476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tional life of humanity, may form a subject for treatment hereafter. Our 

 present study concerns the deeper but not less interesting problem of 

 the indexing of mind, and of the relations of brain-conformation and 

 brain-structure to character and disposition. If there exists no art " to 

 find the mind's construction in the face," Lavater notwithstanding, may 

 we discover " the mind's construction in the skull " ? If the old phre- 

 nology, or the science of brain-pans, be regarded as practically obsolete 

 among physiologists and scientific men at large, what hopes of success- 

 fully estimating the "coinage of the brain" may the new phrenology 

 be said to hold out ? To this interesting question, then, let us ask the 

 reader's attention for a brief period. We may premise that, if the 

 march in ways phrenological be somewhat bellicose, oiu* journey shall 

 not be wanting in those mental elements which make for instruction 

 in a field largely peopled with human hopes and fears. 



The professions of phrenology are not by any means so correctly ap- 

 preciated as might be thought, considering how well known is the name 

 of the science, and how popular were its tenets within, comparatively 

 speaking, a few years back. Although the name " phrenology " is but 

 an echo in the scientific class-rooms, its professors still flourish, mostly 

 in obscure localities in large towns, and often present themselves as 

 modern representatives of the Peripatetici, in that they wander from 

 town to town as traveling philosophers who usually unite a little electro- 

 biology to their phrenological talents, and throw in an occasional mes- 

 meric seance by way of offset to the more serious business of the inter- 

 pretation of character. There are, it is true, phrenological societies 

 and museums in several of our cities. The latter are chiefly remarkable 

 for the varied collection of murderers' efiigies and for the extensive 

 assortment of casts of cranial abnormalities ; the exact relationship of 

 these contorted images to phrenological science being rarely if ever 

 made clear to the visitor on the search for knowledge. Now and then 

 in opticians' windows one sees a wondrous china head whose cubic 

 capacity is mapped off into square inches, half inches and quarters, of 

 veneration, ideality, comparison, benevolence, and many other qualities 

 of mind. The contemplation of such a work of art excites within the 

 mind of the ingeni;ous observer an idea of the literal awfulness of a 

 science which dispenses destructiveness by the inch, and which maps 

 out the bounds of our amativeness by the rule of three ; while the 

 profundity of its professors may by such a mind be compared only to 

 that of Butler's savant who 



.... could distinguish and divide 

 A hair, 'twixt south and southwest side. 



Nor would the admiration of the ingenuous one be lessened were 

 he to enter the sanctum of the "professor" of phrenology, and submit 

 his cranium to the ocular inspection and digital manipulation of the 

 oracle. The very furnishings of the apartment are mystic, and impress 



