EDUCATION, AS IT IS AND AS IT SHOULD BE. 83 



man ; and in the same relation Phrenology stands to those wliose 

 organization is unfit for the office of teacher. 



Phrenology will, doubtless, soon be considered by society at large 

 as indispensable to the teacher as it is at present by the thinking 

 few. The science has hitherto, however, been regarded too much 

 in the light of a means of predicting character ; that is, the inferior 

 branch called Organology has been confounded with the science of 

 Phrenology properly so called. This has been owing to the general 

 preponderance of the perceptive or lower intellectual faculties over 

 the reflective or higher intellectual faculties. The former should 

 be left to professed organologists, as Deville ; while those who wish 

 to soar into the higher departments should follow in the steps of the 

 phrenologists, as Gall, Combe, and Vimont. 



Mr. Robert Chambers remarks, " I have reason to know that, 

 with or without the Organology, the science of Phrenology is mak- 

 ing rapid progress amongst the more thinking portion of the middle 

 and lower ranks. Its progress would, in my opinion, have been 

 much greater if its pretensions as a means of discovering character 

 from external signs (Organology) had not been ignorantly con- 

 founded with those of the false sciences of the middle ages. Were 

 the metaphysics presented alone, this obstacle would be, in a great 

 measure, overcome, and multitudes who have hitherto regarded the 

 science as only a new kind of divination or palmistry, would be as- 

 tonished to view a system calculated to throw the united labours of 

 Aristotle, Locke, Reid, and Stewart, into the shade ; an almost ex- 

 act reflection of human nature, a code of sublime morality, a means 

 of accelerating to an unprecedented degree the social progress of our 

 race." Alluding to the different candidates for the logic chair, the 

 same author remarks, with equal truth and sound sense, " Indeed, 

 were it not that many of the most enlightened men are still igno- 

 rant of the merits of the new system, the filling of the present va- 

 cancy with one who persists in describing the mind as consisting of 

 memory, judgment, and imagination, would appear to me as a sole- 

 cism not less great than would the appointment to the chair of Che- 

 mistry of one who continued to describe fire, earth, water, and air, 

 as the elements of matter." 



Towards dispelling the gross ignorance which prevails on the sub- 

 ject of the mind, no work will operate more effectually than Gall's 

 unequalled Fonclions du Cerveau, which Dr. Elliotson pronounces 

 to be worth all the other phrenological works put together. Next 

 to this may be ranked Combe's System of Phrenology, of which 

 Dr. Macnish thus speaks :— " Great light lias been thrown on this 



