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ON PHYSIOGNOMY 



SIRE are two distinct attributes ; though in ordinary language confounded 

 and used synonymously. It is true, then, that God has willed robbery and 

 murder ; but it is equally true that he has not desired them ; it is equally 

 true that he has most positively expressed his desire upon the subject, and 

 has forbidden them under the severest threats. Our duty, therefore, is to 

 attend to the prohibition : our moral conduct is to be collected from his 

 desire, and not from his will, excepting where the word will is employed in 

 its popular sense, and synonymously with desire. The professors of this 

 new physiognomy, however, having thus advanced their peculiar doctrine 

 upon the subject before us, endeavour to illustrate it by copious examples 

 of persons, who, from bemg endowed with the stealing bump and stealing 

 organ, had a peculiar and irresistible propensity to rob and plunder. 

 Among these. Dr. Spurzheim introduces various characters, whom we 

 should not very readily have suspected to belong to a gang of thieves. 

 He tells us of a chaplain in a Prussian regiment, a man of great intelli- 

 gence and ability, who could not avoid (for these are his words) steaHng 

 handkerchiefs from the officers at the parade. He informs us, that Victor 

 Amadeus I., king of Sardinia, took every where objects of little impor- 

 tance ; and, what will still more astonish the audience before me, that M. 

 Saurln, the Genevese pastor, though acquainted with the best principles of 

 reason and rehgion, was overcome continually by this propensity to steal. 

 He has given us, however, no authority for this last assertion ; and no such 

 calumny should be believed without full proof. 



There is, mdeed, an endeavour on the part of Dr. Spurzheim, though 

 I do not find he is supported by any of his colleagues, to let down, in some 

 degree, this charge against nature and the Author of nature, by telhng us, 

 that though the organs exist that bear these names, and produce a specific 

 propensity, they do not urge on the individual to the actual commission of 

 great crimes of this kind till they are very largely developed, and the deve- 

 lopement has not been controlled by other faculties, which he seems to in- 

 timate may have an influence upon them. " These functions," says he, 

 " are abuses, which result from the highest degree of activity of certain 

 organs, which are not directed by other faculties." Now, in the grst place, 

 it should seem, by his own examples, that other faculties have very httle 

 control over the master- organ or propensity at any time : for, even admit- 

 ting the truth of his extraordinary anecdote concerning M. de Saurin, there 

 can be no doubt that all his faculties of morality and rehgion were habitu- 

 ally at work in repugnancy to his faculty of thieving, and yet, according to 

 Dr. Spurzheim, to no purpose. But, secondly, the learned writer exhibits 

 a strange inconsistency, in regarding the full developement of a function 

 " as the abuse of a function." The function is a natural power ; its growth 

 is a natural power ; and hence its full developement, or " the highest ac- 

 tivity of the organ," instead of being an abuse of such organ or function, 

 ought only to be regarded as its natural perfection. And, lastly, let 

 the matter be how it may, the man, even in his moral character, is passive 

 under every stage of its progress ; or, in the more tangible and exphcit 

 language of M. Magendie, II est impossible de se changer k cet egard. 



Nous RESTONS TELS QUE LA NATURE NOUS A FAITS."* 



Not a few persons will, perhaps, be surprised at finding, that nature has 

 likewise kindly provided us with an impulsory organ for theatrical amuse- 

 ments ; and that she thus seems satisfactorily to have settled the lawful- 



* Precis Elementairc, 2 toms. 8vo. Paris, I8I6, 1817. 



