Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/494

478 being carried on independently of any knowledge whatever of the brain, is known to the writer, in the case of a worthy police-sergeant, who attained tolerable accuracy in the art of reading "the mind's construction," but who had never even seen a brain, and who had the faintest possible idea of the appearance of that organ. Unless, therefore, one may logically maintain that total ignorance of the brain-pan is compatible with an accurate understanding of its contents and mysteries, the successful practice of phrenology must be shown to depend on other data and other circumstances than are supplied by anatomy and physiology—these sciences admittedly supplying the foundation of all that is or can be known regarding the brain, its conformation, structure, and functions. Empirical science—science falsely so called—will not hesitate to assert its ability to accurately solve the deepest problems of character and mind. But the more modest spirit of the true scientist will hesitate before crediting itself with any such ability, or even before giving assent to such general rules of character as are exemplified by the saying, "Big head and little wit"; or by that of the worthy Fuller, who, in his "Holy and Profane State," remarks that "often the cockloft is empty in those whom Nature hath built many stories high."

The fundamental doctrine of the old phrenology is well known to most of us. Its great doctrine is pictorially illustrated in the china heads of the opticians' windows, and may be summed up in the statement that different parts or portions of the brain are the organs of different faculties of mind. The brain thus viewed is a storehouse of faculties and qualities, each faculty possessing a dominion and sphere of its own among the cerebral substance, and having its confines as rigidly defined as are the boundaries of certain actual provinces in the East, the status of which has afforded matter for serious comment of late among the nations at large. Thus, if phrenology be credited with materializing mind in the grossest possible fashion, its votaries have themselves and their science to thank for the aspersion. If it be maintained that feelings of destructiveness reside above the ear, then must we localize the desire to kill or destroy in so much brain-substance as lies included in the "bump" in question. When vainglory besets us, we must hold, if we are phrenologists, that there is a molecular stirrage and activity of brain-particles beneath a certain bump of "self-esteem" situated above and in front of the ear; while feelings of veneration, of hope, or of wonder, are each to be regarded as causing a defined play of action in particular bumps and special quarters of the brain. Were the deductions of phrenology true, or were its claims to be regarded as a science founded on definite grounds, mind could no longer be regarded as a mystery, since it would be within the power of the phrenologist to assert that, when swayed by emotions of one kind or another, he could declare which part of the brain was being affected. This declaration logically follows upon that which maintains the localization of faculties