366 Obituary JVotice of Dr. Gaspar Spiirzheim. 



When he found a child whose head or whose conversation indica- 

 ted an extraordinary mind, he would find out the parents and warn 

 them of the danger of exciting too much the mental faculties, and 

 of the importance of attending to the moral and physical education 

 of their child. In his visits to the schools in Boston he denounced 

 emulation and mere authority as motives of action, but delighted 

 when benevolence and a sense of duty were made the motives of 

 action. 



He was anxious not to give trouble — to prevent future sufferings 

 in others, and was to the last, grateful for every kind service render- 

 ed him. 



In education he was anxious that the moral and physical cultiva- 

 tion of the pupil should not be sacrificed to the intellectual, and he 

 thought many of our establishments for education deficient in these 

 respects. In his choice of duties, Dr. FoUen remarks that he *' al- 

 ways chose for himself in preference, the performance of that duty 

 which required the greatest effort and self-denial ;" and be adds, 

 what it gives us much pain to learn, " that his anxious desire to ful- 

 fil his engagements in Boston and in Cambridge, was the chief cause 

 of his death. Although oppressed by indisposition and contrary to 

 the entreaties of his medical friends, he continued to lecture ; and 

 once in his last sickness, he started up with the intention to dress 

 himself to go to Cambridge." At the close of each lecture, he listen- 

 ed patiently to every inquirer, however humble, and never turned him 

 by, to attend to the great, who were waiting. 



He never suffered poverty to exclude any one from his lectures, 

 and when his friends were his almoners in the distribution of free 

 tickets, he wished never to be informed to whom they were given. - 



His love of truth was supreme ; he wished no one to believe any 

 thing on his authority but simply from conviction, after due exami- 

 nation. He was unwilling that phrenology should become an instru- 

 ment of soothsaying and quackery, and he always refused to desig- 

 nate the characters of living individuals by the application of the rules 

 of his science. 



He did not believe, with Dr. Gall, that there was an organ for 

 theft and one for murder, which he thought inconsistent with the be- 

 nevolence of God. 



" All his writings and lectures (says Dr. Follen,) were marked by 

 the decidedly religious tendency of his mind. He firmly believed 

 in the essential truths of natural and revealed religion. He adopted 



