518 PHRENOLOGY : OLD AND NEW. 



fore, the matter which we now believe to be so largely 

 concerned with the most delicate and subtle of Brain- 

 functions was by the founders of Phrenology considered 

 to have no proper nerve functions at all. 



No attempt, indeed, was made to take any account of 

 more than about one half of it. Their analysis of the 

 Human Mind was supposed to have been complete. 

 The various Faculties, Emotions, and Propensities were 

 assigned to their respective seats, corresponding externally 

 with the upper and outer parts of the skulL But the Con- 

 volutions of the base of the Brain, those resting on the 



* tentorium Cerebelli,' and those of the contiguous inner 

 faces of the Hemispheres, were credited with no share of 

 mental functions. The use of this convolutional Grey 

 Matter being altogether differently estimated by the 

 Phrenologists from what it is at present, their * System ' 

 was devised and their organology denned with no special 

 reference thereto. Incredible as this may seem to many 

 persons at the present day, it is strictly true. The 

 haphazard constitution and boundaries of their so-called 



organs ' may indeed be learned from the words of 

 Spurzheim himself. " The organs," he says,* " are not 

 confined to the surface of the brain : they extend from 

 the surface to the great swelling of the occipital hole 

 (medulla oblongata) and probably include even the com- 

 missures ; for the whole mass of the brain constitutes the 

 organs." 



It need scarcely be said, at the present day, that no 

 such divisions of the Brain as are here indicated, either 

 internally or externally, have any real existence ; and if the 

 convoluted surface of the organ itself presents no such 

 divisions as are to be seen on a phrenological cast, by 

 which the several supposed * organs ' could be marked off 

 * " The Physiognomical System," 1815, p. 239. 



