6o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



study of character that ever gained a temporary foothold, it seems 

 proper to consider the nature of its pretensions and their following. 

 Propagandists have an enviable if perilous vigor and enthusiasm — an 

 element of reckless abandon not unrelated to the extravagances of 

 mania in the exaggeration and self-deception which it entails. Lavater 

 had the simpler problem of collecting drawings and engravings in im- 

 posing array to enforce the principles of physiognomy. Gall collected 

 skulls and casts, and induced persons with marked mental peculiari- 

 ties to have their heads shaven so that their replicas in plaster might 

 be at his service. He asked that 



every kind of genius make me heir of his head. . . . Then indeed (I will answer 

 for it with my own) we should see in ten years a splendid edifice for which at 

 present I only collect materials. 



The critical peril of false theories lies in their applications. Gall's in- 

 terests seem to have remained for the most part scientific and objective; 

 but in association with Spurzheim, whose direction of the phrenological 

 movement largely determined its course, they took a more practical 

 turn, and therein found their degradation. The extension of the 

 phrenological principle to races and animals as a zoological problem 

 appealed to Gall, He tells with ludicrous if pathetic simplicity of his 

 baffling attempt to interpret the prominence of a part of the cranium 

 which monkeys and women have in common. Finally, 



in a favorable disposition of mind, during the delivery of one of my lectures, I 

 was struck with the extreme love that these animals have for their offspring. 

 Impatient of comparing immediately the crania of male animals, in my collection, 

 with all those of females, I requested my class to leave me, and I found, in truth, 

 that the same difference exists between the male and female of all animals, as 

 existed between man and woman. 



Thus was the cranial localization of "love of offspring" discovered. 

 Phrenology similarly offered the clue to racial differences. 



The foreheads of negroes are narrow, and their musical and mathematical 

 talents are in general very limited. The Chinese are fond of colors, and have 

 their eyebrows much vaulted. According to Blumenbach, the heads of the 

 Calmucks are depressed from above, but very large laterally, about the organ 

 which gives the inclination to acquire; and this nation's propensity to steal, etc., 

 is admitted. 



It was seriously set forth that the dog, the ape and the ox do not sing 

 because the shape of their heads shows the absence of the faculties for 

 music; that the thrush or the nightingale had heads with developed 

 musical faculties, and the hawk and the owl lacked these parts; that 

 in the male nightingale or mocking bird the head was square, angular, 

 and more prominent above the eyes, while in the female these parts 

 were conical, thus endowing the male and not the female with the gift 

 of song. " Observe the narrow forehead of the dog, the ape, the badger, 

 the horse, in comparison with the square forehead of man, and you will 

 have the solution of the problem why these animals are neither musi- 



