74 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAN. 



that we should also say something, because here too a 

 great deal of falsehood appears to have got mixed up with 

 a very small amount of physical truth. No anatomist 

 asserts in these days, if indeed anatomists ever made 

 the assertion, that the brain is an inorganic mass of 

 medullary Chaos, or that its various parts have not distinct 

 functions and purposes, whatever these may be ; but it 

 is the pretension made by the phrenologist to forecast 

 human character by reading the " Organs," and predicate 

 even criminal and other life by talking of " propensities " 

 founded on organic development and the relative 

 dimensions of so-called faculties, that produces scientific 

 repugnance and the well-founded disgust of sensible 

 men. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that phrenolo- 

 gists have been successful in localising the various organs 

 of the brain which they have named in their charts and 

 busts, how do they prove, let us ask, that the size of an 

 organ, or the relative size of a set of organs, proves 

 a propensity, or justifies the predication of a character 

 therefrom ? Does the size of a man's hand, or the physical 

 formation and power of his arm, prove, because he possesses 

 great strength, that he is fond of hard labour, or has a 

 propensity for laborious pursuits ? We have seen little 

 and delicate men who have taken to manual industry and 

 become strong-armed by practice from the extremest 

 degree of primary weakness ; and physical giants, on the 

 other hand, who have never taken to greater toil than 

 that of the brain, nor wielded a much heavier weapon 

 than a goose quill. Nay, though a certain amount of 

 cerebral capacity is indicated by the form and dimensions 

 of the skull, there is nothing to indicate that the brain, 

 like the feeble arm, may not develop by exercise, or 

 collapse and diminish from the want of it ; nor to show 

 that portions of the brain may not be largely developed 

 and exercised at one period of life, and wholly unexercised 



