SIR WILLIAM HAMILTOIS'S P!!ILOSOrri"V. 379 



a special care is required lest we lose sight of the rea questional 

 issue ; for there are certain positions of phrenology which must be 

 canrassed on entirely independent ground without reference to the 

 claims of any other science, while there are others which constitute 

 phrenology a rival to psychology. The theories which it maintained 

 or still maintains regarding the functions of different portions of the 

 encephalon, its allegations regarding the development of the enceph- 

 alon or of its different portions in different animals and at different 

 ages, these are matters of purely physiological interest, at least they 

 can affect only in an indirect manner the interests of any other science. 

 When however it is asserted that the study of the brain supplies the 

 exclusively reliable or even the principal information concerning 

 mental phenomena, a doctrine is maintained which comes into direct 

 collision with the claims of psychology. This doctrine the psycho- 

 logist, studying mental phenomena by reflection upon consciousness, 

 cannot choose but combat ; with any other aspect of phrenology he 

 has nothing necessarily to do. 



Observing this distinction we are prepared to estimate more in- 

 telligently the mode in which Sir William Hamilton assails the pre- 

 tensions of phrenology. Convinced that the doctrine of Gall, if true, 

 "would not only afford a new instrument" tor investigating mental 

 phenomena, " but would in a great measure supersede the old,"* he 

 made extensive observations with a view to test the principal facts on 

 which that doctrine professes to be based, and the results, he states, 

 " prove that no assistance is afforded to Mental Philosophy by an 

 examination of the Nervous System. "f His aim, it ig thus evident, 

 was to show that the science of mind must be founded upon a study 

 of consciousness, and that not only can it not be wholly constructed, 

 but it canfeot even receive aid from a study of the brain. The proof, 

 however, which he leads from his wide induction, seems to me quite 

 irrelevant to this point. It is far from my intention, and it would be 

 extremely futile in me, even if it were just, to disparage the value to 

 science of the researches conducted by Sir William Hamilton with 

 the purpose now under consideration. It is for the physiologist, or 

 rather for the historian of physiology, to estimate the assistance which 

 these researches have rendered in the solution of previously unsettled 

 problems. I notice that his observations on the average size of the 



* Led. on Metaph., Vol I., p. 406. 

 tlbid.,p. 264, note. 



