to establish in my letter to Mr Combe; but he seems not a little inclined to quarrel with me for accusing that gentleman and Dr Spurzheim of saying that "an organ perceived what did not exist." Of actually and literally charging these gentlemen with so great an absurdity, I certainly, however, am not guilty. I have merely shewn (if, indeed, as Mr Watson appears to think, I have shewn) that those gentlemen, by assuming a false analogy between two things in their nature essentially and entirely different, had been misled to set up an argument which, carried out to its full extent, necessarily involved the absurdity in question. But these are lapses to which the very highest order of intellect is at times liable.

Mr Watson admits, that the passage he has transcribed in his fourth paragraph from my letter to Mr Combe, is fairly reasoned from the assumption which he has written in Italics. The assumption is not mine. In his chapter on Comparison, Mr Combe says, in so many words (I write from memory), that Comparison compares things or qualities between which other organs perceive only difference; that the organ of Colour compares colours, but Comparison colours to sounds, &c. I really cannot perceive the very great inaccuracy of saying, that things in many respects different are alike in others. We say that men are alike who resemble each other in any degree greater than that in which other men generally do. We even say that men are like monkeys, and monkeys like men, without any fear of being accused of affirming that mankind have tails, or that monkeys talk. Painters speak of " the harmony of colouring," and dillettanti musicians talk of the "lights and shades" of song; but nobody ever dreams of charging the one or the other with saying that colours sing, or that sounds are visible. To me, therefore, the question appears tending rather to resolve itself into a mere dispute about terms, into which it is not my wish to enter any further than to say, that the term "conditions," proposed by Mr Watson, does not convey to my mind any very. distinct idea; and that, if it should be found necessary, as I think it will, for phrenologists still to avail themselves of the terms" resemblance" and "difference", it will be found impossible to abstract them from the objects which suggest the ideas which those words convey, and affix them to that intangible something, for which, I believe, no one adequate expression can be found in any language.

With regard to my "illustrative arguments," alluded to by Mr Watson in the fifth paragraph of his letter, I can only say, that the instances I have given are so very clear, that I cannot conceive why that gentleman should suspect that the "similitudes and dissimilitudes" respectively perceived by myself and my brother, are not altogether in the qualities compared ; unless,

indeed, he mean to make a mere metaphysical distinction, in which case I cannot admit his argument. It appears to me quite sufficient that the resemblance and differences between the colours and sounds mentioned, should be suggested by those colours and sounds, and distinctly perceived. I cannot, therefore, feel the application of the story which Mr Watson has given in illustration. One thing, however, appears to me to be quite certain, that whatever may be the opinions of those clever lawyers, Mr Form, Mr Size, Mr Colour, Mr Weight, and Mr Eventuality, the question, whether Mr Comparison and Mr Wit mutually exercise faculties common to both, is one which must be decided in a court where, though all these may be admitted to plead, Mr Causality must sit alone as judge.

Mr. Watson cannot, I think, have given that portion of my letter to Mr Combe, to which he refers in his sixth paragraph, all that attention which I hoped it might claim to deserve. According to my views, a large organ of Comparison will unquestionably have an intense perception of real resemblances; but unless it be regulated by the suggestions of some other organ (in my opinion, the organ called the organ of Wit), the whole reasoning power being defective, not the organ of Comparison, but the individual in whose brain it predominates, will be be very apt to infer resemblances which have, in fact, no existence. According to my view, a large organ of Comparison standing alone should possess a very vivid perception of a real resemblance, but no power of discriminating between a true and false analogy, exactly as, according to my views, a large organ of Causality standing alone should possess a clear perception of cause and effect, but no power of deciding between two concomitants which is which.

Mr Watson's papers, referred to in his seventh paragraph, shall receive my early attention. I cannot say I feel disposed, with Mr Watson, to refer the laughter which accompanies the exhibition of wit to any excitement of the animal organs. Wit, indeed, like every other intellectual faculty, may be too frequently employed for the gratification of these; and that hiatus maxime deflendus, in the face of a philosopher, will naturally, upon such occasions, assume a coarser and less intellectual expression than I should ever expect to trace in Mr Watson's smile. But, with great submission, there is no style of wit which does not, in a greater or less degree, affect the risible muscles of the gravest Heraclitus of us all; and a thousand instances of pure wit might be adduced, of which not a syllable is calculated to gratify any one of the organs of the propensities. That Mr Watson should with me that "the of Wit is not the only organ by organ means of which the feeling that accompanies the perception of wit is capable of being excited," would have been a consolation

agree

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'to me, had it not been my lot to find, at the same moment, that he agreed with me for a different reason. However, I am even with him; for although I also can bear testimony to the fact that the organs he mentions, one, some, or all of them, are, generally speaking, more fully developed in the heads of witty men than the organ of Wit, I must also beg leave to express an opinion, that the wittiest men in society are far from being those who possess the most intense perception of wit, or who derive the greatest enjoyment from its exhibition. Grimm, in some part of his correspondence, I remember, states many facts in corroboration of this opinion, which he also held, and expressed by saying, in so many words (I forget the exact expression), "Que l'homme d'esprit et celui qu'il amuse sont deux êtres bien differens." The cause of this is, I think, apparent enough. Another fact which has fallen under my observation I may be allowed to mention, as strongly corroborating Mr Scott's opinion concerning the true office of the organ of Wit. Though the organs which Mr Watson has specified form the prevailing development in successful advocates, especially in the outset of their career, there is no instance upon record of a sound and first-rate lawyer who did not possess the organ in question remarkably large. In the portraits of Lord Loughborough and Blackstone, it may be observed very strongly marked, while Causality and Comparison are moderately developed in the latter, and defective in the former. In the late Lord Ellenborough, in Lord Eldon, in Sir William Grant, in the heads of all our most distinguished judges at law and in equity, the same organ appears to be unquestionably the largest in the forehead. But it is obvious that discrimination is the great quality necessary to enable a judge to arrive with facility at a sound legal decision, amid the maze of conflicting arguments addressed to him from the bar.

Should the opinions of Mr Scott eventually issue forth pure from the furnace of public discussion, I shall consider myself a little unfortunate if my proposed term of Assimilativeness should be rejected, on the grounds which appear to Mr Watson to render it "quite inadmissible." It is, indeed, true enough that the term has been, however inaccurately, rather popularly, applied confusedly to express something more than resemblance merely. But I need not send Mr Watson back to his Latin, to convince him that resemblance, merely, is the original and appropriate signification of the word. The popular application of the term, therefore, must have arisen from the resemblance between the particles of those homogeneous substances, into which the food is said to be converted or assimilated. The whole mass of food, however, never is, in fact, assimilated, but in all the various animal and vegetable laboratories, portions only

of the component parts of the nutriment received are separated from their various combinations to form new ones. The food of animals, of course, contains all the ingredients which are found in the chyle, the milk, the blood, and the various secretions; but each of these contains various portions and proportions of some of those ingredients only, and other redundant and useless parts are carried off by evaporation and excretion. The same is the case with plants. The wax, the oil, the honey, the turpentine, which they secrete, are all obtained from the sap which supplies the plant with nourishment; but in no case is there any operation performed, either by plants or animals, which can be accurately expressed by the term assimilate. Of course, until "some definite result be arrived at," the old name must continue; but if phrenologists should at length advance to the conclusion which I have been led to anticipate, I cannot perceive, therefore, that there exists any valid objection to the expression I have suggested. I remain, Sir, your most obedient Servant,

GEORGE HANCOCK.

P. S.-Holding as I do that Causality possesses no power of comparison, it is evident that I admitted too much in saying that each intellectual organ perceives both resemblances and differences within its own sphere. I should wish, therefore, to limit my admission to the perceptive organs. There was one or two other trifling inaccuracies in my letter to Mr Combe, which are too obvious to require particular notice.

ARTICLE III.

REMARKS ON A NOTICE OF GEORGE FOX BY W. A. F. BROWNE, at Page 535. of Vol. IX. of the Phrenological Journal.

RESPECTED FRIEND,

TO THE EDITOR.

I was astonished to see, in an article on Religious Fanaticism, by W. A. F. Browne, in No. 46. of the Phrenological Journal, what I consider an exceedingly injudicious notice of George Fox, whom he calls founder of the Quakers. Such notice in the present day, is, to say the least of it, in bad taste. It had been the practice for a hundred years, or more, in British publications of various character, containing short notices of religious sects, among others even some British Encyclopædias, in a similar manner to traduce the Society of Friends; for such is the undoubted tendency, and there is reason to believe intention, of all such notices. And by copying succes.

sively from their seniors what had been written by the enemies of the society, at a time when politico-religious controversy ran high, and the Society of Friends suffered every kind of persecution, from all parties successively, some of them even unto death. Under these circumstances, a phrenologist would say, that the hostile historian could not write the truth. Hence the lying histories that have been transmitted through a series of hostile publications. But there is also a history of George Fox written by his friends, giving a very different account of him. From this the writers in the more respectable publications, Encyclopædias, and other works containing biographic articles, have, during the last thirty years, surely with better judgment, taken their accounts of this extraordinary individual. The following two paragraphs are from W. A. F. Browne's paper.

There is to be found, in the history of our own country, an instance of an individual who exercised a gigantic moral force over the minds of thousands; whose influence is still felt in the most civilized countries of the world; and who, in many respects, closely resembled my patient. I speak of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers. This celebrated man, at the period of what is technically called his regeneration, was, by the shewing of some of his most distinguished disciples, in every way worthy of a strait jacket. A dose of calomel is a wonderful enemy to inspiration; and had that been timeously administered, a good cobbler would not have been spoiled, and the Society of Friends would never have been heard of. For that Society as at present constituted, as recognising justice and mercy as their cardinal virtues, I entertain perfect respect: these animadversions are directed solely to what may be styled the hot stage of the religious fever in which their founder passed the early part of his career..

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"Prepared by living in an age of great fanaticism, by solitary musings, and above all, perhaps, by a highly excitable and excited temperament, Fox became so infatuated, that, conceiving himself endowed with supernatural powers, he commanded a withered arm to become as it once had been; he declared that all knowledge and power were conceded to him,-in fact, that he was a proxy of Almighty greatness, but that he refrained from exercising it.' And although he confessed that it was inexpedient for him to exercise these gifts, he felt it incumbent to denounce the city of Lichfield, and was much puzzled when no great calamity followed. With what this justly celebrated innovator became when this morbid fervour subsided, we have nothing further to do than to remark that he recovered, which my patient has not."

W. A. F. Browne pretends to copy from George Fox's most