AND CRANIO GNOMY. 



447 



them, why has not the haberdasher and the tailor 1 the latter more especially, 

 since, as it has lately been attempted to be proved, by a learned writer on the 

 subject, that the calling of the tailor is the oldest of all professions whatever; 

 "a calling," says he, "that commenced immediately after the fall: for it was 

 then that mankind sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves clothes." 



Even upon the subject of the religious bump, upon which 1 have said so 

 much already, the professors of the new school cannot altogether agree; for 

 while Dr. Gall and Dr. Bojames affirm, that this protuberance on the top of 

 the head indicates the existence of a God, and is the most cogent proof man- 

 kind possess of such existence, Dr. Spurzheim contends that it is no proof 

 whatever — that his friends have mistaken the quality — and that it indicates 

 neither religion nor morality; both which, it seems, in the opinion of this en- 

 lightened philosopher, have nothing to do with each other: for, "one man," 

 says Dr. Spurzheim, " may be religious without being just, and another may 

 be just without being religious."* Dr. Spurzheim gives to this protuberance, 

 therefore, a different and a far ampler scope, so as to cover, as all his names 

 do, fifty or a hundred qualities at the same time. He calls it, indeed, the 

 organ of veneration, which at first sight appears to have an approach to the 

 name given it by Gall and Bojames ; but then he especially tells us, " that 

 this faculty does not determine the object to be venerated, nor the manner of 

 venerating ; and that it equally includes the veneration of God, of samts, 

 of persons, or any thing else, however mean or contemptible." Yet this is 

 the organ which Dr. Spurzheim has supposed to have been peculiarly de- 

 veloped in the head of the Saviour. As some amends, however, for his phi- 

 losophical apostacy upon this point, he makes Dr. Gall's organ of moral good- 

 ness, in his explanation, the organ of Christian charity,t for so he expresses 

 himself ; introduces a new organ, which Gall will not allow, and a bump 

 which Gall cannot find out, to indicate religious hope and faith, and which 

 he places next to Gall's religious bump ; at the same time totally defeating 

 the value of his amende honorable by adding, that this organ of faith and 

 hope, " in persons endowed with it in a higher degree, manifests credulity.''^ 



Such, then, are a few of the inconsistencies of the new hypothesis, and the 

 discordances of its different professors with each other. 



But it may be replied, that there is no reasoning against facts ; that the 

 gentlemen I allude to are men of learning and character ; and that they have 

 actually determined the moral propensities of a multitude of persons, by a 

 reference to the rules of their own art. 1 admit the learning and character 

 of these gentlemen, and most freely pay homage to them on this score ; but 

 these qualities, though a full security against voluntarily deceiving others, is' 

 no proof whatever against self-deception. 



There is no science, perhaps, among those professed formerly, and held in 

 the highest estimation, which has fallen into more contempt than that of 

 judicial astrology. Yet this, when it was in fashion, was for ages embraced 

 by men of the greatest learning and talents, and of unblemished integrity ; 

 and who, in a thousand instances, foretold events that actually came to pass ; 

 and persuaded themselves that they foretold them by the rules of their own 

 art. Such, to confine ourselves to times comparatively recent, were Baptista 

 Porta, Cardan, and Kepler, of the sixteenth century : the first, the most dis- 

 tinguished scholar, and the last two the most distinguished mathematicians 

 of their age ; and such were the Abbe de Ranee, the celebrated founder of the 

 monastery of La Trappe, and our own two learned countrymen and poets 

 Cowley and Dryden, in the seventeenth century. And let the school before 

 us, therefore, boast as much as they may upon this subject, we can bring far 

 more numerous instances of individuals as honest, as successful, and incom- 

 parably more learned, who have devoted themselves to a science which is 

 now utterly abandoned by every man in the possession of his senses. To 

 talk, therefore, of the occasional success of the physiognomists before us, is 

 to add not a barley-corn to the scale in their favour; since right they must 



♦ Physiolog. Syst. p. 415. t Ibid. p. 416. t Ibid 



