AND CRANIO GNOMY. 



445 



Now, in this very singular passage there are three propositions, concern- 

 ing which, it is difficult to say which is to be admired most ; hiproof deduced 

 from queries, which the author is incapable of answering; the idea that our 

 Saviour possibly sat for his picture ; and the idea that modern artists are pos- 

 sibly inspired when they paint his image from their own conceptions. I must 

 leave the reader to make his own comments (for I dare not trust myself upon 

 the subject) concerning the edifying resemblance which is here pointed out 

 between the head of the Saviour of the world and that of the Jupiter of the 

 Greek poets ; and the unity of sentiment which has ever, it seems, prevailed 

 between ancient and modern artists, when engaged in studying these sacred 

 models.* 



In seriousness and sobriety, however, it is not a little extraordinary, not 

 only that folly or absurdity, but that wisdom, hypocrisy, gluttony, drunken- 

 ness, sensuality, mirth, melancholy, and some dozens of other powers and 

 faculties of the most common kind, should have no chamber allotted to them, 

 no protuberance or manifestation, in the hypothesis before us. During an 

 interview I had some months ago with Dr. Spurzheim, I started this ditficulty 

 for explanation ; but his reply was at least not satisfactory to myself. It 

 may be sufficient to observe, as a single example, that for the organ of glut- 

 tony he referred us to the stomach ; but this is rather to evade than to meet 

 the difficulty. The stomach is unquestionably the organ of hunger, as the eye 

 isof sight, and the ear of hearing; but if the painter, who derives a pleasure 

 of a peculiar nature from the eye, as in the case of colours ; or the musician, 

 who derives a pleasure of a peculiar nature from the ear, as in the case of 

 sounds, have an express chamber in the brain, by which such peculiar plea- 

 sure is alone excited, and on which it alone depends, so ought the glutton, 

 who derives a pleasure of a peculiar nature from the stomach. While, if 

 there be no such cerebral region or chamber in the brain, and, consequently, 

 no external developement or manifestation of gluttony, or any of the other 

 feelings or sentiments I have just glanced at, the system itself, even admitting 

 its general truth, must be so far imperfect and unavailing : it must dwindle 

 into a half science, and be more liable to lead us astray than aright. 



There is also another powerful objection, which I will beg leave to state, as 

 I stated it at the same time to the learned lecturer I have just alluded to, 

 though, so far as appeared to myself, without a successful solution. It is 

 this. The strictly obvious or natural divisions of the brain are but three ; for 

 we meet with three, and only three, distinct masses, — the cerebrum or brain 

 properly so called, the cerebel or little brain, and the oblongated marrow. 

 The first, as we have formerly observed, constitutes the largest and uppermost 

 part ; the second lies below and behind ; the third level with the second, and 

 in front of it ; it appears to be a projection issuing equally from the two other 

 parts, and gives birth to the spinal marrow, which is thus proved to be a con- 

 tinuation of the brain extended through the whole chain of the spine or 

 back-bone. 



Now, as the brain consists naturally of three, and only three, distinct parts, 

 it may be allowable and pertinent to suppose that each of these parts is 



* It is always amusing, and sometimes instructive, to trace the learned rovings of different philosophical 

 imaginations, when indulging in a like pursuit ; to mark the point from which they set out, and follow up 

 the parallelism or divergency of their respective courses, when aiming at a common goal. Sir Everard 

 Hom6, whom every one will allow to be as deeply versed in the internal structure and the external map- 

 ping of the brain as either Dr. Gall or Dr. Spurzheim, seems also, from a late article in the Philosophical 

 Transactions (1821, p. 31), to have felt a tendency to the study of phrenology. But from the only two 

 regions he appears yet to have visited in his new voyage of discovery, his bearings are likely to be in 

 every respect widely different from those of the German navigators, and calculated to lead to very dif- 

 ferent results. These regions are the supposed natural seats of memory and coNcapiscENCE. While Dr. 

 Gall and Dr. Spurzheim fix the first of these, as far as they are able to ascertain its dominion, between the 

 nose and the forehead (Spurz. p. 427), Sir Everard has had to pursue his course into a far higher latitude, 

 and did not reach it till he arrived at the vertex- of the scull, that very region which the German craniog- 

 nomists have already taken possession of for the faculty of religious veneration, as just noticed in the 

 text : at the same time, that while these skilful explorers have decidedly fixed the organ of concup.isckn.gk 

 at the nape of the neck, the ultima Thule, or lowermost extremity of the cranial sphere (p. 344), Sir 

 Everard has found it at its sinciput or highest point of the forehead ; bordering, indeed, where we should 

 little have expected it, upon the region of memory or religious veneration, according to Dr. Gall's 

 hypotheeiB. 



