274 CRANIA AMERICANA. 



monly attributed entirely to the religious and political institutions of the several 

 countries. Presbytery and parish schools, for example, are supposed to have 

 rendered the Scotchman habitually attentive to his ow^n interest; cautious, 

 thoughtful, and honest: vv^hile Popery and Catholic priests have made the Irishman 

 free and generous withal, but precipitate and unreflecting— ready in the gust of 

 passion to sacrifice his friend, and in the glow of friendship to immolate himself. 

 It is forgotten that there were ages in which popery and priests had equal ascend- 

 ancy in all the British isles ; and that the Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman, 

 were beings as specifically distinct then as at present: besides, the more correct, 

 as well as the more profound view, is to regard religious and political institutions, 

 when not forced upon a people by external conquest, as the spontaneous growth 

 of their natural propensities, sentiments and intellectual faculties. Hierarchies 

 and constitutions do not spring from the ground, but from the minds of men. If 

 we suppose one nation to be gifted with much wonder and veneration, and little 

 conscientiousness, reflection and self-esteem; and another to possess an endowment 

 exactly the reverse; it is obvious that the first would be naturally prone to super- 

 stition in religion, and servility in the state ; while the second would, by native 

 instinct, resist all attempts to make them reverence things unholy, and tend 

 constantly towards political institutions, fitted to afford to each individual the 

 gratification of his self-esteem in independence, and his conscientiousness in 

 equality before the law. Those who contend that institutions came first, and that 

 character follows as their effect, are bound to assign a cause for the institutions 

 themselves. If they do not spring from the native mind, and are not forced on 

 the people by conquest, it is difficult to see whence they can originate. 



The phrenologist is not satisfied with these common theories of national 

 character; he has observed that a particular size and form of brain is the invariable 

 concomitant of particular dispositions and talents, and that this fact holds good in 

 the case of nations as well as of individuals. 



If this view be correct, a knowledge of the size of the brain, and the propor- 

 tions of its different parts, in the different varieties of the human race, will be the 

 key to a correct appreciation of the differences in their natural mental endowments, 

 on which external circumstances act only as modifying influences. Such, accord- 

 ingly, is the light in which I regard this great subject. If the size of the brain 

 and the proportions of its different parts be the index to natural national character, 

 the present work, which represents with great fidelity the skulls of the American 

 tribes, will be an authentic record in which the philosopher may read the native 



