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.
- George Combe
- Date:
- [1840]
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.
386/408 (page 380)
![may be adequately, too feebly, or loo highly stimulated, and vhe results will vary accord ingiy. If an organ be kept, as far as possible, in a state of quiescence, it loses in strength, in ease, and efficiency of action ; but adequate and judicious training increases the com pactness, strength, and tone of its fibres; its aptitude for ready, certain, and energetic nction. Hence, could two organs of like size and constitutional activity be subjected, at a given time, under like circumstances, to equally powerful exciting causes, the one would greatly exceed the other in ease, energy, and correctness. Of such differences in training we have no external sign, and, as a guide to them, the rational phrenologist would inquire into the circumstances and education of the individual examined. The natural character, as far as it can be known from organization—education and external in- fluences being given—he can solve the problem of actual character, not indeed with pre- cise, but with approximating accuracy. The non-phrenologist cannot commence the so- lution anterior to experience ; he would not have the slightest reason for stating whether the individual were a Byng or a Nelson, a Burr or a Washington, an image-maker or a Canova, a nostrum-vender or a Hunter, a street-brawler or a Burke. The phrenologist can, indeed, often tell the remarkable traits of a man's character with considerable precision, without reference to his education. If an organ be very deficient in size, no amount of the most judicious training can make it display great energy, and when the phrenologist observes such an organ, he can say, with the most perfect confi- dence, and without reference to previous training and external influences, that in all actions for which its energetic play is requisite, the individual will manifest feebleness or imbe- cility. If an organ, on the contrary, greatly predominate in size, it hungers, as it were, for stimulus, and responds to it, when presented, with such vigorous, rapid, and pleasur- able energy, that its tendency is to overpower the appeals of the weaker organs, and re- duce them to subservient activity ; and though judicious training may greatly modify this tendency, the organ will still exert a powerful influence over the character, and this the phrenologist can state without the slightest danger of mistake. Starting from these ex tremes, we proceed with less and less certainty as to actual character, till we come to men in whom the organs are so equably poised, that from the organization alone, little positive can be inferred. Placed amid elevating and refining influences, where Con- scientiousness, Benevolence, Veneration, and the other sentiments are highly stimulated, and where the proo^nsities have lawful means of gratification, such men mav sustain * teputati justice, piety, and benevolence; surrounded by obnoxious influences, it which the higher sentiments are iittle or not at all stimulated, but in which Acquisitiveness, Destructiveness, and the other propensities are brought into energetic action, they may be debauchees, drunkards, robbers, or murderers. This is the class who often surprise not only others, but themselves, by the greatness and rapidity of their changes from evil to good, and from good to evil; the class from which the revivalists gather their brightest trophies—trophies, alas! which in a little while have too generally to be numbered with the backsliders. The actual character undergoes marked revolutions; the natural character remains the same, its distinctive characteristic being its liability to he strongly modified by external circumstances and education. This the phrenologist can positively state from the organization alone, but he cannot tell whether, for the time being, the individual should be ranked among the vicious or the virtuous, the sinners or the saints; he can tell, however, with certainty, that no amount of moral training, or religion excite- ment, will render him equally virtuous, excellent, and amiable, as if his moral sentiments had been one third greater, or his propensities one third less. The above remarks apply more particularly to the moral character; they are equally Applicable to the intellect separately considered. Training and education, by establishing combinations in activity, and also by increasing vivacity of action, in an intellect whose organs are pretty equally developed, may bring out some talents highly, and leave others comparatively dormant. From an examination of the head in such cases, the rational phrenologist does not pretend to say what organs have *he greatest vivacity of action, or what have been trained to work in associated activity. He merely says that the individual has certain genera] powers, equally developed, which qualify him for a wide field of ac- tion, and that it depends on his training and instruction in what line his strength lies. We cannot close these observations without alluding to certain practices too prevalent is society. It is well known that persons-, calling themselves r»ra<*tic?J plrenologisU.*](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21029143_0386.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
