Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

I have observed that few of those, whom I have formerly known most intimate, continue on the same friendly footing, or combine the steadiness with the warmth of attachment. I have been acquainted with two or three knots of inseparable companions, who saw each other ‘six days in the week,’ that have broken up and dispersed. I have quarrelled with almost all my old friends, (they might say this is owing to my bad temper, but) they have also quarrelled with one another. What is become of ‘that set of whist-players,’ celebrated by ELIA in his notable _Epistle to Robert Southey, Esq._ (and now I think of it—that I myself have celebrated in this very volume) ‘that for so many years called Admiral Burney friend?’ They are scattered, like last year’s snow. Some of them are dead—or gone to live at a distance—or pass one another in the street like strangers; or if they stop to speak, do it as coolly and try to _cut_ one another as soon as possible. Some of us have grown rich—others poor. Some have got places under Government—others a _niche_ in the Quarterly Review. Some of us have dearly earned a name in the world; whilst others remain in their original privacy. We despise the one; and envy and are glad to mortify the other. Times are changed; we cannot revive our old feelings; and we avoid the sight and are uneasy in the presence of those, who remind us of our infirmity, and put us upon an effort at seeming cordiality, which embarrasses ourselves and does not impose upon our _quondam_ associates. Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them. Either constant intercourse and familiarity breed weariness and contempt; or if we meet again after an interval of absence, we appear no longer the same. One is too wise, another too foolish for us; and we wonder we did not find this out before. We are disconcerted and kept in a state of continual alarm by the wit of one, or tired to death of the dullness of another. The _good things_ of the first (besides leaving stings behind them) by repetition grow stale, and lose their startling effect; and the insipidity of the last becomes intolerable. The most amusing or instructive companion is at best like a favourite volume, that we wish after a time to _lay upon the shelf_; but as our friends are not willing to be laid there, this produces a misunderstanding and ill-blood between us.—Or if the zeal and integrity of friendship is not abated, or its career interrupted by any obstacle arising out of its own nature, we look out for other subjects of complaint and sources of dissatisfaction. We begin to criticise each other’s dress, looks, and general character. ‘Such a one is a pleasant fellow, but it is a pity he sits so late!’ Another fails to keep his appointments, and that is a sore that never heals. We get acquainted with some fashionable young men or with a mistress, and wish to introduce our friend; but he is awkward and a sloven, the interview does not answer, and this throws cold water on our intercourse. Or he makes himself obnoxious to opinion—and we shrink from our own convictions on the subject as an excuse for not defending him. All or any of these causes mount up in time to a ground of coolness or irritation—and at last they break out into open violence as the only amends we can make ourselves for suppressing them so long, or the readiest means of banishing recollections of former kindness, so little compatible with our present feelings. We may try to tamper with the wounds or patch up the carcase of departed friendship, but the one will hardly bear the handling, and the other is not worth the trouble of embalming! The only way to be reconciled to old friends is to part with them for good: at a distance we may chance to be thrown back (in a waking dream) upon old times and old feelings: or at any rate, we should not think of renewing our intimacy, till we have fairly _spit our spite_, or said, thought, and felt all the ill we can of each other. Or if we can pick a quarrel with some one else, and make him the scape-goat, this is an excellent contrivance to heal a broken bone. I think I must be friends with Lamb again, since he has written that magnanimous Letter to Southey, and told him a piece of his mind!—I don’t know what it is that attaches me to H—— so much, except that he and I, whenever we meet, sit in judgment on another set of old friends, and ‘carve them as a dish fit for the Gods.’ There was L—— H——, John Scott, Mrs. ——, whose dark raven locks made a picturesque back-ground to our discourse, B——, who is grown fat, and is, they say, married, R——; these had all separated long ago, and their foibles are the common link that holds us together. We do not affect to condole or whine over their follies; we enjoy, we laugh at them till we are ready to burst our sides, ‘_sans_ intermission, for hours by the dial.’ We serve up a course of anecdotes, _traits_, master-strokes of character, and cut and hack at them till we are weary. Perhaps some of them are even with us. For my own part, as I once said, I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about. ‘Then,’ said Mrs. ——, ‘you will never cease to be a philanthropist!’ Those in question were some of the choice-spirits of the age, not ‘fellows of no mark or likelihood;’ and we so far did them justice: but it is well they did not hear what we sometimes said of them. I care little what any one says of me, particularly behind my back, and in the way of critical and analytical discussion—it is looks of dislike and scorn, that I answer with the worst venom of my pen. The expression of the face wounds me more than the expressions of the tongue. If I have in one instance mistaken this expression, or resorted to this remedy where I ought not, I am sorry for it. But the face was too fine over which it mantled, and I am too old to have misunderstood it!... I sometimes go up to ——‘s; and as often as I do, resolve never to go again. I do not find the old homely welcome. The ghost of friendship meets me at the door, and sits with me all dinner-time. They have got a set of fine notions and new acquaintance. Allusions to past occurrences are thought trivial, nor is it always safe to touch upon more general subjects. M. does not begin as he formerly did every five minutes, ‘Fawcett used to say,’ &c. That topic is something worn. The girls are grown up, and have a thousand accomplishments. I perceive there is a jealousy on both sides. They think I give myself airs, and I fancy the same of them. Every time I am asked, ‘If I do not think Mr. Washington Irvine a very fine writer?’ I shall not go again till I receive an invitation for Christmas-day in company with Mr. Liston. The only intimacy I never found to flinch or fade was a purely intellectual one. There was none of the cant of candour in it, none of the whine of mawkish sensibility. Our mutual acquaintance were considered merely as subjects of conversation and knowledge, not at all of affection. We regarded them no more in our experiments than ‘mice in an air-pump:’ or like malefactors, they were regularly cut down and given over to the dissecting-knife. We spared neither friend nor foe. We sacrificed human infirmities at the shrine of truth. The skeletons of character might be seen, after the juice was extracted, dangling in the air like flies in cobwebs: or they were kept for future inspection in some refined acid. The demonstration was as beautiful as it was new. There is no surfeiting on gall: nothing keeps so well as a decoction of spleen. We grow tired of every thing but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.

We take a dislike to our favourite books, after a time, for the same reason. We cannot read the same works for ever. Our honey-moon, even though we wed the Muse, must come to an end; and is followed by indifference, if not by disgust. There are some works, those indeed that produce the most striking effect at first by novelty and boldness of outline, that will not bear reading twice: others of a less extravagant character, and that excite and repay attention by a greater nicety of details, have hardly interest enough to keep alive our continued enthusiasm. The popularity of the most successful writers operates to wean us from them, by the cant and fuss that is made about them, by hearing their names everlastingly repeated, and by the number of ignorant and indiscriminate admirers they draw after them:—we as little like to have to drag others from their unmerited obscurity, lest we should be exposed to the charge of affectation and singularity of taste. There is nothing to be said respecting an author that all the world have made up their minds about: it is a thankless as well as hopeless task to recommend one that nobody has ever heard of. To cry up Shakespeare as the God of our idolatry, seems like a vulgar, national prejudice: to take down a volume of Chaucer, or Spenser, or Beaumont and Fletcher, or Ford, or Marlowe, has very much the look of pedantry and egotism. I confess it makes me hate the very name of Fame and Genius when works like these are ‘gone into the wastes of time,’ while each successive generation of fools is busily employed in reading the trash of the day, and women of fashion gravely join with their waiting-maids in discussing the preference between Paradise Lost and Mr. Moore’s Loves of the Angels. I was pleased the other day on going into a shop to ask, ‘If they had any of the _Scotch Novels_?’ to be told—‘That they had just sent out the last, Sir Andrew Wylie!’—Mr. Galt will also be pleased with this answer! The reputation of some books is raw and _unaired_: that of others is worm-eaten and mouldy. Why fix our affections on that which we cannot bring ourselves to have faith in, or which others have long ceased to trouble themselves about? I am half afraid to look into Tom Jones, lest it should not answer my expectations at this time of day; and if it did not, I should certainly be disposed to fling it into the fire, and never look into another novel while I lived. But surely, it may be said, there are some works, that, like nature, can never grow old; and that must always touch the imagination and passions alike! Or there are passages that seem as if we might brood over them all our lives, and not exhaust the sentiments of love and admiration they excite: they become favourites, and we are fond of them to a sort of dotage. Here is one:

‘——Sitting in my window
Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God,
I thought (but it was you), enter our gates;
My blood flew out and back again, as fast
As I had puffed it forth and sucked it in
Like breath; then was I called away in haste
To entertain you: never was a man
Thrust from a sheepcote to a sceptre, raised
So high in thoughts as I; you left a kiss
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
From you for ever. I did hear you talk
Far above singing!’

A passage like this indeed leaves a taste on the palate like nectar, and we seem in reading it to sit with the Gods at their golden tables: but if we repeat it often in ordinary moods, it loses its flavour, becomes vapid, ‘the wine of _poetry_ is drank, and but the lees remain.’ Or, on the other hand, if we call in the aid of extraordinary circumstances to set it off to advantage, as the reciting it to a friend, or after having our feelings excited by a long walk in some romantic situation, or while we

‘——play with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra’s hair’—

we afterwards miss the accompanying circumstances, and instead of transferring the recollection of them to the favourable side, regret what we have lost, and strive in vain to bring back ‘the irrevocable hour’—wondering in some instances how we survive it, and at the melancholy blank that is left behind! The pleasure rises to its height in some moment of calm solitude or intoxicating sympathy, declines ever after, and from the comparison and a conscious falling-off, leaves rather a sense of satiety and irksomeness behind it.... ‘Is it the same in pictures?’ I confess it is, with all but those from Titian’s hand. I don’t know why, but an air breathes from his landscapes, pure, refreshing as if it came from other years; there is a look in his faces that never passes away. I saw one the other day. Amidst the heartless desolation and glittering finery of Fonthill, there is a port-folio of the Dresden Gallery. It opens, and a young female head looks from it; a child, yet woman grown; with an air of rustic innocence and the graces of a princess, her eyes like those of doves, the lips about to open, a smile of pleasure dimpling the whole face, the jewels sparkling in her crisped hair, her youthful shape compressed in a rich antique dress, as the bursting leaves contain the April buds! Why do I not call up this image of gentle sweetness, and place it as a perpetual barrier between mischance and me?—It is because pleasure asks a greater effort of the mind to support it than pain; and we turn, after a little idle dalliance, from what we love to what we hate!

As to my old opinions, I am heartily sick of them. I have reason, for they have deceived me sadly. I was taught to think, and I was willing to believe, that genius was not a bawd—that virtue was not a mask—that liberty was not a name—that love had its seat in the human heart. Now I would care little if these words were struck out of the dictionary, or if I had never heard them. They are become to my ears a mockery and a dream. Instead of patriots and friends of freedom, I see nothing but the tyrant and the slave, the people linked with kings to rivet on the chains of despotism and superstition. I see folly join with knavery, and together make up public spirit and public opinions. I see the insolent Tory, the blind Reformer, the coward Whig! If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago. The theory is plain enough; but they are prone to mischief, ‘to every good work reprobate.’ I have seen all that had been done by the mighty yearnings of the spirit and intellect of men, ‘of whom the world was not worthy,’ and that promised a proud opening to truth and good through the vista of future years, undone by one man, with just glimmering of understanding enough to feel that he was a king, but not to comprehend how he could be king of a free people! I have seen this triumph celebrated by poets, the friends of my youth and the friends of man, but who were carried away by the infuriate tide that, setting in from a throne, bore down every distinction of right reason before it; and I have seen all those who did not join in applauding this insult and outrage on humanity proscribed, hunted down (they and their friends made a bye-word of), so that it has become an understood thing that no one can live by his talents or knowledge who is not ready to prostitute those talents and that knowledge to betray his species, and prey upon his fellow-man. ‘This was some time a mystery: but the time gives evidence of it.’ The echoes of liberty had awakened once more in Spain, and the morning of human hope dawned again: but that dawn has been overcast by the foul breath of bigotry, and those reviving sounds stifled by fresh cries from the time-rent towers of the Inquisition—man yielding (as it is fit he should) first to brute force, but more to the innate perversity and dastard spirit of his own nature, which leaves no room for farther hope or disappointment. And England, that arch-reformer, that heroic deliverer, that mouther about liberty and tool of power, stands gaping by, not feeling the blight and mildew coming over it, nor its very bones crack and turn to a paste under the grasp and circling folds of this new monster, Legitimacy! In private life do we not see hypocrisy, servility, selfishness, folly, and impudence succeed, while modesty shrinks from the encounter, and merit is trodden under foot? How often is ‘the rose plucked from the forehead of a virtuous love to plant a blister there!’ What chance is there of the success of real passion? What certainty of its continuance? Seeing all this as I do, and unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of understanding, of indifference towards others and ignorance of ourselves—seeing custom prevail over all excellence, itself giving way to infamy—mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.[16]

ESSAY XIV
ON DR. SPURZHEIM’S THEORY

It appears to me that the truth of physiognomy (if we allow it) overturns the science of craniology. For instance, the system of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim supposes that every _bump_ of protuberance on the skull is necessarily produced by an extraordinary protrusion of the brain or increase of the organ of perception immediately underneath it. Now behind a great part of the face we have no brain, and can have no such organs existing and accounting for the external phenomena; and yet here are projections or ramifications of bones, muscles, &c. which are allowed by these reasoners and most other persons to indicate character and intellect just as surely as the new-discovered organs of craniology. If then these projections or modifications of the countenance have such force and meaning where there is no brain underneath to account for them, is it not clear that in other cases the theory which assumes that such projections can only be caused by an extraordinary pressure of the brain, and of the appropriate local organ within, is in itself an obvious fallacy and contradiction? The long prudent chin, the scornful nose (_naso adunco_), the good-natured mouth, are proverbial in physiognomy, but are totally excluded from the organic system. I mentioned this objection once to Dr. Spurzheim personally, but he only replied—‘We have treated of physiognomy in our larger work!’ I was not satisfied with this answer.

I am utterly ignorant of the anatomical and physiological part of this question, and only propose to point out a few errors or defects in his system, which appear on the author’s own showing, in the manner of marginal notes on the work. I would observe, by the bye, that the style and manner of the writer are not such as to induce the reader to place a very implicit reliance on his authority; and in a subject, which is so much an occult science, a _terra incognita_ in the world of observation, depending on the traveller’s report, authority is a good deal. The craniologist may make fools of his disciples at pleasure, unless he is an honest man. They have no check upon him. The face is as ‘a book where men may read strange matters:’ it is open to every one: the language of expression is as it were a kind of mother-tongue, in which every one acquires more or less tact, so that his own practical judgment forms a test to confirm or contradict the interpretation which is given of it. But the skull, on which Drs. Gall and Spurzheim have laid their hands for the discovery of so many important and undeniable truths, nobody else knows any thing about, except as they are pleased to tell us. It is concealed from ordinary observation by a covering of hair, and we must go by hearsay. We may indeed examine one or two individual instances, and grope out our way to truth in the dark; but there can be no habitual conclusion formed, no broad light of experience thrown upon the subject. The unbeliever in the fashionable system may well exclaim—

‘Oh! let me perish in the face of day!’

The only opportunity for fairly studying this question was at the period when people wore artificial hair; for then any well-disposed person had only to pull off his wig, and _show you his mind_.[17] But the hair is a sort of natural mask to the head. The craniologist indeed ‘draws the curtain, and shows the picture:’ but if there is the least want of good faith in him, the science is all abroad again. Unfortunately for the credit due to his system, Dr. Spurzheim (or his predecessor, Dr. Gall, who got up the facts) has very much the air of a German quack-doctor. He is, so to speak it, the Baron Munchausen of marvellous metaphysics. His object is to astonish the reader into belief, as jugglers make clowns gape and swallow whatever they please. He fabricates wonders with easy assurance, and deals in men ‘whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, and the anthropophagi, that each other eat.’ He readily admits whatever suits his purpose, and magisterially doubts whatever makes against it. He has a cant of credulity mixed up with the cant of scepticism—things not easily reconciled, except by a very deliberate effort indeed. There is something gross and fulsome in all this, that has tended to bring discredit on a system, which after all has probably some foundation in nature, but which is here overloaded with exaggerated and dogmatical assertions, warranted for facts. We doubt the whole, when we know a part to be false, and withhold our assent from a creed, the great apostle of which wants modesty, candour, and self-knowledge! Another thing to be considered, and in truth the great stumbling-block in the way of nearly the whole of this system, is this, that the principle of thought and feeling in man is one, whereas the present doctrine supposes it to be many. The mind is one, or it is infinite. If there is not some single, superintending faculty or conscious power to which all subordinate organic impressions are referred as to a centre, and which decides and reacts upon them all, then there is no end of particular organs, and there must be not only an organ for poetry, but an organ for poetry of every sort and size, and so of all the rest. This will be seen more at large when we come to details; but at present I wish to lay it down as a corner-stone or fundamental principle in the argument.

Of the way in which Dr. Spurzheim clears the ground before him, and disarms the incredulity of the reader by a string of undeniable or equivocal propositions blended together, the following may serve as a specimen.

‘The doctrine, that every thing is provided with its own properties, was from time to time checked by metaphysicians and scholastic divines; but by degrees it gained ground, and the maxim that matter is inert was entirely refuted. Natural philosophers discovered corporeal properties, the laws of attraction and repulsion, of chemical affinity, of fermentation, and even of organization. They considered the phenomena of vegetables as the production of material qualities—as properties of matter. Glisson attributed to matter a particular activity, and to the animal fibre a specific irritability. De Gorter acknowledged in vegetable life something more than pure mechanism. Winter and Zups proved that the phenomena of vegetable life ought to be ascribed only to irritability. Of this, several phenomena of flowers and leaves indicate a great degree. The hop and French-bean twine round rods which are planted near them. The tendrils of vines curl round poles or the branches of neighbouring trees. The ivy climbs the oak, and adheres to its sides, &c. Now it would be absurd to pretend that the organization of animals is entirely destitute of properties: therefore Frederick Hoffman took it for the basis of his system, that the human body, like all other bodies, is endowed with material properties.’ Page 56.

‘Here be truths,’ but dashed and brewed with lies’ or doubtful points. Yet they pass all together without discrimination or selection. There is a simplicity in many of the propositions amounting to a sort of _bonhomie_. There is an over-measure of candour and plainness. A man who gravely informs you, as an important philosophical discovery, that ‘the tendrils of vines curl round poles,’ and that ‘the human body is endowed with material properties,’ may escape without the imputation of intending to delude the unwary. But these kind of innocent pretences are like shoeing-horns to draw on the hardest consequences. By the serious offer of this meat for babes, you are prepared to swallow a horse-drench of parboiled paradoxes. You are thrown off your guard into a state of good-natured surprise, by the utter want of all meaning; and our craniologist catches his wondering disciples in a trap of truisms. Instances might be multiplied from this part of the work, where the writer is occupied in getting up the plot, and lulling asleep any suspicion, or feeling of petulance in the mind of the public. Just after, he says—

‘In former times there were philosophers who thought that the soul forms its own body; but if this be the case, an ill-formed body never could be endowed with a good soul. All the natural influence of generation, nutrition, climate, education, &c. would _therefore_ be inexplicable. _Hence_, it is much more reasonable to think that the soul, in this life, is only confined in the body, and makes use of its respective instruments, which entirely depend on the laws of the organization. In blindness, the soul is not mutilated, but it cannot perceive light without eyes, &c.’ _with other matters of like pith and moment_. The author’s style is interlarded with too many _hences_ and _therefores_; neither do his inferences hang well together. They are ill-cemented. He announces instead of demonstrating; and jumps at a conclusion in a heavy, awkward way. He constantly assumes the point in dispute, or makes a difficulty on one side of a question a decisive proof of the opposite view of it. What credit can be attached to him in matters of fact or theory where he must have it almost all his own way, when he presumes so much on the _gullibility_ of his readers in common argument? ‘If these things are done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?’—Once more:

‘No one will endeavour to prove that the five senses are the production of our will: their laws are determined by nature. _Therefore_ as soon as an animal meets with the food destined for it, its smell and taste declare in favour of it. _Thus_ it is not astonishing that a kid, taken from the uterus of its mother, preferred broom-tops to other vegetables which were presented to it. And Richerand is wrong in saying—“If such a fact have any reality, we should be forced to admit that an animal may possess a foreknowledge of what is proper for it; and that, independently of any impressions which may be afterwards received by the senses, it is capable, from the moment of birth, of choosing, that is, of comparing and judging of what is presented to it.” The hog likewise eats the acorn the first time he finds it. Animals however have, on that account, no need of any previous exercise, of any innate idea, of any comparison or reflection. The relations between the external world and the five senses are determined by creation. We cannot see as red that which is yellow, nor as great that which is little. How should animals have any idea of what they have not felt?’ Page 59.

This is what might be termed the _inclusive style_ in argument. It is impossible to distinguish the premises from the conclusion. We have facts for arguments, and arguments for facts. He plays off a phantasmagoria of illustrations as proofs, like Sir Epicure Mammon in the Alchemist. It is like being in a round-about at a fair, or skating, or flying. It is not easy to make out even the terms of the question, so completely are they overlaid and involved one in the other, and that, as it should seem, purposely, or from a habit of confounding the plainest things. To proceed, however, to something more material. In treating of innate faculties, Dr. Spurzheim runs the following career, which will throw considerable light on the vagueness and contradictoriness of his general mode of reasoning.

‘Now it is beyond doubt, that all the instinctive aptitudes and inclinations of animals are innate. Is it not evident that the faculties by which the spider makes its web, the honeybee its cell, the beaver its hut, the bird its nest, &c. are inherent in the nature of these animals? When the young duck or tortoise runs towards the water as soon as hatched, when the bird brushes the worm with its bill, when the monkey, before he eats the may-bug, bites off its head, &c. all these and similar dispositions are conducive to the preservation of the animals; but they are not at all acquired.’

If by _acquired_, be meant that these last acts do not arise out of certain impressions made on the senses by different objects, (such as the agreeable or disagreeable smell of food, &c.) this is by no means either clear or acknowledged on all hands.

‘According to the same law,’ he adds, [What law?] ‘the hamster gathers corn and grain, the dog hides his superfluous food’—[This at any rate seems a rational act.]—‘the falcon kills the hare by driving his beak into its neck,’ &c.

‘In the same way, all instinctive manifestations of man must be innate. The new-born child sucks the fingers and seeks the breast, as the puppy and calf seek the dug.’

The circumstance here indiscreetly mentioned of the child sucking the fingers as well as the nipple, certainly does away the idea of _final causes_. It shows that the child, from a particular state of irritation of its mouth, fastens on any object calculated to allay that irritation, whether conducive to its sustenance or not. It is difficult sometimes to get children to take the breast. Dr. S. takes up a common prejudice, without any qualification or inquiry, while it suits his purpose, and lays it down without ceremony when it no longer serves the turn. He proceeds—

‘_I have mentioned above, that voluntary motion and the five external senses, common to man and animals, are innate._ Moreover, if man and animals feel certain propensities and sentiments _with clear and distinct consciousness_, we must consider these faculties as innate.’—[The _clear and distinct consciousness_ has nothing to do with the matter.]—‘Thus, if in animals we find examples of mutual inclination between the sexes, of maternal care for the young, of attachment, of mutual assistance, of sociableness, of union for life, of peaceableness, of desire to fight, of propensity to destroy, of circumspection, of slyness, of love of flattery, of obstinacy, &c. all these faculties must be considered as innate.’—[A finer assumption of the question than this, or a more complete jumble of instincts and acquired propensities together, never was made. The author has here got hold of a figure called _encroachment_, and advances accordingly!]—‘Let all these faculties be ennobled in man: let animal instinct of propagation be changed into moral love; the inclination of animals for their young into the virtue of maternal care for children; animal attachment into friendship; animal susceptibility of flattery into love of glory and ambition; the nightingale’s melody into harmony; the bird’s nest and the beaver’s hut into palaces and temples, &c.: these faculties are still of the same nature, and all these phenomena are produced by faculties common to man and animals. They are only ennobled in man by the influence of superior qualities, which give another direction to the inferior ones.’ Page 82.

This last passage appears to destroy his whole argument. For the Doctor contends that every particular propensity or modification of the mind must be innate, and have its separate organ; but if there are ‘faculties common to man and animals,’ which are ennobled or debased by their connexion with other faculties, then we must admit a general principle of thought and action varying according to circumstances, and the organic system becomes nearly an impertinence.

The following short section, entitled INNATENESS OF THE HUMAN FACULTIES, will serve to place in a tolerably striking point of view the turn of this writer to an unmeaning, _quackish_ sort of common-place reasoning.

‘Finally, man is endowed with faculties which are peculiar to him. Now it is to be investigated, whether the faculties which distinguish man from animals, and which constitute his human character, are innate. It must be answered, that all the faculties of man are given by creation, and that human nature is as determinate as that of every other being. Thus, though we see that man compares his sensations and ideas, inquires into the causes of phenomena, draws consequences and discovers laws and general principles; that he measures distances and times, and crosses the sea from one end to another; that he acknowledges culpability and worthiness; that he bears a monitor in his own breast, and raises his mind to the idea and adoration of God:—yet all these faculties result neither from accidental influence from without, nor from his own will. How indeed could the Creator abandon man in the greatest and most important occupations, and give him up to chance? No!’ Page 83.

No, indeed; but there is a difference between _chance_ and a number of bumps on the head. One would think that all this, being common to the same being, proceeded from a general faculty manifesting itself in different ways, and not from a parcel of petty faculties huddled together nobody knows how, and acting without concert or coherence. Does man cross the seas, measure the heavens, construct telescopes, &c. from a general capacity of invention in the mind, or does the navigator lie _perdu_, shut up like a Jack-in-a-box in one corner of the brain, the mechanic in another, the astronomer in another, and so forth? That is the simple question. Dr. Spurzheim adds shortly after—

‘We every where find the same species; whether man stain his skin, or powder his hair; whether he dance to the sound of a drum or to the music of a concert; whether he adore the stars, the sun, the moon, or the God of Christians. The special faculties are every where the same.’ Page 85.

He ought to have said the _general_ faculties are the same, not the _special_. But if there is not a specific faculty and organ for every act of the mind and object in nature, then Dr. Spurzheim must admit the existence of a general faculty modified by circumstances, and we must be slow in accounting for different phenomena from particular independent organs, without the most obvious proofs or urgent necessity. His organs are too few or too many.

‘Malebranche,’ says our author, ‘deduces the different manner of thinking and feeling in men and women from the different delicacy of the cerebral fibres. According to our doctrine, certain parts of the brain are more developed in men, others in women; and in that way is the difference of the manifestations of their faculties perfectly explicable.’ Page 105.

For my part, I prefer Malebranche’s solution to the more modern one. It seems to me that the strength or weakness, the pliancy or firmness of the characters of men or women is to be accounted for from something in the general texture of their minds, just as their corporeal strength or weakness, activity or grace is to be accounted for from something in the general texture of their bodies, and not from the arbitrary preponderance of this or that particular limb or muscle. I think the analogy is conclusive against our author. If there is no difference of _quality_; _i.e._ of delicacy, firmness, &c. in the parts of the brain ‘more developed in men,’ the difference of _quantity_ alone cannot account for the difference of character. And, on the other hand, if we allow such a difference of quality in the cerebral fibres, or of hardness and softness, flexibility or sluggishness in the whole brain, we shall have no occasion for particular bumps or organs of the brain to account for the difference in the minds of men and women generally. Drs. Gall and Spurzheim seem desirous to set aside all differences of texture, irritability, tenacity, &c. in the composition of the brain, as if these were _occult_ qualities, and to reduce every thing to positive and ostensible quantity; not considering that quantity alone accounts for no difference of character or operation. The increasing the size of the organ of music, for instance, will not qualify that organ to perform the functions of the organ of colour: there must be a natural aptitude in _kind_, before we talk about the degree or excess of the faculty resulting from the peculiar conformation of a given part. The piling up larger parcels of the same materials of the brain will not produce a new faculty: we must include the nature of the different materials, and it is not too much to assume that whenever the faculty is available to a number of purposes, the difference in the nature of the thinking substance cannot be merely _local_ or organic. For instance, say that the _Organ of Memory_ is distinguished by greater tenaciousness of particles, or by something correspondent to this; that in like manner, the _Organ of Fancy_ is distinguished by greater irritability of structure; is it not better to suppose that the first character pervades the brain of a man remarkable for strong memory, and the last that of another person excelling in fancy, generally and primarily, instead of supposing that the whole retentiveness of the brain is in the first instance lodged in one particular compartment of it, and the whole volatility or liveliness, in the second instance, imprisoned in another hole or corner, with quite as little reason? It may be said, that the organ in question is not an organ of memory in general, but of the memory of some particular thing. Then this will require that there should be an organ of memory of every other particular thing; an organ of invention, and an organ of judgment of the same; which is too much to believe, and besides can be of no use: for unless in addition to these separate organs, over which is written—‘No connexion with the next door’—we have some general organ or faculty, receiving information, comparing ideas, and arranging our volitions, there can be no one homogeneous act or exercise of the understanding, no one art attained, or study engaged in. There will either be a number of detached objects and sensations without a mind to superintend them, or else a number of minds for every distinct object, without any common link of intelligence among themselves. In the first case, each organ would be that of a mere brute instinct, that could never arrive at the dignity of any one art or science, as painting or music; in the second case, no art or science (such as poetry) ever could exist that implied a comparison between any two ideas or the impressions of different organs, as of sight and sound.

Dr. Spurzheim observes, (page 107) ‘The child advances to boyhood, adolescence, and manhood. Then all these faculties manifest the greatest energy. By degrees they begin to decrease; and in the decrepitude of old age, the sensations are blunted, the sentiments weak, and the intellectual faculties almost or entirely suppressed. Hence, as the manifestations of the faculties of the mind and understanding are proportionate to the organization, it is evident that they depend on it.’

I do not see the exact inference meant to be drawn here. All the conditions above enumerated affect the whole brain generally. There is not an organ of youth, of manhood, of decrepitude, &c.

‘A brain too small, however, is always accompanied with imbecility. Willis described the brain of one who was an idiot from birth. It was not more than half the size of an ordinary brain.’ Page 109.

At this rate, if there are idiots by birth, there must be also such a thing as general capacity.

‘I have seen two twin-boys so like each other, that it was almost impossible to distinguish them. Their inclinations and talents presented also a striking and astonishing similitude. Two others, twin-sisters, are very different: in the one the muscular system is the most developed, in the other the nervous. The former is of little understanding, whereas the second is endowed with strong intellectual faculties.’ Page 112.

This is coming to Malebranche’s way of putting the question. In the same page we find the following _morceau_:—

‘Gaubius relates, that a girl, whose father had killed men in order to eat them, and who was separated from her father in her infancy and carefully educated, committed the same crime. Gaubius drew from this fact the consequence, that the faculties are propagated with the organization.’—Good Gaubius Gobbo! Without believing his fact, we need not dispute his consequence.

‘Malebranche explains the difference of the faculties of both sexes, the various kinds and particular tastes of different nations and individuals, by the firmness and softness, dryness and moisture of the cerebral fibres; and he remarks that our time cannot be better employed than in investigating the material causes of human phenomena. The Cartesians, by their doctrine of the tracks which they admit in the brain, acknowledge the influence of the brain on the intellectual faculties.’ Page 118.

Dr. Spurzheim altogether explodes the doctrine of a difference in constitutional temperaments, the sanguine, the phlegmatic, and so on; because this difference, being general, is not consistent with his special organs. He also denies unequivocally the doctrine of the association of ideas, which Des Cartes’s ‘tracks in the brain’ were meant to explain. One would think this alone decisive against his book. Indeed the capacity of association, possessed in a greater or less degree, seems to be the great discriminating feature between man and man. But what _organ of association_ there can be between different _local_ organs it is difficult to conjecture; and Dr. Spurzheim was right in boldly denying a truth which he could not reconcile with his mechanical and incongruous theory.

‘There are persons who maintain that in the highest degree of magnetic influence, the manifestations of the soul are independent of the organization.’ Page 122.

What! have we animal magnetism in the dance too? Would our great physiologist awe us into belief by bringing into the field quackery greater than his own? Then it is time to be on our guard.

‘We find sanguine and bilious individuals, who are intellectual or stupid, meek or impetuous; we may observe phlegmatics of a bold, quarrelsome, and imperious character. In short, the doctrine of the temperaments, as applied to the indication of determinate faculties, is not more sure or better founded, than divination by the hands, feet, skin, hair, ears, and similar physiognomical signs.’ Page 128.

That is, red-haired people, for instance, have not a certain general character. After that, I will not believe a word the learned author says upon his bare authority.

Dr. Spurzheim with great formality devotes a number of sections to prove that the several senses alone, without any other faculty or principle of thought and feeling, do not account for the moral and intellectual faculties. ‘There needs no ghost to tell us that.’ In his mode of entering upon this part of his subject, the Doctor seems to have been aware of the old maxim—_Divide et impera_—Distinguish and confound!

‘We have still to examine whether sight produces any moral sentiment or intellectual faculty. It is a common opinion that the art of painting is the result of sight; and it is true that eyes are necessary to perceive colours, as the ears are to perceive sounds and tones; but the art of painting does not consist in the perception of colours, any more than music in the perception of sounds. Sight, therefore, and the faculty of painting are not at all in proportion. The sight of many animals is more perfect than that of man, but they do not know what painting is; and in mankind the talent of painting cannot be measured by the acuteness of sight. Great painters never attribute their talent to their eyes. They say, it is not the eye, but the understanding, which perceives the harmony of colours.’ Page 158.

This is well put, and quite true; that is, it is the mind alone that perceives the relation and connexion between all our sensations. Thus the impression of the line bounding one side of the face does not perceive or compare itself with the impression of the line forming the other side of the face, but it is the mind or understanding (by means indeed of the eye) that perceives and compares the two impressions together. But neither will an _organ of painting_ answer this purpose, unless this separate organ includes a separate _mind_, with a complete workshop and set of offices to execute all the departments of judgment, taste, invention, &c. _i.e._ to compare, analyse, and combine its own particular sensations. But neither will this answer the end. For either all these must be included under one, and exhibit themselves in the same proportions wherever the organ exists, which is not the fact; or if they are distinct and independent of one another, then they cannot be expressed by any one organ. Dr. Spurzheim has, in a subsequent part of his work, provided for this objection, and divided the _Organ of Sight_ into five or six subdivisions; such as, the _Organ of Form_, the _Organ of Colour_, the _Organ of Weight_, the _Organ of Space_, and God knows how many more. This is evading and at the same time increasing the difficulty. Thus. The best draughtsmen are not observed to be always the best colourists, Raphael and Titian for example. There must therefore be a new division of the _Organ of Sight_ into (at least) the two divisions of Form and Colour. Now it is not to be supposed that these organs are thus separated merely for separation’s sake, but that there is something in the quality or texture of the substance of the brain in each organ, peculiarly fitted for each different sort of impression, and by an excess of quantity producing an excess of faculty. The _size_ alone of the organ cannot account for the difference of the faculty, without this other condition of quality annexed. Suppose the distinguishing quality of the _organ of form_ to be a certain tenaciousness; that of the _organ of colour_ to be a certain liquid softness in the finer particles of the brain. Now a greater quantity of the medullary substance of a given texture and degree of softness will produce the _organ of colour_: but then will not a greater degree of this peculiar softness or texture (whatever it is) with the same quantity of substance, produce an extraordinary degree of faculty equally? That is, we make the fineness or quality of the nerves, brain, mind, atone for the want of quantity, or get the faculty universally without the organ: Q. E. D. Dr. Spurzheim does not make an organ of melody and an organ of harmony; yet he ought, if every distinct operation of the mind or senses requires a distinct local organ, and if his whole system is not merely arbitrary. Farther, one part of painting is _expression_, namely, the power of connecting certain feelings of pleasure and pain with certain lines and movements of face; that is, there ought to be an _organ of expression_, or an organ, in the first place, of pleasure and pain—which Dr. Spurzheim denies—these being general and not specific manifestations of the mind; and in the second place, an organ for associating the impressions of one organ with those of all the rest—of which the Doctor also denies the existence or even possibility. His is quite a new constitution of the human mind.

‘Finally, every one feels that he thinks by means of the brain.’ Page 165.

When it was urged before, that every one thinks that he feels by means of the heart, Dr. Spurzheim scouted this sort of proof as vulgar and ridiculous, it being then against himself.

‘Tiedeman relates the example of one Moser, who was insane on one side of his head, and who observed his madness with the other side. Gall attended a minister who had a similar disease _for three years_. He heard constantly on his left side reproaches and injuries; he turned his head on this side, and looked at the persons.’—[What persons?]—‘With his right side he _commonly_ judged the madness of his left side; but sometimes _in a fit of fever_ he could not rectify his peculiar state. Long after being cured, if he happened to be angry, or if he had drunk more than he was accustomed to do, he observed in his left side a tendency to his former alienation.’ Page 171.

This is an amusing book after all. One might collect from it materials for a new edition of the _Wonderful Magazine_. How familiarly the writer insinuates the most incredible stories, and takes for granted the minutest circumstances! This style, though it may incline the credulous to gape and swallow everything, must make the judicious grieve, and the wary doubt.

‘It is however necessary to remark, that all observations of this kind can only be made upon beings of the same species, and it is useless to compare the same faculty with the respective organ in different species of animals. _The irritability is very different in different kinds of animals._’ Page 205.

And why not in the same kind?

‘The state of disease proves also the plurality of the organs. For how is it possible to combine partial insanities with the unity of the brain? A chemist was a madman in everything but chemistry. An embroiderer in her fits, and in the midst of the greatest absurdities, calculated perfectly how much stuff was necessary to such or such a piece of work.’ Page 219.

Does our author mean that there is an organ of chemistry, and an organ for embroidery? King Ferdinand would be a good subject to ascertain this last observation upon. If I could catch him, I should be disposed to try. I would not let him go, like the Cortes.

‘The external apparatus of the nerves of the five senses are said to be different, because they receive different impressions: but how is it possible that different impressions should be transmitted to the brain by the same nerves? How can the impressions of light be propagated by the auditory nerve?’ Page 227.

We only know that they are not. But how, we might ask, can the different impressions of sight—as red, yellow, blue—be transmitted by the same nerve?

‘Plattner made the following objection:—“A musician plays with his fingers on all instruments; why should not the soul manifest all its operations by means of one and the same organ?” This observation is rather for than against the plurality of the organs. First, there are ten fingers which play: moreover, the instruments present different chords or holes. We admit only one organ for music; and all kinds of music are produced by this organ. Hence, this assertion of Plattner does not invalidate our theory.’ Page 230.

But it does though, unless you could show that a musician can play only as many tunes as he has fingers, on the same kind of instrument. Dr. Spurzheim contends elsewhere that one organ can perform only one function, and brings as a proof of the plurality of the organs the alternate action and rest of the body and mind. But if the same organ cannot undergo a different state, how can it rest? There must then be an organ of action and an organ of rest, an organ to do something and an organ to do nothing! Very fine and clear all this.

The following passages seem to bear closest upon the general question, and I shall apply myself to answer them as well as I can.