166 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



CHAP. XVI. 



mit that both were men of exceptional mental power, 

 careful observers, close reasoners, cautious in arriving at 

 conclusions on anything less than overwhelming evi- 

 dence. The first gave all his energies during a long 

 life to the establishment, on a firm basis of observation 

 and experiment, of the new science of Phrenology which 

 he had founded; the second, coming to the subject with 

 prepossessions against it, took nothing for granted, ob- 

 served every alleged fact for himself, criticised, modified, 

 and extended the work of his teachers, and taught it by 

 lectures and books in a manner at once popular and 

 scientifically exact. And the life-work of two such men 

 was disposed of, not by pointing out important errors of 

 observation or of reasoning, but largely by abuse, or by 

 means of trivial objections which the most rudimentary 

 knowledge shows to be unfounded. 



Let us now consider, briefly, what phrenology is, what 

 is the evidence on which it is founded, and what are its 

 practical results. In the first place it is a purely induct- 

 ive science, founded step by step on the observation and 

 comparison of facts, confirmed and checked in every 

 conceivable way, and subjected to the most rigid tests. 

 By means of large collections of skulls, and casts of the 

 heads of men and women remarkable for any mental 

 faculty or propensity, and by observations and measure- 

 ments of thousands of living persons, the correspondence 

 of form with function was first suspected, then con- 

 firmed, and finally demonstrated by the comparison of 

 the heads of individuals of every age, both in health and 

 disease, and under the most varied conditions of educa- 

 tion and environment. Three men of exceptional 



