CHAP. xvi. THE NEGLECT OF PHRENOLOGY. 183 



and difficult study, and it can hardly be supposed that 

 the half-dozen eminent men who established it have ex- 

 hausted its possibilities. The classification, or rather the 

 enumeration of the mental faculties, whose function has 

 been found to be dependent on certain brain-areas, is 

 wholly founded on long-continued observation and com- 

 parison; and there is, of course, room for improvement, 

 founded on further observations. But in this case, the 

 objections of those who classify the mental faculties from 

 their own consciousness are of no avail. Our conscious- 

 ness does not reveal the brain-organs on which the facul- 

 ties depend, and cannot therefore be used to criticise 

 phrenology, which is the science of this dependence. 

 And in like manner the older anatomists, who only dis- 

 sected the brain, had no valid grounds of objection, 

 since, as Combe always urged, " Dissection never reveals 

 functions." 



But while rejecting phrenology, neither anatomists, 

 physiologists, nor anthropologists were able to give us 

 any knowledge of the relations of mind and brain by 

 other means. Enormous collections of skulls were 

 formed; they were figured and accurately measured, 

 were classified as brachycephalic, or dolichocephalic, and 

 in various other ways, but nothing came of it all, except 

 a rough determination of the average size and typical 

 form of skull of the different races of man, with no at- 

 tempt whatever to connect this typical form with the 

 mental peculiarities of the several races. Never perhaps 

 was so much laborious scientific work productive of so 

 inadequate a result. 



But about the year 1870 several Continental physi- 

 ologists, and, in this country, Professor Terrier, began 



