conduct when equanimity returns. There ought, therefore, to be no retort from the other side, for this but adds to the evil; on the contrary, he should be answered in calm and soothing language. Let no one expect to see good-humour and active poTiteness displayed by a person who is exhausted and uncomfortable. Let no complaint be uttered against him, because, on coming home in the evening, jaded and harassed by professional toil, he does not instantly make himself agreeable, but sits down in sullen silence. Nor let any one resent the fretfulness of a female friend who speaks sharply at a season when irritability of temper is the natural result of a constitutional cause.*) Finally, let no master whose servants are starved and contemptuously treated, look for meekness and good-natured obedience at their hands.

Another department in which a knowledge of the laws under discussion may prove useful, is the treatment of the insane. When Combativeness and Destructiveness are the organs diseased, a cure is to be effected chiefly by withdrawing whatever is calculated to occasion painful emotions, and by giving agreeable excitement to the other parts of the brain. By the former means, every circumstance tending to irritate the diseased organs will be avoided; while, by exciting agreeable feelings, not only will the vivacity of Benevolence be increased, but that of Combativeness and Destructiveness will be positively lessened. Such, at least, there are plausible grounds for expecting to be the result; for the propensities lose a portion of their activity, or become entirely dormant, at seasons when the moral sentiments are in play; while violent action of the propensities_unquestionably tends, during its continuance, to blunt the moral powers. This view is supported by a singular case, reported by Mr Grattan of Belfast, in a recent number of this Journal-the case of a gentleman on the top of whose skull there are two fissures, having the appearance of fontanels in children, and which are uniformly observed to be depressed when he is angry, in consequence apparently of the blood being withdrawn from the coronal region of the brain. †) I may refer also to a circumstance incidentally mentioned of a very violent, combative, and brutal

See on this subject, vol. ix. p. 421, note.

+See Phren. Journ. ix. 473. Since the publication of this remarkable case, the following details have been obtained by Mr Grattan from the gentleman's daughter, in reply to some queries which I sent him:

1. How long may it be since you first perceived the "openings" in Mr B.'s head? First observed the openings in my father's head in the summer of 1829. It was the summer previous to Dr Spurzheim's visit to Belfast.

2. Have you ever remarked whether the openings continued depressed so long as he continued angry? and, if so, how long? The depressions remained so long as he was under the influence of passion; and, as it subsided, the depressions gradually disappeared. Anger never remained long; only while excited by something that displeased. 3. Have

maniac whom Mr Combe saw in the Richmond Lunatic AsyTum at Dublin-namely, that he has a good deal of humour, by the excitement of which his violence is easily subdued."* This effect seems to result from the agreeable action of the sense of the ludicrous, stimulating Benevolence, and extending a soothing influence to the animal feelings.

The treatment of criminals has already been touched upor. If the improvement of their dispositions be the grand aim of prison-discipline, harsh usage ought never to be resorted to as a means of effecting it. Bodily pain, although, like grief, it may lessen sensuality, can never improve the temper. By means of regular occupation of the mind in reading and reflection, and of the body in useful labour, with frequent visits from moral and intelligent persons, all that is possible in the way of reformation will be accomplished.

I shall conclude by noticing a few points on which the preceding discussion is calculated to throw light.

It was argued some years ago by an acute phrenologist, that revenge is a rude manifestation of Conscientiousness. The principles above expounded, however, completely demonstrate the fallacy of such a doctrine. The infliction of revenge is an instinctive act, not necessarily accompanied by the notion that we are entitled to perform it. No one will maintain that the snake, which bites when trampled on, is actuated by moral considerations, or that resentment is weakest among atrocious and unconscientious criminals. Nor is gratitude any more an attribute of Conscientiousness than the desire of revenge. While the latter is an impulse to punish those who have injured us the former is, in like manner, simply a disposition to augment the happiness of our benefactors. The notion that remuneration is justly due may accompany this disposition, but is not essential to its existence. In Mr Combe's Essays on Phrenology, published in 1819, Conscientiousness was represented as the source of gratitude; but Sir George Mackenzie subsequently pointed out the inaccuracy of this view. "Were Conscientiousness alone concerned," says he, "it would give us the feeling that we owed a debt which we were bound, and might be compelled, to pay. Gratitude appears to us to be a sentiment independent of any feeling of obligation, or of any desire to repay a favour conferred. No doubt it impels us to do a good action in return, when an opportunity

3. Have you ever perceived any thing like pulsation or throbbing in the openings? and have you ever seen them distended outwards instead of depressed? I have observed pulsations, but do not recollect seeing the parts distended.

Phren. Journ. vi. 84. .

offers itself; but a person in whom gratitude is powerful, never feels that a debt is paid, although in strict justice he may have overpaid it an hundred fold." Mr Combe now concurs with Sir George Mackenzie, so far as to admit that "gratitude is much heightened by Benevolence;"+ but if my views are wellfounded, that sentiment does not merely increase the feeling, but actually constitutes its essential element. Do we not occasionally see unconscientious men grateful if Benevolence is largely developed? With Conscientiousness, however, their gratitude would be more intense.

In the analysis of Sympathy by Dr Andrew Combe, published in the System of Phrenology, the opinion is stated, that, "by a law of our constitution, the natural language of any ac tive faculty invariably excites the same faculty to activity, and consequently gives rise to the same emotions, in the minds of those who witness it. The forbidding strut of great SelfEsteem, for instance, in a person whom we never saw before, addresses itself directly to our Self-Esteem; we instinctively draw up, and feel moved to support our own consequence by a coldness proportioned to his. In like manner, when we meet, for the first time, with a person whose countenance and gestures express kindness, candour, and open-hearted friendship, which are the natural language of active Benevolence, Conscientiousness and Adhesiveness, the same emotions are excited in ourselves, and we instinctively return his advances with a kindness corresponding to his own." Now it appears to me, that these effects take place, (not under the operation of any such law as that imagined by Dr Combe, but simply because the natural language conveys a meaning calculated to rouse the corresponding faculty in the spectator. The forbidding strut of Self-Esteem calls that sentiment into action in ourselves, only in so far as it is significant to us of an insult or assumption of superiority on the part of the strutter-these being directly calculated to stimulate the faculty in us, just as by a fine landscape the sentiment of Ideality is called into play. That the mere natural language of Self-Esteem does not excite the same faculty in the spectators, is obvious from the fact, that where circumstances put all reference to self out of the question, no such consequence ensues: thus, though we see an actor on the stage exhibiting in perfection the natural language of arrogance, yet, being ourselves not in the least offended by the exhibition, we experience no inclination to" draw up," but are satisfied with laughing heartily. In like manner, we may see one man strutting up to another on the street, without feeling at all disposed to imitate his carriage; though, if ourselves strutted up to, Self-Esteem is touched by

Illustrations of Phrenology, 1820, p. 145.
System of Phrenology, 3d edit. p. 302.

+ Id. p. 546.

the insult, and its natural language, of course, is exhibited. That this is the consequence of the uncerimonious treatment alone, and not of mere perception of the natural language, appears from this, that an insult given quite unintentionally, and with the kindest and most respectful air, has exactly the same effect: I shall never forget the air of offended dignity with which a gentleman in a public office" drew up," when, in a moment of abstraction, half-a-crown was offered him as a compensation for his civility in shewing the building. So it is likewise with Destructiveness and Benevolence: We may see a man furiously enraged, without having our own Destructiveness excited in the least; while the tenth part of the concomitant verbal abuse, if lavished on ourselves, would immediately kindle our wrath into a flame. Thus also, the natural language of Benevolence fails to excite that faculty in us, if we are aware that the appearance is merely assumed. An open, sincere, and friendly countenance, produces good-will only in so far as it is significant of estimable qualities, and these, being agreeable to our own feelings, excite Benevolence through their medium. The views of Dr Combe on this subject, therefore, even though implicitly adopted by Dr Caldwell (who argues on this hypothesis against the corporeal punishment of criminals)* seem built on a sandy foundation. All the phenomena which really take place, are explained by the laws whose existence I have laboured to establish-namely; that Destructiveness is roused by the disagreeable action; and Benevolence by the agreeable, of every power of the human mind.

ARTICLE II.

REPLY by Mr GEORGE HANCOCK to Mr H. C. WATSON'S Comments on his Letter on the Functions of Comparison and Wit, in the 46th Number of the Phrenological Journal.

LONDON, 9th February 1836. SIR, I regret that my absence from town during the past two months should have deprived me, until last week, of the opportunity of reading, in your 46th number, Mr Watson's comments upon my letter to Mr Combe, concerning the functions of Comparison and Wit; and still more, that a variety of occupation will prevent my attempting, at this moment, to enter upon a full and fair examination of the grounds of Mr Watson's

Phren. Journ. vii. 502.

own opinions with regard to the true functions of those organs. I shall be most happy, however, upon a future occasion, to discuss the question at issue between Mr Scott and Mr Watson in the best manner I may be able; and I beg to solicit the forbearance of Mr Watson, and of your readers, if I now confine myself to so brief a reply to that gentleman's observations as I may hope to forward to you by possibility in time for publication in your next.

After the very candid acknowledgment I made at the commencement of my letter to Mr Combe, that "his System and Dr Spurzheim's were the only works which I had had an opportunity of consulting," I had not, perhaps, any reason to expect that my apparent ignorance of the views of Mr Watson and Mr Schwartz of Stockholm, could be considered by any of your readers as an argument against "my feeling so much interested in the progress and accuracy of phrenological science as I professed to be;" and the really unaffected manner in which I placed my letter entirely at Mr Combe's disposal, expressing my wish that it should appear in your Journal only in the event of that gentleman considering that any new light might be obtained by its publication, might, I think, have protected me from the implied accusation brought against me by Mr Watson, of presuming "to treat an agitated question as a question of science," without being duly qualified by previous acquaintance with his particular opinions. The fact, Sir, is, I think, already sufficiently obvious to most of your readers, that I have not the slightest pretension to the character of a phrenologist, and that I ventured upon this, to me, new arena only as a moral reasoner, assuming the facts to which the great masters of phrenology had borne testimony. I had seen, indeed, in Mr Combe's third edition, the brief notice of Mr Watson's "reasons," to which he alludes; but, if my recollection serve me, I found no commentary upon them, either favourable or otherwise; and certainly, as stated by Mr Combe, they failed to produce the slightest degree of conviction on my mind. With the reasonings of Mr Scott it was otherwise; and I was surprised to find arguments which I thought convincing over-ruled by Mr Combe and Dr Spurzheim, upon what appeared to me very insufficient grounds; and if "upon this hint I spake," I really do not understand why any gentleman should feel aggrieved. As between Mr Scott and Mr Watson, the question still remains in statu quo, to be debated between those two gentlemen and their supporters. My affair was only between Mr Scott, and Dr Spurzheim and Mr Combe.

Mr Watson appears to think that I have succeeded in making manifest the essential difference between "perceiving resemblances" and "not perceiving differences," which I endeavoured