482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



gist maintains the actuality of his deductions respecting the "organs" 

 of mind, and it is only a fair and just expectation that, if the brain be a 

 congeries of such organs, the anatomist should be able to see these parts 

 as development has revealed them. The nature of the brain is asserted 

 by the phrenologist to exist in its composition as a set of organs. That 

 nature, argues the anatomist, if revealed at all, should present itself in 

 its development, which alone can show us nature's true fashion of build- 

 ing a brain. What, therefore, is the result of the anatomist's study of 

 the manner in which the brain is fashioned ? The answer is found in 

 the statement that there is not a trace of a single " organ " such as the 

 phrenologist theoretically maintains is represented in the brain. There 

 is no division into separate parts and portions, as the phrenologist's chart 

 would lead the observer to suppose. The scalpel of the anatomist can 

 nowhere discover in the full-grown brain an organ of veneration, or of 

 hope, or of language, or of destructiveness, or of any other mental fea- 

 ture : nor can his microscope detect in nature's wondrous process of 

 fashioning the brain any reason for the belief that the organ of mind is 

 a collection of parts each devoted to the exercise of a special quality of 

 mind. The arrangement which appears so clear on the phrenologist's 

 bust is nowhere represented in the brain itself. And the organs of the 

 phrenologist, in so far as their existence is concerned, may not inaptly 

 be described in Butler's words as being 



Such as take lodgings in a head 

 That's to be let unfurnished. 



But if development gives no support to the phrenological assertion 

 of the brain's division into organs of the mind, neither does anatomy, 

 human and comparative, countenance its tenets as applied to the exam- 

 ination of the brain-pan itself. To select a very plain method of test- 

 ing the deductions of phrenology, let an anatomical plate of the upper 

 surface of the undisturbed brain be exhibited, and, having settled the 

 position of certain " organs " from a phrenological chart, let any one 

 try to discover if the limits of any one organ can be discerned on the 

 brain -surface. He will then clearly appreciate the hojoeless nature of 

 the task he has undertaken, and be ready to shrink from the attempt 

 to resolve the complex convolutions before him into a square inch here 

 of one faculty, or a square inch there of another. Moreover, one very 

 important consideration will dawn upon the reflective mind which con- 

 siders that the convolutions of the brain are not limited to the crown 

 and sides of the head, but, on the contrary, extend over the entire sur- 

 face of the cerebrum, and are developed on its base (see Fig. 2). No 

 phrenologist has attempted, it is true, to get at the base of the brain 

 by inspecting the palate ; but it would be regarded as an absurd and 

 unwarrantable statement to assert that the base of the brain has no 

 functions, and that the mind of man is located only at the top and on 

 the sides of the head. Yet the phrenologist is in the position of one 



