praise it. The very names of these envious and dishonest enemies of Harvey are scarcely remembered; and the honor of this great discovery now rests, beyond all dispute, with the great philosopher who made it." This shows that Harvey, in his day, was treated exactly as Dr. Gall has been in ours; and if Phrenology be true, these, or similar terms, may one day be applied by posterity to him and his present opponents.

Again, Professor Playfair, speaking of the discovery of the composition of light by Sir Isaac Newton, says, "Though the discovery now communicated had every thing to recommend it which can arise from what is great, new, and singular; though it was not a theory or system of opinions, but the generalization of facts made known by experiments, and though it was brought forward in a most simple and unpretending form, a host of enemies appeared, each eager to obtain the unfortunate pre-eminence of being the first to attack conclusions which the unanimous voice of posterity was to confirm." (P. 56.) "Among them, one of the first was Father Pardies, who wrote against the experiments, and what he was pleased to call the Hypothesis of Newton. A satisfactory and calm reply convinced him of his mistake, which he had the candor very readily to acknowledge. A countryman of his, Mariotte, was more difficult to be reconciled, and though very conversant with experiment, appears never to have succeeded in repeating the experiments of Newton."

Here, then, we see that persecution, condemnation, and ridicule, awaited Galileo, Harvey, and Newton, for announcing three great physical discoveries. In mental philosophy, the conduct of mankind has been similar.

Aristotle and Des Cartes "may be quoted as examples of the good and bad fortune of new doctrines. The ancient antagonists of Aristotle caused his books to be burned. Afterwards, these books were received with a veneration equal to that due to inspiration itself; and even so late as the time of Francis I., the writings of Ramus against Aristotle were publicly burned, his adversaries were declared heretics, and, under pain of being sent to the galleys, philosophers were prohibited from combating his opinions

At the present time the philosophy of Aristotle is no longer spoken of. Again, Des Cartes was persecuted for teaching the doctrine of innate ideas; he was accused of Atheism, though he had written on the existence of God; and his books were burnt by order of the University of Paris. A short time after, the same University adopted the doctrine of Des Cartes in favor of innate ideas; and when Locke and Condillac attacked it, there was a general cry of materialism and fatalism. Thus, the same opinions were considered at one time as dangerous because they were new, and at another as useful because they were ancient. What is to be inferred from this, but that man deserves pity; that the opinions of contemporaries, in respect to the truth or falsehood, and the good or bad consequences of a new doctrine, are altogether suspicious; and that the only object of an author ought to be that of pointing out the truth?"-Dr. Spurzheim's Physiog. Syst. p. 488.

To these extracts many more might be added of a similar nature; but enough has been said to demonstrate, that, by the ordinary practice of mankind, great discoveries are treated with hostility by the generation to whom they are addressed.

If, therefore, Phrenology be a discovery at all, and especially if it be also important, it must of necessity come into collision, on the most weighty topics, with the opinions of men hitherto venerated as authorities in physiology and the philosophy of mind; and, according to the custom of the world, nothing except opposition, ridicule, and abuse, could be expected on its first announcement.

If we are to profit, however, by the lessons of history, we ought, after surveying these mortifying examples of human weakness and wickedness, to dismiss from our minds every prejudice against our present subject, founded on its hostile reception by men of established reputation of the present day. He who does not perceive that if Phrenology shall prove to be true, posterity will view the contumelies heaped by the philosophers of this generation on its founders as another dark speck in the history of scientific discovery, and he who does not feel anxious to avoid all participation in this ungenerous treatment, has reaped no moral im

provement from the records of intolerance which we have now contemplated: but every enlightened individual will say, Let us dismiss prejudice, and calmly listen to evidence and reason; let us not encounter even the chance of adding our names to the melancholy list of the enemies of mankind, by refusing, on the strength of mere prejudice, to be instructed in the new doctrines when submitted to our consideration; let us inquire, examine, and decide.

These, I trust, are the sentiments of the reader; and on the faith of their being so, I shall proceed, in the second place, to state very briefly the principles of Phrenology itself.

It is a notion inculcated, often indirectly no doubt, but not less strongly, by highly venerated teachers of intellectual philosophy, that we are acquainted with Mind and with Body, as two distinct and separate entities. The anatomist treats of the body, and the logician and moral philosopher of the mind, as if they were separate subjects of investigation, either not at all, or only in a remote and unimportant degree connected. In common society, too, men speak of the dispositions and faculties of the mind, without its occurring to them that they are in close connexion with the body.

But the Human Mind, as it exists in this world, cannot, by itself, become an object of philosophical investigation. Placed in a material world, it cannot act or be acted upon, but through the medium of an organic apparatus. The soul sparkling in the eye of beauty does not transmit its sweet influence to a kindred spirit, but through the filaments of an optic nerve; and even the bursts of eloquence which flow from the lips of the impassioned orator, when mind appears to transfuse itself almost directly into mind, emanate from, and are transmitted to, corporeal beings, through a voluminous apparatus of organs. If we trace the mind's progress from the cradle to the grave, every appearance which it presents reminds us of this important truth. In earliest life the mental powers are feeble as the body. but when manhood comes, they glow with energy, and expand with power; till, at last, the chill of age makes the limbs totter, and the fancy's fires decay.

Nay, not only the great stages of our infancy, vigor, and de

cline, but the experience of every hour, remind us of our alliance with the dust. The lowering clouds and stormy sky depress the spirits and enerve the mind;-after short and stated intervals of toil, our wearied faculties demand repose in sleep; famine or disease is capable of levelling the proudest energies in the earth; and even the finest portion of our compound being, the Mind itself, apparently becomes diseased, and, leaving Nature's course, flies to self-destruction to escape from wo.

These phenomena must be referred to the organs with which, in this life, the mind is connected; but if the organs exert so great an effect over the mental manifestations, no system of philosophy is entitled to consideration, which would neglect their influence, and treat the thinking principle as a disembodied spirit. The phrenologist, therefore, regards man as he exists in this sublunary world; and desires to investigate the laws which regulate the connexion between the organs and the mind, but without attempting to discover the essence of either, or the manner in which they are united.

It may be demonstrated, therefore, that the popular notion that we are acquainted with mind unconnected with matter, is founded on an illusion, that, in point of fact, we do not in this life know mind as one entity, and body as another; but that we are familiar only with the compound existence of mind and body, which act constantly together, and are so intimately connected that every state of mind involves a corresponding state of certain corporeal organs, and every state of these organs involves a certain condition of mind. A few remarks will suffice to place this doctrine in its proper light.

1st, We are not conscious of the existence and functions of the organs by which the mind operates in this life, and, in consequence, many acts appear to us to be purely mental, which experiment and observation prove incontestably to depend on corporeal organs. For example, in stretching out or withdrawing the arm, we are conscious only of an act of the will, and of the consequent movement of the arm, but have no consciousness of the apparatus by means of which the volition is carried into execution. Experi

ment and observation, however, demonstrate the existence of bones of the arms curiously articulated and adapted to motion, of muscles endowed with powers of contraction, and attached with infinite skill to the bones so as to put them in motion with the least effort, and in the most beneficial manner; and, lastly, three sets of nervous fibres all running in one sheath, namely, one which communicates feeling, a second which transmits motion, and a third which communicates to the mind information of the state of the muscles when acted on by the other two; and all these organs must combine and act harmoniously before the arm can be moved by the will on any one occasion. All that a person uninstructed in anatomy knows is, that he wills the motion, and that it takes place; the whole act appears to him to be purely mental, and only the thing moved, namely, the arm, is conceived to be corporeal. Nevertheless, it is positively established by anatomical and physiological investigation, that this conclusion is erroneous-that the act is not purely mental, but is accomplished by the instrumentality of the various organs now enumerated. In like manner, every act of vision is connected with a certain state of the optic nerve, and every act of hearing, with a certain state of the tympanum, and other parts of the auditory apparatus, of the existence and functions of which we are altogether uninformed by consciousness.

Now, I go one step farther in the same path, and state, that every act of the will, every flight of imagination, every glow of affection, and every effort of the understanding in this life, is performed by means of an apparatus of organs unknown to us through. consciousness, but which are capable of demonstration by experiment and observation; in other words, the brain is the organ of the mind. The greatest anatomists admit this proposition without hesitation. The celebrated Dr. Cullen of Edinburgh states, that "the part of our body more immediately connected with the mind, and therefore more especially concerned in every affection of the intellectual functions, is the common origin of the nerves; which I shall, in what follows, speak of under the appellation of the Brain." Again, the same author says, "We cannot doubt that the operations of our intellect always depend upon certain motions taking