Sir William Hamilton and phrenology. I. Correspondence published in the Caledonian Mercury between Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Spurzheim, and between Sir William Hamilton and Mr. George Combe.

  • Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
Date:
1828
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir William Hamilton and phrenology. I. Correspondence published in the Caledonian Mercury between Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Spurzheim, and between Sir William Hamilton and Mr. George Combe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    in order that both parties might have in common an indisput- able foundation of reality, on which to establish or to refute the hypothesis in question. (See p. 404.) If any hardship be felt by Dr Spurzheim at the delay thus necessarily occasioned, this cannot with justice be attributed to me ; but though it would be preposterous, under these circumstances, to publish my ar- gument before the state of the decisive facts on which it pro- ceeds is recognized as correct, it will certainly be admitted that I act with equal fairness and intrepidity, and afford to Dr Spurz- heim the most advantageous opportunity of subverting my ob- jections to his doctrine, by allowing, nay urging him to disprove, by a comparison with nature, the positions of fact on which the objections are established. I am willing to join issue with Dr Spurzheim, as with Mr Combe, in periling the whole question on the truth or falsehood of the propositions I am soon to pro- pose. Res non verba quceso. Dr Spurzheim ^eems to suppose that the objections I alleged against Phrenology were founded, not on sensible appearances, but on speculative opinions ; not on my own observations, but on the authority of others. It is true, that in the first paper which I read before the Royal Society, in attempting to prove that the consequences of the theory were diametrically opposite to those so fondly deduced from it by its supporters, I only indirectly assailed the doctrine itself, through the logical incompetency of those on whose au- thority it rested; and I there endeavoured merely to establish a general presumption, that the same causes of error—the same prepossession, partiality, and enthusiasm—would be found in the constitution of Phrenology to have vitiated the observation of the fundamental facts, which, in their reasonings on its con- sequences, were displayed by the Phrenologists in the chimerical superstructure reared on so incongruous a basis. I did not at- tempt to show that Phrenology was false, because it immedi- ately involved the conclusions of fatalism, materialism, and atheism, but that, as the Phrenologists were so egregiously de- ceived in maintaining that their doctrine supplied the most se- cure foundation of moral liberty, of the immateriality of mind, and of religion, natural and revealed, we were entitled to infer the probability, that they were equally deluded in the slippery task of authenticating and applying the phenomena which con- dition or constitute the theory itself. It was only subsequently to the reading of this paper, that I satisfied myself that this ana- logical inference was correct; and in the second paper I applied myself exclusively to show, that the determining and integral facts of Phrenology, when not merely selected specialties, were either petitory or false. Petitory—Because Phrenology assumes the very facts, of whose existence, otherwise established, it could only, as a legitimate hypothesis, attempt to explain the law. Professing to demonstrate
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