192 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. CHAP. xvi. 



mine the proportionate development of various parts of 

 the latter by an examination of the former. 



The denial of this was, as we have seen, the stock ob- 

 jection to the very possibility of a science of phrenology. 

 Now it is admitted by all anatomists. The late Pro- 

 fessor George M. ITumphrey, of Cambridge University, 

 in his " Treatise on the Human Skeleton " (p. 207), ex- 

 pressly admits the correspondence, adding " The argu- 

 ments against phrenology must be of a deeper kind than 

 this to convince anyone who has carefully considered 

 the subject." 



It thus appears that the five main contentions of the 

 phrenologists, each of them at first strenuously denied, 

 have now received the assent of the most advanced 

 modern physiologists. But admitting these funda- 

 mental data, it evidently becomes a question solely of a 

 sufficiently extended series of comparisons of form with 

 faculty to determine what faculties are constantly asso- 

 ciated with a superior development of any portion of the 

 cranium and of the brain within it. To assert that such 

 comparisons are unscientific, without giving solid rea- 

 sons for the assertion, is absurd. The whole question is, 

 are they adequate ? And the one test of adequacy is, do 

 they enable the well-instructed student to determine the 

 character of individuals from the form of their skulls, 

 whenever any organ or group of organs are much above 

 or below the average? This test was applied by the early 

 phrenologists in scores, in hundreds, even in thousands 

 of cases, with a marvellous proportion of successful re- 

 sults. The men who first determined the position of 

 each organ only did so after years of observation and 

 hundreds of comparisons of development of organ with 



