42 THE HUMAN BRAIN. 



stood out in those who were prominent in certain faculties, and put- 

 ting the bodily and mental prominences together (for which may he 

 be honored !), he arrived by repeated instances at the signs of the 

 character as they are written upon the head. He completed the 

 dark half of the globe of physiognomy, and letting his active observa- 

 tion shine upon it, he found the rest of the head representative of 

 the whole character, as the face is expressive of the mind. Expres- 

 sion, we may remark, is living representation, and representation is 

 dead expression. The representation of the man by his head had 

 always been vaguely felt, and the best sculptors and poets had imaged 

 their gods and heroes with phrenological truth. But Gall made their 

 high intuitions so current that all could buy them. Now this de- 

 partment of physiognomy surely night be carried to the perfection 

 peculiar to itself without the head being opened. Nay, it would be 

 best learned without breaking the surface ; for the beauty of expres- 

 sion and representation lies in their bringing what they signify to 

 the surface, and depositing it there. But for this purpose the surface 

 must be whole. There is no interval between life and its hiero- 

 glyphics, but the one is within the other, as a wheel within a wheel. 

 The thing signified by the organ of form is form, and not a piece of 

 cerebrum : love is meant by the protuberance of amativeness, and 

 not the cerebellum : and so forth. It is superficiality, and not depth, 

 that is excellence here. The deep ones had dug for ages in the 

 brain, and found nothing but abstract truth : Gall came out of the 

 cerebral well, and looking upon the surface found that it was a land- 

 scape, inhabited by human natures in a thousand tents, all dwelling 

 according to passions, faculties and powers. So much was gained by 

 the first man who came to the surface, where nature speaks by re- 

 presentations ; but it is lost again at the point where cerebral anatomy 

 begins. Gall himself was an instance of this, for he was one of the 

 greatest and most successful of the anatomists of the brain. But 

 when the skull is off, his phrenology deserts him, the human interest 

 ceases, and his descriptions of the fibres and the gray matter are as 

 purely physical as if they were of the ropes and pulleys of a ship. 



It must however be supposed that the brain has a definite ratio to 

 the head, but what that ratio may be, is an undecided question. It 

 is difficult to prove that the risings and fallings of the skull corres- 



