Professional sketches. No. V. Mr. Lawrence.

Date:: [1829]

Credit: Professional sketches. No. V. Mr. Lawrence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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Professional Sketches. saiy to make this declaration, that our remarks may he properly and fairly appreciated. To return, then, to our subject. ’ Was Mr. Lawrence guilty of propagating the doctrine of materialism ? Our readers know—at least many of them must know—that the publi- cation of Lawrence’s Lectures was pirated ; and that, upon applying to the Court of Chancery for an injunction to restrain the robber from pursuing his iniquitous design, the late Lord Chancellor, with that sensitive regard for the public, for which he was so notorious, refused the injunction, because the hook was said to be of an unmoral tendency, thereby permitting any rogue and vagabond to circulate it as widely’ and as briskly as possible ! Setting up too his own opinions (confessedly, in all things but law dogmas, the most narrow and bigoted in the land,) as tests of what was or was not pernicious in science as well as morals. This, then, was prima facie evidence of the author’s guilt; but it is rather too late in the day for the public to pass an immitigable sentence of condemnation on a decision from such a quarter as this, or to pin their faith on a “judgment” of Lord Eldon, when by chance he did happen to be delivered of one. Let us see, then, of what character and intensity Mr. Lawrence’s crime was, as it stands recorded in his published Lectures ; let us see what opinions these were, that Mr. Law- rence so boastingly gloried in, and that were never to be “ concealed nor compromised. After his introduction, after inveighing most energetically against prejudice and errors, and after descanting with great power and ability upon “reason and free inquiry,” as the “ effectual antidotes of error, he proceeds to examine “physiologically, as he particularly ex- presses it, the constitution of the human mind. This, he says, is ma- terial, perfectly,, decidedly, tangibly material; it declines with the na- tural declination of the other organs of the body, becomes decrepit in old age, and “ finally extinguished by death.” “ What,” he asks, “ do we infer from this succession of phenomena? The existence and ac- tion of a principle entirely distinct from the body ? or a dose analogy to the history of all other organs and functions?” “ The number and kind of the intellectual phenomena in different animals,” he continues, “ correspond closely to the degree of the deve- lopement of the brain. The mind of.the Negro and the Hottentot, of the Calmuck and the Carib, is inferior to that of the European; and their organization is also less perfect. The large cranium and high forehead of the Orang-otang lift him above his brother monkeys; but the developement of his cerebral hemispheres, and his mental manifesta- tions, are both equally below those of the Negro. The gradation of or- ganization and of mind passes through the monkey, dog, elephant, horse, to other quadrupeds; thence to birds, reptiles, and fishes, and so on to the lowest links of the animal chain.” This is plain enough, because this is physically demonstrable. It is- upon this principle, in fact, that phrenology is founded. Phrenologists, too, have been accused of very terrible perpetrations—of materialism, of infidelity, of fatalism, and Heaven knows what beside; and unjust, indeed, has such accusation been, let their notions be well or ill founds ed. What does the phrenologist attempt to prove? That the mind is material, wholly and perfectly material? No such thing; he merely points out physical indications of moral effects. This is the “ head and

Professional sketches. No. V. Mr. Lawrence.

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