THE NEW PHRENOLOGY. 671 



then, the person shows great powers of memory he must have a special organ 

 somewhere in the brain whose prominence will be marked upon the skull; if he 

 has great powers of expression his skull must be pushed out somewhere so as to 

 give the brain room in that direction. A man with certain prominences on his 

 head will steal or be a murderer, another with certain other prominences will be 

 a poet or a musician. Seventy-five years ago Gall and Spurzheim took up this 

 idea, amplified it and laid the foundations of the so-called science of phrenology. 

 1 1 is not my intention to discuss this very much. While we may say that as a 

 general thing a man's character corresponds to his outward shape, we are still 

 very much in doubt how much strength of mind is dependent upon size of brain, 

 and we are by no means warranted in saying that because there is a depression 

 in a man's skull at a certain point, there is a corresponding vacuity in his mind. 

 A wit of our generation, who combines a knowledge of anatomy with a rare talent 

 for poetry, has said, that we might as well try to tell the amount of money in an 

 iron safe by feeling of the knobs upon the outside, as try to tell the amount of 

 sense a man has by feeling upon the outside of his skull. This also is not entirely 

 true, for while the safe might be empty, the skull being to some extent moulded 

 by the brain and corresponding with the rest of the man, would show us several 

 things. From its height we might judge somewhat of the person's stature; from 

 its thickness and the size of its prominences, something of his muscular strength ; 

 perhaps from its apparent age and size we could tell that the person using it had 

 had intellect enough to perform the ordinary functions of life, but to make a pic- 

 ture of his intellectual capacity would be beyond our power. Given a fossil 

 bone and a naturaUst can reconstruct some grotesque monster that sprawled and 

 splashed through the prehistoric ages, confounding our theories of geology. He 

 can tell sometimes whether it would be a reptile or a mammal; can make a ra- 

 tional guess as to whether its skin would be thick or thin and what its habits of 

 life would be. This is a legitimate use of the scientific imagination, or more 

 strictly perhaps of scientific induction. Given the bone of a man he could build 

 up a symmetrical man, but the variations produced by civilization would render 

 his restoration uncertain. He would have nothing to guide him as to whether 

 the hair was light or dark, as to whether the man was civilized or barbarous, and 

 these are all important factors in determining the grade of intelligence. For 

 certainly no one will deny that blue eyes look upon the world differently from 

 black ones, and that a thick skinned man is less tormented by the slings and 

 arrows of outrageous fortune than one whose skin is thin. 



When it comes to physiognomy much more can be told, though how much 

 more is a fair matter for question. Certainly a man's soul should shine forth in 

 his face and in his general appearance, and yet here there are some things that 

 we do not understand. The big Roman nose led the Roman armies to the 

 dominion of half the world, and yet the big Roman nose, the nose of Antony 

 and Augustus, arches to-day the faces of innumerable Italian beggars and organ- 

 grinders. Go to day and sit down amcng the ruins of Rome and a man as stately 

 as a Roman senator, or a woman as determined as Cornelia, the mother of the 



