, PREFACK. 



Greek historians; and the frequent allusion to 

 atmospheric phaenomena by their poets shows 

 the attention which was generally paid to such 

 subjects. The simplicity and correctness of nar- 

 ration adopted by the Greeks was probably the 

 result of the prevailing perfection of their phy- 

 sical organization which is one of the principal 

 conditions of intellectual excellence, and in 

 which their philosophers excelled most of those 

 of more modern times. The heads of the an- 

 cient Greek philosophers are of a remarkably 

 fine form for intelligence.* The Romans who 



* The heads of many of the Roman philosophers, and in- 

 deed of those of all countries, ancient and modern, did cer- 

 tainly, as well as those of the Greeks, refute Juvenal's sati- 

 rical assertion fronti intlla Jidex, if he ever really intended 

 such as a serious observation; but the configuration of the 

 heads of those celebrated ancient nations, who gave birth to 

 the sciences from the native energies of their intellectual fa- 

 culties, is more particularly calculated to illustrate and c'-n- 

 firm the notions of modern physiologists respecting the inti- 

 mate connexion between the physical strength of the organs 

 of the brain and the intellectual and moral character of the 

 individual. A subject which has been ably treated of by the 

 celebrated anatomists, Gall and Spurzheim, who by their ele- 

 gant dissections of the brain, and their comparison of the 

 brains of different animals with the proper habits of each, 

 seem to have roused human and comparative anatomy into 

 something like a systematic science. 



