410 MENTAL FUNCTIONS OF 



The objections on the ground of materialism are not more 

 applicable to phrenology than to the doctrine now universally 

 admitted, that the brain is the organ of the mind ; and they 

 have been answered. 



Those who have so little soul as always to ask what is the good 

 of any discovery in nature, may be told that phrenology may be 

 of much service in confirming some moral views which good 

 sense may previously have suggested. Humility and benevolence 

 are two leading duties. If we detect the signs of intellectual 

 deficiency and vice in our own heads, we may learn to think 

 humbly of ourselves ; and, being put in possession of true self- 

 knowledge, endeavour to strengthen what is too weak and repress 

 what is too strong. If we detect the signs of great talents and 

 virtues in the heads of others, we may love them the more as 

 superior and highly favoured beings : whereas, if we detect the 

 signs of great virtues and talents in our own heads, we may learn 

 to give no praise to ourselves, but be thankful for the gift; and, if 

 we detect the signs of vice and intellectual deficiency in others, we 

 may learn to pity rather than to censure. Not revenge, but ex- 

 ample, is the professed, and should be the sole, object of our legal 

 punishments ; example to the culprit himself and others, or, if the 

 punishment is capital, to others only ; and therefore frauds, which, 

 from being very easily committed, may become very detrimental 

 to society, are punished more severely than those which, caeteris 

 paribus, from being difficult of pecpetration, can scarcely from their 

 frequency become dangerous. Were moral demerit regarded, 

 the fraud easily committed would, caeteris paribus, be punished 

 the most lightly. A vicious man must be restrained, as a wild 

 beast y, for the good of others, though, for aught we know, his 

 faults may, like the acts of the beast of prey, be chargeable rather 

 on his nature ; and, while we feel justified in confining, and the 

 culprit is perhaps conscious how richly he deserves his fate, we 

 may pity in our hearts and acknowledge that we ourselves have 

 often been less excusable. 



" Teach me to love and to forgive, 

 Exact my own defects to scan, 

 What others are to feel, and own myself a man." z 



y A man of determined bad principle may in like manner be shunned by the 

 most benevolent, on account of being odious and dangerous ; though they wish 

 him so well as ardently to long for his reformation, and pity his organisation, his 

 education, and the circumstances under which he has been placed. 



z Gray, Ode to Adversity. 



