PROPENSITY. 75 



at another ; just as much as that a man who may have 

 toiled fifty years, and Suddenly succeeds to fortune, or 

 slowly matures it during that period, all at once abandons 

 his hard physical labour, and becomes a mere overseer or 

 master, employing and directing the labour of others, 

 or retires altogether into the leisure of life. If size of 

 cerebral organization meant propensity instead of merely 

 power or capacity, the propensity would be persistently 

 and continuously manifested from the beginning to the 

 end of existence ; but many men's lives are only a per- 

 sistent contradiction to their cerebral development, as 

 much as the lives of others are a contradiction to their 

 energies and physical strength. No one can look on the 

 fine head of Shakespeare without being struck with the 

 impress of- pre-eminent intellect which it bears ; but a 

 question with regard to it still arises whether Nature 

 gave this evidence precedently, and stamped the physical 

 formation with that calm and concentrated aspect of 

 mental energy and seated power, or whether the trium- 

 phant progress of achievement did not enlarge the 

 expression and open the windows of the soul, and thereby 

 mould the physical material to its exposition, just as 

 practice indues the right hand with its cunning, and modifies 

 the nervous and muscular development of the exercised arm 

 into harmony with its use. If there be such evidence for 

 propensity as phrenologists have contended, where is the 

 evidence for energetic achievement, and of culpable and 

 degrading neglect ? But it is utterly fatal to all this 

 argument upon assumption that Propensity is not Material, 

 nor an attribute of Matter. It is no more Material than we 

 have already shown Feeling to be. There is no other pro- 

 pensity known as an attribute of matter, than the propen- 

 sities of gravitation, attraction, repulsion, and chemical 

 affinity, which are not living, but dead ; not inherent, but 

 factitious powers purely physical, and variable under 



