CHAP. xvi. THE NEGLECT OF PHRENOLOGY. 189 



have localized the brain-centres for the various mental 

 faculties. With such confirmation as regards most of 

 the motor-centres yet discovered, the presumption is in 

 favor of the accuracy of the bulk of the phrenological 

 organs, more especially as their development also accords 

 with, and explains, national and race character, which 

 neither physiologists nor anthropologists have even at- 

 tempted to do ; while, as regards individual character, the 

 skilled phrenologist has shown that he is able to read it 

 like an open book, and to lay bare the hidden springs of 

 conduct with an accuracy that the most intimate friends 

 of the individual cannot approach. Yet, even now, the 

 advocates of this new and very crude method of brain- 

 study repeat the old vague objections to phrenology, as 

 if they were true and unanswerable. After the reading 

 of Dr. Hollander's first paper at the Anthropological 

 Institute, Professor Ferrier, while complimenting the 

 author, and making no objections to his facts, went on 

 to say : " What we wanted was evidence founded on care- 

 ful investigation according to strictly scientific methods, 

 serving to indicate a relation between the development 

 of particular centres and special mental faculties, apti- 

 tudes, or peculiarities. At present he did not think 

 there was any such worthy of consideration." But were 

 not Gall's and Spurzheim's, and Combe's lifelong in- 

 vestigations " careful," and their methods " scientific "? 

 And were not their final conclusions justified by that 

 best test of all true theory, the power of prediction of 

 character in its most minute details? Lifelong and 

 class prejudices always die hard, but it is surely now 

 time that this wholly unjustifiable accusation, of phre- 

 nology being " unscientific," should be abandoned, since 



