44 THE HUMAN BRAIN. 



backs of those organs against the skull, their fronts being turned to 

 the origins of the nerves of the face and body ; and thus gives upon 

 the skull the back or passive side of the character, and a portion of 

 the front or active side in the face. 



But still the push of the organs against the skull and their pro- 

 trusion or apparent bulk, would not show that the protrusion upon 

 the head was primarily due to the subjacent organ. In a soft and 

 yielding mass like the brain, the strong and energetic parts would, 

 it seems, hold their places, displace the others, and cause the weak- 

 est to go to the wall. Thus a stout eminence on the head might 

 signify firmness, though the organ of firmness were far away, making 

 room for himself in all directions, and ousting the feeblest parts of 

 the brain into the poorest places, aside from the rest. In fact, power 

 is always felt physically at a distance from itself, where reaction and 

 resistance begin. Thus feeble races are pushed up into the moun- 

 tains before their conquerors, where their condition indeed signifies 

 power, but it is unfortunately the power of their enemies, and their 

 own weakness. We might then expect that in the reactive skull 

 the greatest prominences should have under them the most passive 

 portions of the brain. And if this be the case, the phrenology of 

 the brain would be the inverse of that of the head, and each depres- 

 sion or elevation on the skull would not be the result of a simple 

 pressure, but of the varying balance of two or more faculties or or- 

 gans, pressing each other up or down as the case may be. It does 

 not seem impossible that such a phrenology of the brain should be 

 constituted ; which if it were, it would signify the strength and weak- 

 ness of the character, both written on the surface. Undoubtedly 

 many of the exaggerations of character proceed from the imperfect 

 resistance offered by some of the faculties, and show their strength 

 in the direction of our greatest weaknesses. Thus their forcible na- 

 ture argues the compliance and not the active strength of the mind 

 which immediately executes them. If this hold good of the skull 

 also, then it contains no organs, but merely passive evidences of the 

 faculties, and we are brought again to the point, that phrenology is 

 more properly to be called cranioscopy, and to be regarded as the 

 mute complement of physiognomy. 



Moreover the correspondence between insides and outsides can- 



