6o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



stronger psychological bent than Gall, and developed an arbitrary 

 psychology to fit the scheme. He distinguished between the emotional 

 and the intellectual powers, dividing the former into propensities, 

 which were direct impulses to action (like the desire to live, the 

 tendency to fall in love, destructiveness) and sentiments which were 

 complex human powers (like self-esteem, hope, mirthfulness, ideality) ; 

 the latter were either perceptive (like size, tune, time), or reflective 

 (like causality and comparison). This construction was distorted and 

 confused, but yet not so strikingly divergent from other contributions 

 as to arouse suspicion of its forced adjustment to the alleged findings. 

 It was these latter, apparently substantiated by anatomical evidence, 

 that kept the system alive. In the actual procedures of proof the 

 simple psychology of self-deception was the dominant factor.- Either 

 the trait was marked and the phrenologist readily persuaded himself 

 that the prominence — at best slight and not clearly defined — was 

 present; or in the presence of a marked "bump," he was readily con- 

 vinced that the required trait — as a rule a matter of uncertain and 

 variable judgment — was conspicuous. As a contribution to the temp- 

 tation that allegiance to theory offers to the self-deception in the deter- 

 mination of fact, the retrospective view of the subject has permanent 

 value. Prepossession, though unrecognized by the phrenologists, is 

 likewise a quality of human nature, with an interesting psychology of 

 its own.^ 



At this juncture we turn from the antecedents to the more direct 

 line of descent of modern psychology. The successive claimants to 

 the domain of "character and temperament" may be said to have 

 momentarily triumphed and passed away, without accredited issue. 

 The new sovereignty represents a very different allegiance. It shares 



5 It is characteristic of the wave-like oscillations of movements of this 

 kind that in periods after the desertion of the position by the scientific world, an 

 occasional reaction appears and gains a considerable adherence. An Ethological 

 Society, which publishes the Ethological Journal, was founded in 1903 and 

 attempts to reinstate the phrenological position, though in a wholly modified 

 form and with an attempt at reconciliation with the established localization of 

 function in the brain; the latter is in a legitimate sense the new and true 

 phrenology. There is no reason, except the historical one (which, however, 

 is adequate), for giving the term phrenology any less respectable status than 

 that of psychology itself. It is clear that the doctrine of the localization of 

 function in the cortex of the brain represents a chapter in the development of 

 physiology, which replaces the series of conjectural and extravagant views that 

 belong to the antecedents of our subject. It should not be inferred that the 

 Ethological Society is wholly devoted to this reinstatement of phrenology; 

 it considers the entire range of topics bearing iipon character and temperament, 

 but presents a leaning towards the impressionistic and obscure interpretations. 

 It may be added that so distinguished a contributor to the principles of modern 

 evolution as Alfred Eussel Wallace believed that the neglect of phrenology was one 

 of the intellectual crimes of the nineteenth century, and maintained that this 

 aspect of physiological and psychological research is central in its promise for 



