82 Phrenology. 



from its abuse, on the contrary, spring some of the most flagitious 

 crimes and most poignant sufferings. Still, no court permits a 

 criminal to plead against his condemnation, the strength of his 

 evil propensities which have led him to the commission of crime. 

 The temptations of cupidity will not excuse the felon from trans- 

 portation J nor the fierceness of anger or the delusions of inebriety 

 avert the sentence of death from a murderer. Phrenology does not, 

 in the least, alter the case ; for, independently of this science or of 

 any other relating to our frames — as, for instance, anatomy and 

 physiology — we are quite sure of the existence of our faculties, 

 our affections, and our propensities, and we know that we are re- 

 sponsible for their proper use and for their abuse. Their manifes- 

 tation through the brain does not affect our moral responsibility, 

 any more than if they were associated with any other parts of 

 our frame, or diffused through the whole of it, without any par- 

 ticular locality. 



It is our duty to regulate and control all our powers, affections 

 and propensities, and nothing but the impotency or subversion of 

 our reason can excuse us from moral responsibility. We will 

 suppose, for instance, that according to the language of phrenol- 

 ogy, a man may have small intellectual pov/ers, little conscien- 

 tiousness and benevolence, and large acquisitiveness, destructive- 

 ness and combativeness. Will he therefore stand excused for theft 

 or murder ? Certainly not. It was his duty to obey his con- 

 science, and to resist his animal propensities when they would 

 lead him to evil. Feeble faculties and dispositions may become 

 strong by cultivation and encouragement, and strong propensities 

 may be controlled and subjected by vigilant discipline. We see in 

 life, many examples of self-government producing, by the force of 

 a voluntary discipline, fine characters, formed as it may be out of 

 very imperfect or bad materials, while brilliant intellectual powers 

 and elevated moral feelings are, unhappily, too often subdued by 

 the lower propensities, the animal powers ; in these cases, the latter 

 were not governed, and thus the intellect which should have been 

 the master, became a miserable and ruined slave to the propensi- 

 ties. If the case of the feebler powers and stronger propensities 

 admits of no justification, the opposite case presents no palliation ; 

 for with a strong intellect and a conscience quick to distinguish 

 right from wrong, the propensities ought to be subjected to the most 

 perfect control. Phrenology, therefore, stands not in the way of 



