THE OLD PHRENOLOGY AND THE NEW. 48 7 



No further illustration is required of the fact that, tested under 

 exceptionally favorable circumstances, the deductions of phrenology- 

 are absolutely incorrect, not to say absurd. Nor is the case of the 

 phrenologists bettered by their exercise of apologetics in face of the 

 hard logic of the above and similar facts. Thurtell, with very large 

 " benevolence " and with well-developed " veneration," yet committed 

 an atrocious murder, and this without a special development of "de- 

 structiveness." " Nothing can justify the murder," said the phrenolo- 

 gists, but Thurtell imagined that he would " do a service to society by 

 killino- his friend" (where his benevolence?) "and hence his crime." 

 Thus benevolence, by the exercise of phrenological apologetics, be- 

 comes an excuse for and an active cause of murder. Dr. Gregory's 

 " destructiveness," said the phrenologists, was held in check by some 

 other qualities — by which qualities it would be hard to say, seeing that, 

 tested by phrenology, his whole mental and moral organization was 

 below that of the average murderer. So that we are to believe, in 

 short, that " destructiveness," and the other base qualities of the Pro- 

 fessor, being absolutely useless, must have been intended simply for 

 show and not for use. Things, on this reasoning, truly are not what 

 they seem ; and phrenology thuswise cuts away from under itself its 

 fundamental propositions, that its " organs " are the seats of faculties, 

 and that their activity is proportional to their size. 



But to proceed further would be to slay the slain. Thus much in- 

 deed we have said of the phrenology which still lingers in our midst, 

 by way of contrast with the newer order of brain-interpretation which 

 the advance of physiology has caused to arise among us. In the early 

 days in which the battle of phrenology was fought and won as against 

 the science of brain-pans, physiological experimentation upon the brain 

 was an unknown and unworked source of information. In due time 

 came Flourens, Magendie, Fritsch, Hitzig, and Ferrier, with their exact 

 methods and results, enlarging the conceptions of the brain and its 

 powers, and throwing here and there a ray of light upon the dark 

 places and hidden corners in the domain of the physiology of mind. 

 Hence our new " phrenology " — for the word itself is perfectly explicit 

 as denoting a science of mind or brain — is gradually being built up 

 from sure data and accurate experimentation, the results arrived at by 

 one w^orker being tested by a host of fellow-experimenters ere his in- 

 ferences become facts, and before they are allowed to form part and 

 parcel of the scienti6c edifice. Let us briefly see what are the more 

 prominent facts concerning the brain and its functions which recent 

 science has elucidated. 



No part of the brain has perhaps presented problems of such inter- 

 esting character as the cerebellum or lesser brain which, as already 

 remarked, exists at the hinder and lower part of the head, and which 

 moreover presents us with a structure differing from that of the cere- 

 brum itself. Phrenologists located in the cerebellum the purely animal 



