THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 411 



Morality is inculcated by phrenology in the most striking 

 manner. The faculties common to us and brutes are placed 

 the lowest ; the superior faculties above : as though the former 

 should be subjected to the latter. We learn from phrenology 

 what several faculties do certainly exist: and, as nothing exists 

 but for a good purpose, each should be allowed to act. But 

 they should be allowed to act harmoniously, not one in oppos- 

 ition to another : the love of property not be allowed to oppose 

 benevolence or justice, nor any one intellectual faculty to su- 

 persede the employment of the others. The greater the culti- 

 vation of all the intellectual faculties, the more abundant will be 

 the motives of thought and action, the freer the will : and the 

 more the moral faculties situated superiorly are cultivated, and 

 the fewer provocations are applied to the inferior, the more will 

 the former guide the individual to his own happiness and that 

 of others. 



Phrenology, too, may be of the highest use when in criminals 

 there is suspicion of idiotism or insanity. Idiotism often de- 

 pends on deficiency of cerebral development, and many idiots 

 have been executed for crimes when it was not exactly proved 

 that they were idiotic enough to be unfit for punishment, but 

 whose cranial development might have settled the point at 

 once. Many persons also have been executed who should have 

 been considered madmen, but were not because the fact of illu- 

 sion was not made out : yet the extreme preponderance of the 

 development of the organs of the propensities over that of the 

 moral sentiments and intellect would have proved that they were 

 deserving of coercion rather than punishment. Such does the 

 skull of Bellingham, the murderer of Mr. Percival, prove him to 

 have been. 



In placing confidence in others and forming connections, phre- 

 nology may be of tne greatest use. We might often be at once 

 certain of an intellectual deficiency or a moral objection. Many 

 heads have the development of their various parts so moderate 

 and nearly balanced, that the character will depend chiefly upon 

 external circumstances ; and such will never become remark- 

 able. Although fulness of development does not, like deficiency, 

 give a certainty of the internal force, because it may not depend 

 upon brain or upon good brain ; yet, when the person is known 

 to be of sound body and mind, and not torpid, the force within 

 will, in an immense majority of cases, be correspondent with 



