Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

Tertio, To adjudge and declare the mind and body to be either connected or unconnected, as may best suit

any particular theory advanced, or to be hereafter advanced, by any of your petitioners.

Quarto, To adjudge and declare the brain to be a worthless pulp, utterly unnecessary, and even unfavourable to the perfect exercise of all the powers and faculties of the mind; and to ordain the said brain to desist and cease from all connexion with the said powers of the mind, now, and in all time coming. Quinto, To ordain each hemisphere of the said brain, which the said F. J. Gall and J. G. Spurzheim have presumed, most arbitrarily and unwarrantably, to divide into thirty-three portions, each portion being the organ of a particular faculty, instantly to resolve itself into one homogeneous and unorganized mass, as heretofore, and in that entire state, to hold itself in readiness to execute any office or function which may be required of it by any of your petitioners.

Sexto, To abolish the whole propensities, sentiments, and intellectual powers, proposed and discovered, or pretended to be discovered by the said F. J. Gall and J. G. Spurzheim, and to ordain and declare the same to have been from the beginning, to be now, and in all time coming, utterly null and void.

Septimo, To adjudge and declare that the sole and exclusive right of inventing, making, and vending all manner of theories, systems, creeds, notions, dogmas, first lines, and outlines, concerning mind in general, and the human mind in particular, belongs, by prescription, and under the letters patent to that effect granted by your Profundities, to your present petitioners, as it formerly belonged to their predecessors, and will belong to their metaphysical posterity, so long as your Profundities shall continue to reign over a willing, an obedient, and a happy people.

Octavo, To confirm and revive all, and whatsoever systems,

theories, creeds, notions, and dogmas, of all regular, leal, and trust-worthy philosophers in the said science of metaphysics, that have ever existed, restoring them all to good odour and fame :-In particular, to adjudge that the Ideas of Plato, the Intentional Species of the Peripatetics, the Forms, Modes, and Phantasms of other Ancients, the Entities, Identities, Formalities, Materialities, Virtualities, Ecceities, Petreities, and Polycarpeities, of Dun Scotus, the Substantial Forms of the Realists, the Empty Names of the Nominalists, the Monads and Harmonies of Leibnitz, the Vibrations, Vibratiuncles, and Associations of Hartley, the Animal Spirits and Pores of Descartes, the Perceptive Motions and Imaginative Reactions of Hobbes, the Material Images of Sir Kenelm Digby, the Feelings and Impressions of Hume, the Sympathies of Smith, the Common Sense of Reid, the Tastes, Habits, and Intellectual Faculties of Stewart, the Ideas of Emotion of Alison, the Feelings of Relation and the Simple and Relative Suggestions of Brown, the Transcendental Qualities of Kant, the Flexible Spherule and Sensible Surface of John Fearn, the Symbolical Sentiments of William Howison, and the Harmonic Intervals or Seven-fold Mystery of Francis Maximus Macnab, with all other powers, faculties, sympathies, feelings, and states of mind whatsoever, invented, made, and vended by your petitioners, and their said predecessors, shall be received, understood, comprehended, and believed in, "as the knowledge "which has been accumulated concerning the human. mind," and as such shall be reverenced, taught, expounded, and illustrated, in all schools, colleges, and universities within the dominions of your Profundities, as the only legitimate science of mind, leaving it to your petitioners to reconcile the same to one another as they best can, with full power to

them and their successors to add thereto their own several and respective new theories, creeds, and systems, yet to be invented and made,-the said additions to be incorporated with the said previous systems, and harmonized therewith, and the whole together to form, and be considered, admitted, and acknowledged to be, the science of metaphysics, or the true philosophy of the human mind, in all time coming. Postremo, To inflict such punishment upon the said F. J. Gall, and J. G. Spurzheim, as may serve as a warning to all their deluded followers, and to all the true and loyal subjects of your extended empire;-and, thereafter, to banish forever the said F. J. Gall and J. G. Spurzheim, and their said abetters, Reason and Experience, beyond the bounds of your said extended Empire, and to do otherwise as to your deep Profundities in your great wisdom shall seem meet :

And Your Petitioners, &c. &c.

The Procedure and Judgment of the Court are still

IN NUBIBUS.

ARTICLE II.

RECENT ATTACKS ON PHRENOLOGY.

"Pedro. What! a feast, a feast?

"Claudio. I'faith, I thank him, he hath bid me to a calf's-head "and capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my "knife's naught."

DURING twenty years, the opponents of Phrenology have been ceaselessly labouring to "put it down." In the Edinburgh Review, vol. ii. (1803), an article appears, pretending to refute

"The Man of Skulls ;" and, strange to tell, in 1815, the task of refutation remained still to be performed, and was again attempted in the 49th number of that Journal. So far as we know, the former made little impression, and we believe it was soon forgotten. The last article was a signal, at which the floodgates of sarcasm, slander, and wretched reasoning, were opened, and, from almost every review, magazine, and newspaper in the empire, torrents of abuse and ridicule were poured out against Phrenology and its founders, and it was then imagined to be "put down" for ever. Once more, however, it arose, not like the phoenix from its ashes, for it had never been consumed, but, like the strong-ribbed vessel, which, sound and secure in all its timbers, survives the storm, rises above the waves, and defies the utmost rage of the tempest. In spite of the prejudices of the public, and the interests of individuals, arrayed against Phrenology, (as public prejudice and private interest ever have been ranged in opposition to all discoveries subversive of established systems), the doctrine has gained ground, and is daily rising in general respect and estimation. This progress is manifested, not only in the daily accession of converts, but more amusingly in the various gradations of concession which yielding scepticism is making in favour of the science. Some admit that they "really begin to think" there is something in it, but that it is carried greatly too far; others "must confess," that it is past being laughed at, and that at least it deserves, what it has not yet received, fair play; while many absolute converts coquet with their belief, as if ashamed of it, wanting perhaps the moral courage to brave "the dread laugh," with which the "nonsense," as it is termed, is yet greeted by many jovial, and, quoad hoc, profoundly ignorant company. The avowal of conversion, no doubt, will be more boldly made, when it becomes safer :-in the mean time, the doctrine is advancing, and that rapidly.

This circumstance, however, has only increased the rancour of the opponents of the new philosophy; and, while its disciples have been peacefully employed in adding to the general stock of knowledge of the mental and moral condition of man, by many

thousand observations, they have been assailed by every weapon which ignorance, actuated by malevolence, could muster against them.

We shall state, in the plainest manner, some of the reasons which the phrenologists have had for not noticing these writers sooner. Controversy is, at all times, rather an idle occupation; but metaphysical controversy is peculiarly barren and unprofitable. It has also the property of being altogether endless, and Milton makes it one of the occupations of the fallen angels "to "reason high" on matters of metaphysical import,

"And find no end in wandering mazes lost."

This is the case where the opposing parties are on an equal footing, and where both of them contend with weapons purely metaphysical: but where, on the one hand, we have a strong and consistent statement of facts and observations, and on the other side nothing but speculative reasoning, it is impossible, in the nature of things, that the parties can ever fairly join issue. It is a battle between a living man and a ghost.

There are three things to be attended to in considering an inductive science. First, The facts and observations on which it is founded. Secondly, The reasonings on these facts and observations; and, thirdly, The general theory or system to which these reasonings lead. These three points, which ought ever to be kept distinct, have been confounded and jumbled together by our opponents; or rather, leaping boldly over the first, and avoiding to grapple fairly with the second, they have directed their arguments almost exclusively against the third, namely, the system to which the phrenologists have been led, not by an effort of invention, but by the results of numberless observations of nature and, because our opponents imagine that this system is imperfect, or because some points of it do not correspond with their preconceived ideas of our mental constitution, they take it upon them to denounce the whole as false and absurd.

This is exactly of a piece with the attempts made in the sixteenth century, and even later, to ridicule and reason down the Copernican System. The wits and reasoners of those days,

« AnkstesnisTęsti »