pamphlet which you say you "understand I have privately cir& culated.” It is quite true that I have privately circulated a pamphlet, but diametrically opposite in character to what you represent. If you have not seen “ the Essay” to which you allude, how can you be justified in characterizing it as you have done? Nay, misrepresenting it to the utmost extent possible, in a letter designed for publication ? My own conviction was, that I had strengthened and systematized the proofs of design, wisdom, and goodness in the Deity; and a pretty numerous circle of friends, not destitute of metaphysical acumen, are of opinion that this conviction is well founded. If you have seen the Essay, you must have observed, what stares every reader in the face, namely, the caveat given in the preface, that “I rely on the ho

nour of every individual to whom the Essay may be presented, “that it shall not be reprinted, reviewed, nor publicly criticized, “ but that it shall be treated in good faith As A PRIVATE COMMU“ NICATION.” My object, as is there fully explained, was to present it to reflecting individuals acquainted with Phrenology, who take an interest in the improvement of mankind, and in whose honour I had confidence,“ soliciting, in return, a free “communication of their opinions regarding it;" informing them, at the same time, that it had been printed “ exclusively

for private distribution ; that it is not published, and not sold; so that, if it should contain important errors, injurious to the public, it is in my power at any time to suppress it ; and pledging myself to do so whenever such mistakes are pointed

Let me put it to your candour, therefore, whether a communication made in confidence, upon honour, and for the purpose of obtaining private criticism previously to publication, can fairly or honourably be even adverted to, not to say stigmatized, by you, to whom no copy was presented, in a letter intended for the public eye, on topics altogether unconnected with the Essay in question ? For my cwn part, I care nothing for your denunciation. I have received many valuable remarks on the Essay, and intend speedily to publish it, after availing myself of these ; and you and the public will then enjoy a legitimate right to treat it according to its deserts. But in the mean time, for the sake of your own honour, I take the liberty to suggest, what I conceive justice also dictates, that you should withdraw the note, or paragraph, in which allusion is made to this private communication; in which event, all notice of it in this setter will also be omitted. I trust that I need say nothing farther on this point; yet I cannot avoid observing, that it would be just as fair and correct on my part, to inquire concerning the private and confidential remarks which you have made at any time on the doctrines of Spinoza, and to charge you with atheism. This would be an appeal to the religious feelings of the public, with a view to prejudice you, that would reflect

« out.'

a

disgrace on any man pretending to the character of a philoso. pher, and I do no such thing. But if you shall persist in retaining for the public eye, a paragraph which alludes to a subject utterly unconnected with our phrenological controversy, the public will not be slow in judging whether this has been done from a conscientious regard for the interests of religion, or whether it has not been thrust in with the hope not only of exciting an unjust prejudice against me, but also of withdrawing attention from the actual merits of the controversy, after finding yourself on the losing side.

After the turn which you have now given to the correspondence, I decline entering into any farther discussion with you in this form. I repeat, that I am ready to meet you before the arbiters on any day which you may appoint, and if they shall be of opinion that the arbitration ought at present to be proceeded with, before you have published your statement against Dr Spurzheim, I shall cheerfully obey their commands. In replying to this letter, I shall take it kind that you introduce no new topics, so that the correspondence may here terminate in the mean time. I am, &c.

GEORGE COMBE.

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON TO MR COMBE. MY DEAR SIR,-In reply to your letter of yesterday, I have only to say, in general, that if you feel sore at any parts of my last communication, you must recollect that these were merely the rejoinders, at length tardily provoked, by the irrelevant personalities with which you have of late attempted to screen the weakness of your cause, if not to disgust your opponent with his controversy.

Your own manifold misrepresentations in the Caledonian Mercury, and the contemptible distortion of all truth and reason in the anonymous articles of the phrenological champion, the Scotsman, were allowed to pass, in general, without refutation, because I had myself no patience for the task, and was unwilling either to engross the columns of a newspaper, or to perplex the public with contradictions of what, even if true, had no influence on the scientific question. The continuance of the same teasing conduct in your last letter, made it expedient, however, to discontinue, for a moment, my forbearance; and, as I expressly stated, my answer to that letter was intended “ to signalize, once for all,” your undignified and uncandid mode of disputation, affording, at the same time, a sample of the utter disregard, which, in common with other Phrenologists, you habitually manifest to the correctness of your most positive and most important assertions. In doing this, I had no intention of exciting any irritation on your part; but in check

a

ing a system of personal allusions, as inaccurate as irrelevant, and wholly unworthy of a philosopher and the cause of truth, I was certainly not bound to see that the missiles, I only retorted from myself, fell without inconvenience on the hand from which they had been originally sent. It is curious also that you object to my letter, only in its more unimportant and least galling passages; and are fain to pass over, in dumb endurance, its annihilating expositions of the phrenological tactic you employ, of reversing, in your reports, the reality of the most notorious facis. But though I might have conceded all you ask, had your letter been confined exclusively to ourselves, the case is completely altered by its publication, on your part, to the Phrenological Society.

As to the matter of the placards, it would certainly have been long before I stooped to reproach you with that device for congregating a crowd. But as you have published, through the Phrenological Society, that I condescended to adopt that mean, I must be allowed, on my part, to publish a contradiction of so intolerable an allegation. My statement, that this mode of assembling a multitude was "purely phrenological,” is also, I am confident, perfectly correct. I know nothing of the Committee for the relief of the distressed operatives, but knowing, as I do, the manœuvring of your sect, (and you will correct me if am wrong,) I surmise and venture to state, that the whole business was a phrenological job, originated and carried through by phrenological members of that committee, whose compassion for the starving operatives under their protection, did not induce them either to encourage others to pay, or to pay themselves, their half-crown to any lecture but that in favour of their own opinion. If the proceeding had not been phrenological, if the only end in view had been the advantage of the charity, and if the measure itself had not been indecorous, why was it not proposed to me by the committee, that my lecture also should have been placarded ? It was likewise a piece of amusing subtlety to make the committee pay the expense of placards, advertisements, &c. A larger sum could thus be proclaimed and published as the proceeds of your lecture paid over to the charity. Your friends truly neglect nothing to captivate opinion, or to magnify themselves.

In regard to my third note, as no effect could have been produced in Edinburgh by the publication of the context, I am willing to cancel it, provided you qualify your expression so as to prevent a stranger inferring from it, as he naturally would, that the lecture in question was for any paltry profit of mine.

The allusion in my first note to your pamphlet, was pertinently introduced, in illustration, once for all, of an absurdity with which I have been often pestered by you ; that, having read a paper against Phrenology, I had incurred an obligation to the Phrenologists, of publishing my attack, and of publishing it

And if you

without delay. Had I conceived it possible, that the contents of this note were such as to excite any prejudice against your religious opinions, or to operate, in any way, to your personal disadvantage, it never could have been written by me. yourself will state, and any impartial person confirm, that the smallest danger of such being its effect, is to be apprehended, I must, perforce, withdraw it. Such a statement would, however, be tantamount to saying, that no philosophy can be argued irreligious in its consequences, without reproaching the philosopher himself with irreligion. I hold, and am not bound to dissemble my opinion, that Phrenology is implicit atheism ; but the Phrenologists would be greater conjurors than I believe them, if they were able to trace the connexion, however necessary, between their philosophy and its results. PhrenologyPhysical Necessity-Materialism-Atheism-are, to those competent to the question, the precipitous steps of a logical transition : but though you may have advanced a degree farther than those weaker brethren, who still actually hold that Phrenology is not inconsistent with the moral personality of man, I am far from supposing that you have even a suspicion of the melancholy conclusion to which your doctrine inevitably leads. And if the nature of my allusion could not possibly affect you personally, it is idle to say, that I had no right to refer at all to a work, the opinions of which, in so far as they were stated by me, you have publicly read in the Phrenological Society, which you have printed, widely circulated, and distributed even to women ; which, right or wrong, is not confined to the sphere of its distribution; which is openly discussed in company, and has even been attacked in print ; nay, which you yourself declare to be on the eve of a general publication. I was in fact entitled not only to state the general doctrine, but to have minutely canvassed the arguments of a work thus virtually published. Did not the Christian Advocate of Cambridge publish an elaborate refutation of the Edipus Judaicus, which was only privately circulated by its author ? I have never read your work ; and if

you mean to assert, that the doctrine it maintains is “dia“ metrically opposite” to the material necessity or fatalism of human action, I am happy to afford you the opportunity of contradicting a current misconception, and at once acknowledge the report, on which I depended, to be incorrect. But on the supposition that you maintain that doctrine, I expressly stated, that (with many pious individuals) you were wholly ignorant, that the negation of the moral world virtually denied the existence of a God; and no more suspect you of irreligion for this opinion, than I would accuse a divine of conscious atheism, who could identify the philosophical doctrine of absolute necessity with the Calvinistic doctrine of the absolute decrees.

But, though not with reference to yourself, I can well imagine you anxious, on other grounds, to have the note expunged.

The phrenological clergy have some character to support as theologians. They are at last, perhaps, beginning to suspect that they have placed themselves in a mighty ludicrous posi. tion, and every exertion must be made to prevent them coming to a clear consciousness of their situation. You are well aware, that when they leave the camp, (and decamp they must,) they will, in a body, carry back with them, as they brought over, all the women converts, and half the men. Where then will be your multitudes? The bubble will collapse the moment the pious breath by which it has been inflated is withdrawn.

But while I should hold myself disgraced, if I could have whispered aught against you, to the prejudice of your religious estimation, this reproach you actually incur, by the most odious and unfounded of insinuations against me. You say, in reference to my allusion to opinions, which you have printed, circulated, and publicly read, to an allusion in which you are personally guarded from all prejudice, that “it would be just as “ fair and correct, on my part, to inquire concerning the private “and confidential remarks which you have made at any time, “ on the doctrines of Spinoza, and to charge you with atheism.” It is well that a phrenological controversy teaches the nil admirari; and I cannot treat this inuendo even with so strong a feeling as contempt. I leave it to others to distinguish the total difference of the two cases in every point, supposing the grounds of your insinuation to be true. These are false ; and as I know not by whom, or how you may have been deceived, I can only declare in general, that I never at any time made any confidential remarks on the doctrine of Spinoza ; that I never believed, and never expressed a belief in his opinions ; in short, that I never ultered a philosophical tenet in private, which I would hesitate for a moment to proclaim in public. Pantheism, though sometimes, of late, incautiously preached as Calvinism, I hold to be subversive of all religion, natural and revealed. With his ablest opponents I regard Spinoza, his first principles being conceded, as the most cogent of philosophic reasoners. It is only in its foundation that his doctrine can be assailed, and this foundation cannot be denied by a Phrenologist. The paltry attempt at intimidation, contained in this unfounded aspersion, principally determines me not to retract my reference to your pamphlet, unless compelled to do so, by the personal plea, which, however groundless, I would not choose to resist.

As this correspondence is professedly for publication, I again protest against credence being given to any private assertion or insinuation of the Phrenologists regarding me, of any kind. Almost every statement they have hazarded, in print, has been disproved, or allowed to stand unrefuted, only from indifference; while, on their side, they have been unable to invalidate one iota of any assertion hitherto advanced by me. This caution against their private misrepresentations, is not, however, founded only