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PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED,
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.
CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D.
      NEW-YORK:







SAMUEL COLMAN, No. 114 FULTON-STREET,





         1838. 

    Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by
                       Samuel Colman,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the
                 Southern District of New-York.
G. F. Hopkins & Son. Printers. 
EXTRACTS
 From the minutes of the New-York Phrenological Society, April 4,
                            1838.

   Resolved, that we have heard with much pleasure of the arrival
 in this City of Professor Charles Caldwell, the accomplished ex-
 pounder and able defender of Phrenological Science, and that we
 respectfully invite him to deliver  a Course of Lectures on that
 subject before this Society and our fellow-citizens generally.

   Resolved, that we have also  heard with  like satisfaction that ■
 Doctor Caldwell has prepared a reply to two published Lectures
 of Doctor Sewall, and to other antiphrenologists, and that wc re-
 spectfully solicit of him the manuscript of the same for publi-
 cation.

   Resolved, that a committee of five be appointed from this Society
 to convey to Professor Caldwell the foregoing resolutions, and to
 express to him, in behalf of this  Society, the high respect we en-
tertain for him as a gentleman, a scholar, and a phrenologist.

  Resolved, that a committee of three from this Society be appoint-
ed to superintend the publication of the before-mentioned manu-
script,  and to make suitable arrangements for the delivery of the
proposed Course of Lectures.

                        JOHN B. SCOTT, President.
                        LORING D. CHAPIN, Sect't. 
1 
PHRENOLOGY  VINDICATED,
                        AND

      ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.


In the heading of this  essay, the  term " unmasked "
is used under the entire extent and strength of its signi-
fication.   It embraces in its meaning the detection, in
the work of an antiphrenologist,  of plagiarism, literary
garbling and perverted quotation, fabricated charges, of-
fensive and groundless, against Phrenology and its ad-
vocates, and other gross misrepresentations deliberately
made for  the purposes of deception.  It embraces in
fact the exposure of  a long and  multifarious catalogue
of studied, artful, and culpable devices, expressly de-
signed by an  antiphrenological writer for the suppres-
sion of truth, the support, continuance, and propagation
of error, and the enhancement of his own spurious pre-
tension to  talent and power in  controversy, as well as to
science and letters.   To  add to the demerit and of-
fensiveness of the whole,  these  faults  are  committed
under the  show of a puritanical  uprightness and  can-
dour of intention, and of great extent  and accuracy of
research.   Hypocrisy therefore mingles in  the aggre-
gate, and  increases at once its amount and disrepute*
                     1* 
6          PHRENOLOGf VINDICATED,  AND

   Is any one inclined to remark, that these are charges
weighty in themselves, and of serious import;  and that
therefore they ought not to be preferred, without grave
reflection, and a full conviction that they are founded in
truth 1  My reply is brief.   I am aware of all this, have
carefully weighed  my responsibility in  the matter, and
strictly conformed to the requirement just expressed.  I
not only know that the charges are weighty; my design
has been to make them so, and to render them produc-
tive of corresponding effects.  And some of these effects
are, not only to sustain truth, but to imprint an indelible
brand of disrespect on a pamphleteer, who has delibe-
rately conspired to suppress it. I have of course reflected
on the charges dispassionately and gravely, and am pre-
pared to  support them by incontestable proof.   And a
large proportion of that proof will consist of extracts and
fair inferences from the  work, against which my char-
ges are directed.
  Is any reader moved  by the  solemnity of this exor-
dium to inquire, who  is  the  antiphrenologist here re-
ferred to ?  and what the character of the work he has
written ?   To these questions, the answer will be found
in the following title page.
  "An examination of Phrenotogy ; in  two  lectures,
delivered to the students of the Columbian College, Dis-
trict of Columbia,  February,  1837.   By Thomas Sew-
all, M.  D., Professor of Anatomy  and Physiology,
Published by request."
  Such is the production, so thickly studded with literary
faults, and so  deeply merged in moral delinquencies,
which it is my  purpose  to make the  subject of a criti-
cal examination.   And should I in the course of it ex*, 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.
7
press myself in language so plain and strong as to be
exceptionable to the  author, I have no apology to offer
for  the offence,  nor  any but one  explanation to give
him;  and for that he is  referred to the contents and
character of his  own pamphlet.   That production mer-
its all the severity I shall exercise toward it.  Though
it will be treated however unceremoniously, it shall
not be treated unjustly.  While  no  imaginary faults
will be imputed  to it, those which mark  it shall be call-
ed by their  proper names, provided  such names be not
deemed offensive to  the ear of delicacy, or to cultiva-
ted taste.  That some of the terms and expressions em-
ployed will  be stern  and condemnatory, is  not  to be
doubted ; because, consistently with fitness, they cannot
be otherwise.   I may not, and will not attempt the lan-
guage and manner of the " Athenian bee ;" because they
do not suit  my mood,  and would not be appropriate to
my subject.   Though I shall not studiedly embitter my
pen, neither  shall I dip it  unnecessarily in  the dews of
Hymettus.   When detected in the pamphlet,  falsehood
and deception, rank  plagiarism  and affected learning,
shall  be correctly denominated,  and censured as they
deserve.   Nor  shall  feebleness  of  authorship, bloated
pretension,  or blank  ignorance  be passed unnoticed.
As far as my time and resources may avail, the publica-
tion  I  am examining shall be spoken of in strict ac-
cordance  with  its character.  My language must  if
practicable be suited to my theme.  Foul  looking ob-
jects cannot be  painted in  rain-bow beauty.  Nor can
things that  merit reprobation and rebuke be correctly
represented   in  suavity  of tone,  and blandness  of
expression. 
8
PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
   That the two lectures, as stated in the title page, were
delivered in Washington, in February 1837,  is  proba-
bly true.   They were  not however then delivered for
the first time.  Two or three lectures  to  the  same
purport were delivered by Dr. Sewall in  1825  or '26 ;
and whatever changes may have been since made  in
their style and manner, it is presumable that they were,
in substance  and tenor, somewhat the same with those
which he has recently passed through the press.  I re-
ceived indeed  at the time a  confident assurance that
such was the fact.  True ; he has no doubt during the
whole interval  been  gravely pondering Phrenology,  or
rather the objections  that may be fancied and fabricated
against it, by hostile sciolists in it, and patiently  incuba-
ting fresh matter, for the purpose of enriching and im-
proving his discourses.  We are authorized therefore
to suppose, that he considers those discourses now ma-
ture and perfect — well calculated  to dispel error,  or
what he miscalls  so, diffuse the  misguiding  phantom-
light which he loves,  and give him a place among the
"mighty reformers and conservatives" of the age — per-
chance even a niche in the  " Temple of Fame," by the
side of the Stagirite,  to whose authority he refers, with-
out, I venture to say, having ever perused a single chap-
ter of that philosopher's writings.  That such is his am-
bition,  if not his opinion, may be fairly inferred from a
clause  near the beginning of his second lecture, p. 35,
in which he  virtually disparages his predecessors and
contemporaries in  antiphrenology,  by asserting that
they have used only such " arguments " against the sci-
ence, as " have too often been evaded " by their antag-
onists, and that by the "methods of investigationv" pursu- 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.
9
  ed by them, " the public mind has not been enlightened,
  as to the real merits of Phrenology."   From these ex-
  pressions, I say, taken in connexion with what just pre-
  cedes  them, lam justified in alleging, that he considers
  all other antiphrenologists as inefficient assailants, and
  himself the  Hercules commissioned, and every way fit-
  ted,  to destroy the  Hydra of error, engendered in the
  brains  of Gall and Spurzheim, whom, in imitation of his
  well-bred brethren in abuse, he designates by the cour-
  teous appellation of the "German Doctors."
   Be his  opinion on this topic however what it may, it
  is obvious that he has aimed at Prenology the deadliest
  blow he is capable of inflicting.  But mighty as was his
  effort,  in his own estimation, it will be  presently made
 appear, that, not only has he wasted it in air; but that
 in reality it is as puny and unskilful, as it is ostentatious
 and laboured.  It is essentially a piece of internal vapour-
 ing, under a subdued and calm exterior.   And if I do
 not prove it so, I shall submit, without a murmur, to
 the mortifying  appellation of a vapourer myself.
   As already mentioned, Dr.  Sewall's two lectures, con-
 sisting of only seventy pages, very sparsely printed, were
 conceived about the year 1825 or 1826.   Ever  since that
 period,  the Professor has been in protracted, and no
 doubt painful  gestation and parturition  of them; and
 his safe delivery is but of recent date.   What less then
could he  expect of them, than that they would  issue
from the travail of his aching brain, like Minerva from
the brain  of the ruler of Olympus,  adult in stature, full
fraught  with wisdom,  " clad all in  steel," and  prepared
for the highest and deadliest doings! And how misera-
ble must  be  the disappointment, and how piteous the 
10        PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

condition of the doating parent, when he shall find (as
find he must,) that, instead of giving birth to a paragon
of wisdom and war, he has incurred the " sharp-tooth-
ed" sarcasm  of the satirist;  "Monies parturiunt, et
mus ridiculus nascitur /""   And the mouse shall be forth
coming.   But to drop the  language  of metaphor, and
resort to that of sober narrative.
  In the summer I think of 1824, a brief course of lec-
tures on Phrenology was delivered in the city of Wash-
ington, and  immediately on its close, a Phrenological
Society established.   Of that society I believe, but am
not confident,  that Dr. Sewall was a member.   I am
confident however that he  expressed himself favourably
toward the science — but  whether sincerely or dissem-
blingly, subsequent  occurrences  rendered  doubtful.
About  a year and and a half afterward  (I think in the
spring  of 1826)  another course  of Phrenological  lec-
tures was delivered in Washington, by invitation of the
society, and under its sanction.   That course Professor
Sewall attended, under the semblance of entire friend-
liness to the  doctrines taught in it.  About the termina-
tion of the course, or shortly afterward, a slight event
fell out, in no shape connected with either Phrenology,
or any  other branch of science, at which the Professor
took offence.  That  offence was pointed at first toward
the lecturer.  Like other forms of flame and  fiery me-
teors, however, it was probably forked;  and while one
streak of it fastened on the deliverer of the lectures, the
other passed by him, or diverged from him, and made
war on the science which he had taught.  And that war
is still raging ; and the two lectures recently published,
and now before me, are but a brace of the thunderbolts 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.
11
the Professor has been forging, during the last twelve
or thirteen years, for the  demolition of heresy.
  Be this an  accurate representation of the chain of
cause and effect or not,  it is certainly true, that soon
after  the  time of the offence  referred to, Professor
Sewall  delivered to a class (but what class  I  know
not) two or three lectures in opposition to Phrenology.
But though I do  not know of whom the Professor's
class did,  I well know of whom it did not, consist.  Not
a member of the Washington Phrenological Society be-
longed to it.   As I have been informed, and believe to
be  true, not a member of the society was even apprized
of the Doctor's intention to lecture  on Phrenology, un-
til after he had already done so.  Nor did any one of
them consider him competent to the task.
   Not satisfied with the  clandestine  course Professor
Sewall had thus pursued, for the purpose of discrediting
the science  in  the estimation of  those who had  no
knowledge of it, the Phrenological Society requested,
and even  challenged him, to redeliver his lectures, and
allow the  members of the society to make a part of his
audience.   With this request or challenge he promised
to  comply, and I  think appointed the hour of meeting.
 His engagement, however, was violated — perhaps more
 than once.    The  lectures were  not redelivered.  The
 members of the society, dissatisfied at being thus sported
 with, and deeming  Professor  Sewall's whole conduct in
 the matter unbecoming and exceptionable, took imme-
 diate action  on it,  and published their proceedings,
 which contained somewhat of the statement I have here
 repeated.  A copy of the publication was transmitted
 to myself.  Unfortunately, however, I have lost or mis- 
12         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
 laid it, and have not a distinct recollection of all its par-
 ticulars.  But I  well recollect that it was  neither res-
 pectful toward Dr. Sewall, nor creditable to him.   I
 think I may add,  that it chagrined and mortified hini.
   If I have done the doctor injustice in this narrative, it
 is unintentional.   And  if I have been in anything incor-
 rect, I doubt  not that a copy of the proceedings of the
 Washington Phrenological  Society referred to, can be
 found ; and that  will furnish the narrative accurately.
 How far the offence unintentionally given to Dr. Sewall,
 (for it  teas unintentionally given) has been instrumental
 in rendering him hostile to Phrenology, I pretend not to
 know.   Nor,  unversed as  I am  in  casuistry  of the
 kind, shall I  take  any  concern in  the solution of the
 problem.  From  the circumstances  of the  case,  one
 of two  points appears  certain.  The  doctor  was  dis-
 trustful of  either  the  solidity of  the  cause he  had
 espoused, or  of his own ability to handle  it; else he
 would  not have  withheld from the  members of  the
 Phrenological Society,  many  of whom were his fellow
 practitioners of medicine, and all of them his neighbours
 and  acquaintances,  the privilege  and  gratification of
listening to his lectures.  There appears to have been
something unsound at the fountain-head of his antiphre-
nological career ; and, as was to be expected, that taint
has more or less polluted the entire stream.
  From the year 1826 until the summer of 1837, eleven
long years, it was my fortune, good or bad as the case
may turn out, to be an entire stranger to the movements
of Professor Sewall, in his favourite enterprise of erecting
barricadoes, to protect the world from  the heresies of
Phrenology.   And  even after possessing myself of the 
ANTIPARENOLOGY UNMASKED.
13
two lectures I am now examining, (the first fruits of his
love and labours) I allowed many months to pass away,
(believing my other engagements of higher importance)
before  doing more than hastily glancing my eye over
them.   Nor should I ever have turned to  the pages of
them  again, so  trivial  and  commonplace,  false and
trashy  did I find them, had I not  been given to under-
stand,  that, by  many people, they were differently esti-
mated ; and that, among persons unqualified to judge
of them, they were  exciting prejudices against Phre-
nology.  Such are the reasons why I did not commence
the present scrutiny  at an early  period;  and, having
commenced it,  I have motives sufficient to induce me
to make it as severe and definitive,as truth will authorize,
and my time and other resources will admit.
   As far as industry  and labour may be deemed virtues,
(and they are highly valuable ones, when  applied, from
correct motives, to correct purposes)  Professor Sewall
is entitled to praise.   I know not when I have looked
through seventy octavo pages more  toilsomely thrown
together, or exhibiting marks of more apparently exten-
sive reading and research by their author,  than the
Professor's " Two Lectures." I say " apparently exten-
sive " — not really  so;  for I am convinced that the
writer  has  read himself but few of the works to which
he has referred.  His  knowledge of them is  derived
from second-hand sources.  Still however, scanty as
I  believe  his original research  to have been, did  his
lectures contain evidence of a corresponding amount of
candour, judgment  and talent, they  would be a pro-
duction of some merit.   But in these attributes they
are deplorably  wanting.   Morally considered, they  are
                          2 
 14        PHRENOLOGY  VINDICATED, AND

 a mass of falsehood, spurious pretension, and studied
 artifice, thrown together for selfish and other unbecom-
 ing purposes.  In  an intellectual point of view,  they
 are a caput mortuum — a body without a soul — a bloated
 aggregation of garbled and perverted matter, assorted
 and  arranged without either judgment or genius, tact
 or scholarship.  From beginning to end, they do not
 contain a mark of profundity, or an original thought.
 Their  objections to Phrenology, instead  of being  new,
 as their author professes them to be, are nearly as old
 as the science itself.   They are among the very first
 that were contrived and presented by the antiphrenolo-
 gists of Europe and  America.  And  since  their first
 conception, they have  been repeated and re-repeated,
confuted and re-confuted, until they have contracted the
 staleness of a ten-times-told tale.   For they have been
literally told and refuted, more, I doubt not, than  fifty
 times.  If  Professor Sewall does not know this, he is
 more ignorant of the history of Phrenology than I have
 supposed him  to be ;  and infinitely more so than,  as a
lecturer and a writer on it, he ought to be.  And if he
does know it, I leave to others to judge of his motive in
 bringing again before the public  such miserably vapid
 and time-battered  commonplace.   To pass  by  other
 and higher causes,  self respect alone should  have re-
 strained him from thus exposing himself, clad but in the
 tattered cast-clothes of his predecessors.
  For full  information on all these points, if indeed  he
 is deficient in it, and desirous of attaining it, he is refer-
 red to  the  Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, the  wri-
 tings of Gall, Spurzheim, and the two Combes, and the
 Edingburgh Phrenological Journal, from its commence- 
            ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         15

ment to the present time, and he will be satisfied.   He
will there find every objection to Phrenology contained
in his "Two Lectures," together with substantial and
conclusive replies to them ; and several others of equal
validity,  and equally refuted,  which have not perhaps
occurred to him — I should rather say, which he has not
seen.   For I verily believe that none of Dr. Sewall's
objections are his oxen.  He has too little originality of
mind to conceive and  frame  them himself.   He  has
collected them  from books, and done them up into lec-
tures, not to dissipate error from the minds of Phrenolo-
gists ;  but to plant  or perpetuate error in the minds of
those who are  ignorant of Phrenology.
   In 1S26 he did not, as already mentioned, lecture to
Phrenologists.  He refused to lecture to them even when
invited and challenged to that effect.   It is far from being
probable, therefore, that he delivered to Phrenologists
his " Two Lectures," in February, 1837.   He delivered
them to college  youths,  who, it is presumable, were
strangers to the science.   Nor has he published them
for Phrenologists;  but for those whom  he  wishes to
keep blind to the true knowledge of  Phrenology; and
with whom he is solicitous to acquire  popularity, and build
up a reputation for science and learning — perchance
also  to increase among them his professional business.
Dr. Sewall would not dare to deliver his " Two Lectures "
to a phrenological audience.  He  knows too well the
reception he would encounter.  Nor, I venture to say,
has he presented a copy of his " Lectures" to any Phre-
nologist  in either Europe or America.  He is apprized
that  the  act would bring down on him ridicule — not to
say a harsher feeling, and a  heavier infliction.  I am
told, however, that he has circulated his pamphlet to no 
16         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED,  AND

small extent among those who are already immersed in
ignorance or error respecting the  science.   And the
report is no doubt correct.  I shall  only add, under this
head, that it would have been well for the reputation
and standing of the Professor, had no Phrenologist ever
opened his pamphlet.   But to proceed to  an analysis
of his " Two Lectures ;" and establish against them the
truth of the charges, preferred in the second paragraph
of my essay.   And first, of
   " Plagiarism,  Literary Garbling,  and  Perverted
        Quotation/'
  A large portion of Lecture I. is taken verbatim, with-
out  acknowledgment, and therefore  by plagiarism,  from
two works.  The  first of these  is  the  " Biography of
Dr. Gall," prefixed to  the Boston edition of his works,
translated into English by Winslow Lewis,  M. D. &c.
and edited by Nahum  Capen, Esq.    It is some of the
matter of this production in particular,  that  Dr.  Sewall
has  garbled, changed, and perverted, the better to ac-
commodate it to his purposes of deception.  The second
work on which he has played the plagiarist, and garbled
deeply, but without, I believe, making any perversion of
its meaning, is the "  Elements  of Phrenology,"  pub-
lished by myself, in 1827.  Proof of these charges  shall
now be produced.  In  " Lecture  I." when speaking of
the early years of Dr. Gall, Dr. Sewall says :
  " His (Dr.  Gall's) attention was  at first drawn to this
subject (the conformation of the cranium) by observing,
while quite a youth, that each of his brothers and sis-
ters, his  school  fellows and companions in  play,  pos-
sessed some  peculiarity of talent or disposition, some
aptitude or propensity, which distinguished  them  from
others." *****  » Some amused themselves by 
          ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.          17

cutting figures in wood, or drawing them on paper, in
painting, or the  cultivation of a garden; while others
abandoned themselves to the noisy games, or traversed
the woods in pursuit of flowers, bird's nests, and but-
terflies." *******  " Some were distinguished
for the beauty of their penmanship, some for their suc-
cess in arithmetic, others for the talent of acquiring  a
knowledge  of natural  history  and languages.   The
composition of one was remarkable for elegance, while
the style of another v/as stiff and dry; a third connected
his reasoning in the closest manner, and clothed his ar»
guments in the most forcible language."
   So much  for the first and second pages of " Lecture
I."   Let us now turn to  its prototype* the "Biography
of Dr. Gall."
    " From  an early age he  (Dr.  Gall) was given to
observation, and  was struck with the fact, that each of
his brothers and sisters, companions in play, and school-
fellows, possessed some  peculiarity of talent or dispo-
sition, which distinguished him  from others.    Some of
his schoolmates  were distinguished for the beauty of
their  penmanship, some by their success in arithmetic,
and others by their talent for acquiring a knowledge of
natural history,, or of languages.  The  compositions of
one were  remarkable for elegance, while the style of
another was stiff and dry ; and a third connected his
reasonings  in the closest manner, and clothed his ar-
gument in the most forcible language." * * *  * * *  *
" Some cut figures  in wood,  or  delineated them on
paper; some devoted their leisure to  painting, or the
cultivation of a garden, while their comrades abandoned
themselves  to noisy games, or traversed the woods to,
                       2* 
18        PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

gather flowers, seek for bird's nests, or  catch  butter-
flies."
  Such are a  few, and but a  few, compared with the
number that might  be adduced, of Professor Sewall's
acts of piracy committed  on the " Biography  of Dr.
Gall.  And it will be observed that, with a view to con-
ceal those acts, he has garbled and transposed some of
the passages,  inserting between  them a few  words or
lines of his own, or something drawn from other clauses
of the " Biography,"  like  mortar between bricks, to fill
up the crevices.  True ; the effort at concealment is
a very shallow one; resembling not  a little that which
the ostrich makes, by  placing its head under a bramble,
to escape from the hunter, its body and limbs remain-
ing exposed.   Still however it is an effort, and  shows
at once the studied trickery, and the puerile weakness
of its author.   He would have concealed his plagiarism
and  barrenness of intellect, had it been in  his  power.
The worst however is to come.
  In relation to the passages just quoted, Dr.  Sewall
has  acted without much disguise, and taken them as
he found them.  He has neither omitted any thing  ma-
terial in them, nor altered their meaning, to subserve
sinister purposes, by palming on his hearers  or readers
artful misrepresentations or false constructions. Though
he has shown much weakness therefore, and reprehen-
sible  unfairness in the proceeding, he can hardly  be said
to have committed  treachery in  it, or any other act of
moral turpitude.  But in the following case, his  fault is
far different in amount, and much  darker  in  colour.
Depravity alone could have led to its perpetration.
  "In 1808," says  he, Lect. I,  pp. 8-9,  " Gall and 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.
19
 Spurzheim presented a joint memoir, on the Anatomy
 and Physiology of the Brain, to the French Institute,
 which at that time was in full glory, and one of the first
 scientific societies in Europe.  The  chief of the ana-
 tomical department was M. Cuvier, and the first mem-
 ber of this learned body to  whom Drs. Gall and Spurz-
 heim addressed themselves.  He received the German
 Doctors with politeness, attended  their lectures, and
 witnessed their dissections  of the brain.
   " A committee was appointed by the Institute to re-
 port upon the memoir,  consisting  of Tenon, Portal,
 Sabbatier, Pinel, and Cuvier; all men of known candour
 and ability.   M.  Cuvier drew up an  elaborate report,
 containing within a short compass the whole substance
 of the memoir; but while it was approved by the Insti-
 tute, it  was  not such as to  satisfy Gall and Spurzheim,
 or to inspire confidence  in their views of the  anatomy
 and physiology of the brain.  Some  merit was awarded
 to them for their method of dissecting the brain, and for
 some other improvements they had made ; but many of
 the  discoveries which  they claimed as  original  were
 traced to anatomists ioho had preceded them, and their
 main positions were regarded as extremely hypothetical.
 Such was the reception which Phrenology met with
 from the French Institute."
   Such is the account of this truckling manoeuvre (for
 that it ivas a piece of truckling will be presently made
 appear) of the Institute of France, given  by Dr. Sewall.
 Let us  now turn  to  it,  in  the  pages  of the u Biogra-
phy," and see it there  depicted as it was.
   " In  1808, they (Gall and Spurzheim,) presented a
 joint memoir on the anatomy of the brain, to the French 
20
PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
 Institute."  ********
 " The Institute was then in all its glory.  In proportion
 as Buonaparte had cannonaded,  it had grown enlight-
 ened.  As the hero was the referendary of military justice,
 so was it  the Areopagus of scientific truth.  The chief
 of the  anatomical department  was M.  Cuvier;  and he
 was the first member of this learned body to whom Drs.
 Gall and Spurzheim addressed themselves.
  " M. Cuvier was a man of known talents and acquire-
 ments, and his mind was applicable  to many branches
 of science.  But what equally distinguished  him with
the versality of his understanding, was the suppleness of
 his opinions.   He received the German Doctors with
 much politeness.  He requested them to dissect a brain
 privately for him and a few  of his learned friends ;  and
 he attended a course of lectures, given purposely for
him and a party of his  selection.   He listened with
 much attention, and appeared well disposed toward the
 new doctrine; and the writer  of this article heard him
 express his approbation of its general features, in a circle
 which was not particularly private.
  " About this time the Institute had committed an act
of extraordinary courage, in  venturing to ask permission
 of Buonaparte to award a prize medal to Sir H.  Davy,
for his admirable galvanic  experiments, and was  still
 in  amazement at its own heroism. ' Consent was ob-
tained ; but  the soreness  of national  defeat rankled
 deeply within.  When the  First  Consul was apprized
 that the greatest of his comparative anatomists had at-
 tended a course  of lectures by Dr. Gall, he broke out
 as furiously as he had done against  Lord Whitworth;
 and at his levee  berated the wise men of his land fo* 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.         21
allowing themselves to be taught chemistry by an Eng-
lishman, and anatomy by a German ; sat. verbnm.   The
wary citizen  (Cuvier)  altered his  language.   A com-
mission was named by the Insiitute, to report upon the
labours of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim ;  M. Cuvier drew
up this report.   In this he used his efforts, not to pro-
claim the truth, but  to  diminish the merits of the learned
Germans.  Whenever  he could find  the  most  distant
similarity between  the  slightest point  of their mode of
operating, and anything done before,  he dwelt  upon it
with peculiar pleasure; and lightly touched upon what
ivas really new.   He even affected to  excuse the Insti-
tute for taking the subject into consideration at all,  say-
ing that the anatomical researches were entirely distinct
from the physiology of the brain, and the doctrines of
mental  manifestations.   Of  this part of the subject,
Buonaparte, and not  without cause,  had declared his
reprobation ; and Cuvier was  too great a lover of liberty
not to  submit his opinion to  that of his Consul.   His
assertion, too, that  the anatomy  of the brain has noth-
ing to say to its mental influence, he  knew to be in
direct  opposition to the fact;  but  even the  meagre
credit which he did dare to allow  to  the new mode of
dissection, he wished  to  dilute with as much  bitterness
as he  could.    So unjust and unsatisfactory,  so lame
and mutilated did  the whole report  appear, that the
authors of the  new method  published  an answer, in
which  they accused the committee  of not having re-
peated  their  experiments.    Such was  the  reception
which  the  science  of Phrenology met with from the
Academy of the great  nation."
  Such is the account given by Professor Sewall of the 
22         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED,  AND
proceedings of the French Institute, in relation to Drs.
Gall and Spurzheim, and  such the account contained
in the " Biography" from which he immediately derived
his  information.   And  on the  Professor's departure
from truth and correct principles in the matter, no com-
ment is  necessary to  expose its  enormity.   He has
committed  one of the deepest and most reprehensible
of literary delinquencies.  Not only has he been guilty
of garbling  and perversion, but of gross interpolation,
and such an entire change in the sentiment and design
of the work from which he has quoted, as to make it
hold out views  directly the opposite of what its author
intended.   Not only has he rejected from his garbled
extract every expression favourable to Gall and Spurz-
heim, which the  "Biography" contains;  he has,  in
disregard of truth, introduced an assertion of his  own
directly hostile to them.
  While Dr. Sewall pronouunces Cuvier a man  " of
known candour" the " Biography " declares him to have
been " distinguished for the suppleness of his opinions.'"
In plain terms, destitute of candour.   And, in  the case
referred to, that " suppleness " was pre-eminent.  That
Cuvier's opinion had been friendly to the doctrines  of
Gall and Spurzheim, until a rebuke from the First Con-
sul changed it, was no secret in Paris.  In 1821,  the
Baron's summerset on that subject was there publidy
spoken  of, generally believed, and never contradicted.
It was even openly asserted,  that he had drawn up tivo
reports on the memoir of the  Phrenologists.  Of these,
the  first contained a flattering approval of their doc-
trines;  because he himself thought favourably  of them;
and the second a "supple" and submissive disappro- 
            ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.        23

val;  because the First Consul thought unfavourably of
them.  And that was the only reason of their condem-
nation  by him.   That Cuvier " was subsequently  a
Phrenologist," as far as he had informed himself in the
science, his writings prove.   But he never was  fully
and intimately informed in  it;  because  he never tho-
roughly studied it.   The engrossment of his mind by
his own pursuits prevented  him.  And high-gifted and
great as he was, nature did not make him a thorough-
bred Phrenologist.   Nor did  he ever make himself so,
by the  requisite kind and extent of inquiries.  To his
sentiments of the science, therefore, much more defer-
ence has been paid, and much more consequence at-
tached, than  they actually  deserved.  Respecting the
entire  merits of Phrenology,  he was far  from being  a
competent judge.   A man  of native  powers vastly in-
ferior to his,  but who had made Phrenology a serious
study,  would be greatly his superior, in fitness to decide
on its truth or falsehood.   I shall only add, that, in the
few last years of his life, Cuvier spoke  openly of the
truth and importance of Phrenology.   He sent  Gall
when on his  death-bed, a  cranium which he deemed
corroborative of the science.   But the patriarchal Phre-
nologist,  not having  yet  forgotten the Baron's former
" supple" act of unkindness and discountenance,reject-
ed the  peace-offering, and returned it to  the Great Na-
turalist, accompanied by a laconic and cutting message.
Notwithstanding this,  Cuvier, if I  mistake not,  was
one  of the  five, who  pronounced eulogies over the
grave of the illustrious German.   As far as they may
avail therefore, the  writings,  conversation, and actions 
24         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

of Cuvier testify to the truth  and usefulness of Phre-
nology.
  Again, says Professor Sewall, in the  passage  ex-
tracted from  "Lecture I. ;" "many of the discoveries
which they (Gall and  Spurzheim) claimed as original
were traced to anatomists ivho had preceded them."  Not
only is this clause scandalously false ; it is a most dis-
honourable interpolation.  Of the assertion it makes, the
work on which the Professor  has so disgracefully pla-
giarized, does not contain a single tittle in either letter
or spirit — but virtually the reverse.   The following
strong and memorable passage  appears in the  extract
just correctly  made from that production.
  " M. Cuvier drew up this report (on the memoir of
Gall and Spurzheim.)   In this  he used efforts, not to
proclaim  the  truth, but to diminish  the  merits of the
learned Germans.   Whenever he could find the most
distant  similarity between the slightest point  of their
mode of operating, and anything done before, he dwelt
upon it with peculiar pleasure, and lightly touched upon
what was new."  * * * *.   He  moreover said, in posi-
tive violation of truth,  " that the anatomical researches
(of the  Phrenologists)  were entirely  distinct from the
physiology of the brain, and the doctrines of mental
manifestations."
  Thus was a course,  not merely of deep injustice, but
of virtual treachery, pursued toward Gall and Spurzheim,
to injure and suppress their rising reputation, as anato-
mists and philosophers.   And for what purpose 1 — to
soothe the jealousy of the savans of Paris, to  appease
the  resentment of the  First Consul of  France, and to 
           ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.          25

conciliate his favour toward  an individual — And that
individual was the first naturalist of the age !  The whole
transaction was deeply discreditable to all who promo-
ted or in any way countenanced it; and on the charac-
ter of the Baron  Cuvier it has  affixed  a  stain,  which
neither time nor circumstance can ever efface.   It is
not true,  as Professor Sewall has asserted, that a single
discovery, much less " many discoveries," claimed as
original by Gall and Spurzheim, were " traced to  anato-
mists who  had preceded them."  What they claimed
as original and their own, was original and their own;
and time and truth have sanctioned their claim.   They
were  as  really the discoverers  of what is  now consid-
ered the  true anatomy and physiology of the brain, as
Harvey was of the circulation of the blood, Columbus
of the New World, or Franklin of the identity of elec-
tricity  and  lightning.   And I fearlessly add, that their
discovery was not only the more intricate ; but  that it
is destined to prove the more important of the four.
Nor is this all.  Were  the present a suitable occasion
to embark in the inquiry, it would be  easy to show, that
Galen, father Paul, Servetus,  Caesalpinus, Fabricius,
and others, had, before the time of Harvey, done much
more toward the  discovery  of the  circulation  of the
blood, than had been  done  toward the  discovery of
Phrenology, by all the predecessors of Gall and Spurz-
heim.  The  clahn of the latter inquirers therefore to
the title of discoverers, was in the same proportion less
questionable  than the claim  of the  former.  And  the
paramount value of the contributions to science, made
by the two illustrious Germans, is sufficiently clear from
the following considerations.
                       3 
26         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
   Of the four great discoverers just mentioned, the dis-
coveries of two, Columbus and Franklin, were confined
to dead matter.  Of Harvey, and Gall and  Spurzheim,
the discoveries related to living  matter.  These latter
discoveries therefore were of the more elevated order;
because, as respects the affairs of our globe, the know-
ledge  of  living is superior  to  that of dead matter.
Of living  matter again, some kinds bearing a higher
rank than others, the knowledge  of such kinds must be
also higher.  Nor will it  be denied, that the cerebral
system is of an order superior to  the circidatory.   But
Harvey discovered  only the anatomy and functions of
the latter; while Gall  and Spurzheim made a similar
discovery in relation to the former.  Hence, I repeat,
the labours of the two Germans resulted in  a more ele-
vated and important contribution to the science of nature,
than the labours of the Englishman.
   In one respect the fortunes of Havey, and  those of
Gall and  Spurzheim were alike.    Their  discoveries
were pronounced unfounded, and brought down on their
authors not merely denunciation and abuse, but  what
was tantamount to persecution.    This state of things
however could not last; because truth was destined ul-
timately to prevail.   And when it did at length prevail,
and the soundness  of the  doctrines  of the circulation
and of phrenology  could be no longer disputed consis-
tently with any  show of reason and science, conscience,
and justice, robber-like efforts were set on foot, to de-
prive the authors of the honours of their discoveries, by
tracing and attributing them to some of their predeces-
sors.   To this  work of piracy in science Dr. Sewall
has lent himself.   And in doing so, he  has shown an 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.
27
equal degree of pomp and injustice, vanity and weak-
ness.
   I mean the pomp and  vanity of learning, which  in
reality Dr. Sewall does not possess.  His learning in
the present  case, like his objections to phrenology, is
altogether second-hand.  He has not toiled for it, but
has procured it as a charity from those, who had pushed
their researches after it to the fountain head.  By far
the greater portion of it is furnished to him by Gall and
Spurzheim themselves.  They have frankly referred to
all writers of distinction, who, previously to themselves,
had pronounced the brain to be a multiplex organ, and
marked different  regions  of it  as the seat of different
operations of the mind.  I say " operations ; " for none
of those writers have  even named, much less expound-
ed, an original power or faculty of the mind.  The rea-
son is plain.   They had no knowledge of those faculties.
And herein  consists  the immense  superiority  of Gall
and  Spurzheim to  all preceding mental  philosophers.
They have so analyzed the mind, as to indicate  accu-
rately its innate faculties,  or original powers, together
with the specific functions of each;  while other philo-
sophers have spoken only of mental  operations or forms
of action.  From the time of Aristotle to that of Dr.
Brown, every philosopher who has attempted to instruct
the world in the  science  of mind, has spoken  only  of
perception, and memory,  and  understanding, and will,
and judgment, and imagination, and attention, and as-
sociation, and other forms  of generalization and abstrac-
tion, which are nothing but so many modes of action of
the original  faculties  of the mind.  But, so to analyze
the  mind, as to discover and describe  those facul- 
 28        PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

 ties, to specify their functions, and to point out the
 portions  of the brain  in  which they  are  seated, and
 through  the  instrumentality  of which they are mani-
 fested — these discoveries and achievements were re-
 served to immortalize the two philosophers of Germany.
 And they have immortalized  them, and are mental pro-
 ducts of the highest order that have been  exhibited by
 man.  They are, indeed, too elevated or too profound,
 as the case may be, for Professor Sewall to reach and
 comprehend  them.   For  his language, in various in-
 stances,  shows that he does not comprehend them — or
 that he intentionally blunders, as  often as  he  attempts
 to speak of them discriminatingly.   Of all the mental
 efforts of the German phrenologists,  their analysis of
 the mind, and  their division  of it into its primitive fa-
 culties, and pointing out the  range  of action  of those
 faculties, is the most herculean.   Their dissection of
 the brain, and  their indication of the places of its nu-
 merous subordinate organs, though achievements pecu-
 liarly interesting and important, are far inferior, as in-
tellectual exertions.  But, to return, and bestow a part-
 ing gaze on the pyramid of  learning,  which Professor
 Sewall, in  his  overweening conceit, has erected to his
 own glory, by eleven or twelve tedious years of industry
 and toil.
   To collect the materiel of  this  ill-constructed pile of
 ostentation and conceit, he has commenced with Aris-
totle, who  he tells  us  learnt his  letters and wrote his
books  more  than three hundred  years nearer to  the
birth-day of time, than the beginning  of the christian
era was; travelled down through the domains of Galen,
Bernard Gordon, Albert the Great,  Archbishop of Ra- 
           ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         29

tisbon, Peter de Montagnana, Michael  Servetus, Lu-
dovico Dolci,  Jo.  Baptistae Portse, and  Dr.  Thomas
Willis;  and lastly, through the " New Jerusalem" of
that memorable  crack-brain, the Baron Swedenborg!
With each of these shining personages the Professor
may be supposed to have spent some time in his travels ;
for he gives what he no doubt considers quite  an amus-
ing account  of their  dates, places of abode, ranks in
life, haps and mishaps, and other like domestic matters;
and assures us, on the word of a man, that they were
orthodox believers in the multiplex character of the brain.
Now, to many people in  the world, all this might have
been as fresh and  well savoured as the contents  of the
morning newspaper, had not the two " German Doctors"
themselves been such communicative gossips, as to have
told the same story at a prior period.   For,  with  per-
haps one  or two omissions, they have told it distinctly.
And, to speak plainly, I doubt not that it was from their
writings Dr. Sewall derived his knowledge of it—with-
out, however, as is his custom, making any reference to
them, as the source of that knowledge.   Such reference
 would expose the  limiledness of his  researches.   And
that he is anxious  to avoid, because the exposure would
detract from  his standing, and reputation for learning
among his readers.  There is but little danger, however,
that any  considerable number of his class of readers
 will detect his plagiarisms,  i have  already said  that
 they  are  not phrenologists, and have therefore little or
no acquaintance with the  writings of Gall and Spurzheim.
 That the Professor knows, and therefore draws his mat-
 ter, in perfect security, from the works of the " German
 Poctors."  Notwithstanding the  pomp and  parade of
                         3* 
30         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

learning which he makes in his" Two Lectures," I ven-
ture to assert, that, in a single hour, I can make any
sophomore in the country, as learned on the subject of
authorities in phrenology as he is.  In the compass of
five or six pages I can show him the whole of them.
  I have said that Dr. Sewall begins, with Aristotle, his
descant on the multiplex character of the  brain.  And
on  one of his assertions respecting that writer, I have a
few remarks to offer; because I  believe the  assertion
unfounded.   His words are as follows:  " But while
he  (Aristotle) regarded the  brain  as multiplex, he con-
sidered a small head as the standard of perfection, and
contends that it is indicative  of superior intellect."
  In the truth of the underscored clause of the sentence
I have no confidence.  In plainer terms, I deem it un-
founded*   I  do not believe that Aristotle ever pronoun-
ced a "small head" either " the standard of perfection,"
or  a mark of "-superior intellect."  And I will  state
the ground of my disbelief.   First however, I must do
Dr. Sewall the justice to. observe, that  the error, if it
be  one, did not originate with him.  In truth he is not
guilty of  originating  any thing.   He is  essentially,  in
all  things of mind, a  borrower  or  a taker.   And this is
as  true of his assertion respecting the great Greek phi-
losopher,  as  of his other assertions.   I  venture to say
that he has never looked into the original writings  of
that author.   Nor, I further say,, could he  have read
them if he had.  He is therefore ignorant of them. And
as  to translations and interpolations,, they are insufficient
authority — or rather no authority at all.   But  to my
purpose.
   I do  not believe that Aristotle has pronounced a small. 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.
31
head  an evidence of "superior intellect;" because  I
have been unable to find the  assertion in  his original
works — I mean  his works in his native tongue.   And
though I have not read, in Greek, one third of his wri-
tings ; I have looked carefully through his philosophical
writings  for the sentiment in question ;  but looked  in
vain.   I could no where meet with it.   If it be,  not-
withstanding,  there, Professor Sewall will  confer a fa-
vour on me, by informing me of the place.
   I have still  another reason  for disbelieving that Aris-
totle considered a small head a mark of superior intel-
lect in its possessor.  Such was not the prevalent opinion
in ancient Greece —but the reverse.  Painters and sculp-
tors were there, as well as in every other place, strict ob-
servers  and imitators of nature.   On  no  other  plea
could the products of their labours have been creditable
to them, or valuable in themselves.   But it is  well
known, that to the figures and likenesses  of their phi-
losophers, sages, and other men of highly gifted minds,
they never failed  to give large heads.   On the other
hand, to their  gladiators, wrestlers, foot-racers,  and oth-
er persons of mere  corporeal  distinction, they gave
much smaller heads.   Hence the heads of Zeno,  Soc-
rates, Plato, and Aristotle  himself, as represented  by
the artists of  their time, were  large.   The  head  of
Pericles is handed down to us as large to deformity.
The  heads of Hercules, and other mere  heroes and
warriors,  were comparitively small.  In a special man-
ner the  frontal region was contracted.
   In representing their deities, on eanvass and in  mar-
ble, the  artists observed  the  same  rule.   Hence the
head  of  Minerva, the  goddess of wisdom,  is much 
32         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
 larger than that of Venus, the goddess of beauty, or of
 Diana, the huntress, whose occupation consisted chiefly
 in muscular action.  And the head of Jupiter, the wisest
 and greatest of the heavenly throng, is immensely large.
 The frontal region in particular,  where the organs of
 intellect lie, is enormous.  In size, it is a counterpart to
 the muscles which he employs in hurling his  thunder-
 bolts.  The  head of Apollo, the god of science, poe-
 try and taste, is also sufficiently large ; while the heads
 of Mercury and Bacchus, who held inferior and far less
 creditable godships, were much smaller.   For the pre-
 ceding reasons, I say, I do not believe that ever Aris-
 totle declared a small head to be the badge of mental
 superiority.   The notion is  wholly unworthy of him ;
 because it is  untrue.   Were I even to find it in his wri-
 tings, I should be compelled to regard it as a misprint or
 an interpolation.   I can, in no  shape, attach  to  Aris-
 totle, an opinion which would  now  bring disgrace on a
 schoolboy.  If he has intentionally expressed it in his
 writings, it must have been in the form of irony, jest, or
 ridicule.   In earnest it could  not have been.
   As respects the Baron Swedenborg, I know not whe-
 ther Dr.  Sewall is serious, in  asserting a likeness  be-
 tween the  visions of that amiable but wild monomaniac,
 and the doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim.   If he is, I
pity him.  His power of comparison, and his perception
of similarity and dissimilarity must be extinct.   He is so
far therefore a monomaniac himself.   For monomania
consists in some derangement — excessive, diminished,
 extinguished, or perverted  action — in one or  a few of
 the original faculties of the mind, the others remaining
 unaffected.  And nothing short of paralytic feebleness, 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.         33
deep perversion, or entire extinction, of the  powers of
comparison, and of the perception of likeness  and un-
likeness, can induce Dr.  Sewall or any body else, to
identify the  fancies of  Swedenborg with the tenets of
Phrenology.  Swedenborg's writings, taken  in matter,
spirit, and manner,  resemble the heated and irregular
outpourings of high-toned fanatacism ;  while those of
Gall and Spurzheim are the grave, and  calm, and sub-
stantial productions of profound philosophy.    Gall's
great work on the anatomy and functions of the brain
and nerves, and their instrumentality in the operations of
the mind, is not surpassed indignity, depth, and solidity,
by any  production I have ever examined. Such at least
is my own opinion; and  in making the comparison, I
do not except either the " Novum Organum" of Bacon,
the  " Principia " of Newton, or the " Mechanique Ce-
leste " of Laplace.  And, of the four,  it is a work of
much  the greater variety of matter and thought.  To
analyze the human mind,  discover and  expound  its ori-
ginal powers, and  explain their functions and range of
action, is, to say the least  of it, as grand an achievement,
and requires as capacious, discriminating, and powerful
an intellect to  accomplish it, as the discovery and illus-
tration  of the true  mode of attaining knowledge  by Ba-
con, or the detection of the organization of the heavens,
and the movements and laws of the celestial bodies, by
Newton and Laplace.   However extravagant this opin-
ion  may perhaps appear to many persons now, the time
 is approaching, when it will be  viewed  in the  light of a
familiar truth.
   I have said that there is neither affinity nor  actual si-
 milarity between the discoveries and doctrines of Gall 
34        PHRENOLOGY  VINDICATED,  AND
and Spurzheim, and the crude notions and shapeless re-
veries of the Baron Swedenborg.   In proof of this, the
following extract from the  Baron's writings is offered ;
and  it makes perhaps something more nearly resem-
bling  an approach  toward some of the sentiments of
Gall and Spurzheim, than any other clause which those
writings contain.
  " The peculiar distinctions of man, will  and under-
standing, have  their seat in  the brain, which is excited
by the fleeting desires of the will, and the ideas of the
intellect.  Near the various spots where these irritations
produce their effects, this  or that  part of the brain is
called into a greater or less degree of activity, and forms
along with itself corresponding parts of the skull."
   Such is the incoherent jumble of words, expressing
nothing but  indefinite unintelligible  notions, between
which and the doctrines of Phrenology Dr. Sewall per-
ceives a likeness. I shall only add, that it may be and pro-
bably is near akin to the Doctor's Phrenology, the falla-
cies and trashiness of which will be  shown hereafter.
But it is as  unlike the  Phrenology of Gall and Spurz-
heim, as sophistry is unlike solid argument, and balder-
dash unlike sound philosophy — or, stronger still, as the
writings of Professor Sewall are unlike those of a well
disciplined scholar, and a candid and profound inquirer.
   Equally inconsistent with justice and correct  repre-
sentation is it, to liken the  discoveries and doctrines of
Gall and Spurzheim to the  visions and crude hypotheses
of  Gordon,  Albertus  Magnus, Peter de Montagnana,
Servetus, Dolci, Portee, certain Arabian physicians, and
other theorists,  with which  they have been frequently
and disparagingly compared.  Taken in their matter, 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.         35
principles, and application, the writings and teachings of
the two Phrenologists are in depth, intelligibility, defini-
tiveness and  merit, wholly dissimilar to the writings of
all or any of their predecessors.   They are productions
of an entirely different order and character.  As already
intimated, all other writers on mental philosophy, speak
only of certain modes of action  of the mind, such as
perception, memory, will, judgment, understanding, and
imagination ; while Gall and Spurzheim, passing beyond
mere action and external manifestation, disclose the pri-
mitive  and innate faculties of mind, by which that action
is performed, and those  manifestations  made.  They
have stript off the veil, which had previously hung over
the powers and instruments of memory, will, judgment,
imagination, and every other furm of mental action, and
brought them fairly to light.  They differ from other wri-
ters  on the philosophy of mind, exactly as he who analy-
zes the human arm,  and demonstrates  and describes its
muscles,  nerves, blood-vessels, ligaments, bones, and
such other parts as are subservient to its movements and
economy, differs from him who simply speaks of those
movements and  that economy themselves.  And as far
as the accomplished anatomist surpasses in profundity
on this point, the common unprofessional obseiver, so far
do the  German Phrenologists surpass all mental philoso-
phers,  who had gone before them, and from some of whom
they have  been groundlessly  charged with having re-
ceived hints and derived assistance.
   There are two facts in Phrenology, not so much noti-
ced as they deserve to be, which, while  they add not a
little to its beauty and fitness, as the science  of mind, 
36        PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

testify at  the same time strongly to its truth.   I  shall
briefly indicate them.
   Man, possessed of the faculties which Phrenology be-
stows on him, is precisely adapted to the situation he oc-
cupies,  as  the  head and  chief of terrestrial beings.
This  could be easily and satisfactorily  demonstrated,
were the exposition  a suitable one for the present occa-
sion.   Take from him  a single faculty,  animal, moral,
or intellectual, and the privation so far unfits him for the
station he holds.   Add  another faculty,  and it  will  be
useless, there being no demand for its exercise and func-
tion.  Those  given  to  him  by Phrenology  appear to
make up  the  exact  complement of feeling, sentiment,
and intellect,  which he ought to  possess.  Compose
man, on the other hand, of only the modes of mental ac-
tion of which metaphysicians make him up, and he will
be wholly unfit for an inhabitant of earth.  He will  be
in fact a mere abstraction,  unfit for any thing.   Thus
compounded moreover,  his nature will be as mysterious
and unintelligible, as it will be inapplicable to any useful
end. Man, as an active being, is intended to be conver-
sant, not with generalities and abstractions, but with spe-
cialties  and actual existences.  He must be provided
therefore with intellectual faculties  fitted to give him a
knowledge of individual objects, with their qualities of
form, size, colour, and weight;  a knowledge also of lan-
guage, of numbers,  of  place, of tune, of the lapse of
time, of events,  of likenesses and unlikenesses,  equali-
ties and inequalities, and of the important relations of
cause and effect;  add  to these, the feelings and senti-
ments suited to  make him act according to  his wants
and desires, and to the knowledge thus received, and he 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.
37
is  well prepared for the station he holds, and the duties
attached to it.  And all these Phrenology gives him ;
while metaphysical  philosophy  gives  him not  one of
them — nor any thing else, to make him a being of defi-
nite action, and practical usefulness.
   The  other phrenological  fitness  and beauty alluded
to  is, the location in groups of the organs most closely
allied to each other.  Amativeness,  Philoprogenitive-
ness, Adhesiveness, and Inhabitiveness, form the family
or  domestic group ;  and they lie in contact.   Benevo-
lence, Veneration, Wonder, Hope,  and Conscientious-
ness form the high moral and religious group:  and they
lie together.  Form, Size, Weight,  and Colour are the
organs which furnish us with a knowledge of the essen-
tial properties of matter ; and they are also grouped.  Of
all the other organs which  co-operate to  similar ends,
the  same is true.   Of some of these  kindred  organs
the fibres are known  to intermingle  with each other.
And with all of them  the case  is probably the same.
Hence  the  readiness with  which they work  together,
and  the aid which  they promptly and  mutually afford.
Of all  these  aptitudes, beauties, and advantages, other
schemes of mental  philosophy  are  entirely  destitute.
Hence the surpassing  value of Phrenology.
   1  have  charged Professor Sewall with plagiarism on
my  " Elements  of  Phrenology," written  in 1826,  and
printed in 1827; and  the charge  shall now  be made
good.   The plagiarism here referred  to, is  confined
chiefly to the locations and  descriptions of the phreno-
logical organs ; and  it is connected with garbling.  The
better  to conceal his piracy, the Professor, omitting or
changing occasionally a single word, or a brief expres-
                         4 
33        PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

sion, extracts skippingly here a clause or two, or a whole
sentence or two, and there a clause or sentence or two
more, and tacks them together, somewhat as a  seam-
stress makes  a patch-work  bed-quilt,  or  a notable
housewife a rag-carpet.   To  render the view  of the
plagiarisms the more simple  and easily understood, I
shall place Professor Sewall's name over his language,
and my own name over mine.

                   amativeness.
                     Sewall.
  This  organ  is  situated in  the  cerebellum, or the
lower part of the occiput.  When full it gives a back-
ward protrusion of the occipitis, and a thickness to the
upper part of the neck.  Its function is sexual love.

                    Caldwell.
  Seat.  The cerebellum, or lower part of the occiput.
When strongly developed, it produces a backward pro-
tusion of the os occipitis,  giving unusual thickness  to
the upper part of the neck.   Its  function is  sexual
love.
              ph1loprogenitiveness.
                     Sewall.
   Situated at the occiput, immediately above Amative-]
ness. * *   Its function is the love  of offspring.  It is
more fully developed in women than in men.  * *  Of
twenty-nine females who had been guilty of infanticide,
the development was defective in twenty-seven.

                    Caldwell.
   Seat. The occiput, immediately above Arnativeness. 
ANTIPHRENOTOGV  UNMASKED.         39
 Its function L tne love of offspring.  This organ is more
 strongly developed  in women than in men.   *   *  Of
 twenty-nine females who had been guilty of infanticide,
 the development of the organ of Philoprogenitiveness
 was defective in twenty-seven.

                concentrativeness.
                      Sewall.
   Situated immediately above Philoprogenitiveness, and
 below Self-esteem.   Its function is to  maintain two or
 more powers in simultaneous or combined activity, so
 that they may be directed towards one object.

                    Caldwell.
   Seat.   Just above Philoprogenitiveness.  * *  * Its
 function is believed to be,  to maintain  in simultaneous
 and joint activity two or more  of the intellectual pow-
 ers, so that they may be concentrated on the same object.
         covetiveness or acquisitiveness.
                     Sewall.
   Situated immediately behind  Constructiveness.  Its
 function  is the love of acquisition generally.  *   *  *
 When largely developed, and not regulated by the high-
 er faculties, it often leads  to dishonesty and theft.  A
 chaplain in  the Prussian army, in whom it was  large,
in other respects a worthy and pious man, was remarka-
ble for stealing pocket handkerchiefs, pen-knives, books,
ladies' stockings, and indeed every thing portable in the
nature of property.
                    Caldwell.
  Seat.   On each side of the head, immediately be-
hind No. 7, (Constructiveness).  Its  function is a love 
40         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
of acquisition generally.   If not restrained and prop-
erly regulated by the higher faculties, it leads to great
selfishness and even theft.   *  *  *  *   A chaplain
in the Prussian army, in all other respects a very wor-
thy man, was remarkable for the propensity.  He stole
pocket-handkerchiefs, pen-knives, books, ladies' stock-
ings, and indeed every thing portable  in the nature of
property.
                  secretiveness.
                      Sewall.
  Its function is the love of secrecy.   *  *  *   When
largely developed, and not properly balanced by  the
higher faculties, it leads to management, lying, duplici-
ty, and deceit.  When properly controlled, it augments
the efficiency of character.  In courts and cabinets, it
is a powerful engine.   It is the diplomatist's sword  and
buckler.    The fox, and  several animals of the cat-
kind, are  remarkable for it.   In some  of the human
race, it is almost their  only power.

                    Caldwell.
  Its'function is the love of secrecy.   *   *   *   *
When not  properly controlled and  regulated  by the
higher faculties, it leads to management, intrigue,  and
falsehood.  In relation to conduct,  it is the source of
art, hypocrisy, and cunning.  When directed by an en-
lightened intellect, and restrained within proper limits
by the moral powers,  it augments not a little the effi-
ciency of character.   In  courts and cabinets  it is a
powerful  engine.  On many occasions, it is the diplo-
matist's  sword and buckler.  *  *  *   The fox  and
several animals of the cat-kind, are remarkable for it.
In some of the human race it is  almost their only power. 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.
41
              love of approbation.
                     Sewall.
  Situated on each side of self-esteem.  Its function
is the love of approbation and applause.   If directed
to objects of  importance ; it becomes a lofty and noble
ambition, and leads to corresponding efforts and achieve-
ments ; but when its objects are low and trivial, it  de-
generates into vanity, and leads to frivolity.

                    Caldwell.
  Seat.   On each side of No. 10 (self-esteem).   The
function of this organ is love  of approbation  or ap-
plause.   If it be directed to objects  of importance, it
becomes a lofty and noble ambition, and leads  to cor-
responding effort and  achievement.   But if its objects
be low and trivial, it degenerates into vanity, and leads
to frivolity.
                   cautiousness.
                      Sewall.
   Situated in front of No. 11.   Its function is the sen-
 timent of circumspection, or the impulse to take  care.
 Regulated and sustained by the other faculties, this
 sentiment becomes prudence ;  but not thus modified, it
 degenerates  into instability, doubt, demur.

                     Caldwell.
   Seat.   On each side, adjoining No. 11, in front of
 it.  The  function of this is the sentiment of circum-
 spection, or the impulse to take care.  *  *  *  Regu-
 lated and sustained by the other faculties, this sentiment
 becomes prudence.   But  if not thus  modified, it de-
                 4* 
 42         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

 generates  into irresolution, and instability, doubt and
 demur.

                      Sewall.
   The five following organs are proper to man, and con-
 stitute the line of demarcation between him and the in-
 ferior animals.

                     Caldwell.
   The five following organs and sentiments are proper
 to  man, and constitute the real lines of demarcation
 between him asid the inferior animals.

                        HOPE.
                      Sewall.
   Situated  on each side of veneration.   Its function
 produces a tendency to believe in the possibility of what
 the other faculties desire.   *   *  *   It is the castle-
 builder's home, his heaven,  his consolation  in disap-
 pointment ;  his panacea  for every evil.  It is the cyno-
 sure to which his soul  perpetually points.

                    Caldwell.
   Seat.  Immediately adjoining No. 14  (veneration)
 on each side.  Its function is a tendency, without any
 solid ground of conviction, to believe in the possibility
 of what the other faculties desire.   It is in a particular
 manner the castle-builder's home —he dwells in hope
— it is his heaven, and gives him  every good — his
consolation under  disappointment —his   panacea for
every evil — it is the cynosure,  to which his  soul per-
petually points. 
           antiphrenology unmasked.         43

                     ideality.
                     Sewall.
  Situated above 7 and 8.   Its function is to give ex-
quisiteness of feeling.   It is the fountain of enthusiasm
not only of the poet, but of the philosopher, the orator,
the painter, the sculptor, the philanthropist, and of the
high-minded  warrior.   It  is  the organ of poetry, and
confers a relish for poetry  on those  who do not write.
It gives refinement and taste.  It communicates to elo-
quence its splendour and soul,  and to conversation its
highest charms and brilliancy.

                    Caldwell.
   Seat.   Immediately above Nos. 7 and 8.   Its func-
tion is to give exquisiteness to feeling.   *****
This  organ is the fountain of enthusiasm not merely to
the poet, but to the philosopher, the orator, the painter,
the sculptor, the mechanician,  the philanthropist,  and
even to the generous and high-minded warrior.  It con-
fers a relish for poetry on  those who do not write,  and
gives  refinement to the taste of those who judge.   It
commuuicates to eloquence  its  splendour  and its soul,
and to conversation its highest charms and brilliancy.

                   individuality.
                      Sewall.
   Its  function is to give the  faculty of practical obser-
vation, and the capacity to  acquire knowledge in de-
tached parcels,  but not to put it well  together.   The
possessor  is full of matter for  conversation and  anec-
dote, but is a mere detailer  of facts,  which he seldom
attempts to classify.   He is a man of extensive inform-
ation, rather than a profound philosopher. 
44         phrenology vindicated, and

                    Caldwell.
  Its function is to give the faculty of practical observa-
tion, and the capacity to acquire knowledge in detached
parcels, but not to put it well together.   The possessor
of it is an  agreeable, often  an instructive companion.
He is pregnant  in matter for conversation, in which he
is often accounted brilliant; but  he is a mere  detailer
of  facts and  anecdotes,  which  he rarely attempts to
classify or  arrange.   He is a man of information, rath-
er than a profound philosopher.

  Such are a few of the more open and daring piracies,
committed  by Professor Sewall,  on the " Elements of
Phrenology."   Thrice the number, at least, of a more
covert and dastardly character, but equally certain, could
be easily adduced.  The act, however, most discreditable
to its author, as a mark of ignorance, and which ought
therefore most to mortify and humiliate him, has  not
been  yet represented.   Like most mere copyists and
imitators, the Professor is unable to discriminate between
the  faults of his original and the excellencies.   He  has
therefore copied  promiscuously.
  Inl827,the date of the publication of my "Elements,"
the  organ of  Eventuality had not been discovered ; or
rather its peculiar function had  not been ascertained.
It was considered as making  a  part of Individuality ;
and, from being situated immediately over that organ,
and in contact with it, it was called Upper Individuality.
At  a subsequent period, however,  it was found to be
the recogniser or perceiver, not of individual objects, but
of facts,  or events.   Hence, in correspondence  with its
function, it  was called Eventuality, and is so delineated,, 
           ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         45

named, and described, by Spurzheim, Combe, and other
writers, whose works have appeared, since the time of
the publication of my " Elements."  For  the  reason
already  stated then, Eventuality not having a place in
my production, Professor  Sewall has copied  so accu-
rately, as to omit entirely that organ and its faculty, in
his " Two Lectures."  That this act of copyism has
the merit of entire faithfulness and exactitude, may not
be denied.   In the performance of it,  the Professor re-
minds us of the strict imitativeness of the Chinese tailor,
who, having had sent to him an old coat with a patch
on each elbow, as a pattern to work  by, put like patches
on the elbows of the new coat he constructed.
   Two  other recently discovered cerebral  organs and
their functions are now spoken of by systematic writers
on Phrenology — Vitativeness, the love or desire of life,
and  Alimentiveness, the love or  desire of nourishment.
Of these also Professor Sewall is presumed to be igno-
rant ; becuuse he has made no reference to them in his
pamphlet;  and because they are not  treated  of in my
work, to which he has so faithfully and scrupulously
adhered.
   Under this head I shall only add,  that, throughout all
his preceding purloinings from the "Elements of Phre-
nology," he has neither once  referred to the work, by its
title, nor used a single mark  of quotation, to  show that
he was working with borrowed matter.
   The Professor closes Lecture I.  with a few remarks
of a somewhat general and abstract character respecting
Phrenology, to which he gives the name of " rules ;" and
in his exposition of each one  of which  he deviates more
or less from truth — in his statement  of some of them 
46         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

widely—whether from ignorance or by design, I shall
not pause to inquire.  Here stands one of his rules :
  " First. Every faculty desires gratification, with a de-
gree of energy, proportionate to the size of the organ."
  This is untrue, as every well informed Phrenologist
knows, and every correctly written work on the subject
testifies.   The " size " of an organ makes but one of at
least four  distinct  and oft-repeated  conditions of its
strength.   I  would inform  Dr. Sewall what the three
remaining conditions are, did I not think it more to his
benefit that he should once more look into  phrenological
writings, and, while he is attaining a knowledge of the
conditions  in question, acquire a more  creditable  ac-
quaintance with thejscience at large.
  Another disgraceful blunder, or intentional and un-
principled  misrepresentation — the Professor may  take
his choice.
  " If the organ of Acquisitiveness is large, and that of
Benevolence is also full, the two propensities being thus
counterpoised, there may be no special desire of accu-
mulating wealth manifested, and as little  of the  spirit of
liberal giving."
   This is  no phrenological doctrine.   The organs  of
Acquisitiveness and Benevolence neither counterbalance
nor neutralize each other.   They may both be  large in
the same  individual, and both be exereised freely and
independently.  They  then act  alternately.   A  man
may, and  often  does, labour strenuously  to  acquire
property,  and makes of it, when acquired,  appropria-
tions and  dispositions the most liberal and  charita-
ble.  Benevolence only forbids  him to create distress,
in his operations  to gratify  Acquisitiveness.   But it
in no  way interferes with his acquisitions  of  proper- 
           ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         47

ty, when effected, as they may be, without either vio-
lating justice, or producing pain of body or mind.   Nor
does Acquisitiveness throw an obstacle  in the way of
kindness and liberality.  It often draws  in, that Bene-
volence may the more certainly gratify itself by pouring
out.   Hence many of the most industrious and money-
making individuals never grow rich.   It  is the abuse of
Self-esteem that puts a check  on Benevolence, hoards
the products  of Acquisitiveness, and creates  the miser.
In his attempt to show that certain other organs coun-
terpoise and neutralize each other, our author manifests
equal ignorance, and is therefore equally at fault.  His
attempts to philosophize in Phrenology  are abundantly
feeble, and intellectually discreditable.   Nor arc his ef-
forts  at sarcasm and  misrepresentation less so.   Yes;
singular as it may appear, he is crude  and clumsy even
in misrepresentation, notwithstanding  his  habitual and
extensive practice in it.   In proof of this, take the fol-
lowing  meditated blow, the obvious untruth  and  awk-
wardness of which render it harmless to the intended
 victims, and make it recoil on the assailant.   He pro-
 fesses in it to  show it  to  be  one of the doctrines of
 Phrenology, that every person possessing large deve-
 lopements, moves in the direction of the organ which
 predominates for the time.
   " The  devout man  (says he) bows his head forward
 in order to present the organ  of Veneration, in the di-
 rection of the  Deity in the Heavens."
   This I say is at once impertinent and  untrue.  Worse
 still for the intellect of its author, it is a gross blunder.
 No Phrenologist has ever uttered the notion ; or if so,
he is an  ignoramus, as to the location  of the  organs. 
48         PHRENOLOGY  VINDICATED, AND

And so must Dr. Sewall be, else he  would not have
made so silly an attempt to bring Phrenology into dis-
repute.   The meditated but miserable sarcasm, recoils
from its object, and fastens on himself.   The organ of
Veneration occupies the crown of the arch of the coro-
nal region  of the head.  It points directly to the heav-
ens  therefore when the individual stands  erect — not
when he "bows his head forward."  Its direction  du-
ring that position of the head, deviates from the course
toward the heavens, by an angle of many degrees.
   With  this, I  close  my examination of Lecture  I.,
and pass to the consideration of

                    LECTURE II.
  In the first paragraph of this lecture, appears the fol-
lowing remarkable clause :
  " My object in this lecture  will be to  show how  far
the science (of Phrenology) is reconcilable with the ana-
tomical structure and  organization  of the brain,  the
cranium, and other parts  concerned."
  Here is submitted a proposition,  which, if sincerely
submitted, is as boastful and groundless; and, if insincere,
as wanton and reprehensible as art can devise, or ima-
gination conceive.   Either Professor Sewall is ignorant
of the  fundamental principles of  physiology ;  or  the
pretension here held out by him, is intended to deceive.
I am most inclined to  believe the latter braneh  of  the
dilemma; being hardly prepared to suppose the Profes-
sor enveloped in so deep and  dark a cloud  of profes-
sional ignorance, as the truth of the  first  branch would
throw around him.
  The necessity which impels me to  the adoption  of 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED..
49
 this belief, is unwelcome to me.   The change of opin-
 ion which an occurrence of the kind produces, respecting
 a man who had  been  more favourably thought  of,
 engenders  not  only regret,  but  mortification at  our
 mistake ; and, worse still, it  tends to create  suspicion
 in relation to other persons, and thus to darken and em-
 bitter our brighter and kindlier thoughts of human nature.
 Did  I suffer the measures of Professor Sewall at all to
 influence me in these respects, such would be  the effect
 produced on  me,  by his deliberate efforts at  deception
 and misguidance, with a view to  bring Phrenology and
 its  advocates into disrepute.   I say the " advocates " of
 Phrenology ; for the insults he has offered them, by his
 remarks,  are numerous and gross ; and the imputation
 aimed at  the purity of their motives by him, in the three
 following paragraphs, is as false and flagitious as offen-
 sive language and a malicious spirit can render it.
   " There is a celebrated divine now living in  Scotland,
 equally distinguished for his amiable disposition,  his
 gigantic powers of mind, and  the  great moral  influence
 which he  exerts upon the Christian world.  This indi-
 vidual, it  is said, has the organ of destructiveness very
 largely developed,  and not having any counteracting
 organ very large,  it is contended by those  who are
 acquainted with the fact, that  he manifests his inherent
 disposition to  murder, by his  mighty efforts to destroy
 vice, and  break down systems of  error.   In  this way,
 he gratifies  his propensity to shed  blood."
  " By a  recent examination  of the head of the cele-
brated infidel Voltaire, it is found that  he  had the organ
of veneration developed  to a very extraordinary degree.
                      5 
50        PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

For him it is urged, that his veneration for the Deity
was so great, his sensibility on the subject of devotion
so exquisite, that he became shocked and disgusted with
the irreverence of even the most devout Christians, and
that out of pure respect and veneration  for the Deity,
he attempted to exterminate the Christian religion from
the earth.
   " Other  explanations as much at variance with truth
and common sense, are resorted to in carrying out the
system."
   Such are the improbable, ill-contrived, and senseless
falsehoods, which the vapid imagination of Professor
Sewall has fabricated, with the intent of bringing ridi-
cule and odium on Phrenology and its expounders.  I
do not call them its defenders; because when well ex-
pounded, it most effectually defends itself, and needs no
other advocate.
   Dr. Sewall is  challenged  to name the Phrenologist
of good standing, or of any standing, who has given the
preceding explanations of the characters of Voltaire and
Dr. Chalmers ;  the latter being, I doubt not, the great
Scottish divine, to whom the allusion is so falsely and
unbecomingly made.   Nor will the challenge  be ac-
cepted.  The reason is plain.  No Phrenologist can
be  referred to as the author of the explanations.  Dr.
Sewall is himself the author; and he cannot  escape from
the imputation.   I hold myself responsible, in pronounc-
ing the fabrication a work of his own mind — a shallow
artifice, of his own contrivance, coolly, deliberately and
maliciously executed.  It is a sinister, but  feeble blow,
designed, not for the  overthrow of error,  but for the 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.          51
achievement of victory over  a system of impregnable
doctrines, to which the assailant is hostile — regardless
whether it is attempted on true or false ground.
  Dr. Sewall's paragraph about Dr. Chalmers in parti-
cular, is  a flimsy network of mendacity and ignorance,
mistake  and blunder.   It is not  true  that the  great
Scottish divine has " destructiveness very largely devel-
oped," and no " counteracting organ very large."  His
ruling organs are all large ;  and hence the unusual size
of his head, the power of his intellect, and the corres-
ponding  weight and  strength of his character.  Were
not his moral and intellectual  organs large (his religious
organs being  included under the term "moral")  he
neither would nor could make " mighty efforts to destroy
vice, and break down systems of error." Such " efforts "
require large and powerful moral organs to  give to the
disposition sufficient strength, and large and  powerful
intellectual ones to do the  work.   Such at least is the
phrenological doctrine on the subject; and Dr. Sewall
knows it; else he is a punier novice than I have thought
him.
  It is evident, however, that he is ignorant of the true
bearings, and of the  whole range of action of the organ
of Destructiveness.   He  evidently thinks (else is  his
phraseology inaccurate and deceptive) that the function
it performs and the propensity it gives,  lead exclusively
to the " shedding of blood."  This is a vulgar error. It is
the phrenological doctrine of the stage-coach and the rail-
road car, the beer-house, and the newspapers.  From
which of these fountains the  Professor has imbibed his
phrenological draughts and inspiration, or whether from
either or all of them, I neither know nor care.  But I well 
52         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
know that he has not derived them from the writings of
either Gall, Spurzheim, Combe, or Broussais ; nor from
any other standard work in  Phrenology.  To all such
works they are in direct opposition;  because they are
in direct opposition to truth.
   The function of Destructiveness, or  rather the  pro-
pensity it bestows, is to destroy, in the abstract or gene-
ral meaning of the term ; and the kind of destruction to
which it may lead, depends entirely on circumstances and
their  influences.   It depends materially on the  condi-
tion and sway of concomitant organs.   It may be moral
or intellectual, as certainly as physical; because there
are moral and intellectual evils  to be  destroyed.    Vice
belongs  to the first class, and error to the second.   If
serpents, alligators, tigers, and other noxious and destruc-
tive animals, as well as enemies and monsters in  human
shape, are to be beaten down and eradicated, so are the
pernicious errors that mislead, and the ruinous vices that
contaminate society.  Of the two forms of war and havoc,
requisite for these purposes, the latter  is far the most
important.   Moral and  mental  are not only worse than
physical and  corporeal  evils;  they are productive of
them.   And, other things being alike, the individual with
large  Destructiveness is best fitted to  vanquish the for-
mer class of foes to human happiness, as well  as the
latter.
   Destructiveness, while it renders the  human charac-
ter stern and severe, bestows on it much of its energy,
keenness, and power of action.   One of its effects is, to
wind  up the other faculties to a higher  pitch, and  thus
impart to them a tenser tone.  It points and  sharp-
ens the steel of satire and irony, invective and sarcasm. 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         53
and renders it more piercing, trenchant, and terrible. It is
also the chief source of ill-nature, malice, slander, male-
dictions, and imprecations of mischief on those who have
given offence, and, in fact,  of every word and action de-
signed for the production of unnecessary pain.  It gives,
moreover, to those possessing it in full developement a
power to paint scenes of blood and slaughter in deeper
colours, and with bolder and more terrific features, and
to describe them in stronger, more thrilling, and appro-
priate  language, than could ever be attained  to, by per-
sons endowed with it in a very limited degree.   Nor is
this all.  Poets  and other  writers, who have large and
active Destructiveness, have not only a capacity; they
have  also a passion for  descriptions of battle  and car-
nage.   For such forms of mental exercise they have an
instinctive fondness. Scott  and Byron are in proof of this.
They had both very full  and vigorous Destructiveness ;
but the former in particular had it under perfect control,
in consequence of the surpassing size and strength of his
moral and reflecting organs.  When he chose, however,
to slip the leash, and give this  mental dog  of war full
freedom and scope of action, in his battle and havoc de-
scriptions, as he often did, its power was terrific.  Take,
as a single instance, out of scores, perhaps hundreds of
the same character, that might be adduced,  the follow-
ing fearful language-picture of  the  vengeance inflicted
by " The Bruce," on Cormac Doyle, for the treacher-
ous assassination of his  favourite page :
          " Not so awoke the Bruce! — his hand
          Snatched from the flame a knotted brand,
          The nearest weapon of his wrath;
          With this he crossed the murderer's path,
                        5* 
54          PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
          And venged young Allan well!
          The spattered brain, and bubbling blood
          Hissed on the half-extinguished wood;
          The miscreant gasped and fell!"

   A  more  horror-striking portrait of the ruthless and
vindictive crushing of human existence has never been
drawn.   Nor, without the aid of large Destructiveness,
could Scott have  conceived and  given life  to  such  a
fancy-piece of slaughter, any more than  a dwarf could
bend the bow of Ulysses, or hurl the rock, with which
Hector struck down the warrior that opposed him.
   Of his description of the death  of Bertram the same
may be said.   The picture is awful.
 " While yet the smoke the deed conceals,
 Bertram his ready charger wheels;
 But, floundered on the pavement floor
 The steed, and down the rider bore ;
 And bursting in the headlong sway,
 The faithless saddle-girths gave way.
 'Twas while he toiled him to be freed,
 And with the rein to raise the steed,
 That from amazement's iron trance,
 AH VTicklifTe's soldiers waked at once.
 Sword, halbert, musket-butt, their blows
 Hailed upon Bertram as he rose ;
 A score of pikes, with each a wound
 Bore down and pinned him to the ground ;
 But still his struggling force he rears,
 'Gainst hacking brands and stabbing spears ;
 Thrice from assailants shook him free,
 Once gained his feet, and twice his knee.
By tenfold odds oppressed at length,
 Despite his struggles and his strength,, 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.          55
        He took a hundred mortal wounds,
        As mute as fox 'mongst mangling hounds,
        And when he died, his parting groan
        Had more of laughter than of moan."

   Even in his glowing delineation of the subversion of
a pile of dead matter, Scott manifests the giant  strength
of his Destructiveness.   I allude to his volcanic picture
of the night-burning of Rokeby castle.

          " In gloomy arch above them spread,
          The clouded heaven  lowered bloody red ;
          Beneath, in sombre light, the flood
          Appeared  to roll in waves of blood.
          Then one, by one, was heard to fall
          The tower, the donjon-keep, the hall.
          Each rushing down with thundering sound,
          A space the conflagration drown'd ;
          Till, gathering strength, again it rose,
          Announced its triumph in its close,
          Shook wide its light the landscape o'er,
          Then sunk — and Rokeby was no more !"

   Does any one wish  to witness the outpourings of the
Destructiveness  of Byron, in satire, and malediction 1
Let him turn to the " Curse of Minerva," and be abun-
dantly gratified.   He will there find such lines as  the
following,  shedding blight and burning  wherever they
strike.  And first  on  the name and character of Lord
Elgin, for despoiling  the Parthenon  of its inimitable
ornaments.

      " For Elgin's fame  thus grateful Pallas pleads >
      Below,  his name —above, behold his deeds!
      Be ever hailed  with equal honours here,
      The Gothic  monarch, and the Pictish peer! 
56         PHRENOLOGY  VINDICATED, AND
       Arms gave the first his right — the last had none,
       But basely stole what less barbarians won!
       So, when the lion quits his fell repast,
       Next prowls the wolf— the  filthy jackall last!
       Flesh, limbs, and blood, the former make their own;
       The last base brute securely gnaws the bone! "

   The following curse is on the same:

        " Hear then in silence Pallas' stern behest;
        Hear and believe, for time shall tell the rest.
        First on the head of him who did the deed
        My curse shall fall, on him and all his  seed ;
        Without one spark of intellectual fire,
        Be all the sons as senseless as the sire;
        If one with wit the parent  brood disgrace,
        Believe him bastard of a brighter race."

   The poem abounds in such thunder-striking passages,
 the fearful product of the same faculty.
   Thus spacious is the sphere of action, and thus mul-
 tiplied the bearings and influences of the organ of De-
 structiveness, in the exercises of the mind — and without
 being pushed beyond its proper limits, the picture might
 be extended.   Yet so  barren and defective is Professor
 Sewall's conception of its function, that  he pronounces
 it  a mere " propensity to  shed  blood! "  And, rich, as
 he doubtless considers himself in this  mite of intelli-
 gence, he draws on it as his  treasury for  the instruction
 of the age !  The Professor's grasp of mind is quite too
narrow and microscopic for the office of a teacher — es-
 pecially for a teacher of mental philosophy.   His own
mental vision embraces things  on so petty a scale, and
with so single a bearing, as to remind one of the second
line in the following couplet of  Pope; 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.          57
      " While man exclaims, see all things for my use !
      Sec man for mine, replies a pampered goose.'"
See the organ of Destructiveness, says the antagonist
of Gall and Spurzheim and Combe, and others, design-
ed to bestow  on its possessor, a " propensity to shed
blood!" — Had he received from nature less of a " pro-
pensity to shed " — ink, on a subject with which he is
unacquainted, the press would have  been a flood-gate
of less error than it has been; and  he himself would
have  had less cause to sink  under mortification, and
forswear his pen which has so fatally disgraced him.
  Professor Sewall's remarks on the character of Vol-
taire are, if possible, still  more offensive and reprehen-
sible.   The  spirit of  mendacity and defamation  that
pervades them is inexpressibly odious.   That Voltaire
had a full  development  of Veneration  is true.   And
that, in the early part of his life, he entertained a high
reverence for a Great First  Cause,  is also true.   Of
his sentiments on that subject, in his latter years,  I
know less — perhaps I should say I know nothing.   It
might  have become  perverted, greatly enfeebled, or en-
tirely extinguished.   Occurrences  of  the  kind have
repeatedly taken place.  I myself have witnessed them.
One of the most irreverent and profane beings I have
ever known, was a lunatic, who had once been an enthu-
siast in religion.   Be these points however as they may?
the explanation of Voltaire's  infidelity,  which the Pro-
fessor has  attempted to palm on the public, as the pro-
duct of Phrenology, is scandalously false.   It is not
true, I mean, that any enlightened and correct Phrenolo-
gist has ever offered such an explanation.  If so, Pro-
fessor Sewall  is called upon to name him, and give his 
58         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
explanation in his own words.  Who, except the Pro-
fessor  himself, in  one of his unhappy and disgraceful
moods ever penned such a sentence  as the following 1
  " For him (Voltaire) it is urged, that his veneration
for the Deity was so great, his sensibility on the sub-
ject  of devotion so exquisite, that he became shocked
and  disgusted with the irreverence of even the most de-
vout christians, and that out of pure respect and vene-
ration  for the Deity, he attempted to  exterminate the
christian religion from the earth !"
  What  Phrenologist, I  again demand of Dr. Sewall,
(the  atrocity of the case  justifies the  word " demand")
has ever made this statement, or any thing like it, re-
specting  the  cause of the infidelity of Voltaire 1   Nor
will he answer the demand.   He  dare  not answer it.
He has  ventured so far already into  the flood of false-
hood, that he will shrink from  going farther lest it should
overwhelm him.   The statement is the  product  of his
own mind, compounded  and concocted  to poison the
public  ear, and render it deaf to  truth.   A conscious-
ness of this will close his lips ; because to speak would
but cover him with deeper disrepute.   Silence  is his
only protection from scorn, and he will use it  to that
effect.   If I wrong him in these charges, he has  but to
convince me of the fact, to receive from me prompt and
ample  amends.  Intentional  injustice I do to no one.
The charges are not made wantonly, or without  reflec-
tion.   They are preferred on ground which I consider
valid;  and nothing  short of what I may deem more
valid, shall induce  me to  withdraw them.   To be com-
pelled  to speak thus of Dr. Sewall is not only unpleas-
ant,  but mortifying to me.  And should any one  blame 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.          59
me for doing so, my reply and  only defence would be,
that, however improper,  in  such a case, the office of
censor may be for me, I cannot admit that the censure
and rebuke are misbestowed.
   It is understood that Voltaire became " shocked and
disgusted at the irreverence " not of " the most devout
christians," but of the professors  and ministers of the
christian religion, because they were not "devout" — in
plainer language, because they were profligate and hypo-
critical.   He took offence at  the corruptions and de-
baucheries  of the priesthood ;  and, as  is too often the
case, he did not stop with taking offence at them.  He
unfortunately  extended his disapproval and  dislike to
the religion which they abused.  As they were the high-
est and most  zealous professors of Christianity, the de-
fenders of its principles, the expounders of its doctrines,
the depositories of its mysteries, the  commissioned and
consecrated ministers of its rites,  and the dispensers of
its benefits and  blessings — as they stood related to it
in these several high, sacred, and responsible capacities,
he regarded them erroneously as its true representatives.
Finding them corrupt therefore, he inferred improperly,
that the leaven of their corruption pervaded and pollu-
ted  the  entire system. " And  hence his enmity to the
christian religion.
   It does not however follow, that, because the philoso-
pher of Ferney was not a  christian, he was therefore
destitute of reverence and  devoutness.   Far from it.
A  sentiment  of veneration is  the  product of nature;
not of any given  form of religion.   Much nearer  the
truth would  it be, to say that  the organ of Veneration
is the source  of religion — for, without that organ in 
60         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

man, religion could have no  existence in him.   In a
higher or lower degree, a sentiment of veneration is an
attribute of the  human race.   All men of sound minds
have their share of it, what ever form of religion they
profess or follow ; or whether they profess or follow any
form.   It is not to be  doubted, that, under certain sys-
tems of paganism, higher reverence is manifested, and
a  more  intense devotion professed  and practised, than
under the christain religion.   Because one scheme of
religion is more  rational and true than another, it is not
on that account certain that the professors of it are ei-
ther more sincere in their belief of it, or more ardently
devout in their acts of worship.   The followers of the
crescent are as  zealous in  their  faith, and  more strict
and sanctimonious in their devotional exercises, than the
followers of the cross.   When the worshipper of Jug-
gernaut moreover prostrates himself to be crushed by
the car-wheels of his  god,  it is an act of religious de-
votion ; and so is that of the Hindoo widow, when she
voluntarily consumes herself on  the funeral pile, with
the body of her husband.  Nor does Christianity furnish
at the present period, any such offerings of devotedness
as these.  Nor had primitive Christianity, in the meridi-
an of its fervour, any thing of faith and zeal to surpass
them.    Even the crown-seeking martyr had nothing to
offer more precious than life.   And that offering is not
withheld by  the pagan.
  All this shows, that religion is an inherent sentiment;
not the result of a system of opinions.  Nor, of course,
does the superiority of devoutness bespeak  any superi-
ority in the  system of religion, under which it occurs.
It  is the  fruit of cerebral development,  and cerebral 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.
61
training.   The mere doctrines of religion  have no in-
fluence on it, though the mode of worship may ; because
one  mode of worship may exercise the organ of vene-
ration more than another; and a higher degree of ex-
ercise gives it superior size and strength.   I shall only
add, that in the conical heads of some Asiatic nations,
the development of Veneration and the other religious
organs,  is fuller than in  any of the national  heads of
Europe, or in the  heads  of  the people of the  United
States.    Hence the fanatical depth of their supersti-
tions and devotions.  And we are confidently told, that
a like form of head usually characterizes those individ-
uals, who pertinaciously adhere to a bigoted belief in
the doctrine of the divine right of kings to the throne
and the judgment seat,  the sceptre and the sword.
   Neither Christianity then, nor any other  form of re-
ligion can be justly  referred to as tests of either the
falsehood or the truth of  Phrenology.   Nor could any
thing short  of ignorance  or artifice have  induced Dr.
Sewall  to  make  the reference.   The latter cause is I
doubt not the true one.  He has appealed to the church,
in the spirit  of intrigue, to put her ban on Phrenology,
and by her authoritative influence aid him in his attempt
to subvert it, because his end is unattainable by reason
and argument.  But the appeal will be fruitless.  The
church  will not aid him.   Not a few of her ablest and
most enlightened  members and ministers have already
become  the advocates of Phrenology; and they will all
become  so, as soon as the science shall be  fairly under-
stood by them.  Instead of  continuing to  frown on it,
the time is approaching when they will frown on those,
who have  artfully attempted  to withhold from them the
                     6 
62         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

knowledge of it.   And in such an attempt the  Doctor
has signalized himself—but not by his ability.   When
stript of its artifice, his effort  is feeble.   I shall close
my remarks on this topic, by referring once more to the
deep insult Dr.  Sewall has offered, and the coarse slan-
der and defamation he has practiced toward the whole
phrenological world, in the following sentence which has
been  already quoted:
  " Other  explanations, as much at variance with truth
and common sense, are resorted to (by Phrenologists) in
carrying out the system."
  In  plain English, Phrenologists are a brotherhood of
liars or fools or both.  Such is the true interpretation of
the Professors  charge.   And against  whom,  and  by
whom is it made ?  Delicate  and weighty as it is,  this
question must be  answered.
  The charge is  preferred against Gall and Spurzheim,
and all their followers, consisting  at present of hundreds
of thousands ; among them not a few as able and illus-
trious as any men of the age ; and no less signalized by
their morals and virtues, than by science and letters.
   On the  other hand, the charge is made by  a single
individual, and, as far as I know, by him alone ;  and that
individual  is Dr.  Thomas Sewall of Washington city ; a
name which has yet to find a place in the catalogue of
the literati and philosophers of the  day.   Nor  have we
hitherto received any strong indications of its fitness for
 such a place.
    After this specification and contrast of the accuser
 and  the  accused, accompanied  by a request  that the
 reader will  " look on this picture, and on this," of the
 parties concerned, I  shall only subjoin, that if  there be, 
            ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         63

in the  records of insolence  and injustice, an act  of
greater  audacity, than Dr. Sewall has here been guilty
of, I know not the page which it soils and disgraces.
  I must now return, and offer a few remarks on Dr.
Sewall's proposition  laid down  in  the beginning  of
" Lecture II.," in which he pledges himself to " show,
how far Phrenology is reconcilable with the anatomical
structure  and organization of the brain,  the  cranium,
and  other parts  concerned ;" and  on  his declaration
which immediately follows, that the anatomy of the parts
concerned, is  the proper and only standard by which to
ascertain the truth of the science.   The meaning of this
extraordinary  allegation is, that a knowledge of the ana-
tomy of any part of the human body is our only clue to
guide us to  a  knowledge of its physiology or function ;
than which  a  more groundless assertion was never ut-
tered.   So far is it from having even the semblance of
correctness in it, that in no single instance has the func-
tion of a part ever been discovered by an examination of
its anatomical structure.   No ; the functions of organs
are discovered by observation  alone ; observation, I
mean, made,  not on the  organic structure  of the  parts
when dead; but  on their action  and its  results  while
living.  And  even when the  discovery is made, no pe-
culiar aptitude is perceptible between the anatomy  of
the organs,  and  their modes of action.   That aptitude
no researches  in minute anatomy have yet demonstrated.
And that  the  demonstration  will ever be made, is far
from being certain.   But it is very certain that enlight-
ened anatomists and physiologists disclaim all pretension
to such accuracy of  knowledge at  present.  If Dr.
Sewall sincerely  believes otherwise, his ignorance on 
64
PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, A^ND
the subject is eminently disgraceful to him.  And if he
is acquainted with the plain truth, so abundantly familiar
to the medical  world,  that the  function of none of the
organs of the body has ever yet been discovered by its
anatomical structure ;  and that as respects even the or-
gans whose functions are known, no peculiar fitness is
discoverable between those functions and the organiza-
tion which produces them — if he is acquainted with this
truth, and asserts the contrary, for the purposes of de-
ception, the task of apportioning to him the measure of
reprobation he  deserves, is  left for the present to the
conception of others.  I am  unwilling to express  it  in
words.
  I ask Dr.  Sewall to inform me frankly, whether he
honestly believes, that  he  can tell, from its anatomical
structure,  why  the  simplest piece of vital organization
produces the kind of action and issue, which observa-
tion assures us it does produce 1 Can he thus tell why an
acorn produces an oak, and not  a hickory ? or why a
walnut produces a walnut-tree, and not a chestnut,  or
an elm ? Can he tell from its structure and organization,
why the egg of  a turky produces a turky, and not a buf-
falo 1  or  why the egg of a  goose does not produce a
shark or a grizzly bear 1 or, stronger still, why it may not
produce even a Professor of Anatomy ?  Can he tell why
the liver secretes bile rather than pancreatic liquor 1  or
the kidneys urine, rather than saliva ?    Can he tell why
a muscle  contracts 1  or why it is not  instrumental in
sensation, in place of a nerve?  Can he tell from the
structure even of the heart itself what must be of necessi-
ty its functions  and uses 1 No,  he cannot.  Long before
the discovery of the circulation of the blood, the struc- 
            ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         65

ture and mechanism of that organ were known, as ac-
curately as they are at present.  But functions and uses
very far from the true ones, were attributed to it by the
anatomists and physiologists of the day.
  It will be understood that  I here  allude not to the
mechanical, but to the organic structure of the parts con-
cerned.  Since  the  discovery of the  circulation of the
blood, that a fitness of the valvular structure of the
heart  and veins for  the performance of that  process is
perceptible, cannot be denied.   It is even probable that
the knowledge of the veinous valves, which he had deri-
ved from his preceptor Fabricius ab Aquapendente, led
Harvey to the discovery of the circulation.  Still it was
observation alone — I mean the actual perception of the
functional action of the part that completed the work, and
immortalized the  discoverer.  But neither Dr. Sewall,
nor any other anatomist or physiologist can discover the
shadow of fitness between the vital  contraction and dila-
tion of the heart, and its minute  anatomy.   From any
knowledge  he  possesses of such anatomy,  he cannot
render the  slightest  reason, why the heart should not
perform the function of the liver or  even of the brain, a3
well as that which it does perform.  So consummately
empty and  arrogant is  his  pretension of being  able to
" demonstrate " from its " structure," the unfitness of
the latter organ to perform the offices assigned  to it by
Phrenology !
  That there exists an essential and immutable relation
between the minute  organization of every distinct part
of the body, whether it be muscle or  gland, membrane
or blood-vessel, and its mode of action, is necessarily
true;  but it is equally so, that that relation has not yet
                        6* 
66         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
been detected.   No ; the functions of all our organs,
as far as they are known, have been discovered, I say,
not by anatomical researches into the minutiae of the
structure of dead bodies, but by observations on living
bodies.   And, in many if not most cases, that observa-
tion may be made as effectually by men who know no-
thing of organs, except their existence and location, as
by those who are  intimately acquainted with their struc-
ture.  Every one knows that the eye sees, the ear hears,
the tongue tastes, and the nose smells, and that the fin-
gers are the seat and instruments of touch.  It is almost
as generally known, that the lungs are concerned in re-
spiration, the stomach in the digestion of food, and the
liver in the secretion of bile.  But the infant in his cradle
knows as well why these things are so, as the ablest an-
atomist and physiologist in existence.
   If this, moreover, is true,  as respects the simpler or-
gans of the body, much more so is it, in relation to the
more  complex  ones.  Wherefore is  it  then that Dr.
Sewall alleges the notorious fallacy and monstrous ab-
surdity, of being able to " show  whether Phrenology be
reconcilable to the anatomical structure and organization
of the brain?"  Just as easily can he tell, by an inspec-
tion of the  nose, whether its possessor be a christian or
a pagan; or by an examination of the great toe, under
what form of the horoscope its owner was born.
   Will Professor Sewall so far oblige his less enlightened
contemporaries, as to inform them, what sort of cerebral
structure is  suitable, and what sort is not suitable for the
production of the organ of Benevolence — of Veneration
— of Firmness — of Hope — of Ideality — or  even  of
Secreliveness, whose excess leads to deception and jug- 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         67
glery;  with the operations of the last of which his ac-
quaintance is intimate.  The Professor is doubtless pre-
pared to give this information ; else how can he show,
whether Phrenology is " reconcilable " or irreconcilable
" with  the  anatomical  structure and organization of the
brain."  In truth,  he  knows but very little about the
brain,  notwithstanding the following pedantic and dog-
matical paragraph :
   " The fact of the existence of the horizontal mem-
brane called the tentorium, separating the superior from
the inferior part of the  brain, as well as the arrangement
of the lateral ventricles, the  corpus callosum, the fornix,
and other parts, clearly show the absurdity of the idea
of organs as described by phrenologists.  The notion,
then, of the division of the  brain into phrenological  or-
gans is entirely hypothetical;  is not sustained by dis-
section, and is utterly inconsistent with its whole forma-
tion."
   This is a mere " clap-trap," as empty and fallacious,
as it is conceited and artful.  It is designed, I mean, by
Dr. Sewall, to secure  to himself a character and conse-
quence with the public, which he does not deserve, by
an affectation of knowledge which he does not possess.
It is instinct, moreover, from beginning to end, with a
spirit of insolence and misrepresentation. It is not true,
as he  asserts, that the tentorium separates  the superior
from the inferior portion of the brain, in other words, the
cerebrum from the cerebellum, in such  a way as to in-
terfere in the slightest degree  with the doctrines  of
Phrenology.   Nor, as far as I am informed on the sub-
ject, has any  antiphrenologist, other than  Dr. Sewall,
ever made the assertion.  No matter, however, whether 
68         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

others have made it or not.   Nature does  not sanction
it in her structure and general arrangement of the parts.
It has not, therefore, I repeat, the slightest foundation
in truth.   The opening in the tentorium for the passage
of cerebral matter is amply sufficient for the purposes of
Phrenology.  Nor, whether they be  considered sepa-
rately, or in their united influence, do the " lateral ven-
tricles, the corpus callosum, the  fornix,"  or any other
portion of the brain, offer the slightest objection to the
truths of the science.   If Dr. Sewall is ignorant of this,
it is because he is equally ignorant of the  principles of
Phrenology and the structure of the brain.  No wonder,
therefore, that he cannot perceive their relation to each
other.  I need  hardly add,  that the insolence  of the
paragraph quoted consists in its author's rude imputation
of" absurdity " to a body of men  who are immeasurably
above him in every attribute that  constitutes an element
of human greatness and merit.  If I treat the Professor
without much observance, he may look for the  cause,
with a certainty of finding it, in  his own repeated  and
reprehensible violations of truth, and his coarse discour-
tesies toward phrenologists.   I shall only further observe
in this place, that his  entire exposition  of the  human
brain  is  as superficial  and  flimsy a production of the
kind, as I have ever examined.   A student of medicine,
who could not in a single week, learn to give one equally
valuable, should retire from the profession to some trade
or pursuit more nearly on a level  with his humble abili-
ties.  If Professor Sewall lectured on anatomy no more
correctly and instructively than he writes on it, no won-
der that the medical  school  he held his appointment in
failed to prosper. 
           ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         69

  The Professor's references to Haller, Wrisberg, So-
emmering, Blumenbach, and Cuvier, and his quotation
from the writings of the latter, respecting the compara-
tive size of the human brain, have been made and re-
peated by antiphrenologists, until they are reduced to
the condition of the veriest common-place.  Nor have
they in reality any more weight or relevancy, as evidence
either for or against the doctrines of Phrenology, than
the same amount of matter, extracted at random from
the Pilgrim's Progress,  or the Tale of a Tub.   As re-
spects himself, their effect is two-fold and  antithetical.
While they probably excite toward him the admiration
of uninformed antiphrenologists ; they certainly awaken
contempt and pity in the minds of those of an opposite
character.
   It is  matter of regret to  me  that Dr. Sewall has
deemed  it necessary to make an effort  to  increase the
influence and authority of his  own notions, as an anti-
phrenologist, by a reference to the  sentiments of Pro-
fessor Warren, of Boston.   In the capacity of a sur-
geon and a scholar, a gentleman  and a high-minded
member of society,  Professor Warren has few equals.
But,  in  his  relation to Phrenology, I cannot speak  of
him in terms so elevated.  His writings show, that  in
that science  his knowledge  is very limited.   That  in
fact he has never made it a serious study, without which
no man, be his intellect what it may, can thoroughly
master it.   His authority in it, therefore, is correspond-
ingly without weight.   That the Professor was formerly
in the ranks of antiphrenology, is true.   But I am far
from being convinced that he is there at present.  I am
inclined to believe that a farther acquaintance with the 
70         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

science has done not a little toward  reconciling him
to its doctrines.   My uncertainty as to his precise pos-
ture at present, arises from the sentiments contained in
a paper read by him, at the last meeting of the British
Scientific Association, in Liverpool.   In one part of his
paper, relating to the skulls  of an aboriginal people,
taken from an ancient mound in the Mississippi Valley,
he remarks:
  " There was (in the form of the skull) less extension
of forehead than in the European head, but it resembled
it;  the elevation of the forehead being equal  to the
Cancasian race.   The vertex also was  uncommonly
elevated.   The seat of the organ of Veneration seemed
to be venj much developed, and it was evident that they
were  a very religious nation; for there was  evidence
that they made many sacrifices."
   The sentiments here  expressed,   savour  strongly
of  those  of a phrenologist.    So do the following.
Speaking of the form of the Peruvian skull, Professor
Warren further says :
  " I perceived that the  organ of Constructiveness was
peculiarly developed in all these heads;"  and that peo-
ple were devoted  to certain kinds of building, and other
sorts  of mechanical  pursuits.   Evidence of their Con-
structiveness still exists in the ancient  monuments which
abound in their country.   So far as these extracts avail,
Professor Warren is a Phrenologist.   In a subsequent
part of his paper, however, the Professor holds a lan-
guage at variance with this.   Discoursing of the skulls
of a "flat-headed" people, which he had in his posses-
sion ;  in other words, of Carib skulls, he observes:
  " I  have the head of a celebrated  chief, who  had a 
           ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         71

most  extraordinarily  flattened forehead, and  he was
known to have remarkable talent.   In fact, no person
was thought  of any consequence  in  that country (the
country of the Carib) unless he possessed a flat head."
   So openly are these two extracts  at war with each
other,  that they may be fairly regarded as holding their
author in a state of neutrality.   If  the Phrenologists are
forbidden by them to lay claim to him ; so unquestiona-
bly are the antiphrenologists.   In the main, therefore,
whatever may have been the cast of Professor Warren's
opinions, at a former period, Dr. Sewall cannot strength-
en himself and  his cause,  by the authority of that gen-
tleman at present.   The case, however, of the  flattened
6kull  of an  Indian chief  " remarkable for talent,"  of
which  Professor Warren  speaks, calls, perhaps, for a
few farther remarks.
   The chief I say was of the Caribs, a nation now
nearly, if not quite, extinct, of whose general history  we
know but  little, and of their individual history nothing
at all.   We  learn, indeed, chiefly  by tradition, that, as a
people, they were a personation of ferocity, savagism,
and revolting brutality. Precisely as a phrenologist would
infer from the size and shape af their heads, their intellect
 was extremely limited, being, in common with that of the
 inferior animals, the product almost alone of their percep-
 tive  organs;  morality was still  more dismally want-
 ing in them ; while their courage was fearless, their
 cruelty and  thirst for blood insatiable, and their Secre-
 tiveness, Covetiveness, and other animal propensities on
 the same scale.  So signally true is all this, and so strik-
 ingly and forcibly is it indicated by their developments,
 that teachers of Phrenology are in the uniform habit of 
72        PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
exhibiting the Carib  head in verification ef their doc-
trines.  So  warlike and indomitable were the Caribs,
that they could not be subdued.  They were therefore
extinguished.   Of cougars,  panthers, and tigers, the
same is true — not however  on account of their  high
intellect; but of their fierce  and intractable  animalily.
And the Caribs  were the tigers of the  Indian race.
Thay had faculties for battle, stratagem, and rapacity ;
but not for knowledge.
   Thus far  of the Carib tribe.  And our intelligence
even here is defective and dim.  Of Carib individuals,
whether chiejs or commoners, our information is neces-
sarily far more restricted.  Here even tradition fails to
instruct us.  As  respects this subject, the  entire tab-
let of our knowledge is blank ; and every  one may and
does write on it as rumour dictates or fancy prompts.
   I am compelled to believe then,  that Professor War-
ten's information respecting the " talent" of the flat-head-
ed chief is extremely scanty in its amount, and doubtful in
its character.  How can it be otherwise ? The chief lived
warred, and died, in the battle-field or his cave, many
centuries  ago — perhaps long  before a Caucasian foot
had  placed  its print on the shore of the western world ;
and when certainly no pen was employed, nor probably
other means used, to delineate his character for intellect,
or to record his actions.
   Whence then I ask again, has professor Warren de-
rived his knowledge of the " remarkable talent" of the
Carib chief?   And I reply  myself, without  hesitation,
that it is not from any authentic source.   It is from tra-
dition at best; and that of a very " dim-green light."
Nor is this  all. 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED,
73
  In giving character to a chief, in savage life, talents
for knowledge avail but little.   Bodily activity, strength,
and hardihood, daring courage and  brute ferocity do
infinitely more.   These indeed are almost exclusively
the attributes of the savage leader.   Hence a brave and
a chief are nearly the same.   A sachem in the council-
house,  and a chief in  the  field  are different beings.
Black-IIawk was a chief.  And had he never visited
the United States, he  would have been supposed and
reported to be a man of talent.  In truth he ivas so re-
ported.   But  a personal  knowledge of him dissipated
the illusion.  He was a brutal daring savage — and no-
thing more.  The grade  of his intellect was  low, and
its compass narrow.  His followers who accompanied
him  on his visit, surpassed him not a little in intellect ;
yet  he was their chief, and  they  obeyed  him.   His
head was  not  indeed  flat — was not  a Carib-head.
But  it approached that  figure.   His forehead was nar-
row,  low,  and  retreating.   And  the same is true  of
many of the chiefs,  whose likenesses are contained in
the " History of the Indian  Tribes of North America,"
now in the  course of publication in Philadelphia.   To
close this discussion.  The  Carib chief, of whose skull
Professor Warren speaks, might have  been a man re-
markable for talent,  in a nation of" flat-heads ;" but he
would not have been so in a nation of " round-heads ;"
had that nation been composed of Caucasians.  Nor, until
the laws of nature change, in relation to the powers of the
human  mind, is it possible for an individual with a low,
narrow, and retreating forehead, to be intellectually great.
No  well established instance of the kind moreover, has
ever yet occurred. And I regret sincerely, that a man of
                     7 
74         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

Professor Warren's  standing  should  have given  the
sanction  of his name to so palpable an error.
  I respectfully ask the professor, whether he has ever
known a  man with a head " almost as flat as a pancake,"
(his own expression on the subject) possessed of " re-
markable talent?"  I mean intellectual talent.  He will
not reply affirmatively.    Has he ever seen a man with
such a head, whose intellect was not the counterpart of
his forehead — low,flat,  and meagre?  Neither will he
answer this question in the affirmative.   I, on the con-
trary,  confidently answer it for him in the negative.
Such  an  incongruous phenomenon has never met  his
eye.
  Suppose the Professor were introduced into an  as-
sembly composed  of " Flat-heads," sugar-loaf heads,
"round heads," and  men with well formed and  large
sized  Caucasian heads,  and requested, without putting
any questions to them, or making any inquiries respect-
ing them, to choose from among them an  individual  of
" remarkable talent."  Suppose such a case ; would he
make  his choice from among  the "flat-heads?"  No.
The sugar loaf heads?   No.   The round heads ? No.
Like  every other  observant and  judicious man,  he
would choose from among  the Caucasians, with  large
and well  arched heads, and lofty, bold, and expanded
foreheads.  And his choice would be creditable  to his
sagacity and judgment. None indeed but a " flat head "
would choose differently; and  he is flat  in all things,
except animality.   In that he is fidl.
  Dr. Sewall appeals to  Professor Warren for another
fact, which calls, I think, for a  few remarks.
  " One  individual who was most distinguished for the 
           ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.         75

variety and extent of his native talent, says Dr. War-
ren, had, it was ascertained after death, an uncommonly
small brain."
  Not having Professor Warren's work, referred to in
this paragraph, now before  me, I cannot assert that Dr.
Sewall's statement is inaccurate.  But  I strongly sus-
pect it to be  so.   The Doctor, I greatly fear, has mis-
taken Professor Warren's precise meaning ; or he is at
his old tricks again — garbling, mutilating, or in some
shape  changing another writer's expression, to make it
suit the better his own purposes.  But here I may per-
haps be wrong ; and Dr. Sewall may for once be right.
His  correctness however,  supposing  it  to  exist, avails
him  nothing to the discredit of Phrenology.
   Whatever  may be the size of their heads, all men, not
accidentally mutilated, or defective in the original con-
formation of their brains, have  the same number of cere-
bral  organs.   Provided therefore his  brain be well pro-
portioned, and his temperament good,  a  man with a
small head may apply himself to as great a " variety " of
pursuits, as a man with a large head.  And he may pro-
secute them  with  as much  activity, but not with as much
power.  As  relates to mental operations, the difference
in the  import of these two terms is not sufficiently re-
garded.   That  difference  is radical  as well as great.
There  may  be great  mental  activity, with but little
power ;  and  great mental power, with but little activity.
The activity of the racer, the greyhound, and the swal-
low, surpasses the activity of  the dray-horse, the New-
foundland dog,  and the  condor; but  their power is
greatly  inferior.   In like  manner,  the activity  of the
mental  faculties of woman is greater than  that of the 
76         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

faculties of man ; but their power is less.   Yet the fe-
male may manifest as great a " variety " of talent as the
male.   And she does so.
  By the existence of a great variety or flexibility of na-
tive  talent then, in  an individual with a small brain,
Phrenology loses nothing.   Nor, of course, does anti-
phrenology gain  any thing.   And,  as to the phrase
" extent of native talent," I am  ignorant of its precise
signification.   I can attach to it no definite  meaning.
And that is one reason, why I suspect Dr. Sewall of in-
accuracy.   I doubt greatly whether Professor Warren
has used the expression.   He is  a scholar, familiar with
the true import of words, and therefore writes correctly;
while, as might be easily  shown, Dr. Sewall's style  is
incorrect, many of his forms of expression being indefi-
nite,  and  difficult to be  understood.  If however by
"extent of talent" he meant great  compass or depth,
elevation or power of intellect, the expression involves a
mistake. No man of "an uncommonly small brain,"  or
even  possessing a brain of but common size,  has  ever
yet been an  intellectual giant — a Csesar, a Napoleon,
a Bacon, or a Franklin.   And as soon shall a  dwarf in
frame equal a Hercules  in achievement, as such an un-
natural  occurrence take place.  If Professor Warren
has really made the statement, as reported by Dr. Sewall,
I  respectfully  ask him,  whether  the individual  with
" an  uncommonly small brain,"  possessed the gigantic
intellect, which once gave eminence to a Dexter dead,
and now gives eminence  to a Webster living?   That
his reply will be negative, I feel as confident, as if it
were  this moment sounding in  my ear.  To add  as
much as possible to the weight of Professor  Warren's 
            ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED,         77

testimony against Phrenology, Dr. Sewall prefaces his
adduction of that  testimony with the following high-
toned assertion,
  "Professor Warren, of Boston,has probably enjoyed
as great opportunities for dissecting the brains of literary
and  intellectual men of high grade, and of comparing
these with the brains of men in  the lower walks of life,
as any anatomist of our country, if not of the age."
   As a matter of personal knowledge, I am not author-
ized to  contradict this.   I can find men however of
full  and ripe intelligence,  unquestioned veracity, and
high standing,  who have  been intimate with Professor
Warren's professional  career,  for  the last fifteen or
twenty  years,  who will contradict it.  They  are  pre-
pared to say, that the Professor's experience in the sort
of inquiry and comparison alluded to is exceedingly
limited.  They are ready to aver, that although Profes-
sor Warren has written against Phrenology, he has never
devoted himself,  to any  extent, to phrenological re-
searches.   That, in a special  manner, he has not ap-
plied himself closely and strenuously to the  ascertain-
ment of the difference in size and character between the
brains of men  of high, and men  of ordinary talents.
More  particularly still; that he has  never been suffi-
ciently observant of the  relative size of the different
compartments of  the brain, in  men of different  grades
of intellect.   And, as respects the truth of phrenological
doctrines, that is a point of superlative moment.  In
two individuals similar in temperament, the brain may
be of the same size, and yet the intellect of one of them
feeble, and that of the other comparatively strong.  The
reason is plain. In the latter the intellectual organs pre-*
                          7* 
78         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
dominate, and the animal in the former.  Or, the man of
weak intellect may have a phlegmatic and dull, and he
of the strong a nervous and highly elastic temperament.
Or, though neither be a man of education, in the com-
mon acceptation of the term,  the more intelligent may
have  exercised his intellectual faculties in the highest
degree.  As  respects the  principles  of Phrenology,
these are matters of supreme importance;  and until
Professor Warren shall have strictly inquired into them,
which there  is good  reason to suspect he has never
done, his authority, whether for the science or against
it, will have but little weight.  Whatever may have been
his " opportunities " then  " for dissecting  the  brains of
literary and intellectual men of high grade, and of com-
paring these with the brains of men in  the lower walks
of life" — whatever may have been his "opportunities"
I say to this effect, they have not been sedulously and ad-
vantageously improved by him.  He will not himself say
that  they  have been thus  improved — whatever Dr.
Sewall may say for him. As respects the truth of Phre-
nology therefore, or his own improvement in the know-
ledge of it, he might as well not have enjoyed them.
   Professor Warren I trust will take no exception at the
freedom of these remarks.   They are made  under  the
influence of the highest respect for him.  But,  as  the
weight of his name  is thrown, as I believe,  into  the
scale of error, I have deemed it my duty to counter-
balance it, as far as possible, by the weight of facts, and
fair-drawn  inferences.  Dr.  Sewall concludes his  re-
marks, under  this head of his  subject, with the follow-
ing clause :
   *'■ I feel authorized to say, that the experience of emu 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.
79
ntnt anatomists of all times and countries, who have paid
attention to the  subject, will be found  in strict accord-
ance with that of Dr. Warren."
  It is difficult to say, whether this sweeping assertion
should be pronounced an equivouque, a juggle, or a bold
misrepresentation.   Be its name however what it may,
it throws a veil  over truth, by pretending to more than
its author can prove.  The qualification contained in the
phrase, "who have paid  attention to  the subject," is
quite adroitly, because perhaps  evasively introduced.
The  reason is plain.  It  may be designed as a covert,
behind which to skulk, as  a protection  from fair  and
manly contest.  The  "subject" alluded to is, whether
the brains  of very strong-minded men, or those of men
of ordinary minds, have been found, by strict compari-
son,  to be uniformly of the same size, or of different
9izes ? — and if differing in size, which predominates
most  frequently ?  or is the frequency  of  predominance
between them about equal ?
   Such, I say, is the " subject" of inquiry.   And I ask
 Dr. Sewall, what " eminent anatomists "  of any lime or
 country, except Gall and Spurzheim, and their followers,
 have  actually paid to this subject the attention  it de-
 serves ? — the attention, I mean, absolutely necessary to
 a satisfactory decision?  I  ask him to name even  one,
 who has thus  rigidly and faithfully inquired and com-
 pared, and who still coincides in opinion  with Professor
 Warren.  And I  confidently believe, and even  assert
  that he cannot  do so.  He cannot name a single anato-
  mist, of real eminence, who has thus examined and  thus
  decided.   He  can easily cite the names of men called
  anatomists, who concur with Professor Warren in asser- 
 80         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

 tion.  But neither are they " eminent;" nor have their
 inquiries been of the right cast.  They have inquired,
 not to find truth; but to find fault — as Dr. Sewall him-
 self has done.   Their testimony, therefore, is as value-
 less as  his.   I know not the name of a single anatomist
 of authority  and standing, who  does  not dissent from
 the views of Professor Warren; provided he has tho-
 roughly examined the  subject.
  Taking his departure from this point of" Lecture II,"
 Dr. Sewall threads his way through a  wilderness of er-
 rors  and misstatements, the most gross and palpable.
 Of these, time  permits me to  notice but a  few.  The
 cranium, he  says, p. 45, is " thin  in childhood, thicker in
 adult life, and becomes thin again in old age."   These
 words are not his ; but their meaning  is; and that pre-
 cisely.   And the statement is  incorrect.   The skull
 does  not become thinner in old age than it was in the
 prime of life.  When any change  in  it  occurs in  ad-
 vanced  life,  it grows thicker  and firmer, by  a pro-
 cess familiar  to every  physiologist — to every one, cer-
 tainly, who  deserves  the title.  This, I mean, is the
 usual course  of things.   When the skull becomes thin-
 ner in old age, as it sometimes  perhaps may, the  change
 is irregular, and  is the  product of some deviation from
 health and nature.
  In  p. 49,  the Professor asserts  that phrenologists
 " estimate the amount of intellect  by the size  of the
head."  This is untrue.  "Size," as heretofore men-
tioned, enters into the computation but as a single ele-
 ment.  And  the number of elements is at least four —
I think them five.
  Does any one wish to banquet on a puffy» frothy, ill-sa~ 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.            81
voured dish or two of rhetoric ?  If so, let him turn to p.
50, and have his desire. He will there find a whole repast
of rodomontade, as rare and exquisite, as ever mental
cook did up. In the first platter, is served up, in tempting
gastronomic style, the brain of Reubens—in the next
that of Humboldt — then, of Wren — of Douglass — of
Simpson — of Dean Swift — of Chatham — of Colum-
bus — of Newton — of Volney — and, in the form of a
dessert, the wit-spiced, rich, and racy brain of the Great
Unknown !!—Seriously;  this is one of the most taste-
less and  tawdry, flaunting and lubberly dashes in rheto-
ric I have any where witnessed.   It reminds one of the
matchless  sublimity of the  following stanza  of an  un-
fledged aspiring son of Parnassus :

          " The sun's perpendicular height
           Had illumined the depth of the sea;
          And the fishes beginning to sweat,
           Cried d—n it, how hot we shall be!"

   Speaking of the effects of injuries done to the brain,
Dr.  Sewall has deemed it important to refer to the nur-
sery-tales of Ferrier and Rennels on that subject, though
they have been repeated, and satisfactorily answered,
dozens of times, until their groundlessness and absurd-
ity are common-place and notorious.  On this point the
Doctor surpasses even himself, in the recklessness of
his misrepresentation, or the depth of his ignorance.
His words are as follows :
   " In many of  these cases, (of injuries  done to the
brain) blindness and deafness have been produced, mo-
tion and  sensation destroyed, and all the intellectual fa-
culties suspended ; but there has not been a destruction 
82         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

of a particular faculty of the mind, while its other powers
have remained untouched"  P. 58.
  If the Professor believes the latter part of this para-
graph, his ignorance is  deplorable; if he does not, his
mendacity is detestable.  He may take his choice.  To
one charge or the other  he must submit.  As an igno-
ramus or an impostor he hangs on the dilemma.
  No instance of the " destruction of a particular faculty
of the mind, while its other powers  have  remained un-
touched !"   So far is this from being true, that the in-
stances to this effect  on record are numerous ; and
scores of them have been seen, which are not recorded.
As  far as my observation and inquiries have extended,
the five faculties which most frequently suffer from in-
juries of the brain, while the others continue sound, are
Alimentiveness, Amativeness, Language, Calculation,
and Eventuality.  The cases, in which a temporary sus-
pension or impairment, or the entire extinction of these
has been produced, by lesions of the brain, the other fa-
culties remaining sound, are so numerous and unequi-
vocal, that their denial by Dr. Sewall is actually amazing.
Nor is the solitary derangement of Form,  Size, and
Colour, through cerebral injuries, by any means uncom-
mon.  For ample and satisfactory information on these
points, I refer to the Edinburgh Phrenological Journal,
and to sundry  other productions by  members of the
Phrenological school.   Into  that school, moreover, I
earnestly advise Professor Sewall to enter as a  pupil,
and con, at least, his horn-book,  before he ventures to
write on Phrenology again.   Though it is not probable
that he will even then open any new mines of knowledge
to the world, he may, perhaps, make a less disgraceful 
          ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.          83

exposure of his own ig-norance of the treasures contained
in those which have been opened by others.
  On what  he  calls the " Theory of the  plurality of
cerebral organs," the Doctor attempts, page  58, to be
sarcastic and witty.  But here again, as is  his custom,
he plays the daw, by appearing in borrowed feathers.
Every thought he expresses is derived from some of his
predecessors in antiphrenology.  He is himself still the
" barren fig-tree" encumbering the ground.   Let me
seriously ask him, on what principle, except that of the
" plurality of cerebral organs," does he explain mono-
mania?  But I take  back the question.  To ask him to
explain anything  in Phrenology,  is  like  begging fire
from the ice-berg, or water from the flint.   So utter is
his ignorance of the science, that he  has neither shape
nor  shadow of explanation to give. — But throught his
slough of petty blunders and misrepresentations I must
wade no longer.  The task has become  loathsome to
me.   Turning from it therefore, " for  once, for all, and
ever," I enter on the  exposure of another higher and
more  daring effort  of Professor Sewall to deceive —
and that shall be  the last.   And it is perhaps the most
flagitious the Professor has made.
   The object aimed at in this stratagem, is to convince
the  public that  the size and form of the head give  no
valid evidence  of the form and size of the brain which
it contains.  This objection to Phrenology,  like  every
other  that his  artifice and industry have been able to
adduce, has been replied to, times almost innumerable,
and abundantly refuted in  all its  bearings.  The only
thing new therefore  in Dr.  Sewall's presentation of it is
the  unprecedented falsity of the means he has employed 
84         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

to give it weight,  and  the  matchless audacity,  with
which he has pressed them.
  This objection professes to rest on three points; the
different thickness of the same skull in different parts ;
the difference in the thickness of the skulls of different
individuals ; and the different sizes of the frontal sinus.
Though it is true that, to a certain extent, these differ-
ences do exist;  it is equally true that, in the average of
skulls, that extent  is  extremely limited.   So  entirely
inconsiderable is it, as  to have no appreciable influence
in the result of the computation.   By Gall, Spurzheim,
and  other  phrenological writers,  this  truth  has been
amply  demonstrated.   Better still; it  is demonstrated
by skulls themselves ;  as every one may  learn from a
careful  examination of them.  By such examination it
will appear, that the difference in these points, as relates
to healthy adult Caucasian  skulls,  taken in mass, is not
more than the twelfth of an inch — perhaps not so much.
In a  vast majority of skulls the frontal sinus is so small,
as to place no obstacle in the path of the  skilful Phre-
nologist, in his attempt  to ascertain the size of the brain,
by an  examination of the  head.   It  is not, I mean,
beyond the discernment of such a Phrenologist to dis-
criminate between cases, in which form and character
may be given to the  orbiter region by development of
brain,  or  irregularity of bone.   To  those who have
made themselves acquainted  with the subject, these are
but truisms.  If they  be otherwise  to Dr. Sewall,  he
will find the cause, provided he search for it, in his own
lack of information on the subject.
   Of  the  healthy skulls  of adult  Caucasians,  the
average thickness is about one fifth of an  inch.   And, 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.
85
except in a few inconsiderable points^  this is uniform
throughout the skull.   Here again, while I refer to the
works of Gall, Tiedeman, John Bell and other  distin-
guished anatomists for concurring testimony, as to the
thickness of crania, I appeal  to an  examination of
skulls themselves, as the only infallible test of the truth
of my statement.   And to such test I confidently  trust
it.   As a general rule, the  difference in  the thickness
of the  crania of different  adult individuals does not I
repeat vary more than from half a  line to a line  from
this  standard,  or  from one another, and  rarely so
much.   The crania of children  are  thinner, while, as
already mentioned, those  of persons advanced  in  life,
are  usually somewhat thicker and  harder.  Such are
the  facts which  nature, when the part is in a healthy
condition, steadily presents.  Let them be contrasted with
the counterfeit facts presented by Dr.  Sewall. And if that
gentleman can witness the  contrast  without shame and
confusion, to say nothing of the neverdying worm of re-
morse, I envy him neither his conscience,  nor his regard
for the approbation and esteem of the votaries of honour,
and the  lovers  of truth.
   His pamphlet contains seven engravings or lithographs
of skulls, running from plate II. to plate VIII. inclusive.
These, with a studied and  cool  duplicity, which might
be  well  called detestable, he has palmed on the public,
as a fair specimen of the average character of the hu-
man cranium, in respect to positive and relative thick-
ness, and to the dimensions of the frontal sinus.   Yet I
venture  to say that another group of seven such skulls,
he  has never seen.  Nor can he collect such another
8 
86         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED,  AND

perhaps in seven years' research.   I  am not myself
entirely unacquainted with human crania.  For twenty
years past I have been in the habit of examining care-
fully all I  could have access to, as  well in anatomical
museums as elsewhere.  And nothing even approaching
in character Dr. Sewall's seven conspirators have I been
able  to find.   I bestow  on them  that  ominous  and
odious name ;  because, by the agency of their employer,
they are  made to conspire against  truth and science,
conscience and every other praiseworthy  feeling.   Dr.
Sewall has collected and used them, on the principle
of suborning and bribing witnesses, or packing juries —
that he may derive from them false  testimony, and an
unrighteous decision.   And  he has succeeded.   His
seven plates are so many conscienceless  stratagems to
delude.  There is not among them  the representation
of a single natural average skull.  In point of thickness,
plate  VIII. comes nearest the truth.  But even in that
the thickness  is not correct, and the  frontal sinus is
vastly too large.  It is on account of its  deceptiveness
in the latter respect, that  Dr. Sewall has had that cra-
nium  delineated.  He wishes to impose on his readers
the groundless belief that sinuses so spacious frequently
occur; whereas it is doubtful  whether they occur in
one skull out  of every ten  millions ;  and  in  healthy
skulls they probably never occur, because, they are un-
natural.  I have seen them a few times in the skulls of
idiots, which are always irregular in some way, on ac-
count of the irregular development of their brains.  To
speak more definitely on this point.
  The reader is requested to bear in mind, that, as here- 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.         87
tofore stated, the average thickness of the human skull
is about the fifth  (/i«o-tenths) of an inch, and to com-
pare this with the  following admeasurements :
  The thickness of the skull, represented in plate II. is
about the  eighth of an inch; that  in  plate III. a little
more than three tenths of an inch ;  plate IV. about five
tenths;  plate V.  six tenths; VI. eight  tenths; VII. a
full inch or more;  VIII. thickness nearly natural,  but
frontal sinuses enormous.
  From  this representation, brief as  it is, the studied
and  reprehensible effort of Professor  Sewall to deceive
must be obvious to every one,   His professed object is
to give, in a series of plates, a fair and natural delinea-
tion of the average character of the human skull.  And
to effect this, he has had  executed drawings of seven
skulls, each of them in some way deformed  and unna-
tural; and most  of them bearing  indubitable marks of
disease.   The cranium  represented  in  plate VII. be-
longed to the  cabinet of  Spurzheim.  I saw and ex-
amined it both in Paris and Boston.   It is, if I remem-
ber correctly, the skull of a maniac.  But whether cor-
rect in this or not,  I am perfectly so  in stating, that, in
his lectures, Spurzheim exhibited it as a diseased skull.
And as such, it  must appear to every one acquainted
with anatomy — Dr. Sewall not excepted.  That gen-
tleman informs us, that  he procured from  Professor
Smith, of Baltimore, the skulls delineated in plates IV.
 V. and VI.  And I  doubt  not that Professor  Smith
 keeps them in his cabinet,  as  specimens certainly of
unnatural, and probably of diseased crania.  The bones
themselves may not be diseased.   But they are preter-
 naturally thickened, in consequence of derangement in 
88         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED,  AND

the viscus they enclosed.   Such  occurrences are fre-
quent in cases of long continued madness  and other
chronic cerebral affections.   The brain diminishes in
size and the  skull thickens ; changes  which had  evi-
dently taken  place in the brains and crania represented
by Dr. Sewall, in plates IV. V.  VI. and VII.  The
brains had been reduced in size by some morbid affec-
tion.   In consequence of this, the internal table of the
cranium had  retreated from  the external, to prevent the
production of a vacuum, and a greater amount of diploe
having been interposed, the whole had grown thicker.
In the fashionable language of the day,  a larger amount
of blood flowing to the bones of the  crania, they had
become hypertrophied.   I  have  several  specimens of
such  changes in  the  skulls of  maniacs.   Even Dr.
Sewall  himself has not the  hardihood  to proclaim his
plates a fair representation  of the average character of
the human cranium    No ;  when interrogated  on the
subject by his class, instead of a manly avowal or disa-
vowal, he plays the Jesuit, and equivocates in his reply.
The following are his  own words  on the subject:
   " You have asked, gentlemen, if the specimens of
crania delineated in the plates, were not extreme cases;
of irregular structure, and to be regarded  as exceptions
to the general rule ?   I have already stated,  that I pos-
sess skulls of every intermediate degree of thickness,
from  that of  the Waterman (plate II.  one eighth of an
inch thick) to the  cast of  Spurzheim;  and those, also,
which  exhibit the frontal  sinuses from the  size repre-
sented in plate VIII.  to those  which are scarcely per-
ceptible ;  and, by visiting the anatomical cabinets of out 
            ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         89

country, the same variations will be seen in abundance."
—pp. 52, 53.
  The first part of this extract, I repeat, is an equivoque
— a Jesuitical reply — " a non-committal," practised in-
deed by the timid and wiley politician; but which the
man of science should throw from him, as a stigma alike
on his character and calling.   Yet it may be true.  Pro-
fessor  Sewall may have the varieties  of crania which he
says he has.  But if so, they are not an accidental pos-
session.   They are  not,  I  mean, the product of pro-
miscuous acquisition.  They have been procured by the
research and selection of years.  And Dr. Sewall has not
hazarded, I say, nor will he hazard the groundless as-
sertion, that they are a  correct representation of the
average character of human crania in a natural condition.
Like the poet's witches, actuated by a spirit of moral cow-
ardice or duplicity, he has " paltered  about the matter in
a double sense ;" an act as inconsistent with manliness,
as with truth and conscience.   Bold, open deception is
less despicable than that which is covert and dastardly;
on  the same ground that mid-day robbery  is less con-
temptible than  mid-nighi  theft.  He whose timidity per-
mits him to sin only by halves, if not the most atrocious,
is the  most despised of sinners.
   The assertion  made  in  the  italicised clause  of the
extract is also  unfounded.  Such irregularities  of  cra-
nia are not to be  " seen  in abundance,"  in the  "  ana-
tomical cabinets of our  country."  And if they even
were,  the testimony borne by the fact, would avail Dr.
Sewall but  little.   Cabinets are made up  too much of
rarities — of things  curious more than  of things useful,
Hence a cranium remarkable for thickness, thinness, or
                         g* 
90         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
any  other  unusual characteristic, will be  preserved,
while dozens of common ones will  be thrown  away.
Such is our passion for novelty, and  deviations from
the usual course of things.
  When seriously examined in its character and bearings,
the conduct of Professor Sewall, in the composition and
publication of his " Two Lectures," constitutes a prob-
lem not easily solved.   The Professor is a practitioner
of medicine of some distinction,  in  the  capital  of the
nation ; as a man and  a member of society, I am told
he stands well;  his general associations are good, and
many of his personal ones of a high order ; to science
and letters  he makes no  ordinary pretensions ;  in his
usual deportment he affects great candour and fairness ;
and  I am  informed  that he is also a professor of reli-
gion.
   In  the  midst of these  circumstances,  each  one  of
which ought to serve as a bond, to connect him indisso-
lubly with truth  and honour, that, in  disregard of them
all, he should bring to bear on a philosophical  discus-
sion the intrigues  and stratagems of the  hustings and
the ballot  box, is in no small degree surprising; and,
were he a man of power, I might  well say alarming.  It
is a measure unsound  in principle, of hateful example,
subversive  of sincerity and uprightness,  and, as  far  as
its influence may extend, pernicious in  its effects.  To
be rendered duly sensible of the truth of this, we have
only to  suppose  the pursuit of a similar course by every
man of standing, and to look calmly on the issue.  But
on a spectacle so appalling it is impossible to look calm-
ly.  The world  would  be a pandemonium  sufficiently
tormenting to inflict expiatory punishment on its own 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.
91
deepest crimes.  Immeasurably worse  than the Dark
Ages, an age of falsehood and  its concomitants, would
prevail.  So far as his influence may extend, such is the
odious  tendency of Professor Sewall's  conduct.  It is
at war with all  that is  sacred in itself,  and valuable to
man.   If his conscience whisper peace to him, and his
reputation can  sustain itself under this trial, I know not
what can shake the latter,  or awaken to action the worm
of the  former.
   One extract  more from the " Two Lectures," and I
shall take leave of them forever.
   " But in order to render this part of the investigation
 the more satisfactory and conclusive, I have instituted
 a series of experiments, to  ascertain the exact amount
 of brain in the skull, compared with its external dimen-
 sions.  These experiments were made under the immedi-
 ate inspection,  and by the assistance of Thomas P. Jones
 of this city, and Professor Wm. Ruggles of the Columbi-
 an College ; gentlemen whose high  scientific character
 assures the utmost accuracy in the results.   I am much
 indebted to these gentlemen for the aid they have afford-
 ed me.   In the first series of experiments was ascer-
 tained,  the volume  of each skull, the brain  included.
 In  the second series, the volume of  the brain, or the
 capacity of the cerebral  cavity.
    "Then, in  order to render the difference in capacity
 more obvious, the volume  of each  skull, the  brain in-
 cluded, was reduced to the  dimensions of seventy fluid
 ounces.
    " The table shows the  result of these experiments, as
 extended to five of the skulls delineated in the plates. 
92         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND
                                       Vol. brain.
   Plate II.           70 oz.           56.23 oz.
        III.             "               51.72
        IV.             "               46.21
         V.             "               34.79
       VII.             "               25.33

   " In five adult skulls therefore, of the same external
dimensions, we have a difference in the amount of brains
between II. and III. of     .     .     4.50 oz.
        II. and IV.  "     .     .     10.01.
        II. and V.   "     •     .    21.43.
        II. and VII. "     .     .    31.89.
   "In this computation we have a difference in the vol-
ume of brain, contained in two  skulls of the same ex-
ternal dimensions, of 31.89 ;  something more than one
half.  These  experiments have been extended to a great
variety of crania, not here delineated;  which confirm
the above estimate,  and show that the external dimen-
sions of the  skull furnish no indication of  the amount
of the brain."
  This is another deliberate and unprincipled effort  in
Dr. Sewall to deceive those who are unversed in the
knowledge of the human brain.   Yet, with all his la-
boured insidiousness, he has presented  no shadow of
objection  to  the  principles of Phrenology.   That he
possesses two skulls of the same volume — say 70 oz.,
containing brains, the one of 56.22 oz., and  the other
of 25.23 oz.  weight, may be true.  It may be  also true,
that  he possesses the intermediate sized  skulls and
brains to which he refers.   But his object is trickishly
to palm on the public the belief, that these exhibit an 
ANTIPHRENOLOGY  UNMASKED.
93
average of  the comparative difference of size in the
skulls and brains of healthy adult individuals ; and that is
not true.  He knows it is not. Nor will he hazard the rem-
nant of his reputation (if any remnant he possesses) by
openly pronouncing it true.
  The average weight of the brain of the human  Cau-
casian adult, when fairly developed, and  in  a  healthy
condition, is, I think, about threepounds and three or four
ounces.  Very few exceed this  more than from two to
four ounces.   If my recollection serve me, the brain of
Cuvier weighed four pounds  and nine or  ten ounces ;
and  the brain of Byron about  the same; so did that of
Dupuytren—and they were all of extra size.    But never
has there been seen the healthy and well developed brain
of a full sized Caucasian adult, which weighed but little
more than a pound and a half!   In attempting the estab-
lishment of an opposite opinion, our author, I repeat, is
as sensible as I am that he is  violating truth — else his
ignorance on the subject is worse than idiotic!
   To  show the fallacy and futility of the efforts of Dr.
Sewall, and all other antiphrenologists, to make  it ap-
pear, that the  size and form of the human brain cannot
be  discovered by an  examination of the human  head,
let the following experiment be made.
   Let fifty skulls be taken promiscuously and  bisected
__some perpendicularly, and others horizontally. In the
sections  thus produced, as moulds, make casts  of bees-
wax or plaster.    This being done, extract  the  casts,
and lay them and the  cranial sections, in which they
were  formed, disorderly on a table.  In this  state of
location, let them be  examined even  by a boy of ten
or twelve years old, of common intellect, who  was not 
94         PHRENOLOGY  VINDICATED,  AND

present at  the casting, and who has never seen  them
before; and he  will point  immediately to  the  section
of skull, in which each or  any given  cast was formed.
This  experiment I have had made; the issue  was as
just  stated; and I deem it conclusive.   And so  did
every one who witnessed it.   And  so would Dr. Sewall
were the scales  off his eyes.
  Once more.   In one respect, plate VIII. is designed
to practise, and actually does practise on those who are
unversed in anatomy, as  gross a deception, as either of
the others.    Though  it  represents  the bones of the
cranium of nearly their natural thickness in most places,
it makes them more than usually uneven in their thick-
ness ;  and  the frontal sinuses exhibited in the plate, are
eminently unnatural.   They  are four or five limes  the
ordinary size of those cavities.   Certainly they are by
far the largest that I have ever seen.   Dr. Sewall  will
not have the effrontery to pronounce them natural.   He
knows them to be enormous — far, very far beyond the
regular and healthy average size.  And that is  the rea-
son why he has  had them here depicted.   His object
in having the plate prepared was deception — not in-
struction — the  propagation  of error — not  of truth.
The  stratagem  is dishonourable,  not to say detestable
— worthy only of the unhallowed cause it is intended
to subserve.
  I have never  seen frontal  sinuses at all  approaching
the dimensions  of those represented in plate VIII. ex-
cept in the crania of idiots, madmen,  and perons far
advanced in years.   In the first of these  the cerebral
organs  lying immediately  behind the  internal orbiter
plate, had been  originally very small, or entirely  want- 
           ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         95

ing; while in the two last those organs had been dimin-
ished by absorption ; in the  former from disease, and in
the latter, as one of the frequent, perhaps usual infirmities
of old age.   But I repeat, that  in  adult  Caucasians,
healthy and in  the prime of life, sinuses of such di-
mensions do  not exist in  one  cranium in ten  mill-
ions.
   But I must push this protracted and unpleasant dis-
cussion no farther.   Yet protracted  as it is,  and multi-
plied and various as are the topics embraced in it, many
gross errors and  scandalous faults in  the " Two Lec-
tures "  of Professor  Sewall remain  untouched.    No
matter.   Other  pens will demolish some of them ; and
time, with truth  and science as his auxiliaries, will over-
throw and trample on the rest.   As  I take  neither pride
nor  pleasure  therefore,  in being their  executioner, I
leave them to perish under these blighting influences, or
of their own accord, in the deceptiveness of their spirit,
the trashiness of their matter, and the feebleness of the
composition,  which has  ushered them  to the world.
Nor, in the wreck that awaits them, can they fail to
bury under their ruins whatever of  respectability as a
writer their author had  attained.   That they will  bring
down on him this full measure of retributive justice, is
as certain as that we  live under  a dispensation, where,
ultimately, truth is destined to triumph over falsehood,
purity over turpitude, and right over wrong.   That Dr.
Sewall may receive a foretaste of the manner in which
his reputation will be dealt with, by  his long-incubated
brood,  I refer him to Milton's family-picture of Satan,
Death, and Sin.  He will  there see depicted, in suita- 
96         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED, AND

ble colours, strength, and hatefulness, the  issue  of a
studied and stubborn infringement of the commands of
Heaven.   And no trait in the appalling character of
the  fallen arch-angel,  was  more sinful  in itself,  or
more odious  in the eye  of his offended Creator,  than
his hostility to truth, which procured for him the appel-
lation of the " Father of Lies."   The Doctor I say
may herein see and contemplate the image  of his own
conduct, in the preparation and publication of his " Two
Lectures," and the reward that awaits it.
  Shall I be told again, as I have been on former occa-
sions,  in  relation to some  of my efforts to vindicate
phrenology and phrenologists  from slander,  abuse, and
false  imputations, that I am not sufficiently calm  and
courteous in the tone of my reply ?  That I give to  feel-
ing too loose a rein, and  indulge in terms of resent-
ment and reprobation toward my antagonists, to such
an extent, as to awaken public sympathy in their favour,
excite disapproval  and  reaction against myself,  and
thus do an injury to the cause I am defending ?  Should
such  a charge be  preferred  against me,  whether by
friend or foe, my reply is brief.  The accusation is un-
just.  Writers, who are themselves discourteous and
insulting,  slanderous in their reports, false  in their re-
presentations, and insidious in the opinions and expla-
nations they impute to others — who, in  fact, adopt all
means but fair ones, to achieve their own purposes, and
throw disrepute on their opponents — such writers have
no  claim  on courtesy.   Not  only would the  boon be
gratuitous : it would be wasted on them.  Neither are
they worthy of it, nor would they place on it the estimate 
           ANTIPHRENOLOGY UNMASKED.         97

to which it is entitled.   And things that are valuable
should not be prodigally and uselessly lavished on those
who deserve them not;  and who do  not know  their
value.   The act would  be not only incongruous, but
injudicious and injurious.   The moral gratuity thus be-
stowed would be ascribed by the receiver to timidity,
affectation, insincerity, or some other discreditable mo-
tive in the  giver.  So  unworthy would be the return
made for courteous and respectful  replies and comments,
by the description of writers just  referred to.  And, as
far as  their works have fallen under my notice, of this
description is every antiphrenological  writer, from the
first that  showered  the  anathemas of the  church on
Gall in Vienna, in 1796,  through the long and wrathful,
calumnious,  malignant,  and denouncing  train, ending
with Professor Sewall, in 1837 — forty-one belligerent
years.  And the Professor himself shows, in his lectures,
as little of becoming respect and observance, as his pre-
decessors.   He has the audacity to impute to the whole
phrenological corps, a " departure from truth and com-
mon sense;" and mendaciously  to impute to them al-
legations and explanations so consummately silly, that,
if true, they  would  disgrace even  the  dullest and most
illiterate school-boy.  From me, therefore, as a phreno-
logist  and a  lover of truth, he  deserves no courtesy in
reply;  nor  shall he  receive any, until  he recalls and
makes amends for his slanders and misstatements against
the school of philosophy  to which I belong, and the sci-
ence whose  doctrines I have endeavoured to defend.
   Personally,  I entertain toward Professor  Sewall "no
resentment."   Nor do I toward his opinions.   He has
                          9 
98         PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED,  AND
the same right to his opinions that I have to mine. But
his manner and means, in his attempts to propagate them,
I do resent.  They  are steeped in insincerity, and in-
stinct with a desire to disparage and deceive — to dis-
parage his opponents, and deceive his readers.   They
are, therefore, immoral and vicious.  And  vice and im-
morality of every description ought to be resented.  And
the resentment should be active.  It should awaken and
array every suitable power of the mind against the evils
that  excite it, until  they are beaten down and  extin-
guished.  And by cool reason, bland persuasion,  and
calm  remonstrance,  that effect is  rarely,  if ever, pro-
duced.   The  evils in questi&n are set  afloat and sus-
tained by passion of some kind ; if not by the resentful
and  open, by the concealed and insidious, which are
immeasurably worse.   Passion,  therefore,  must en-
counter passion, as  steel  meets steel, else the conflict
is unequal.
   The  man who attempts to propagate false opinions
by unfair and immoral means, must have his conduct
rendered  discomfortable, injurious, and openly discred-
itable to him, otherwise he will obstinately persist in it.
And when he becomes so contumacious an offender as
the antiphrenologists are,  he deserves to be crushed, if
he cannot be reformed ; or suspended on a  moral gibbet,
and made an object at once of abhorrence and mockery.
   The difference between the efficiency and success of
a cool, reasoning, and persuasive reformer of abuses,
and eraser of errors and false doctrines, and an impas-
 sioned  one, is clearly seen in  the different characters,
 modes  of action, and degrees of success, of Luther and 
ANTIPHRRNOI.OGY UNMASKED.          99
Melancthon.   Had the former of these been no more
impetuous, warm, and resentful, than the latter, the Re-
formation would not have been achieved by them.  In
the physical economy of our globe, the bolt from the
thunder-cloud is just as necessary, on suitable occasions,
as the rain that distills from it, or as the sunbeam from
the sky.   And, in its moral economy, the gleam of re-
sentment, properly directed,  is often much more effec-
tive in the prevention or removal of mischief, and the
achievement of good, than the  light  of reason, or the
balm  of persuasion — or than the union of both.  Such
are my sentiments; such has been my conduct as  a
phrenologist;  and such shall be my future course in the
same capacity,  as often  as  any one worthy  of  notice
shall  cross my path, as rudely and offensively as Pro-
fessor Sewall has done.
   On the contrary, let the Professor, or any other wri-
ter, call in question the truth of Phrenology, and discuss
the subject with the candour, calmness, and  courtesy,
which should  always characterize a scientific  contro-
versy ; and, if I reply to him at all, my language, matter,
and manner, shall be marked with a corresponding ex-
emption from passion and reproach ; and, as far as I can
render it so,  from every other exceptionable  quality.
Fact  and  plainness, courtesy and argument, shall be
alone employed.   But they shall be employed with
whatever of force and efficiency I can bring to the con-
test.   I  shall  only add, that if, in  preparing this vindi-
cation of a favourite science, a degree of resentment has
been  frequently awakened in me, by the contemplation
of what I deemed an act to be  reprobated, or an impu- 
100          PHRENOLOGY VINDICATED.

tation to be repelled, that state of mind has never been
such, as to render me forgetful of my solemn obligation
on no account intentionally to violate or neglect truth to-
ward science, nor justice toward man.  To the strictest
scrutiny, therefore, I cheerfully submit the essay I have
written, and hold myself responsible for all it contains. 
APPENDIX.
                 Reese's Humbug.

It was  my intention  before I had seen  the  work, to
give, in this " Vindication," a brief analysis accompa-
nied by an argumentative refutation, of  an  attack on
Phrenology,  in  the  " Humbugs  of New-York, "  by
" David Meredith Reese, M.  D., "  of  that city.  A
glance at  the production however has  dissuaded me
from my  purpose.   I cannot descend to the level of
such a publication, and reply to it with argument, or in
any other way that might imply toward  it the slightest
degree of respect; or which might give  it even imagi-
nary weight.  The only sentiments it can awaken in
my mind  are pity for its weakness and  puerility, con-
tempt for its  conceitedness, and abhorrence for its men-
dacity.  It is throughout a feeble, but coarse and  mali-
cious pasquinade, and attempt at ridicule, instead of a
fair and  manly discussion.   Though its author  cants
about morality and religion, it breathes, from beginning
to end,  a spirit  as immoral and  unchristian, because
mendacious  and abusive, as  it is insolent and discour-
teous.   And in neither of these qualities  is it surpassed
by the vilest political  tirades of the day.
   If the author of the " New-York Humbugs " either
possesses  now, or aims  at possessing  hereafter,  the
slightest standing  in  science and letters, it  is surpri-
sing that  even  folly itself, however rank and wanton,
should have permitted in him an act so irrevocably sue-
                         9* 
102
APPENDIX.
cedal to his reputation, as that he has perpetrated by his
attack on Phrenology.  Should he even in time to come
compose something true  in science, and not entirely
discreditable in literature, still  will  " Chapter III. " of
his " New-York Humbugs " cling to his escutcheon, a
mark for the curling lip, and " slow, unmoving finger
of scorn " to point and mock at, and for detestation to
knit his withering  brow  at,  which neither time  nor
change can  ever efface.  Nor is our author's emptying
out of  abuse and misrepresentation  condemnable only,
on account  of its  violation of truth and decorum.  It
is but the dregs, feculent, time-worn and stale, of what
scores  of his predecessors had poured out before him.
It contains not a single thought, nor even perhaps a form
of expression,  which does  not  disgrace the pages of
many antecedent attacks on Phrenology.  It possesses
not therefore  even the humble  merit of originality in
calumny, or novelty in falsehood.  Though, as already
stated, I cannot condescend  to reply by argument to
such an imbecile, crude, and  virulent  article, it is  due
perhaps to the reader, as well as  to myself, that I should
illustrate and confirm the  foregoing strictures, by a  few
quotations from it.
   Our author commences  " Chapter III. " with  an  un-
truth, in asserting that Phrenology  and Animal Mag-
netism are similar in character ; that the same forms of
mind are particularly prone to  a belief in both ; and  that
these forms  are necessarily imaginative, fanatical,  and
inclined  to  the marvellous.  The  following  are  his
words.
   This " science, falsely so  called, (Phrenology)  is a
among the prevalent and prevailing humbugs of the day, 
APPENDIX.
103
 and it is placed next to animal magnetism,  in the pre-
 sent volume, because of its claiming to be of similar an-
 tiquity, and of kindred character  too ; since both pro-
jess to be eminently philosophical.   The same individuals
 who embrace the one, very frequently become the willing
 disciples of the other."
   This I say is untrue.   There are  few, if any persons
 living who seriously profess the "philosophy" of Ani-
 mal Magnetism.  The number of those who even prac-
 tise the art of it is very small; and  respecting the phi-
 losophy or reason of it, nearly all, I believe, are silent; or,
 stronger still, acknowledge their ignorance.   Assuredly
 I  have never heard an individual  attempting to explain
 it, except by attributing it to action on  the imagination;
 which comes much nearer to a confession of ignorance,
 than to a profession of philosophy.  Nor do I know of
 any respectable publication  on the  subject.  No one,
 as far as I am informed, has ever pretended to say, either
 verbally or in print, why, or how any magnetic  or gal-
 vanic influence is excited by the process pursued; or
 why or how, if it  even were excited, it  could produce
 the effects ascribed to the art.   And, that " the same
 individuals  who embrace  Phrenology are more  prone
 than others to a belief in  Animal Magnetism," is a po-
 sition as unfounded as imagination can conceive.  It is
 an empty and groundless  assertion of our author, made
 for  the purpose of carrying a point, under a reckless-
 ness whether it be true or false.
   As far as  my information extends, Spurzheim was the
 only distinguished Phrenologist,  who has expressed a
 belief in  Animal Magnetism.  And his belief in it was
 exceedingly limited.  It was a  good-natured friendli- 
104
APPENDIX.
ness toward it, and nothing more.  To employ a com-
mon form of expression, he fancied that there was " some-
thing of truth in it;" but he did not push his views to
a fourth part of the extent  with many others.  Nor did
he ever, I believe, attempt  to practise the art.
   Gall, on the contrary,  was no Animal  Magnetist.
Nor was he in any degree an imaginative man.   On
the contrary, he was more  sternly a votary of Jacts and
fair inferences, than almost any other man I have ever
known.  In stores of analogy also he was  peculiarly
opulent.  His conversation was enriched by them to a
degree that rendered it as delightful as it was instructive.
But they were never visionary, far-fetched, or laboured
analogies.  They came to him unsought for, and were
straight to  the point — led directly from the  known to
the unknown — from  the  simple  to the complex — or
from the certain to the probable.   He did nothing more-
over in the cloister or  the closet.   His sphere was  the
wide and open field of nature.   And there he imagined
nothing.  He observed accurately, reflected profoundly,
made correct deductions, and thus  studied, learnt,  and
represented things as they were.
   The two Combes again, Elliotson, Connolly, Brous-
sais, Otto  of  Copenhagen, and scores of  other  able
Phrenologists I could name, are no believers in Animal
Magnetism.   They have no fanaticism, I mean, on the
subject.   Nor are  they indeed fanatics in any thing;
but men of keen and practised observation, cool delibe-
ration,  sound judgment,  and untiring  perseverance.
And such are the men best fitted to  make discoveries,
improve science, and benefit their race.
   Were it admissible in me to speak of myself, I might 
APPENDIX.
105
 correctly say, that, within the last eighteen years, I have
 been instrumental in making several thousand converts
 to Phrenology.   And I  am inclined to believe, that
 there was not an Animal Magnetist in the number.
   Let it  not be understood, however, from these  re-
 marks, that I am a positive condemner of Animal Mag-
 netism.   Far from it.   I  have not hitherto studied  the
 subject with sufficient closeness, and to a sufficient ex-
 tent, to have matured my opinion, and prepared myself
 to pronounce on it.   And I  never  form  an opinion of
 any thing, whether light and simple, or weighty and com-
 plex, in anticipation of the necessary inquiry.   Had  the
 author of the "Humbugs" acted with like caution, fair-
 ness, and justice, that  "clap-trap" work would have
 been yet unwritten.  For, to the eye and  understanding
 of every man of discernment, it " stands  confessed " a
 deliberate clap-trap — a bait for popularity, and nothing
 more.  It is a lure — I must add, a very shallow and
 culpable,  yet not an  implausible  one — to what  the
 writer has so elegantly and classically denominated  the
 "gullibility of human nature."
  For the prolongation of what he terms the " tempo-
 rary existence "  of Phrenology, our author assigns three
 reasons.   Of these, one is,
  "  The array of great names, including those of learned
 and  scientific men, who  have cultivated  and taught it,
 and  dignified it by  the  misnomer of philosophy  and
 science."
  If then Phrenology be such a source of rank impos-
ture  and palpable delusion, and so senseless in itself, as
the writer asserts it to be, will he favour us with a good
reason, why so  many great, enlightened,  and scientific 
106
APPENDIX.
men have blindly attached themselves to it, and given
it their support; while he himself, who is certainly dis-
tinguished by  neither talent, science nor learning, has
penetrated its  fallacies, and detected in it its lurking
and portentous spirit of mischief!  Is he reared up, in-
spired, and  fitted for the purpose,* of enlightening his
race,  and protecting them from the deadly contamina-
tion, and unpardonable sin of this hydra of evil ?  In
" humbler  English," does be  fancy himself some  re-
doubtable personage, destinedjo do feats,  at the sight
or even mention of which, the " world shall grow pale ?"
May we  judge from the tone  in which the gentleman
writes, these interrogatories must be answered affirma-
atively.  Hence-forward then,  let the frog  in the fable
be forgotten, and the author of the " New-York Hum-
bugs," in conflict with Phrenologists, be substituted in
its place !   A few remarks more ; and I shall dismiss
from  my thoughts both the subject and its source.
  Among the numerous gross and  unqualified false-
hoods which crowd the pages  of Dr.  Reese's " Hum-
bugs," the  following are alone sufficient to consign to
disgrace the work and its author.
  " The organs (of the  brain) should all  be double or
none, while  the  science lays  down  a number of single
organs." p. 71.
  Will Dr.  Reese favour the public with the names of
his " single " phrenological organs ?  I call them " his,"
because they do not belong to  either  the science or its
advocates.   Their organs  are all " double,"  as the Doc-
tor declares  they ought to be.   Whether the gentleman
made this groundless  statement from ignorance or  a
spirit of carelessness, or mendacity,  I neither know, nor 
APPENDIX.
107
Care.   My concern is  not  with its source, but its cha-
racter.  And I pronounce it untrue.   The writer must
himself moreover know it to be so.
  Again. " And that the science of Christianity, and the
book of Revelation are entirely at variance with Phre-
nology, needs no other proof than the fact every where
apparent,  that all the hosts of infidelity are marshalled
in its favour, while its originators, propagators, and pro-
minent teachers, from Gall  and Spurzheim down  to
Amariah Brigham, M.  D., have been either skeptics  or
free  thinkers, Deists  or  Alheists, neologists  or mate-
rialists." p. 72.
  This is a notorious  falsehood, and must be  so pro-
nounced.   The reader I trust will pardon me for the use
of such strong and harsh expressions, which may be of-
fensive to  the ear of refinement and delicacy.   Though
I may  acknowledge the impropriety of them as coming
from me, and as being employed in a scientific discus-
sion ; I cannot admit the incorrectness  of their appli-
cation.
  Neither on principle, nor in fact, have phrenology and
infidelity the  slightest  native affinity,  or  essential con-
nexion.  Free  thinkers,  skeptics,  and deists,  have no
more predilection for phrenology, than other men.  On
the contrary, very many of them are actively hostile  to
the science; while numbers of the most pious of the
clergy, and others might  be named, who are in the
ranks of its ardent admirers and advocates.
  Another flagrant untruth.
  " And here  they (phrenologists) are taught  to  regard
the lascivious man to be  prompted  by  the  organ  of
Amativeness, formed by the muscles of the neck." p. 76. 
108
APPENDIX.
   The organ of Amativeness " formed  by the  muscles
of the neck!"  If Dr. Reese has  ever read a single
book on phrenology, he knows this to be false;  and in
making the  statement,  he has deliberately and inten-
tionally  violated  truth, and  therefore  outraged  re-
ligion, of which, I am told, he makes burning professions.
He even stands self-convicted of falsehood in this case,
by the  following passages in his own work:
   " The doctrines of phrenology may be briefly stated
to be the following :
   " 1st. The brain is  the  organ of  all our instincts —
propensities — sentiments — aptitudes — intellectual fa-
culties — and moral qualities." p. 64.
   Now, the strongest of our " instincts" or " propensi-
ties " is physical love.   Yet here, in  direct contradiction
of what he had previously stated, the miserable blun-
derer declares its  organ to be, not  any portion of the
brain, but the "muscles of the neck!"  To be  always
consistent, says the proverb,  " liars should have good
memories!"    The application  of this,  in  the  present
case, we leave to others — to  our author himself, if the
task  has any attractions for him.
   Speaking of Gall's  discovery of  the  organ of Lan-
guage,  our author asserts, that  the  illustrious German
" located that organ in the eyes," and deemed its strength
and perfection to correspond to the size and structure of
those  orbs.    " All  phrenologists," says he again," agree
in attributing the faculty of speech, and the power of ar-
ticulating sounds, to the eyes."
   An untruth more  deliberate and flagitious than this,
has never been uttered.  That Dr. Gall discovered and
pronounced,  that ready and great linguists had promi- 
APPENDIX.
109
ntnt eyes, is true.  But it is equally so, that he also pro-
nounced, that the organ  or source of language was not
in the eyes ; but in that portion of brain which lies 6c-
hind, and a little above them.  That point, therefore, if
unusually developed, necessarily protruded the eyes for-
ward, and  somewhat downward.  Hence  their promi-
nence, which Gall declared to be an external manifes-
tation of the internal cerebral organ.   But, with neither
the " size " nor " structure " of the eye has the discov-
erer alleged the power of language to have the shadow
of connexion, as  far as cause and effect are concerned.
The entire tale, therefore, is but a profligate fabrication
by Dr.  Reese, devised and  propagated for the selfish
and vain  purpose of inflating his own popularity, pro-
moting his pecuniary interests, and bringing discredit on
a science which he does not understand.
   In his attempt to arraign phrenology before the pub-
lic on  the  odious and fatal charge of immorality and ir-
religion, Dr. Reese is guilty of as unprincipled and ne-
farious a distortion of facts, and perversion  of argument,
as ever disgraced the lips  of a false witness or accuser,
or unveiled the turpitude of a venal informer.   The fol-
lowing is a specimen of the malignant balderdash, which
he distils on this subject from his calumnious pen.
   " They (the phrenologists) tell us, that this disposition
which loves what is astonishing, mysterious, or miracu-
lous, is the immediate result of a particular organiza-
tion ; and it would be as unjust to accuse those endowed
with it. of imposture, as  it would be to censure poets for
embodying and personifying their ideas;  for  they  are
only the slaves of a too  energetic action of one part of
the brain.   If this be  not  sublimated impiety, material-
                        10 
110
APPENDIX.
ism, and fatalism, we know not where these character-
istics are to be found;  and that  such sentiments anni-
hilate all moral distinctions between truth and falsehood,
vice and  virtue, is  too obvious to need  comment."
Again :
  " The moral aspect of phrenological doctrines is, that,
however, which renders the humbug the most mischiev-
ous and deplorable.  Multitudes go to the science for
the purpose of easing a loaded conscience, by learning
that their  delinquencies and views  are  constitutional,
and depending wholly  on organization.   Such find a
false peace — an imaginary comfort in the doctrine, that
virtue and vice are alike the result of organs  implanted
by  the  Creator,  and thus persuade themselves  into the
disbelief of human accountability.  *****
   " Hence, a man is religious or otherwise, by reason
of a physical necessity, since the prominence, or the de-
pression of the top of the  head, where  the organs of
Veneration, Theosophy, and Marvellousness are located,
must irresistibly result in one  or the  other character."
   On this  vile and offensive outpouring of ignorance
and prejudice, mendaciousness and malice, (for they are
all  concerned in the production,) my comment shall be
brief.   The charges contained in it have  nothing new in
them, and do not therefore  belong to the author of the
" Humbugs."   They are the property of the fire-and-
faggot guerilla party, whose standard he has joined ; and
are as  old as the crusade,  waged against Phrenology,
in  the  last years of the last century, by the fanatics of
Vienna, and continued by their auxiliaries, down to the
present day,  under the influence of a spirit of bigotry
and injustice, falsehood and vindictiveness, that has no 
APPENDIX.
Ill
parallel in modern times.   Or if it has any, it is in the
case of Gallileo, who was placed under  the ban and
discipline of the church, and threatened with the tortures
of the  inquisition itself, on account of his sublime dis-
coveries in astronomy.   Nor can it be held doubtful,
that those who  now  pursue  an inquisitorial process
against character and opinion, would, in the seventeenth
century, have done the same  against life and person.
It is times  and manners, not  bigots and  fanatics, that
have undergone a change.   In the narrow minds and
ruthless tempers of many pretenders to piety and Chris-
tianity, the  inquisition still exists.    Give them sway,
and they will re-erect it in  the dungeon.   And the ad-
vocates of Phrenology would be its first victims; be-
cause, in the discovery and diffusion of liberal science,
they are in the lead.
   Did not other considerations forbid the  measure, nei-
ther time nor space permits me at present  to reply to the
charges of materialism and  fatalism, immorality and
impiety, preferred  against Phrenology,  by those  who
are ignorant of it, or hostile to it through the influence
of sinister motives.  For the science has but two class-
es of opponents ;  those who have never  studied it, and
do not therefore understand it; and those who feel them-
selves in  some way personally interested in its refuta-
tion and overthrow.   And they have been already scores
of times answered to  the satisfaction of all such as are
actuated by candour, amenable to reason, and the pos-
 sessors of common sense.  To repeat the arguments,
therefore,  in  defence of the  science,  on  the  present
 occasion, would  be altogether superfluous in me.
    Let not the author  of the " Humbugs" however, 
112
APPENDIX.
imagine that I  have any disposition to decline a con-
test, of a  becoming and beneficial character, in behalf
of Phrenology, should any thing occur to render it ne-
cessary.    Though no professed knight-errant in the
cause, yet on one condition I will  cheerfully break a
lance with any writer, whose name and standing entitle
him to a meeting.   And the condition, which is an hon-
ourable one,  is as  follows:   The champion must de-
port himself  with knightly courtesy, bear truth on his
banner, and present in the tourney some new ground of
challenge — I mean some new charge against the sound-
ness and merits of the science.   In that case he  shall
be met in a corresponding style of courtesy and respect-
fulness.   Not otherwise.   To no charge  or challenge,
stained with untruth, stale  and trashy in its character, or
dictated by a spirit of bigotry or fanaticism, invective or
abuse, will an answer be  returned.    And of such un-
manly and unchristian description is every imputation,
by which  phrenology  has  been hitherto assailed.   By
neither Justice nor truth, magnanimity nor decency, nor
by the slightest discoverable  wish  to benefit science,
or promote the true interests of the human family, has
even  one  of  them been characterized.   Nor has any
of the assaults  which Phrenology has sustained, com-
mitted a more profligate outrage on truth and manliness,
morality and religion, than Dr. Reese's Humbug.
  I shall only add, that one of my motives for noticing
the "New-York Humbugs" in this place,  is, that their
rude and discourteous author may find himself associa-
ted in recompense  with the author of the  " Two Lec-
tures," with whom he has asociated himself in a plot
against science.   For thus associated the two  writers 
APPENDIX.
113
are,  in bestowing encomiums on each other's produc-
tions, and in that way endeavouring to extend their cir-
culation, and give weight to their matter.  I have thought
proper therefore, to impale them both on the two horns
of the same dilemma, that,  as they have been platonicly
united in  their lives and labours, they may  not, in the
fitness of their reward, be divided.
10* 
NOTE.
 The  frontispiece plate is  designed to exhibit a fair
 average of the thickness of the human  skull, especially
 that of the Caucasian race, in healthy individuals in the
 prime of life.   And  no pains have been spared, in ex-
 amination and comparison, to render the view accurate.
   At different periods of life, and in different states of
 health, the condition of the cranium, in these respects,
 varies.  In childhood the  skull is thin, and the frontal
 sinuses so small,  as to be  scarcely perceptible.   In
 adult life, the  sinuses are more developed, and the skull
 is thicker.  Still however, in persons who are healthy,
 and have never suffered  from protracted affections of
 the head, their average does not exceed that represent-
 ed  in the plate.   I doubt whether the average of the
 sinuses equals it.   Those cavities furnish therefore, as
 every one must perceive, no serious  impediment to tho
 detection of the  development  of the brain in that re-
 gion.
  In advanced age the condition  of these parts is differ-
 ent.   So it is  in protracted insanity, and other chronic
cerebral affections.  In these cases the brain diminishes
in size, the skull  becomes thicker, and the  frontal si-
nuses more capacious.   The causes of these changes
need  not be mentioned.   By  all well-informed physi-
ologists they are sufficiently understood. 
PREFATORY  NOTE.
This is the discourse, in which the Trustees of Tran-
sylvania University charge Dr. Caldwell with the design
of delineating the character of Dr. Dudley.   On this
point two or three questions may be fitly asked.
  Would any one draw such pictures of moral deformity
as the discourse contains, with a view to their being
considered the likenesses of honest and honourable men?
or would any one  of discernment  apply them to such
men ?   The application excites a strong suspicion that
a likeness existed.
   Suppose  Dr. Caldwell had  drawn abstract pictures
as remarkable for piety and rectitude, and as free from
duplicity and guile,  as  Fenelon,  Hervy,  or  the late
Bishop White, would any person have pronounced them
likenesses  of the same man,  for whom  the pictures he
drew were  supposed to be intended ?  These questions
are put.   The public will  answer them, every one for
himself.
   The discourse is  printed verbatim as it was delivered ;
certain portions of it that were not delivered, on account
of its length, being in italics.   During its delivery, Dr.
Caldwell did not direct toward Dr. Dudley a single look
or gesture.   If the audience therefore,  or any of them* 
116
PREFATORY  NOTE.
applied the  pictures to that gentleman,  they were in-
duced to do so, not by the manner of the speaker, but by
the matter of the  speech.   In a word, they made the
application on account of the likeness which they, from
some cause, perceived or fancied.
  If there be blame in the case therefore, Dr. Caldwell
feels that it cannot justly fall on him.   The fault lies in
being a man addicted to falsehood, not in delineating
one.  We have fallen on evil times, indeed, if the busi-
ness of life be,  not to have vice " undone," but to keep
it "unknown;" as  was  once,  we are told, the  rule in
Venice. 
                THOUGHTS
                       ON THE

  PHRENOLOGY  OF  FALSEHOOD
                        AND
         ITS  KINDRED  VICES.

A VALEDICTORY  ADDRESS,  TO  THE MEDICAL GRADUATES  IN
  TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY; DELIVERED MARCH 15, 1837,  BI
  CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D.

GENTLEMEN  GRADUATES :

     When one of the sages of Greece was asked  by
an Athenian youth, what were the choicest elements of
the  human character, and  the brightest ornaments of
human  nature, he replied,  " a regard  for  truth,
JUSTICE TOWARD MEN, AND  PIETY TOWARD THE GODS."
  In accordance with this  answer are  the spirit and
tenour of every precept and point of  doctrine of the
christian religion, that bears either directly or indirectly
on the subject.  In like accordance are the tenets and
practice  of every distinguished teacher and  pattern of
morals,  whose  history is  known  to  us.   And  in a
corresponding  strain does  one  of the most accom-
plished judges of man deliver himself,  when he ex-
claims :
" A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod ;
An honest man's the noblest work of God." 
118     THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

  But in confirmation of this maxim in morals, it is not
necessary to refer to writings and  opinions either an-
cient or modern, sacred or  profane;  nor to any other
form of evidence from without.   The  truth of  it is
sustained by a witness within ourselves, whose testimony
no infidel will reject, no casuist make a subject of cavil,
nor skeptic of doubt.  It is written on the constitution
of man, in characters which  can be neither erased,
misinterpreted,  nor  concealed.   We feel  instinctive-
ly, and  intuitively recognise  the  surpassing  beauty,
sacredness,  and  value, of the  qualities  embraced in
the  reply of the sage.   And  in proportion to the
amount and  purity of those qualities, which  our  con-
sciences tells us  we ourselves possess,  are the  com-
placency and satisfaction  with which we contemplate
our  condition, and the actual degree  of our self-estima-
tion.  No man, however lofty his  rank,  and confident
his bearing in his intercourse with the world, or what-
ever show of respect he may receive from his adherents
and  followers, can stand well in his own esteem,  if he
feels himself deficient, in those bright and glorious attri-
butes  of character — if he feels that  he  is wanting in
truth  and  its concomitants,  the  shield  and  buckler
against the stings and arrows of an  offended conscience
— or rather that which keeps the conscience free from
offence.  He may for a time impose on  the public, and
even make  an effort   to blindfold himself.  But  the
struggle is vain;  and  failure is certain.  In his dark
and  lonely hours, when sleep has shed his dews on the
eyelids of honesty, he is haunted by the spectre of his
own degradation ; and sooner or later his masquerade
closes, and he appears to the eye of general scorn, the
artificial and miserable thing that he is. 
        FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES.     119

  It is obvious then that truth and fidelity are recom-
mended alike by a constitutional instinct in ourselves,
by the ripest experience and wisdom of earth, and by all
we  know of the approval of Heaven, as of paramount
importance, as well to the honour, as to the interests of
our race.  Of this also the converse is true.  By the
same instinct and high authority the practice of falsehood,
in  all its  modifications — open  lying,  theft,  slander,
swindling  and overreaching,  duplicity  in action and
words,  perjury, prevarication,  and treachery,  are  de-
nounced as deep and nefarious vices,  consigned to in-
famy, and  doomed to punishment.
   I am aware of having here grouped, under the head
of falsehood, a number  of crimes which are not usually
regarded as  of the same kind, or as springing in any
decree  from  a common, or even perhaps from a kindred
source.  I do not however doubt of being able to con-
vince you that the case is otherwise — that they all
arise in part from the same root, and  therefore partake
of a  common nature—that they are convertible  into
 each other—that  he who, under one form  of tempta-
 tion, will  equivocate, prevaricate, and  shuffle, practise
calumny and duplicity, make faithless  professions, and
 debase his being by  deliberate falsehood — the wretch
 I say, who will thus outrage truth and manliness, under
 one temptation, will, under another, cheat, steal, commit
 perjury and  forgery, and play the traitor, and  even the
 murderer ! — And principle, as well as experience, con-
 firms the  position.   " He that will lie, will steal," is a
 phrase so  strictly conformable to observation, that it has
 passed into a proverb.
    Truth is the rock on which the temple of virtue and 
120     THOUGHTS ON  THE PHRENOLOGY OF
morality rests.   Remove  it; the foundation is gone,
and the fabric is a ruin.  Nor is this all.  Truth forms
both the basis and the superstructure of creation itself.
When the  Deity called into existence the universe of
mind and matter, he did so in conformity to the princi-
ples of truth.   It was not in his nature or even in his
power to do otherwise ; for his own moral essence is
truth, which at  once controls and hallows his  actions.
To suppose him capable of acting in opposition  to truth,
or apart from it, would be to suppose him imperfect and
feeble like  ourselves.  It is a strict and conscientious
adherence therefore to truth, that draws man nearest to
the Deity, and makes him most resemble him.   And the
converse is equally true.   The gross and habitual de-
parture from truth, most completely estranges man  from
the Deity, and covers him with the  deepest degradation
and  guilt.   To  the minds of enlightened and reasoning
men, this statement is as undeniable, as that things equal
to one and the same  thing, are equal to one another.
   The crimes  of robbery, piracy, and murder, though
partaking also of falsehood, contain  less of the meanness
of it, than either of the other forms of guilt just enume-
rated. Robbers, pirates, and murderers are often gene-
rous, bold  and  manly.   But liars,  thieves, hypocrites,
and  traitors are  usually incorporations  of ignominy and
cowardice.
   On an occasion however like the present, when, for
the last time, you are to be the listeners and I the speak-
er, and when you are on the eve of entering on the trials
and responsibilities of professional life—on such an oc-
casion, it would but ill comport with  the respect and duty
I owe you, and  the  course I have  always pursued in 
        FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES.      121

addressing you, were I to present you with nothing but
a series of propositions, unsupported by suitable  evi-
dence.  Having uniformly endeavoured, in all my dis-
courses and discussions before you, to deal in reason as
well as assertion, in philosophy as well as fact, it is not
my design, in the present instance, to depart from the
practice.   To  demonstrate therefore  their turpitude as
a class, and the deep abhorrence in  which they should
be held, I shall attempt a brief analysis of the several
vices just referred  to, in which their kindred nature will
be made to appear.  In this disquisition  I shall neces-
sarily treat the subject phrenologically ;  because it can-
not be satisfactorily or even intelligibly treated in any
other  way.   Nor will you regard this mode of handling
it with surprise or  disapproval.    Most of  you have stu-
died Phrenology to such effect, as to be convinced of
its truth.  You know it therefore, as the genuine science
of mind, to be alone applicable to the  topic I am discus-
sing, and  alone competent to such elucidation of it as its
importance requires.
   All vices are, in  their  origin and  character, exclu-
sively animal.   They are seated I mean  in the animal
compartment of the brain, and are the offspring of the
excess or abuse, perversion or misapplication of one or
more  of the animal propensities.  They hold in  their
composition no ingredient that is truly human — nothing
I mean that elevates man above brutality.  This repre-
sentation, which is susceptible of proof, shows, on  prin-
ciple, the base and degraded character of vice, in addi-
tion to its sinfulness;  his animal  nature  being the
lowest and least worthy and honorable element in the
constitution of man.  Nor is there wanting another con-
                         11 
122      THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

sideration exhibiting in a still stronger light this inherent
debasement. He that is habitually addicted to vice is es-
sentially deficient or deranged in his moral nature, es-
pecially in  the higher and  nobler faculties of Benevo-
lence, Veneration, and Conscientiousness, as well as in
the superior intellectual faculties, whose master province
is reflection and reason.  He therefore I say who in-
dulges in vice, of whatever description, so far descends
from the sphere of human action and honour, and min-
gles with the brute.   He even sinks beneath the brute ;
because he disobeys and  abuses  powers bestowed on
him by the  Creator, to withhold him from such debase-
ment, and of which the inferior creation are destitute.
Hence  the pilfering of the fox  is much  less offensive
than human theft;  and the murder of man, when per-
petrated by his fellow, is infinitely more shocking, than
his destruction by the  wolf, the hyena, or the  tiger. But
to speak more of the elements and philosophy of crime.
   A confirmed  propensity to destroy human life, like
that possessed  by Dehman, who was  executed  ten or
twelve years ago, in Indiana, for the ninth  murder he
had committed, without provocation, or motives  of in-
terest or revenge, as a mere amateur in blood ;  or like
that which  impelled Margaretta Gottfried to the  actual
destruction, by poison, of more than twenty human be-
ings, on  as many different occasions, and to attempt the
destruction of twice as many more, for which she was
beheaded at Bremen, in 1830—a  propensity such as
this, is the  product of excessive, perhaps morbid action
in Destructiveness, and some defect  or perversion  in
the action of Benevolence, Veneration, Conscientious-
ness  and Causality.   Had these latter organs been 
        FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES.      123

sound and vigorous in their functions, they would have
restrained Destructiveness, and prevented the murders
— on the  same  ground  on  which  a  few  men  of
peaceful and  orderly  habits  interpose their influence,
and withhold the ruffian from deeds of violence.
  In him also who  is addicted to falsehood, Conscien-
tiousness, Veneration, and Causality are wanting in de-
velopment or action or both; or their action is perverted;
and the functions (inordinately strong) of Secretiveness
and Cautiousness, the two meanest organs (may any  be
so denominated) belonging to man, constitute his " riding
passion."   To common lying,  add  a propensity  to
slander and defame, and the result shows that the organ
of Destructiveness, which is the source of hatred, ma-
lice, and a propensity  to mischief of every description,
is also in excessive action.   For the  usual aim of that
organ, when unduly excited, is to injure and destroy
character, as well as person.   Combativeness, which is
comparatively a manly  propensity, does not belong to the
liar,  who, to other marks of meanness and degradation,
unites for the most part, as already mentioned, the qual-
ity of cowardice.   A moral coward he necessarily is ;
because  a man who is  morally intrepid and firm, feeling
no  unsoundness  in his  conduct,  character, or inten-
tion,  has  nothing  to fear,  were he susceptible  of
fear, and therefore  no  temptation to conceal or misrep-
resent.   Such  a man  cannot descend from his proud
elevation in moral rectitude, to the debasement and tur-
pitude of hypocrisy and deception.  That degradation
he leaves  to the changeling and the craven, the profli-
gate and the culprit, who quail under the apprehension'
of their  actions and designs  being visited by the light* 
124      THOUGHTS  ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

I shall only add, that a lie  is an acknowledgment of
inferiority or guilt in him who is its author.  Men rarely
fever depart from truth, except to escape from penalty
or punishment; or to represent themselves  or their con-
ditions,  or actions, superior to what  they are, and  thus
gain credit for a fictitious standing—or to better  their
condition by  criminal  means.   Truth serves  all the
purposes of the innocent and the  honorable ;  but to the
dishonorable  and the  guilty  falsehood   is  essential,
and  can  alone afford  them  a temporary protection.
   The crime of falsifying can be perpetrated by deeds
as well as by words.  It consists in  the intentional as-
sertion or representation of what  is known not to exist,
or of facts or things in a light different from  the real
one.  And this, I say, may be done by acting as cer-
tainly as by speaking.   Falsehood,  then, in its full ex-
tent, consists of two leading elements, concealment and
fiction ;  the concealment or denial of what is, and the
feigning of what is not.   The main-spring  of the whole
therefore is Secretiveness in a state of excessive action,
and  divorced from  the guidance and  restraint of the
higher faculties.   That propensity, which is but the love
or instinct of concealment, impels other faculties to the
kind  and degree of fiction, appropriate to the occasion,
without  which its work would be incomplete, and  its
purpose  defeated.   Its fabrications and  contrivances
therefore differ according to the end  to be obtained by
them.  But, in all cases, secrecy is  the chief ingredient
among the means of deception, without which, I say, the
scheme would fail.  That these views are  as applicable
to swindling, overreaching, cheating, and all other forms
of practical knavery, as they are  to  common falsehood,
may be easily made appear. 
         FALSEHOOD AND ITS  KINDRED VICES.     125

   These latter views consist in the false appropriation
by one person, to his own ends and uses, of that which
in truth belongs  to another; in the devising of the
means by which this fraud may be effected ; and in the
concealment of the iniquitous object he aims at.   Here
therefore is nothing more than the perpetration of an un-
truth in a new shape.   And that shape is given to it by
the union of the inordinate action of Acquisitiveness with
that of Secretiveness.   In this case, as in the  former
ones, Benevolence, Veneration, Conscientiousness, and
Causality, are inactive, feeble, or  perverted; and  here
also Destructiveness mingles at times in the mischief,
for the malicious purpose of inflicting an injury on the
person defrauded,  and thus giving him pain.   These
vices then are identical with lying,  except that they con-
tain  in their composition one  additional  element—the
love  of gain.   Remove that, and you convert swindling,
cheating, and other forms of knavery, into the promul-
gation of simple falsehood in speech, or its perpetration
by acts.
   Theft is but knavery in a different shape, and a higher
degree.   The elements of the two forms  of vice are the
same.  In each, Benevolence, Veneration, Conscien-
tiousness, and the reflecting faculties are again perverted,
inactive  or  feeble;  and Covetiveness,  Secretiveness,
and Cautiousness, are in action; the two former to excess.
Each therefore is the product alike of the meanest and
most grovelling of the animal propensities; and in  each
the  highest and noblest of the moral and intellectual
faculties are  deficient or at fault.   They  are in  their
nature, moreover, as already intimated, closely allied to
falsehood in  words.  In plain language, the thief, the
                        11* 
126     THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

liar, the swindler, and the hypocrite, and he  who prac-
tises knavery or deception in any other form, belong to
the same family of felons ; and any one of them may be
readily changed into either of the others.  It  is a maxim
in morals, to which there is no exception, that he who does
not hold his word, when pledged, as sacred  as his oath
or his bond, is neither an honest nor an honourable man.
He who is true to his promise only by compulsion, or
from a motive of deep self-interest, is not true to it at
all.  Remove his compulsion or selfishness,  and his
falsehood will appear.   The  greatest of felons,  when
manacled and imprisoned, commits felony  no  longer.
The reason is plain.   The power to steal, rob, murder,
and prove a traitor, is taken from  him.  Nor is he less
innocent on account of his inaction, than the individual
is, who refrains from falsehood, only because the com-
mission of it would  prove injurious to him.
   But all is not yet told.  The deepest crime belonging
to this  class is now to he named.  It is treachery.
No  other form of falsehood equals it in baseness and
guilt.   In  all that is   vile, revolting, and   criminal, it
far surpasses theft.  The reason is obvious.  It more
deeply  outrages  what  should be  held most sacred in
human feeling.  The traitor has been confided in, while
the thief has not.  The latter, therefore, has  violated no
plighted faith;  while the former  is a monument of de-
liberate perfidy.  When Judas is declared to have be-
trayed with a kiss, the imputation is the most damnatory
that language can record, or fancy conceive,  against hu-
man depravity.   Yet every one who betrays at all, be-
trays with a kiss, or some other token of similar import
-"Some act expressive of attachment and good will, to 
        FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES.     127

prevent suspicion, and secure confidence.   The traitor,
I say,  is therefore more guilty than  the thief, because
his crime  is against his comrades that have trusted and
cherished, or in  some way benefitted him.   This ren-
ders him  trebly false — to virtue, to friendship, and to
his God.   But the thief, as such, is specially trusted  by
no one.  Hence he violates no pledge of fidelity given
 in a sacred moment of confidence ; nor does he delibe-
rately trample on one of the holiest feelings of our nature.
   The fair exterior that treachery puts on, while rumi-
 nating the darkest purposes within, ranks it, I say, with
 the most execrable of vices.  It makes  it  realize the
 fearful picture of Conspiracy, drawn by the great dram-
 atist, in one of his happiest moments of inspiration, and
 in his strongest colours.   The scene  and  time  are,
 when Brutus is told by his porter, that some of the con-
 spirators against  Csesar, who were at his  gate, on a visit
 to him by night, were muffled in their cloaks, to escape
 recognition.   On receiving this information, the noble
 Roman thus soliloquizes :
       ______..__________--------" O, conspiracy I
     Sham'st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
     When evils are most free ?  O,  then, by day,
     "Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enongh
     To mask thy monstrous visage?  Seek none, conspiracy;
     Hide it in smiles and affability ;
     For if thou put'st thy native semblance on,
     Not Erebus itself were dim enough
     To hide thee from prevention."
    So is  it with treachery.   Conscious that no gloom is
  deep enough to  mask its hideous visage, if presented in
  its native features and  expression, it clothes  it in mild-
  ness, courtesy,  and pleasantness of look and manner* 
128    THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

and, in the blandest accents, that counterfeit friendliness
and affection can utter, whispers in the ear it means to
ensnare, its fatal falsehoods.  For falsehood is the prime
engine of its mischief.   And when malice unites  with
this, and the guise of treachery is still retained, the com-
pound forms one of the most appalling of human enor-
mities.  Then may the possessor of it say with Richard,

      " Why, I can smile, and murder while 1 smile;
      And cry, content, to that which grieves my heart j
      And wet my cheeks with artificial tears;
      And frame my face to all occasions.''

—Ay; and so can others I could name, do this, as  dex-
terously as crook-backed Richard.
   One of the basest and most abhorrent forms of treach-
ery, is  that under which a culprit, charged with  a  deep
or capital offence, turns informer or accuser, and testifies
against his associates in crime.   It has long been cur-
rent, as a  forensic  adage, that the greatest  villain and
coward turns " King's  or State's evidence," to rescue
himself from the  cord, and consign to it his less  offend-
ing fellows.  And the maxim is equally true, in its re-
lation to other trangressors, charged with lighter and
more venial offences.  He who, in any case of imputed
guilt, turns informer, and accuses his comrades,  does
so from motives of bribery, cowardice, or vindictiveness
— to gratify his cupidity, escape punishment, or glut his
revenge.   Viewed in the two former of these aspects,
he is an object of pity and scorn; in the latter,  of exe-
cration and abhorrence.  In either and all of them, he
is a recreant and a renegade from truth, lost to magnan-
imity* manliness, and virtue — and will be so considered 
        FALSEHOOD AND  ITS  KINDRED VICES.     129

by honorable  men, until his name and character shall
be lost in forgetfulness.  He is one of those " wretches "
of the poet, who " concentred all  in self,"  will never,
either in life or in death, be an object of sorrow or praise ;
but
          " Living, shall forfeit fair renown ;
          And doubly dying shall go down
          To the vile earth, from  which he sprung,
          Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung."
   Descended from the same source, and  similar in
character, are various other minor forms of deception,
which daily annoy  us, and shed their deleterious influ-
ence through society.   To this class of evils, which,
though petty in detail, are momentous in the aggregate
of mischief they produce, belong equivocation in speech;
false professions, shuffling conduct, promise-breaking,
prevarication, and  all other  shapes, which  insincerity
and  duplicity so aptly put on.
   Such is the motley brood of falsehood, that is over-
running our land, as the land of the Pharoahs was over-
run  by the loathsome frog and the  devouring locust.
And the  moral  pestilence is  far the most  deplorable.
The reptile and  the insect are only an outward annoy-
ance ; but the poison of falsehood penetrates the inward
man, and  turns him throughout to a moral lazar. Were
this  pestilence of the soul confined in its ravages to the
ignorant  and  uncultivated, it  would  still be  an evil of
dangerous import.   But  when it fastens on men  who
occupy some of the high places of the community, whose
examples are weighty, and their sway extensive, it be-
comes a national distemper, and threatens the produc-
tion  of a  national calamity.   And such is, at present, 
130     THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

the alarming condition of the United States.  Among
the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the culti-
vated and the uncultivated, a disregard for truth is por-
tentously  prevalent.   In the  pursuit of business,  and
the transaction of affairs both public and private, plain
dealing and honesty of purpose are wantonly discarded,
and intrigue, management, and stratagem, have posses-
sion  of their places.   In this perverted  and ominous
condition  of things, prevarication has  supplanted truth,
cunning has become  the substitute for wisdom  and ta-
lent, a love of power has usurped the place  of patriot-
ism, and  selfishness  the places of charity, justice,  and
philanthropy.   Wealth and popular favour,  as instru-
ments of  power, constitute the idol to which " the  mil-
lion"  do  homage.   To propitiate that, sacrifices are
made on the altar of  a vulgar ambition, unprincipled in
their nature, and degrading to all who take part  in their
ministry.   The man who attains his end by hypocrisy
and stratagem, instead of being censured and rebuked,
as in former times, for his dishonesty and guilt, is praised
now for his acuteness and dexterity.
   is a project set on foot, whose object is the promotion
of intellectual or moral improvement, the correction of
abuses, or the accomplishment of any other form of ac-
knowledged usefidness ?   Is it for the establishment or
endowment of an university or a college, the amendment
of the condition of a professional institution, or the ad-
vancement of the interests of some mechanical or literary
association ?   Or is it for any other purpose subservient
to the public welfare ? In such a case, sentiments of hon-
our  and manliness, no less than motives of morality and
duty require, that those concerned in  the project should 
FALSEHOOD AND  ITS KINDRED VICES.     131
act with fidelity^ consistency^ and firmness, and not play
the part of time-servers or shufflers^ dependents or para-
sites.   Influenced  only  by public considerations, they
should press  toward  the  attainment  of a public end.
Neither selfish nor social feelings, apart from this, should
mingle in their counsels or sway in their measures.
   But rarely, at the present time, is this line of conduct
faithfully pursued.   In cases of the sort, different indi-
viduals shrink, at times, from their duty in supine inac-
tion, or join in opposition  to schemes, of which even they
themselves had been the first proposers, for different rea-
sons— some from  a craven dread of responsibility —
others from a fear of the  loss of popularity, and  a for-
feiture of the incense of flattery and favour — a third set
from an unwillingness to encounter difficulty and trouble,
or make personal sacrifices — a fourth from feebleness oj
resolution  and instability of purpose — a fifth from brib-
ery, or some other venal  motive— a sixth, perhaps, from
a mixture  of several of these influences — and a seventh
from a still more unpardonable cause — a malicious  de-
termination  to  betray their  associates in the enterprise,
injure their reputation and standing, and thus gain an
ascendency over them in general popularity, or  in  the
direction and benefits of some other undertaking about to
be set on foot.
   As respects the  foregoing general  concerns, so inte-
resting in themselves, and so important to the  dignity
and welfare of society, you, gentlemen, will stand doubly
related to the community hereafter — as physicians, and
as men.   And, in both capacities, but more especially
in the former, it will become the standing which, I doubt
not, you  will attain, not only to avoid yourselves, as  a 
132    THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

blot on your profession and your personal reputations,
the practice of every form  of imposture and falsehood,
but with all your powers, and the means at your com-
mand, to aim at its prevention and extinction in others.
For the purpose, then, of aiding you in your preparation
for the enterprise, allow me to invite your attention to a
few of the  methods, by which artful and unprincipled
physicians violate their obligations to truth and honesty,
and dishonour their calling, by descending to the devices
of empirics and impostors.   And here permit me  to re-
mark in general, by way of illustration, and to prevent
the necessity of repetition and detail, that I would brand,
as empirics, all who practise medicine without principles,
or in opposition to them ; and as an impostor, every one
who is guilty of any form of professional affectation, ar-
tifice, or concealment.  Some of these modes of affec-
tation and imposture shall  be forthwith represented to
you.
   In the sketch of professional charlatanry here contem-
plated, I shall not include operations by steam, vegetable
medicines, secret nostrums, bone-setting processes, pa-
tent remedies, nor any of the numerous panaceas  and
catholicons, the extensive patronage and employment of
which constitute, in part, the disgrace of the age.  These
are  so  universally acknowledged to be  the  fruits  and
symbols of medical knavery, that no physician of char-
acter ventures to be concerned in them.
   In close affinity to these devices is the artifice pur-
sued by many physicians, of boasting of their pre-emi-
nent professional success.   In their own report of their
practice, they cure every thing.  In recommendation of
their skill, and to secure additional means  of testing it, 
        FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES.     133

some of them assert that they never lose a patient in
any  form or degree of  fever,  in  croup,  dropsy of the
brain,  or cholera infantum ; and that, in their  hands,
even pulmonary consumption is a manageable disease !
Such assertions are scandalous, because they are untrue;
and  criminal, because they do mischief on a twofold
ground.   With the intelligent portion of the community
they tend to bring medicine and its practitioners into dis-
repute ;  and,  by deluding the ignorant, they  induce
them to resort, in their sickness, to the authors  of  such
devices, and to repose in them a confidence which often
proves fatal to them, by preventing them from receiving
aid from abler and more honest and honorable members
of the profession. For in medicine, as in other vocations,
fraud and weakness are  the almost inseparable concomi-
tants of boasting.   Under such circumstances, artifice
and  intrigue are employed as substitutes for science, and
skill; because truth and honesty can never be made to
subserve the purposes of groundless pretence and inordi-
nate ambition.
   The  physicians here described  never  fail to  exagge-
rate the amount of their practice, as well  as the success
of it;  well  knowing that,  like other things, business,
real or reputed,  attracts in proportion to its quantity
whether actual, or feigned ; and that therefore an abun-
dant extent of it produces  more,  by what may be ac-
counted  a law of nature.
   Another class of Physicians, without falsely boasting
of the amount of their business in ivords, do so inaction.
Of these, some becoming wonderfully devout, are punc-
tual in their attendance at church, as well  as at other
places of public resort, where, by their servants or re-
tainers, they contrive to be called out once or twice an
                        12 
134      THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

hour, as if to administer to the wants of the sick, not one
of whom perhaps is under their care.   A member of this
class of professional counterfeits, who fell within my
knowledge, practised a like imposture at the house of a
gentleman to whose daughter he was paying his address-
es.  But  even almighty love, which conquers all things
else, was compelled to surrender to his mightier propen-
sity to fraud.  From the midst of his burning vows and
tender solicitings,  and his strenuous contest with the
coyness of the fair one, he contrived to be dragged by
repeated messages to contend with disease.  Nor did
he  pack  his cards and cog  his dice to no purpose.
He succeeded in his suit, but  made no progress in the
procurement of business.  The gallant's mistress being
thus fraudulently won,  and the marriage ceremony and
its attendant convivialities completed, the husband had
the felicitous leisure to pass days and weeks in the com-
pany of his  wife, without a summons to the  chamber of
sickness.
   Other members of this class make a show of business
in another way, different indeed in execution, but identi-
cal in dishonesty.  They constantly exhibit themselves
in gigs or  on horseback, hurrying from one quarter of a
city or town, or of the country, to another, as if just
called to apply the trephine, reduce a recent and painful
luxation, control an alarming hemorrhage from a divided
artery, or to minister in some  other form of disease,
where delay and  death would be synonymous terms.
Thus  are truth and honour disgracefully bartered by
them for the appearance and reputation of having an ex-
tensive business ; and  the actual business which that
reputation produces.
   One of these jugglers who was known to me in Phi- 
        FALSEHOOD AND  ITS KINDRED VICES.     135

ladelphia,  adopted a stratagem somewhat different, and,
as the issue proved, a little more hazardous.   Mounting
a gig every morning, he drove hastily from dwelling to
dwelling of wealthy and respectable citizens ; and halt-
ing before each door, entering the hall, and  remaining
long enough for a visit and prescription, returned  to his
vehicle, and proceeded elsewhere in his career of dis-
honesty.  That career however was destined to end in
a ludicrous and very uninviting catastrophe.
   From the hall of a house, to which his wayward fate
directed this impostor to make a morning visit, a cloak
had  been  stolen on the preceding night.   The chief
waiter in  the family was a sturdy young Irishman, re-
cently imported from the  " emerald isle," to whom the
vagabond  iEsculapian  was unknown.  Hearing a foot-
step in the hall, unannounced by the bell or the knocker,
the true-blooded Hibernian, plunged into  the passage,
with the  vigilance of an Argus, the spring of a cata-
mount, and the fidelity of a knight of Castile to his mis-
tress.  Finding there  a stranger,  whose physiognomy
did not  please  him, and who manifested surprise, min-
gled perhaps with alarm, at his abrupt appearance  and   *»
fiery visage, the son of  St. Patrick, grappling the physi-
cian by the throat, called out to his employer, in a sten-
torian note, and the accent of his country,  " te tief! te
tief?  master, te tief!  te tief! I have got  him, I have
got him,  hard  and fast,!"—During this boisterous  in-
vocation to his  master, he beat time to his tongue, with
his brawny fist, to such effect, that, before relief arrived,
the discomfited prisoner, who made resistance at first, had
surrendered at  discretion, and was calling for quarter.
Mean time the master of the house, alarmed by the
uproar,  hastened  into  the  hall,  and,   recognising the 
136     THOUGHTS ON  THE PHRENOLOGY OF
unfortunate pulse-feeler, rescued him from the merciless
mauling of his faithful domestic.   A suitable ^/maZe to a
scheme of imposture!
  But the entire story of these knights of the pestle and
mortar, who like Proteus of old, assume all shapes, and,
like the modern chamelion, all colours, for the procure-
ment  of business, is not yet  told.   Another caste of
them  make their way to practice, by their kind and af-
fectionate deportment,  in the  families where they visit.
Their inquiries after the health of the several members
are made with great particularity and earnestness ; and,
in relation  to  each of them, something complimentary
and pleasing is either said or done.   The school-boys
and school-girls of each family are pronounced by them
the most  accomplished and promising in the country.
For the younger children their pockets are filled with
apples and cakes, ginger-nuts and sugar-plumbs ; and
to mothers and grown up daughters, their tongues offer
abundantly the incense of flattery.   Nor do they fail in
their homage to nurses and grandams, maiden aunts and
gossipping cousins, who, after halting and  lying  by for
years, at  the  Rubicon of their teens, have ultimately
passed it.  And the success  and prospects  in business
of the males of the  families share also their  regard.
Nothing of interest or supposed importance to the do-
mestic  establishments escapes  the vigilance of their
inquiries and the kindness of their wishes.
   Not all the  artfulness  however  of these practised
flatterers can save them at times from mortification and
disaster.  One of them formerly known to me attempted
to make his way to the favour of parents,  by dandling
and kissing  their  "incomparable"  children.   On an
unlucky occasion, however, in stooping down to kiss the 
       FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES.       137

beauteous and darling infant, his lips, by a fatal aberra-
ration, came into contact with the brow, cheek, or some
other more sacred  portion of the face of the  still more
beauteous and darling mother.  This so  incensed  the
fair one, that, springing from her seat, she extended to
the physician her lily-white hand — but not that he might
bestow on it also a mark of his gallantry.   0 ! no;  but
that it might  bestow on  him  a blackened eye, and a
bleeding nose.   Nor did  her courtesy end here.   She
ordered him, with a significant movement of her foot, to
quit the  house,  and  never  re-enter it, on pain of the
vengeance of an offended husband.
   Another class  of these favour-hunters  erect the pre-
carious fabric of their dishonesty  on a broader basis.
Instead of confining their adulation and blandishments
to  selected families,  they extend them  to every one.
Their courtesies and professions of regard, familiar nods
and fawning salutations, are general; and they are the
supple, knee-crooking incense-burners, and humble ser-
vants of the whole community.   Their smiles and crin-
ges, and other artifices to attract notice, and attain pop-
ularity, become disgustingly common.   They meet their
acquaintance with the smirks of cheats and the sycho-
phancy of spaniels, approach  them, lock arms with
them, and, leading them into a retired  place, whisper in
their ears something  commendatory of themselves, or
condemnatory of their enemies—or administer to them
perhaps a nauseous compound  of both.   Thus, with
the arch-coquette Belinda,
        "Like the sun, they shine on all alike;"
and, with SirPertinax McSycophant, the symbol of du-
plicity, make bows and protestations the  scaffolding of
their fortunes.
                      12* 
138     THOUGHTS ON  THE  PHRENOLOGY OF

  These parasites of the public rarely look you fully in
the face, but eye you askance, as if watching your move-
ments and endeavoring  to  penetrate your designs, and
eagerly striving to veil  from you their own;  and their
conversation is in a tone approaching a whisper.  Every
word they speak, and every action they perform, betoken
a propensity to concealment and mystery.   In the street
you see them frequently walking, arm in arm, and con-
ferring familiarly  with  one of their  retainers, or  with
some person of influence,  whose favour  and patronage
they are anxious to secure — and not unfrequently with
those whom they secretly hate, and malignantly defame.
   The real intimacies of such counterfeits are  few,
though their apparent ones are numerons.  In truth the
exterior of their whole  lives is a compound of appear-
ances; all their realities being studiously covered.  Like
so many whited sepulchres, specious  without, but repul-
sive masses  of corruption  within, their whole  existence
is a masquerade.  They live, and act, and converse but
in character; and in whatever they do,  in the  eye of
the  world, they are as real  actors, as McCredy in Ham-
let,  or Forrest in  Spartacus.   It is  only  in solitude that
they are themselves ; and then, if Conscientiousness be
not extinct in thorn, they are miserable  monuments of
self-abasement.   Subsisting  thus on mere occurrence
and expediency, they are necessarily  the sport and foot-
ball of events — consistent only in their inconsistencies,
and steady only in their unsteadiness.  What they said
yesterday  they unsay to-day; while  a third and differ-
ent  report will issue from them to-morrow.  In vain
therefore would I  attempt to paint them  to you in  their
true likeness — because they  have  none.   As  well
might I endeavour fixedly to  embody into the form and 
       FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED  VICES.     139

symmetry of an Apollo, the  fleeting rack, as it drives
before the storm, and changes at each sweep of its pro-
gress through the heavens.   From my  inability howev-
ever to delineate them, nothing will be lost to you.  To
detect them is easy.  You will know them from their
want of likeness ; and from their never ceasing changes,
in their efforts to conform to  the changes in the current
of the times—or rather to the changes in public opin-
ion.    Such  chamelion-shufrlers consist  of materials
well fitted  to  be  moulded  into informers,  traitors, and
false witnesses  against those who have  imprudently
trusted them.   But to things of so much  turpitude and
repulsiveness, no more time can now be  devoted.  Con-
signing them  therefore to scorn and abhorrence, I must
pass to other  forms of deception.
   Hypocrisy in religion is another form  of falsehood, by
which physicians endeavour  to recommend themselves to
public favour, and to procure business.  And it will not
be denied that the scheme is execrable.   It is fraught
xoith a spirit much worse than that of common duplicity.
Implied blasphemy makes often  apart of it; for it virtu-
ally invokes a  blessing from Heaven on a system of false-
hood and a course of profanity.   I have  known physi-
cians but slightly removed in  their habits from profliga-
cy, ivho were in the constant practice of dropping on their
knees, and imploring divine aid in the operation of a
remedy they were about to administer.   And I have been
called irreligious, for  rebuking with sternness such re-
volting mockery.
   This religious juggle is played off in different ways,
according  to the  end proposed to be attained by it.  Usu-
ally the aspirant to  advancement  enrolls  himself under
the banner of a particular sect, to secure to himself, on 
140     THOUGHTS  ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

the score of brotherly love, the patronage of its members.
Sometimes however his views are broader, and his desires
more  ambitious.  He therefore resolves to stand  well
with all sects; and conformable to this are the course he
shapes and the means he employs.
   An eminent physician of Philadelphia held a pew in
some, place of worship of every religious sect and deno-
mination in the city,  the Jews and the Society of Friends
excepted.   Of these  the former were too small a body to
have a strong attraction for him; and the latter not  only
rejected the overture of the hypocrite to lake a seat among
them;  they  rebuked  it, because  they deemed it dishonest
and offensive.
   This arch-pew-holder (who had a place even in one oj
the African  churches) if he did not, like St. Paid, make
himself " all things to all men," was at least, as a secta-
rian, every thing to every sect.   He was as flexible and
accommodating  in religion,  as Cataline  was in vice.
When  in conversation with an  Episcopalian, he gave
a preference to Episcopacy — with a  Presbyterian, to
Presbyterianism—with a JVIethodist, to JVIethodism —
and with a Baptist, to Baptism.  Nor, when in the compa-
ny of Catholics, did he fail to find beauties and excellencies
in their form  of worship, which excited his admiration,
and commanded his  approval.   Yet was that physician
accounted pious;  and his hypocrisy procured for him
extensive patronage.
   But a jew years ago, a wicked and  repulsive specta-
cle was exhibited, under a show of religion, within a few
miles of this city, (Lexington in Kentucky.)   Two  phy-
sicians, one of them of very loose morals and habits, and
the other far from being a pattern of virtue, became de-
sirous of securing, for a particular purpose, the counte- 
FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED  VICES.     141
nance and support of an  influential religious sect.  To
accomplish their end, they repaired to a camp-meeting
held in  the neighbourhood, were proselyted on the same
day, practised their orgies in  the same pavillion, grew
deeply penitent for past offences, and made pious and pub-
lic  resolves respecting future amendment — prayed fer-
vently, raved  and exhorted boisterously, and played the
entire part of counterfeits and fanatics with such arti-
fice and effect, as to dupe the spectators, and be accred-
ited for sincerity.  Even the clergy were persuaded that
two sinners of note were metamorphosed into christians.
But the delusion did not last.   The project, which had
been the cause of the feigned conversion, and of the gross
and offensive hypocrisy which followed it, did not suc-
ceed ; and, with its failure, failed also the masquerade
saint-ship of  the two proselytes.    With appetites there-
fore, whetted afresh by their brief abstinence, the pseudo-
converts soon  returned to the "flesh-pots " they had forsa-
ken, and jilunged anew into their favourite indulgences
— two of which were, falsehood and calumny.
   One  detestable sfratagem more, frequently resorted to
by physicians who are haunted by envy and jealousy, and
I am done.   It is that of calumniating rival physicians,
by condemning and often misstating their practice.  No
act can be more deeply dishonourable, and scandalously
base and immoral, than this.    Yet it is perpetrated occa-
sional^,  even by those whom fortune has  seated in  the
high places of the profession.    Let the following case be
received in illustration of my allusion, and in  confirma-
tion oj Us truth.
   Two physicians of standing are rivals for business in
the same  town, but maintain with each other a friendly
intercourse.   One of them falls sick of a dangerous com- 
THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF
 plaint,  and is attended by the other, who,  by a bold and
 decisive practice, is acknowledged by himself to have sa-
 ved his  life.   In other cases also, the physician thus res-
 cued from death, testifies to the efficacy of the same mode
 of practice.   For some time the relation of these  two
 physicians to each other continues unchanged; and they
 meet and consult on disease as before.
   At length a new and destructive epidemic occurs, in
 the treatment  of which they are  equally engaged — but
 with a dissimilar issue.   The practitioner who had saved
 his rival's life is far the most successful.   He scarcely lo-
 ses a patient, be his condition what it may, while the other
 scarcely saves one  whose attack is  severe.    From this
 time the physician thus surpassed in practice, rendered
jealous of his  rival, conceives a deep-rooted hostility to-
 ward him, which he artfully endeavors to conceal under
 a friendly exterior.   Of his mode  of practice, however,
 which had  eventuated so  successfully,  his sentiments, as
 reported by himself, undergo a sudden and complete revo-
 lution.  That  mode by which his life had been previously
 saved, and which he had highly commended, is now the
 object of his dread and dislike.   He avails  himself of
 every occasion  presented to him, to condemn it with bit-
 terness (atfirst confidentially and in ivhispers, but after-
 wards more  openly,) as being not only inefficient, as a
 means of cure  ,  lutighly injurious to the human consti
 tidion.  In this way, though comparatively unsuccessful
 in the treatment of diseases himself, he succeeds in exci
 ting against his rival, feelings and prejudices unjust in
 themselves,  and  detrimental to  his  interests.   Yet  the
form of practice, I say, thus censured and condemned, is
 that to which the epidemic referred to,  and the traducer's
 own malady, had most readily yielded.  Nor is it doubt- 
FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED  VICES.     143
ed by any one informed on the subject, that pining envy
and unmanly jealousy, and not honest conviction, are the
cause of the change in the calumniators conduct.   Such
is the case I have ventured to state.   To pronounce judg-
ment  on it is left for yourselves.  I shall only add, that,
though presented  to you as matter of  supposition, the
leading features of it are matters of fact.
   It  has been just  alleged that envy and jealousy, in the
the mind of the physician discomfited in the epidemic,
were  the  cause of  his subsequent reprehensible conduct.
And  they are ignoble passions, which rankle only in the
bosom of an inferior toward one above him.  Their look
is upward.   A superior looks down on  an inferior with
pity or scorn; while the inferior  envies the lot  of the
superior; because he conceives it to be more eligible than
his own.  He therefore that cherishes envy, acknowledges
by the act, a consciousness of his inferiority  to him whom
he envies.
   For the same reason all affectation is an acknowledge-
ment of inferiority in him who practices it.  No indi-
vidual will affect to  be what he  is not, unless  he feels
convinced that if he were, really what he personates, his
condition would be more  elevated  and desirable than it
is.   Affectation moreover virtually presents a fiction for
a reality.   It is therefore founded in falsehood, and is so
far a violation of  strict morality.   The physician then,
 who  affects  to know more or do more than he  actually
 does  know or do, or to have made in his profession disco-
 veries or improvements, which are the fruits of the labours
 of others — such  a physician is wanting in that sacred
 regard for truth, without which his morals are unsound,
 his professional reports and communications unworthy •/
 credit, and his example pernicious.  His reputation more- 
144     THOUGHTS ON  THE  PHRENOLOGY  OF

over, is a house on the sand, whose foundation must, soon-
er or later, pass from under it, and leave it a ruin.
  Such, in part, is the vice of falsehood.  But the pic-
ture  is incomplete.  Nor does time permit me to finish
it at  present.   I have shown its origin to be animal and
degraded, and  that it constitutes  the foundation of a
group of crimes and felonies,  that people jails, and give
employment to  gibbets.   No poison has ever been se-
cretly administered to destroy human life, except at the
instigation of Destructiveness, and under the direction
of Secretiveness ;  the latter of which, as already stated,
is the source of falsehood and treachery.   The debase-
ment of the vice, then, apart from its criminality, should
prevent its commission.
  Were it possible for me to analyze and classify all the
crimes that have  been committed by man,  and enume-
rate all the moral and physical evils that have resulted from
them, since the origin of our race, the exposition would
show, that, virtually, falsehood has been the source of
the whole.  Paradise was lost by falsehood and treach-
ery ; and we are  taught to believe, that from that loss
have proceeded all the subsequent crimes and calami-
ties of the human family.
   A world of truth would be a world  of innocence,
peace, and happiness.   In such a glorious  condition of
morals, the  higher and  nobler faculties  of our  nature
would control and regulate the subordinate ones, whose
excess and perversion make vice and its concomitants.
And to produce that condition of things, is the legitimate
object  of sound  education.   But  I must pursue this
theme no farther.  A few suggestions respecting a re-
medy for the evils of falsehood shall close my address.
  At the commencement  of this branch of my subject, 
        FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED  VICES.    145

two very important questions present themselves.  Does
such a remedy exist?   And, if so, does it lie within our
reach; and can we apply it when attained to the reform
contemplated 1
  To these questions my reply is affirmative. A remedy
for falsehood does exist;  its accessibility is certain ; and
its efficient application, though difficult, is  practicable.
Answers the reverse of these would be of fearful import.
They would  proclaim the  reformation  of  mankind in
mass, by means within their own power, to  be impossi-
ble, and  their earthly condition hopeless.   And to that
doctrine I cannot subscribe.  In my view, it would be
disrespectful  toward the  Deity, if not calumnious  and
blasphemous.   It would pronounce his works imperfect,
and  impeach his veracity, when he proclaimed them
"all  very good !"  Boundless as he is himself in truth,
justice and goodness, wisdom and power, I cannot be-
lieve that he created  man  to be always the slave and
victim of a lying tongue, a knavish  disposition, and a
felonious  hand.   If, as  we are taught to  believe,  all
things tend to good, a time must come, when those vices
will have an end, and man be permitted to repose within
his  dwelling in peace, and to gather in and garner  up
the products of his industry, without  being  endangered
in his person or property by the hand of the  felon, or the
devices of the knave ; or wounded in his feelings, and de-
prived of his good name, by the tongue of the slanderer.
  In plainer and more  explicit terms.  So exalted is my
opinion of the attributes of the Deity, that I cannot doubt
the perfection of any thing he has created.  I am there-
fore  compelled  to be a believer  in the doctrine of a mil-
lennium to come.  Though before its advent thousands
                        13 
146     THOUGHTS ON  THE  PHRENOLOGY OF

of ages will have probably elapsed.   And I further be-
lieve, that  that high and happy degree of  reformation
and improvement in the condition of man, is to be the
product exclusively of his own labours.  He must work
for the felicity he is destined  to enjoy, else he will nei-
ther attain nor deserve it.  He is furnished by the Crea-
tor with the means and powers  to purge himself of the
grovelling vice of falsehood, and emerge from the igno-
minious condition it imposes.   Let those provisions be
brought to the task with energy and judgment, and it
will be completed.  Even a steady and determined re-
solution to employ them, is an important  step toward a
consummation so desirable.
   The first effectual act in the eradication of falsehood,
is to denounce it  in  words,  and discountenance  it  in
practice — to proclaim against it in every shape a per-
secution of intolerance,  and a  war of extermination.
Whatever may be their  wealth, or standing, or preten-
sions, let the liar and  the traitor, the shuffler,  the swin-
dler, the knave, and the thief, be openly held in the de-
testation they merit;  be excluded from the companion-
ship of the upright and honorable, and thrown into the
abhorred society of each other ;  or driven into solitude.
Let the friends and patterns  of virtue and good order
shun them as lepers,  or other unclean things — except
when they make a benevolent  effort to reclaim  them.
Let them then approach them in the capacity of moral
physicians, and act  toward them accordingly.  Time
does not permit me to enter  in  detail on the mode  of
treating them.  In addition, however, to the inculcation
of moral precepts, and  the recommendation of moral
practices, by example as well as advice, a part of the 
        FALSEHOOD  AND ITS KINDRED VICES.     147

curative  means  should  be, a contrast strongly drawn,
and earnestly presented to them, of the actual character
and standing (with the good and the wise) of the traitor
and the faithful,  the  reckless liar, and the conscientious
friend and follower of truth —the comparative and widely
different estimation, in which such individuals are held
by every one, the attainment of whose esteem should be
an object of ambition — the different fates that usually
await them while living, the opposite feelings they ex-
perience from a retrospect of their lives, and the un-
speakable  difference of their hopes and apprehensions,
on the approach of death.  The more effectually to en-
force these representations, remind such of them as are
not altogether indifferent to religion, of the dismal venge-
ance denounced in Scripture against liars and traitors.
And to render this argument still more impressive, no-
thing can be better suited than  a recital of the examples
of Ananias, who was stricken dead with a lie on his lips,
and of Judas, whose remorse for his treachery drove
him to suicide.  Nor will it be amiss to familiarize them
with the fact, that nothing is so  affrontive to  a man of
honour as  to be bearded as a liar.   Why 1  Because
the appellation is unequalled in the ignominy it imputes.
But if it be degrading to an individual  to be pronounced
a liar ;  to deserve the appellation is immeasurably more
so.   I  need scarcely add, that  these efforts at reforma-
 tion will be most likely to succeed, when they are made
 through the "ruling passions" of the individuals to be
 reclaimed.   Let the proud man be addressed through
 his  pride, the timid through  his fears,  the  ambitious
 through his love of distinction, the covetous through his
 love of gain, and  those  who have  religious feelings
 through their hopes and apprehensions  as to a future 
 148     THOUGHTS ON  THE PHRENOLOGY OF

 state.  On this topic, however, I can dwell no longer,
 but must pass to another.
   However skillfully and  vigorously the effort may be
 made, it is  not by any kind of action on adults, that our
 race can be freed entirely from the turpitude of falsehood.
 Though the habits of long-practised  liars and traitors
 may be amended, to reduce them to soundness is per-
 haps impossible.   Their moral malady would seem to
 be incurable.   After years of practice, their propensity
 to violate truth in some way, becomes  almost as deeply
 and immovably rooted in their nature,  as the propensity
 to breathe, sleep, or take food.   Of such profligates (and
 their  number is not small)  it might be  correctly said, in
 the words of the prophet,  " Ephraim is  given over to
 idols  ; let him alone."
   It  is through the medium of a suitable education,
 commenced in the very  morning of life, that  the mind
 can receive that  moral  soundness, mould, and bias,
 which are fatal to falsehood.   Childhood is the period
 of mental flexibility, when the animal propensity, whose
 excess is lying, can be most effectually regulated.  And,
 if neglected then, it too often acquires  such strength
 and unbridledness, as to be afterwards irreclaimable. So
 true are the words of the poet:
       " 'Tis education forms the common mind ;
       Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."
That the " bent" therefore may be of sufficient compass,
 and in the right direction, I would follow in my advice
somewhat the  manner of  an eloquent French writer,
when urging the early inculcation of the  virtue of patri-
 otism —  " Begin," said he " with the child in its cradle,
 and let the first word it pronounces be Washington."
 Thus would I say :  " begin with the  child, as soon as 
        FALSEHOOD  AND  ITS  KINDRED VICES.     149

it can  understand you, and let each word it hears or
utters, and every action it performs or witnesses, be in
accordance with truth.  Let it be taught that, in its na-
ture, falsehood is not only sinful, but ignominious and
dishonourable —that it is indicative of the  meanest and
basest of natures — and that to be guilty of it is to forfeit
affection, favour, and kindness, and to excite displeasure,
and incur punishment.  And let it further learn, that an
inviolable adherence to truth  is lovely and honourable,
and secures universal affection and  good will — that it
is the  highest characteristic  of pure and  elevated na-
tures—that even the Deity himself has virtually assumed
the name of Truth, and made known, as one of his
holiest attributes, that he will not, cannot  swerve from
it — and that inflexibly to practise truth, is the never-
failing way to gain and preserve the  esteem and confi-
dence of  the  virtuous and  enlightened ;  and, as the
highest  of earthly rewards, to  enjoy the gratification of
self-esteem, in union with the approbation of a peaceful
conscience.   These views to be imparted  successively,
as the mind of the instructed becomes capable of com-
prehending them.
   Moral education then is that form of discipline which
can alone preserve the mind from all that is base and
odious in  falsehood.  And,  contrary to general belief
 and custom, it can be efficiently promoted only by prac-
 tice and example ; not by the cultivation of the intellec-
 tual faculties.  Mere moral  precepts, whether oral or
 written, do comparatively but little to confirm the pupil
 in habits of virtue.   They may give him knowledge, but
 nothing more.   And  that, as daily experience evinces,
 has no necessary affinity to moral duty, nor any positive
 control  of it.  A single  day of moral practice impart*
                        13* 
 150    THOUGHTS ON THE  PHRENOLOGY OF

 more strength and activity to the moral faculties, than a
 month or even a year of reading, and listening to ha-
 rangues recommendatory of morality.
   To these remarks,  however, exceptions may exist.
 On youthful minds of an ardent temperament and a lofty
 ambition, the  mere contemplation of examples  pure in
 sentiment and sublime in their moral bearing, especially
 if associated with deeds of greatness and glory, produces
 at times  very salutary effects.   To the native seeds of
 morality, sown in the constitution of those who come
 under their influence, they   are  sunshine and dew.
 Their genial agency awakens the germ, and future events
 give nourishment  and growth,  and bring the  fruit to
 ripeness.   Hence the benefits  that result from the biog-
 raphical memoirs of distinguished men.  There is reason
 to believe that such productions have done much more
 in the promotion of sound  morals  and practical virtue,
than all the didactic discourses, essays, and systems of
 moral philosophy, that have issued from the pen  and the
 press, since the origin of letters.  Plutarch has done
 more  for morals, by his lives of the great, than all the
 sages of Greece by their writings; and the authors of
 the lives of distinguished Romans, more than the moral
 writers of  Rome.   Nor is it doubtful  that the  biogra-
 phies  of Franklin,  Washington, Hamilton, and other
 illustrious Americans, composed in a manner  worthy
 of their subjects, might be so used as to be made the
 means of greater amendment in the morals of our coun-
 try, than all the editions of Paley, Smith  and  Beattie,
 Stewart and Brown, and all the other disquisitions on
 morals, that have ever been published.
   But it  is not by the exertion  and influence of a few
 agents in the  cause  of truth and morality, however 
        FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED VICES.      151

strenuous and powerful they may be, that mendacity
and its  concomitant  evils  can be  suppressed.   For
the completion of a work of such magnitude and diffi-
culty, the labourers must be numerous, true  to their
vocation, ardent in their zeal, and untiring  in their per-
severance, else their efforts will be unavailing.  Nothing
short,  I say, of a  sound  moral education  diffused
throughout the land can accomplish the object.  And to
that caste of education, in its true character and entire
extent,  we are hitherto strangers.   Its very beginning
among  us is yet to be made, and its  real value yet to
be  learnt.   In this assertion, exceptionable as it  may
perhaps be thought, there is neither error nor extrava-
gance.   I fearlessly repeat, that,  lofty as  are our pre-
tensions to knowledge, morality and religion, the value
and sacredness  of truth, and the turpitude of falsehood
are either misunderstood, or shamefully disregarded by
us.  Were the fact  otherwise, so would be the issue.
In all parts of our country, and under all circumstances,
truth would be held in higher estimation  and  honour,
and falsehood in  deeper  disgrace and odium,  than is
now the case.   In a special manner, those notoriously
addicted to the  latter, in some  of  its most repulsive
shapes,  would never  be received into  public favour,
caressed and sustained in their movements and meas-
ures, and hailed under the  prostituted title of benefac-
tors and  friends, in any cause  deemed  upright  and
praiseworthy.  Yet, in  whatever direction you  throw
your eyes over  our country, you  will find such scenes
of prostitution abundant.
   But  the moment  warns me that  I must hasten  to a
close.   Not however until I shall have briefly indicated
to you  the  only source  of  that improvement in moral 
152     THOUGHTS ON THE  PHRENOLOGY OF

education, which can convert the love of truth and the
detestation  of falsehood, into the " ruling passion" of
the whole community.  It is family discipline, con-
ducted under  the  guidance of solid  judgment,  correct
knowledge, inflexible resolution and  perseverance, and
sound conscience, and  brought to  the  perfection  of
which it is susceptible.
   That truth  may attain the ascendency it deserves,
and falsehood  be held in due abhorrence, every family
must be  converted into a school of  morals, where the
former will be practically taught and encouraged, and
the latter, in all its modifications, discountenanced.
   And mothers must be the teachers.   Nor  will the
occupation be found either impracticable or  burthen-
some to  them.  On the contrary, it will be a  source
of the purest and most elevated enjoyment.   It will
only impose on them the
      "Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
      To teach the young idea how to shoot,
      To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,
      To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
      The generous purpose in the glowing breast."
And who that deserves the name of mother,  or even
of woman, would  not eagerly and joyously embark in
the employment!
   That mothers however may be  fitted for a vocation so
elevated and responsible, and prepared to discharge the
duties of it with credit and  usefulness, they must  be
suitably trained  and disciplined themselves.   And I  la-
ment to say, that  in the present state of society, this is
far from  being generally the case.   The systems of fe-
male education  now in vogue, (if "systems" they can
be called,) are miserably defective,  and  can never  fit
mothers  for an office at once so  sacred and important. 
        FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED  VICES.     153

They qualify  them much better to glitter, sport, and
dazzle abroad, than to officiate in their consecrated pro-
vinces at home.
  Female education, as now  conducted,  is deplorably
superficial.  It addresses itself far more to the eye and
the ear, than to the understanding and the conscience.
To play on  the piano and the  harp, to touch the guitar,
to paint, dance, embroider, and dress with taste, are de-
sirable and delightful, as accomplishments of the fair.
But they  are  only accomplishments.   They  are the
mere " trappings and suits " of female  education, and
should  be  regarded but as decorations of something
" within which passeth  show," and is of higher value.
And that something  is  wealth of intellect, delicacy  of
feeling, refinement of sentiment, purity of morals, an
undeviating  adherence to truth, and a sincere regard for
the duties of a religion, free from moroseness, bigotry,
and superstition.    For, however  regardless they may
be of such duties  themselves, there are few men of in-
tellect and standing, who do not recoil from the specta-
cle  of an irreligious woman.  If her infidelity be openly
avowed, she is so far unsexed, and marred in her fitness
for  the  sphere she should occupy.   It is to woman we
instinctively look for  the ornament, charm, and solace
of home — for all that is most hallowed, as well as most
lovely in the domestic circle, and most attractive and re-
spected in the  social.   But,  if she be not spotless  in
her morals, refined in her taste, graceful in her manners,
and pious in her sentiments, we look in vain,  and feel
the chill of disappointment, and the sting of regret, in-
stead of the thrill of admiration, and the glow of de-
light.   She  neither fills  up the measure of our  expecta-
tion, satisfies  our wishes, nor realizes our hopes.   But, 
154     THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY OF

when her character and virtues are suited to her sex,
she is at once our most valuable exemplar and instruct-
ress in truth and fidelity, purity and fortitude, friendship
and love.   In all that  is most attractive and  estimable
she towers above us, as a  being  of a superior nature,
destined to a higher sphere, and leaves us  in  our inglo-
rious caste of inferiority, the creatures of earth.
   We hear occasionally of the constancy of man, as
an unlooked-for  event.   But we witness as  an every-
day occurrence, the fidelity, truth, and devotedness of
woman.  We read, among the ornaments of epic song,
of the friendships of Pylades and  Orestes, Achilles and
Patroclus, Nisus and Euryalus ; and in ancient romance
of that of Damon  and Pythias, and a few others, be-
tween men.   And we  bestow on  them an ample meas-
ure of admiration and applause.  Yet what are they but
heartless professions, compared to the manifestations re-
corded of woman—to the unfathomable attachment
for example, of Kaled (a young female in the attire of
a page) to  Lara his Lord, as immortalized  by Byron.
The  scene  is laid  at night, and the  moment is that in
which  the chief is about to lead the charge  to his last
conflict.  And  the following  are the lines, that will
perpetuate to all ages, the truth  and faithfulness of  a
female friend :

       "Perhaps 'twas but the moon's dim twilight threw
       Along his (Kaled's) aspect an unwonted hue
       Of mournful paleness, whose deep tint expressed
      The truth, and not the terror of his breast.
       This Lara marked,  and laid his  hand on his ;
       It trembled not in such an hour  as this ;
       His lip was silent, scarcely beat his heart;
       His eye alone proclaimed, we will not part! 
        FALSEHOOD AND ITS KINDRED  VICES.     155

     Thy band may perish, and thy friends may flee,
     Farewell to life, but not adieu to thee I"
And fearfully did the issue verify the fatal resolve of the
eye.  The leader fell,- and the page  was maddened and
desrtoyed by the agonies of grief.
   Or what were those male friendships, contrasted with
the fidelity of Emma to Henry, as celebrated by Pryor :
      " Thy rise of fortune only did I wed,
      From its decline determined to recede;
      Did I but purpose to embark with thee
      On the smooth surface of a summer sea,
      When gentle zephyrs play in prosperous gales,
      And Fortune's favour fills the swelling sails ;
      But would forsake the ship and make the shore,
      When the winds whistle and the tempests roar  ?
      No, Henry, no ; one sacred oath has tied
      Our loves ; one destiny our lives shall guide;
      Nor wild, nor deep our common way divide !"
   These splendid examples of  truth and faithfulness in
 woman  are  among the redeeming lights of the world,
 and, to the heart of sensibility, beggar the much boasted
 glories of man.    There dwell in them a moral sublimi-
 tv,  power,  and  beauty, which render them impressive
 and attractive, far beyond what philosophers have achie-
 ved in the halls of science ; historians and poets in the
 temples of  the muses ; orators  on the rostrum ; or he-
 roes in the field.  Hence when a  Shakspeare, a Scott,
 or  a Byron, resolves most deeply to fascinate and en-
 thrall the minds of his readers, he  presents them with a
 picture of female  devotedness,  constancy,  and good
 faith.   Were it possible,  moreover, for the reprobate
 votaries of falsehood and  intrigue, to become instinct
 with  the feelings of honourable men, such  examples
 would either reclaim them  from profligacy, crush them 
156      THOUGHTS ON THE PHRENOLOGY
 under a sense of their own  degradation and unworthi-
 ness, or madden them with remorse.  And I repeat,
 that, if this world of deception and treachery is ever to
 become a world of fidelity and truth, the conversion will
 be, in a high degree, the work of educated  woman, in
 the faithful discharge of her maternal duties.
    This, gentlemen, as heretofore suggested, is the last
 time I shall ever address you — a consideration which,
 on my part, gives  to  the  occasion unusual  solemnity.
 Accept therefore, I entreat you, as my official death-bed
 discourse, the sentiments I have uttered.  And consider
 them as consecrated by the sincerity and affection of a
 father to his sons, at the trying hour of their final sepa-
 ration.
    Though but few of you rank  as heads of families
 now, it is  my earnest hope that you will all live to do so
 hereafter.   When in that justly honoured and responsi-
 ble capacity then, let me further hope, that you will not
 be unmindful of some of the thoughts that  have been
 expressed to you this day.   In that case, you may  not
 have listened, nor I spoken, altogether in vain.   And,
 at whatever period the event  just referred to may occur,
 let truth and fidelity be the inmates of your dwellings,
 and your companions without; and peace, respectability,
 and honour will not fail to acompany them.   Nor will
 falsehood and treachery, whensoever,  wheresoever,  or
 by  whomsoever practised, escape in the end, exposure
 and reprobation, disaster and disgrace.
  Cordially welcoming  you to the  professional  rank
which you have this day attained, and  tendering to you, in
behalf of the Faculty of Medicine, and the government
of the University,  the  affectionate benediction of your
Alma Mater, I bid you farewell ! 
                         errors.
Page 79, 5th line from the top, for " equivouque," read equivoque.
  "  101—2, bottom and top lines, for " succedul," read suicidal.
  "  125, top line, for " views," read vices. 
 
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