226 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



XL 



THE OLD PHRENOLOGY AND THE NEW. 



THERE has ever lain a strange fascination for culture and ignorance 

 alike, in the attempt to diagnose the intellect and character of man 

 from the outward manifestations of his face and skull. The problem 

 of character and its interpretation is as old as Plato, and may prob- 

 ably be shown to be more ancient still. Egyptian soothsayers and 

 Babylonian astrologers were hardly likely to have omitted the index- 

 ing of character as a profitable and at the same time legitimate exer- 

 cise of their art. The forecasting of future events and the casting of 

 nativities were studies likely enough to bear a friendly relationship 

 to the determination of character from face, from fingers, or from 

 skull and brain itself. But the histories of palmistry and soothsaying, 

 with that of physiognomy, are they not all writ in the Encyclopaedias ? 

 We shall not occupy space with an historical resume of the efforts of 

 philosophy in swaddling clothes attempting to wrestle with the great 

 problem of mind and matter ; nor shall we at present venture to 

 oppose a scientific denial to Shakespeare's dictum that 



There's no art 

 To find the mind's construction in the face. 



Darwin's " Expression of the Emotions," the development of 

 facial contortions, and the interesting study of the genesis of smiles 

 and tears, and of the thousand and one signs which make up the 

 visible and emotional life of humanity, may form a subject for treat- 

 ment hereafter. Our present study concerns the deeper but not less 

 interesting problem of the indexing of mind, and of the relations of 

 brain-conformation and brain- structure to character and disposition. 

 If there exists no art "to find the mind's construction in the face/' 

 Lavater notwithstanding, may we discover " the mind's construction 

 in the skull " ? If the old phrenology, or the science of brain-pans, 

 be regarded as practically obsolete amongst physiologists and scien- 

 tific men at large, what hopes of successfully estimating the "coinage 

 of the brain" may the new phrenology be said to hold out? To this 

 interesting question, then, let us ask the reader's attention for a brief 

 period. We may premise, that if the march in ways phrenological be 

 somewhat bellicose, our journey shall not be wanting in those mental 

 elements which make for instruction in a field largely peopled with 

 human hopes and fears. 



