76 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAN. 



varying physical circumstances. Moral propensity is a 

 vital and a living power wholly metaphysical, and 

 incapable therefore of being evidenced by the dimensions 

 of a physical organ, or the relative preponderance of 

 physical arrangements. The biologist who does not 

 know this is little better than a mere materialist, like 

 Epicurus, and must be profoundly ignorant of metaphysics, 

 without which such conclusions as he draws cannot 

 legitimately be even approached. Matter is but a fourth 

 part of the elements which go to the constitution of a 

 human being, as we have shown at the outset of these 

 chapters ; and the phrenologist who proceeds to assert the 

 existence of propensity on the bare evidence of physical 

 or material development omits consideration of three- 

 fourths of the elements necessary to the determination of 

 the subject, and is no wiser than he who, looking at a 

 set of palsied and paralytic limbs, would assert, on the 

 bare ground of their apparent size and formation, that 

 the possessor of them must be able to walk and leap. 

 Physical development can at best give partial evidence 

 of Capacity only, not of Propensity, and only partial evidence 

 we insist, for men are not uniformly strong in proportion 

 to their appearance of strength, nor uniformly active- 

 minded in proportion to their appearance or capacity, 

 or even possession of intellect. The intensity, the vigour, 

 and the quantity of the vital power, purely immaterial 

 and beyond the range of scientific investigation, have 

 much to do with character, as well as all the circumstances 

 which attend its development, and, as external influences, 

 test and call it into operation. And the quality and 

 texture of the material elements, when matter itself is 

 at last condescended on, has more to do with its sustained 

 activity and enduring power than that crude, primary, 

 and dominant assumption of the phrenologist the 

 superficial appearance of mere brute weight or quantity. 



