Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

all within the range of its influence. Without Benevo- | racter in great strength, but their direction was ren. lence, it is apt to be too severe and stringent. When dered unprofitable by the predominance of Wonder Conscientiousness is weak, or when, as happens in per- and Self-Esteem.' The general function of the organ fectly honest' and 'honourable' people, in the broad is held to be ascertained, but the metaphysical analysis sense of these terms, it is not something more than is still far from being perfect. average in its power, the defect will run through the whole conduct and judgments of an individual. We often hear people complaining that a particular friend is uncertain. This word expresses concisely the defect of Conscientiousness above described.

The existence of Conscientiousness as an independent element in the human constitution, renders intelligible many supposed inconsistencies in human conduct that a man, for instance, will be kind, forgiving, even devout, and yet not just. It is a great mistake with regard to those who, after many years of sanctimonious professions, are detected in dishonest acts, to say that they must have been all along mere hypocrites. It is quite possible that many of their religious feelings and convictions may have been sincere, but only insufficient in force to compensate for the lack of direct Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness gives remorse when the individual has been tempted to sin. The organ is larger in some nations than others. It is larger generally in Europeans than in Asiatics and Africans; very generally it is deficient in the savage brain. It evidently grows in civilisation; indeed, it constitutes an essential of civilisation. The organ is often found diseased, and the insanity consists in morbid self-reproach, imaginary debts, and unfounded belief in merited punishment.

No. 17.-Hope.

No. 19.-Ideality.

The organ of this faculty is situated farther down, but close to that of Wonder, along the temporal ridge of the frontal bone. Dr Gall discovered it in the busts and portraits of deceased, and in the heads of a great number of living, poets. This confirmed to him the old classical adage, that the poet is born, not made; in other words, that his talent is the result of a primitive faculty. Dr Gall called it the organ of Poetry. Dr Spurzheim corrected this, and gave it the elegant name it now bears; which has, as well as others of the expressive names of the phrenological organs, been adopted into ordinary language.

The faculty delights in the perfect, the exquisite, the beau-ideal-something beyond the scenes of realitysomething in the regions of romance and fancy-of the beautiful and the sublime. Those writers and speakers who possess it large adorn all they say or write with its vivid inspirations. It is the organ of imagery. The sermons of Chalmers owe much of their charms to it, and the organ was very large in his head. Shakspeare created such beings as Ariel, Oberon, and all the imaginings of the Tempest' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' under its influence. The faculty renders conversation elevated, animated, and eloquent.

Nature abounds in beauty and splendour to gratify Ideality-a proof of pure beneficence in the Creator; for it is a pleasure of unmixed gratuity, if we may so speak: man might have been created without it; but Divine goodness superadded that, the most exquisite, to his other enjoyments. The organ is small in criminals and other coarse and brutal characters, for it is essential to refinement. It prompts to elegance and ornament in dress and furniture, and gives a taste for poetry, painting, statuary, and architecture. A point of interrogation placed on the bust on the back part of the region of this organ, conjectured to be a different organ, but one allied to Ideality. Some phrenologists have considered it the organ of the Sublime, from its touching on Cautiousness, which the grand, at least the terrific grand, in some degree affects. A writer in the

The organ of this faculty has its place on each side of Veneration, partly under the frontal, and partly under the parietal bone. It was discovered by Spurzheim, but never admitted by Gall, who considered Hope as a function of every faculty that desires. To this Dr Spurzheim answered, that we desire much of which we have no hope; a criminal on the scaffold intensely desires life, but has no hope of it. Dr Spurzheim considered Hope a faculty sui generis, producing hope, in general, of good, or gratification to the other faculties; and, by careful observation in nature, found the organ in the situation just described. It seems to have been given to man to make him happy. It produces gaiety and cheerfulness, looks on the sunny side of everything, and paints the future with bright colours.Phrenological Journal' suggests the love of the past as When not regulated by the intellect, Hope leads to rash speculation, and, in combination with Acquisitiveness, to gambling, both at the gaming-table and in the counting-house. It tends to render the individual credulous, and often indolent.

its function. The existence of the faculty of Ideality demonstrates that the sentiment of beauty is an original emotion of the mind, and settles the controversy in which Professor Stewart, Lord Jeffrey, Dr Brown, and others took a part, as to the origin of our perception of beauty. The organ is held as established.

No. 20.-Wit, or the Ludicrous.

The organ of this faculty is situated before, and a little lower than that of Ideality. When large, it gives a breadth to the upper region of the forehead. In the portraits of Sterne, his forefinger is represented resting on this angle of the forehead, which in him was very large, and the mental manifestation powerful.

No. 18.-Wonder. The organ of this faculty is situated on each side of that of Benevolence, with one other organ, that of Imitation, interposed. Dr Gall discovered it by observing it large in the seers of visions and dreamers of dreams, and in those who loved to dwell on the marvellous. Persons with the faculty powerful are fond of news, especially if striking and wonderful, and are always expressing astonishment; their reading is much in the The phrenological writers have discussed at great regions of the marvellous, tales of wonder, of en- length, and with not a little controversy, the metaphychanters, ghosts, and witches. When the sentiment is sical nature or analysis of this faculty. We do not reexcessive or diseased, it produces that peculiar fana- quire to follow them into this inquiry, as most of them are ticism which attempts miracles, and with Language agreed that by means of this faculty we see and enjoy active, speaks with unknown tongues. It draws the the ludicrous, and experience the emotion of laughter. ignorant and fanatically-inclined, who have the organ Man is the only laughing animal, and the impulse and large, with ease by its pretensions; hence the numerous its result are too well-marked characteristics not to be followers of Johanna Southcote. Thom, and Edward the manifestations of a special faculty. Dr Beattie's Irving. Mr Combe says of the last-I examined theory is the most satisfactory of any that the objects his head before he was established as a preacher, and of the ludicrous are incongruities, with a certain mixwhen his peculiarities were unknown, and observed ture of congruity. When this organ is large, the inthat the organs of Wonder and Self-Esteem were very dividual both enjoys and creates the ludicrous, and large. They gave a tinge to his whole public life. The is apt to give a ludicrous turn to everything that organs of Benevolence, Conscientiousness, Veneration, passes through his mind. For the discussions in which and Intellect were also amply developed, so that he Mr Scott, Mr Watson, and Mr Schwartz of Stockholm possessed the natural elements of the Christian cha- | have taken a part, as well as for the opinions of Gall,

Spurzheim, and Combe, we must refer to Mr Combe's System' (4th edition, p.416). We may observe that Mr Scott and Mr Hewett Watson consider the organ No. 20 as that of an intellectual, and not an affective faculty. Mr Scott views it as the faculty by which we discriminate or observe differences; and this, by much ingenious reasoning, he is inclined to hold to be the function of a different faculty from that by which we perceive resemblances. Mr Watson thinks the function of No. 20 is to investigate what may be called intrinsicalitiesthe intrinsic nature of things. Mr Combe thinks the facts adduced by Mr Watson make it probable that there is a faculty for this power, but that it is not No. 20. Dr Spurzheim unsettles both Mr Scott's and Mr Watson's theories anatomically, by showing that the portion of brain is in the same region with Ideality, and is therefore the organ of an affective, and not an intellectual faculty. He farther holds, that the same faculty which perceives resemblances perceives differences; and both he and Mr Combe, observing that all those who deal largely in the ludicrous have the Organ 20 large, conclude, that whatever may be the object or objects of the ludicrous in nature-whether something specific, like colour or odour in a rose, or some condition of things, which in themselves are not necessarily ludicrous-there is a mental sentiment or emotion which excites to laughter. No. 20 is the organ essentially of this emotion, and so far they hold it established.

No. 21.-Imitation.

This organ is situated on each side of that of Benevolence. Dr Gall found the protuberance accompanied by instinctive, and often irrepressible mimicry. The purpose of the faculty is to enable the young to learn from the more advanced, and keep a convenient uniformity in the manners and externals of society. Celebrated players always possess it largely, and by it imitate the supposed manner, and even feel the sentiments, of their characters. The Imitative arts depend on this faculty; and its organ is found large, accordingly, in painters and sculptors of eminence. What a fund of amusement and delight comes from the group of faculties whose organs are all in this one region of the head, well named The Poet's Corner'—namely Ideality, Wonder, Imitation, Wit or the Ludicrous, Time, and Tune! The faculty of Imitation has been recognised in a state of disease when the impulse to mimic is beyond the individual's control. Pinel makes mention of an idiot girl who was affected in this way. Parrots, monkeys, and the mocking - bird imitate and mimic. The last-mentioned often attracts other birds by the cries of their own kind; and then waggishly, as it were, scares them away with the cry of some bird they dread. The organ is established.

ORDER SECOND.-INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES.

By these faculties man and animals perceive or gain knowledge of the external world, and likewise of their own mental operations. The object of the faculties is to know what exists, and to perceive qualities and relations. Dr Spurzheim divided them into three genera: -1. The External Senses; 2. The Internal Senses, or Perceptive Faculties, which procure knowledge of external objects, their physical qualities and relations; 3. The Reflecting Faculties.

GENUS I.-EXTERNAL SENSES.

By these, man and the inferior animals are brought into communication with the external material world. Much metaphysical acumen has been wasted, and much nonsense written, about the senses. Before phrenology discovered internal faculties, of which the senses are the ministers-they themselves giving only passive impressions called sensations, but forming no ideas the senses were considered the sole sources of our knowledge. They are necessary to that knowledge, but would never of themselves have completed it. By each sense we discover some quality of material nature.

| The senses, as generally received, are five in numberTouch, Taste, Smell, Hearing, and Sight. There are certainly two more-namely, the sense of Hunger and Thirst, and the Muscular Sense, or that by which we feel the state of our muscles as acted upon by gravitation and the resistance of matter. Without this last sense we could not keep our balance, or suit our movements to the laws of the mechanical world. Dr Thomas Brown conjectured this sense many years ago, and Sir Charles Bell has thrown much light on it by proving that separate roots, afterwards joining in one apparent nerve, but evidently being two, gave muscular motion and muscular sensation. For further information on this subject, see the preceding sheet.

GENUS II.-INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES, WHICH PROCURE

KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS, OF THEIR PHYSICAL QUALITIES, AND VARIOUS RELATIONS. These faculties correspond in some degree with the perceptive powers of the metaphysicians, and form ideas. No. 22.-Individuality.

The organ of this faculty is situated in the middle of the lower part of the forehead, immediately above the top of the nose. It takes cognisance of individual existences-of a horse, for example. Other knowing faculties respectively observe the form, colour, size, and weight of the horse, but a faculty was necessary to unite all these, and give the individual idea of a horse. It furnishes the substratum which has form, colour, &c.-an old desideratum of the metaphysicians. Individuality is the storehouse of knowledge of things that simply exist. It is often large without being accompanied by reflecting power; when this is the case, the individual has been compared to an encyclopædia, full of facts, but unable to reason from them. All the objects of Individuality are noun substantives. Verbs and adjectives are the perceptions of other faculties to be afterwards noticed. As Individuality merely observes existences, without regard to their modes of action, it is the faculty of the naturalist. Those who possess it large and active, observe the minutest objects; nothing escapes them, and they remember even the minutest objects so well, that they will miss them when taken away. On the contrary, those who have it small, observe nothing, and give the most imperfect account of the objects which have been in their way. In the artist, the faculty gives great minuteness of detail, and with Imitation and Form, great power of hitting likenesses in portrait-painting. The faculty prompts to personification of abstract ideas- as Fame, Envy, Wisdom, Folly. The organ is established: the metaphysical analysis of the faculty requires farther inquiry.

No. 23.-Form.

This organ is situated on each side of, and close to, the crista galli, and occupies the space between the eyes. In those who have it large, the eyes are wide asunder, and vice versa. Dr Gall discovered the organ in persons remarkable for recognising faces after long intervals, and although perhaps only once and briefly seen. The bust of George III. furnishes the best example in the Phrenological Society's collection; and it is well known that he never forgot a face. Townsend, the famous Bow Street officer, had the same talent, one most essential to his office. As every material object must have a form, regular or irregular, this faculty was given to man and animals to perceive forms, and they could not exist without it. When large, it constitutes an essential element in a talent for drawing, but requires Size and Constructiveness to perfect the talent. Forms are capable of great beauty, and of affording much pleasure, and in nothing more than in the human figure. Many persons who have the organ of Form large, connect their words and ideas with forms, and these often fanciful and of their own creating. Mineralogists and crystallographers generally possess this power in large endowment. The celebrated Cuvier owed much of his success in comparative anatomy to his large organ

No. 24.-Size.

[ocr errors]

of Form. Decandolle mentions, that his (Cuvier's) | nate colours, often to a ludicrous extent. The organ in memory was particularly remarkable in what related large in great painters, especially great colourists, and to forms, considered in the widest sense of that word; gives an arched appearance to the eyebrow; for exthe figure of an animal seen in reality or in drawing, ample, in Rubens, Titian, Rembrandt, Salvator Rosa, never left his mind, and served him as a point of com- Claude Lorraine, and others. A large endowment of parison for all similar objects.' the organ gives great delight in flowers and brilliant colouring of all kinds. Nature has profusely provided for the gratification of this faculty, by the exquisite colouring in which her works are dressed. Some metaphysicians consider the pleasure we derive from colours to be the result of the association of ideas. Phrenology has discovered that it is the great gratification of an organ forming part of our constitution. Like that of Ideality, the pleasures we derive from Colour are gratuitous goodness from the Creator's hands.

Every object has size or dimension. Hence a faculty is necessary to cognize this quality. The supposed organ is situated at the inner extremities of the eyebrows, where they turn upon the nose. A perception of Size is important to our movements and actions, and essential to our safety. There is no accuracy in drawing or perspective without this organ. Sir George Mackenzie thinks that the faculty of Size, as it cognizes dimension of every kind, whether in length, breadth, thickness, height, depth, or distance, is that faculty whereby we perceive space in general, analogous to the faculty of Time, by which we perceive time. Different individuals manifest different degrees of the power of perceiving size. Some seem not to possess the power of estimating distance or dimension, while others can draw a circle without compasses, and find the centre of one already drawn with the greatest accuracy.

No. 25.-Weight,

No. 27.-Locality.

Dr Gall was led to the discovery of this faculty as primitive, by comparing his own difficulties with a com panion's facilities, in finding their way through the woods, where they had placed snares for birds, and marked nests, when studying natural history. Every material object must exist in some part of space, and that part of space becomes place in virtue of being so occupied. Objects themselves are cognized by Individaality; but their place, the direction where they lie, the way to them, depend on another faculty, a faculty given for that purpose. Without such a power, men and animals must, in situations where objects were nume rous and complicated in their positions, as woods, have lost their way. No man could find his own home, no bird its own nest, no mouse its own hole. The use of the faculty will be rendered plain by considering what it is we do when we wish to remember our way through the streets of a large city; we note particular objects, buildto each other, and these relations we can remember, although with a faint recollection of the forms of the ob jects themselves. The organ is large in those who find their way easily, and vividly remember places in which they have been. It materially aids the traveller, and is supposed to give a love for travelling. The organ was large in Columbus, Cook, Park, Clarke, and other travellers. Geometricians, whose study is the relation of spaces, have the organ large as was the case with Kepler, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Newton. The faculty, when active, prompts the individuals to localise everything, and think of it as in its place.

Weight is a quality of matter quite distinct from all its other qualities. The weight of any material object is only another name for its degree of gravitating tendency-its attractibility to the earth. A power to perceive the different degrees of this attraction is essential to man's movements, safety, and even existence. There must be a faculty for that perception, and that faculty must have a cerebral instrument or organ. Phrenologists have generally localised that organ in the super-ings, for example, and observe how they stand in relation orbitar ridge or eyebrow, immediately next to Size, and farther from the top of the nose. But as yet the function of the Organ 25 has given rise to so much discussion, as to leave it far from certain what that precisely is. Mr Combe says, 'Persons who excel at archery and quoits, and also those who find great facility in judging of momentum and resistance in mechanics, are observed to possess the parts of the brain lying nearest to the organ of Size largely developed; and the organ is now regarded as probable. Persons in whom Individuality, Size, Weight, and Locality are large, have generally a talent for engineering, and those branches of mechanics which consist in the application of forces; they delight in steam-engines, water-wheels, and turning-lathes. The same combination occurs in persons distinguished for successful feats in skating, in which the regulation of equilibrium is an important element. Constructiveness, when Weight is small, leads to rearing still-fabrics, rather than to fabricating working machinery.' Mr Simpson has given much attention to this faculty (Phrenological Journal,' vol. ii. p. 412), and opened up some original views for discussion inquires a distinct perceptive power. Our safety, and the phrenological world; a new chapter, as Mr Combe calls it, in the science of mind. He cites a number of noted mechanicians and engineers in whom the Organ 25 is large. In the bust of James Watt it is particularly prominent. Children who walk early and steadily have uniformly the organ large, and the inference was drawn that the faculty gives the power of preserving equilibrium, or that balance of forces which is essential to the application of animal power, and even to existence.

No. 26.-Colouring.

As every object must have a colour in order to be visible, it seems necessary that there should be a faculty to cognize this quality. The organ is the next outwards from Weight in the eyebrows, occupying the precise centre of each eyebrow. A hollow there, into which the end of the finger could be put, or such a flatness in the ridge of the eyebrow that a perpendicular line dropt from it would pass through the eyeball, has, times without number, been found to be accompanied with a want of power to discrimi

No. 28.--Number.

The organ of this faculty is placed at the outer extremity of the eyebrows and angle of the eye. It occasions, when large, a fulness or breadth of the temple, and often pushes downwards the external corner of the eye. When it is small, the part is flat and narrow between the eye and the temple. Their Number is a very important relation or condition of things, and re

even existence, may depend on a clear perception of
number. Dr Gall called the faculty Le Sens de Nom-
bres,' 'The Sense of Numbers,' and assigned to it not
only arithmetic, but mathematics in general. Dr Spurz-
heim more correctly limits its functions to arithmetic,
algebra, and logarithms; geometry being the exercise,
as already shown, of other faculties. Dr Gall first
observed the organ in a boy of nine years of age near
Vienna, who could multiply and divide, mentally, ten
or twelve by three figures, in less time than expert arith-
meticians could do with their pencils. Dr Gall adds,
he had created his own method.' An advocate of
Vienna regretted to Dr Gall that his son was so much
engrossed with calculating, that he attended to nothing
else. Dr Gall compared the heads of these two boys,
and found no particular resemblance but in one place
- that described above-where they exactly agreed.
Dr Gall then went to noted arithmeticians-among
them an author of tables of logarithms and found the
same organisation. Many other examples will be found
in the phrenological writings.

1

No. 29.-Order.

The organ of this faculty is placed in the eyebrow, between Colouring and Number, and is large and prominent, and often pointed like a limpet-shell, in those who are remarkable for love of method, arrangement, and symmetry, and are annoyed by confusion and irregularity. The marked love of order in some persons, and their suffering from disorder, are feelings which no other faculty, or combination of faculties, seems to embrace. Several cases are mentioned in the phrenological books, where it characterised idiots, deficient in almost every other faculty. Mr L, a late medical gentleman in Edinburgh, was remarkable for the organ and its manifestation. He was pointed in his engagements-for the faculty gives this important habit neat and careful in his writings, regular in his accounts, precise in his dress, and cleanly in his person. In savages, whose habits are slovenly, filthy, and disgusting, the organ is comparatively small.

No. 30.-Eventuality.

The organ of this faculty is situated in the very centre of the forehead, and when large, gives to this part of the head a rounded prominence. Individuality has been called the faculty of nouns; Eventuality is the faculty of verbs. The first perceives mere existence; the other motion, change, event, history. All knowledge must be of one or the other of these two descriptions-either things that are, or things that happen. In the following examples-the MAN speaks, the WIND blows, the DAY dawns, the nouns cognized by Individuality are printed in capitals; while the verbs, addressed to Eventuality, are in italics. The first is simple existence; the other is action, event, history. Dr Gall distinguished, as the metaphysicians do, verbal memory, local memory, real memory. It is now phrenological doctrine that all the intellectual faculties have their own memory. Form remembers forms; Colour, colours; Size, dimensions; Individuality, objects; and so on.

The most powerful knowing minds have a large endowment of both Individuality and Eventuality; and such individuals, even with a medium reflecting organisation, are the clever men in society-the acute men of business-the ready practical lawyers. The organ of Eventuality is generally well developed in children, and their appetite for stories is well known. Those, however, in whom Eventuality is moderate, and Individuality large, are prompted less to listen to tales than to see things,' as they call the exercise of their more powerful faculty. In after-life, the latter will observe minute existences-will tell how many nails are in a door, and miss one if taken out before their next inspection. The former will make use of incidents when they wish to recall any matter of memory.

[ocr errors]

No. 31.-Time.

Whatever be the essence of time as an entity, it is a reality to man, cognizable by a faculty by which he observes its lapse. Some persons are called walking timepieces; they can tell the hour without looking at a watch; and some even can do so, nearly, when waking in the night. The faculty also marks the minute divisions of duration, and their relations and harmonies, which are called time in music, and rhythm in versification. The impulse to mark time with the head, hands, feet, and whole body, is too common, too natural, and too strong, not to be the result of a faculty; it is the impulse to dance, almost universal in both savage and civilised man. In some, the impulse, when well-marked time is offered the better if combined with music, though a well-beat drum may be danced to-is often irresistible. It exists in a diseased state, for we have seen dancing madmen. Dogs, horses, and many other animals give plain indications of possessing the faculty, by their conduct on the return of particular days, occasions, &c.

The

than that of Time, giving a roundness to the point where the forehead turns to form the temples. It is large in great musicians; and when small and hollow, there is an utter incapacity to distinguish either melody or harmony. Music may be defined as a species of natural language, depending immediately on either a melodious succession or a harmonious unison of tones-tones, again, being distinguished from simple noises by a peculiarity in the mode of their production. (See ACOUSTICS, Vol. I.) The organ of Tune in the human brain appears to have been constituted in relation to these physical facts; and in cases of good endowment, to have a most exact perception of all their niceties, and a power of using them to the production of the species of natural language which we term music. Cases of a low endowment of the musical faculty, or of persons said to want musical ear, are of frequent occurrence, though perhaps in many such instances early culture would have brought out some trace of the faculty. The great bulk of mankind possess the organ in a moderate endowment, so as to be capable of enjoying music in some degree. The individual possessing it in high endowment becomes, in all stages of society, a distinguished artist, exercising a peculiar power over his fellow-creatures, so as to rouse, melt, soothe, and gratify them at his pleasure. But the gift, in this active forin, is liable to be much modified according as it is accompanied by Ideality, Benevolence, Wit, and other faculties.

No. 33.-Language.

When the faculties are in activity, either singly or in combination, the impulse in almost all individuals is strong, in many irresistible, to communicate to others the feelings or thoughts produced by them. This may be done by signs, which is natural language, or by words, which constitute conventional. A faculty is given to man and animals which connects feelings with signs and cries; but to man alone is given articulate speech. The comparative facility with which different men clothe their thoughts in words, depends on the size of this organ, which is situated on the super-orbitar plate, immediately over the eyeball, and when large, pushes the eye outwards, and sometimes downwards, producing in the latter case a wrinkling or pursing of the lower eyelid. There is no fluent speaker deficient in this organ. There is some doubt of the faculty giving the power of learning languages, and the spirit of languages in philology; the prevailing opinion is, that the faculty of Language has less to do with this power than Individuality, Imitation, and some other faculties. Learning the words and structure of other languages is quite a different thing from applying our own to express our thoughts and feelings.

The

None of the organs have been better proved to be primitive by diseased manifestation than this. instances are numerous of persons losing the power of finding words for their thoughts, and recovering it again; and in many of these cases, the brain in the organ when examined after death has been found diseased. Pain in the region often accompanies the loss of appropriate speech, in plague, yellow and typhus fever." But we must refer for further information on this interesting subject, to the works on phrenology, especially to Mr Combe's 'System.'

Internal Excitement of the Knowing Organs→→
Spectral Illusions.

The Knowing Organs are for the most part called into activity by external objects, such as forms, colours, sounds, individual things, &c.; but internal causes often excite them; and when they are in action, objects will be perceived which have no external existence, and which, nevertheless, the individual will believe to be real. This is the explanation of visions, spectres, and ghosts, and at once explains the firm belief of many that they have appeared to them, and the fact that it never happens that two persons see the same organ of this faculty is situated still farther out spectres at the same time. We formerly remarked,

No. 32.-Tune.

that it is the perception of conditions, of the condition in which objects exist. As the organ of analogies, similitudes, and comparison of ideas, it is established.

No. 35.-Causality.

when treating of Wonder, that excess or disease in that organ predisposes the patient to believe in the marvellous and supernatural, and probably stimulates the Knowing Organs into action, when spectral illusions are the consequence. A young lady known to Mr Simpson, and mentioned in the phrenological books by the This is the highest and noblest of the intellectual initials of S. L., lived in indescribable horrors for above powers, and is the last in the phrenological analysis of a year, in consequence of the visits of the spectral the faculties. Dr Spurzheim so named it from believing forms of persons and other objects, and the perception that it traces the connection between cause and effect, of bright lights, brilliant colours, music, and other and sees the relation of ideas to each other in respect illusions. At the time of these false perceptions, she of necessary consequence. Its organs are situated on was strangely affected in the organ of Weight and each side of Comparison. Some metaphysicians have the sense of Resistance; she lost the power of preserv- held that we have no idea of cause, but see only sequence, ing her balance, and saw perpendiculars and horizon- or one thing following another. It is true that we do tals at other angles. She complained of sharp pain see sequence. When, for example, fire is put to gunwhen her visitants appeared to her; and although igno- powder, Individuality perceives the existence of the rant of phrenology, and even the situation of the organs, powder and of the match; Eventuality sees the motion she put her finger and thumb, when asked where she which unites them, and the change or event which felt the pain, to the organs of Form and Individuality. takes place in the explosion; but we have a third ideaFor several weeks these were the site of her pain ex-namely, that of power, agency, or efficiency, existing in clusively; and then the figures which appeared to her some way in the cause, to produce the effect. Whence were forms without colour, resembling, as she stated, do we get this third idea?-from a third or distinct cobweb. Here plainly was Form active, but Colouring faculty, and that is Causality. With a powerful perdormant. Some weeks after this her objects became ception of causation, the individual reasons from cause naturally coloured, and the pain extended along the to effect by logical or necessary consequence. It is the eyebrows, including the organ of Colouring. Embrac-faculty which sees principles and acts upon them, while ing, as the progress did, Size, her illusions referable to the other two faculties only try experiments. Resource that organ in morbid activity were singular: she saw in difficulties, and sound judgment in life, are the objects sometimes gigantic, sometimes dwarfish, and result of powerful Causality. The organ is established. even minute. The pain proceeding onwards along the whole eyebrows, Order and Number became affected, and her visiters came in great numbers and most annoying confusion, so that sometimes they seemed to We quote the following passage from Mr Combe's tumble into her apartment like a cascade, a confused System' (4th edition, p. 593):- The human mind and mass of persons, limbs, heads, &c. Her apparitions the external world having emanated from the same began at last to speak to her, and her terrors were much Creator, ought, when understood, to be found wisely aggravated. It was probable that the organs of Lan-adapted to each other; and this accordingly appears in guage and Tune became affected; for she often heard bands and choruses of music. We may add that she was greatly relieved when the true nature of her spectres was explained to her. In time the affection left her entirely. It is likely that the proximate cause of these morbid manifestations was an undue determination of blood to the region of the head where the Knowing Organs are situated.

GENUS III.-REFLECTIVE FACULTIES.

The Intellectual Faculties already considered give us knowledge of objects, and the qualities and relations of objects, also of the changes they undergo, or events. The two remaining faculties, according to Dr Spurzheim, act on all the other sensations and notions'that is, they judge of the relations of different ideas or classes of ideas produced by the Knowing Faculties. They minister to the direction and gratification of all the other faculties, and constitute what by excellence is called reason-in other words, reflection.

No. 34.-Comparison.

Dr Gall discovered the organ of this faculty in a man of science who reasoned chiefly by means of analogies and comparisons, and rarely by logical deductions. He illustrated everything, and carried his opponent along with him with a flood of resemblances, concluding that the thing disputed must be true, being like so many things that are known to be true. In his head was a fulness in the form of a reversed pyramid, just in the middle of the upper part of the forehead. The faculty perceives analogies and resemblances. Every faculty can compare its own objects. Colouring can compare colours; Weight, weights; Form, forms; Tune, sounds; but Comparison can compare a colour with a note, or a form with a weight, &c. Analogy is a comparison not of things, but of their relations. Dr Spurzheim thought that the faculty perceives difference. Mr Scott dissents from this, and attributes that function to the faculty of Wit. The precise fundamental function of the faculty is yet controverted. Mr Hewett Watson argues ingeniously, and Mr Combe assents to the argument,

Adaptation of the External World to the Intellectual
Faculties of Man.

an eminent degree to be the case. If the reader will direct his attention to any natural or artificial object, and consider, 1st, Its existence; 2d, Its form; 3d, Its size; 4th, Its weight; 5th, Its locality or relation in space to other objects; 6th, The number of its parts; 7th, The order or physical arrangement of its parts; 8th, The changes which it undergoes; 9th, The periods of time which these require (we would add here, its soundproducing quality or sonorousness, as quite different from all those enumerated); 10th, The analogies and differences between the individual object under consideration and other objects; 11th, The effect which it produces; and lastly, If he will designate this assemblage of ideas by a name, he will find that he has obtained a tolerably complete notion of the object.' We may add, that the relations between the affective faculties or feelings of man and the moral world are not less harmonious; and demonstrate design in a manner altogether irresistible.

Relation between the Functions and the Structure of the Brain.

An accumulation of facts which amounts to proof as cogent as is to be found in regard to any other physical truth, has connected with the anterior lobes of the brain the Intellectual Faculties, and with the middle and posterior lobes the Feelings. The Intellectual Faculties constitute the WILL of man, and in obedience to the will are the voluntary motions. But the feelings, when in activity, as is well known, have certain involuntary motions connected with them. Now the spinal cord has two columns the one, the anterior, observed to produce motion, and therefore called the motory tract; and the other to produce sensation, and therefore called the sensory tract. These two tracts join the brain by what is called the medulla oblongata; and here a most striking distinction takes place. The motory tract alone communicates with the anterior lobes, in which, in the intellectual organs, resides the will. Hence in voluntary motion, as an effect of will, the motory tract obeys the anterior lobe alone; in other words, the anterior lobe of the brain manifests will, and the motory tract executes will. The sensory

« ElőzőTovább »