on Drs. Gall and Spurzhehn's Phys'iognomonical System. 375 



Lect. 6. After enforcing the necessity of studyini:: the primitive 

 faculties of the mind, Dr. S. proceeded to the Vllth propensity : 



Organ of conslru liveness, or of mechanic arts. The faculty 

 of construction is not derived from the form of the hands, feet, 

 or any external instruments; monkies have four hands and 

 do not build, other animals have only two, and yet build; the 

 same structure of feet is found in birds that build nests, and those 

 which do not build : hares and rabbits have similar feet, yet the 

 latter burrow, and the former do not. Hands, indeed, are mere 

 instruments ; the faculty or disposition is internal : it is a pri- 

 mitive faculty. One man has this constructive faculty more de- 

 veloped, more active than an other, as one excells more or less 

 in the arts. By this faculty birds build nests, men ho-ascs, ships, 

 and construct every kind of instiunieiit from the spaile and 

 plough to the chroiioaseter, draw figures, design, grave, hew 

 stone, cut cloth, make drovses, &c. and all the arts of civil life ; 

 no other faculty is so active and so useful to society. If this 

 facvdty be imited to that of mathematics or music, it produces 

 a mathematic or musical instrument maker ; to that of form 

 and colour, a sculptor, draughtsman, and painter; instances of 

 this organ being developed in a female, a dress-maker ; in the 

 reputed skull of Raphael at Rome, and in a boy discovered by 

 Dr. S. in the National school, Baldwin's-gardens. Rabbits 

 have it and not hares; rats are without it, and do not build : 

 hamsters (a kind of German rat, mus cricetus, Linn.) have it 

 very conspicuous, as they build ingenious houses in the sand in 

 the north of Europe. Such comparisons of similarities are not 

 to be considered as extravagant or irrational, as the organs of 

 these little animals are as perfect for their purpose as man's are for 

 his. The organ of constructiveness is a small elevation situated 

 above the temple, generally parallel with the cheek and jaw- 

 bones. 



VIII. Organ of coveliveness: there are thieves among all 

 classes of society; even priests have this propensity; Saurin, 

 ])astor of Gene\'"a, was remarkable for it; physicians often steal 

 things from the liouses of their patients and afterwards send 

 them back ; a dying man put out his hand to steal the snuft- 

 box of hi i confessor ; and idiots often have this propensity in 

 the extreme, the diseased state excites it ; men covet and steal 

 every thing, even that which is more trou!)lesome than useful to 

 them. Jurisconsults deny the existence of this propensity as a 

 fat-ulty in nature, alleging that all our ideas of pro]jerty are 

 things of convention, and that the law which defines an art of 

 theft is artificial ; con>-e([uently there can be no innate faculty 

 in man for what is wholly artificial arid the result of social re- 

 gulations. To this Dr. S. answers, although actual property is 

 A u 4 the 



