268 ANALYSIS OF COMBB's " SYSTEM OF PHRENOLOGY." 



feelings or emotions produced by them, Mr. C. fairly infers that 

 these faculties have not the attributes of perception, conception, me- 

 mory, and imagination. They possess the attribute of sensation 

 alone ; or, when they are active, a sensation or emotion is experi- 

 enced : hence, sensation is an accompaniment of the action of all the 

 faculties which j^e/, and of the nervous system in general ; but sen- 

 sation itself is not a mental faculty. 



]Mr. Combe is completely successful in evincing the immense ad- 

 vantages which may be derived from the right application of his 

 principles in explaining the sources of pleasure and happiness, in 

 choosing servants and confidential agents, in accounting for the great 

 variety of tastes and dispositions among mankind, in managing the 

 unhappy victims of insanity, and in conducting the all-important 

 business of education. 



The perceptive, or knowing, and the reflective faculties, form 

 ideas and discern relations : they are subject to the will, or, rather, 

 they constitute will themselves, and they minister to the gratifica- 

 tion and government of the other faculties which onXy feel. They 

 may become active from excitement by internal causes, and then 

 the kinds of ideas which they are adapted to form are presented in- 

 voluntarily to the mind. Again ; they may be excited by the pre- 

 sentation of external objects calculated to call them into action ; 

 and, moreover, they may be prompted into action by an act of the 

 will. When excited by the presentation of external objects, the 

 objects are perceived, and this act is called perception ; but percep- 

 tion is not a separate faculty of the mind ; it is merely a mode of 

 action of the faculties that form ideas, and the term implies the 

 lowest degree of intellectual power. Perception is simply an act of 

 the perceptive and reflective faculties. When these are powerfully 

 active from internal excitement, whether by the will or from natu- 

 ral activity, ideas are then vividly and rapidly conceived, and the 

 mental act of forming them is styled conception ; and if this act is 

 performed with a very high degree of vivacity, it is then called 

 imagination. Each of the foremen tiontd faculties })erforms the act 

 of conception in its own sphere, and temperament or constitution 

 exercises great influence on their activity. 



The lymphatic constitution requires external objects to rouse it to 

 vivid action, while the sanguine and nervous glow with spontane- 

 ous and constitutional vivacity. Hence, imagination, which results 

 from a high degree of activity, is rarely found with a constitution 

 purely lymphatic, but it becomes exalted in proportion to the ap- 

 proach of the constitution to the nervous. Conception, then, is the 



