176 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



higher mathematics. I worked through " Hind's Equa- 

 tions " and " Trigonometry " successfully, got on with 

 the " Differential Calculus " with some difficulty, but 

 broke down over the " Integral Calculus," for want of 

 that faculty of intuitively perceiving resemblances and 

 incongruities, whether in ideas, words or symbols, some- 

 what awkwardly termed by phrenologists " Wit," but 

 defined by some as the " organ of analogy." As a fact, 

 I have no power to joke or make a pun, or see quickly 

 all the possibilities of a position in chess, though no one 

 more enjoys these diversions than myself. Most great 

 mathematicians are either witty or poetical Kankine, 

 Clifford, De Morgan, Clerk-Maxwell, and Sylvester 

 being well-known examples; and that a phrenologist 

 should detect my failure in the higher mathematics, and 

 connect it with the deficiency of this organ, has always 

 seemed to me very remarkable. 



^os. 3 and 5 both dwell on my want of self-confi- 

 dence, and the second says that I am often thought to 

 have too much. This is very true. In youth I was 

 painfully shy, and was literally afraid of calling on 

 people without an invitation. 'When I was in Para, in 

 1848, 1 was accused of being too proud to call on people, 

 and suffered much in consequence; and throughout my 

 whole life I have never been able to become intimate 

 with any persons except those whose manners and dispo- 

 sitions were such as to make me at once feel sympathetic 

 and at home with them. I have therefore made fewer 

 intimate friends than most men, and all for want of a 

 larger development of self-esteem. 



No. 4 indicates my deficiency of verbal memory, due 

 to a small organ of Language. This makes the acquir- 



