Lectures on phrenology : including its application to the present and prospective condition of the United States / With notes, an introductory essay and an historical sketch by Andrew Boardman.

  • Combe, George, 1788-1858.
Date:
[1840]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on phrenology : including its application to the present and prospective condition of the United States / With notes, an introductory essay and an historical sketch by Andrew Boardman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    ed that a large skull indicates a large brain, an J that a large brain causes a large skull ; that persons having a brain weighing but one and a half pounds are invariably idiotic ; that a predominant coronal region gives a general tendency or disposition towards virtue, and that education has the power of modifying the constitutional tendencies of our nature. The fundamental error of ancient philosophy was the no- tion that a general cause must be first divined or conjectured, and tiien applied to the explanation of particular pheno- mena ; they perceived not the plain but momentous truth, that a general fact is nothing else than a fact common to many individuals, and consequently, that the individual facts must be known, before the general fact can be stated. Hence, instead of first ascertaining by direct observation, the relative velocity of two descending bodies differing in weight, then of two others—persisting with new experiments until enough of instances had been observed to justify an assumption of uniformity, Aristotle first assumed a gross error as a general fact, and then inferred it of any two bodies whatever. His reasoning was correct, but his pre- miss was false. He attended to logic but utterly neglected induction. But, besides pointing out the true method of investiga- tion, the Baconian philosophy furnishes a number of tests by which we may know when two facts bear to each othei the relation of cause and effect, or of sign and power. These are, 1. Invariable connection. 2. Invariable negation of the effect, with absence of the cause. 3. Increase or diminution of the effect, with the increa- sed or diminished intensity of the cause. It further teaches us that, we are not to deny the exis- tence of a cause in favour of which we have a unanimous