opinion that my words are calculated, to convey the idea that regeneration is either solely or generally employed by them. My object was to affirm that it, in common with " inspiration," is a technical term used by fanatics to designate a period of excitement. When the term is rightly, that is, scripturally applied, either by Quakers or by others, I understand its import, and reverence the nature of the state which it represents. When it, or any other word, however, is used to signify a mere corporeal condition, which can be excited and removed by external agents, I must continue to expose and condemn such misapplication.

Your correspondent, Mr Editor, has adduced no proof whatever that my opinion as to the deportment of George Fox is erroneous. Until he does so, I shall continue to entertain that opinion. But notwithstanding my belief that George Fox, for a certain period of his life, was in a state of as great excitement as the lunatic with whom he is contrasted-notwithstanding my conviction that some of his immediate proselytes, ex. gr. James Naylor and William Simpson, were maniacs-notwithstanding the strikingly intemperate tone of your correspondent— for that society of which he is a member, (I copy part of the essay upon which he has commented,) as at present constituted, as recognising justice and mercy as their cardinal virtues, I entertain perfect respect. And remain, your obedient servant, W: A. F. BROWNE.

MONTROSE, February 15. 1836.

[It seems perfectly evident, that if Mr Browne fell into error respecting George Fox, he erred involuntarily, and with the sanction of eminent authorities. Even supposing him to have erred, therefore, (which, however, most of our readers will probably agree with us in thinking by no means apparent,) it may be questioned whether the style of Dr Maxwell's communication is altogether unexceptionable, and such as ought to characterize a philosophical and religious discussion. We honour the zeal with which he defends what appears to him to be truth; but must at the same time be permitted to express the opinion, that, in ascribing base and interested motives to those who, in the exercise of the common right of private judgment, have arrived at different conclusions, he has departed unnecessarily from the proper subject under review.-ED.]

ARTICLE IV.

REPLY TO AN OBJECTION TO PHRENOLOGY FOUNDED ON A COMPARISON OF THE BRAINS OF ANIMALS OF DIFFERENT SPECIES; AND TO THE ALLEGATION THAT CERTAIN ANIMALS ARE ALTOGETHER DESTITUTE OF BRAIN. BY CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D. Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Clinical Practice in Transylvania University.

In a late number of The Christian Examiner, Phrenology has been assailed by a reverend gentleman, who, among other objections which we have fully answered elsewhere,* brings forward one that is frequently urged, and therefore deserves to be considered in detail.

"But, above all," says he, "if it be true, as phrenologists assert, that this dependence of mind on brain holds through all the orders of animated nature, why is not the brain in the lower tribes always proportioned to the amount of mind manifested by them? It requires but a cursory observation to perceive that this is far from being the case. Not to insist on the example of vertebrated animals, in several of whom the proportion of the brain to the rest of the body is larger than in man; what are we to say of the astounding manifestation of mind displayed by the insect world; exemplified, not only in the wonderful contrivances of the bee, the spider, and the common ant, but in actions more wonderful still, as having no immediate reference to the necessities of life, and as bearing the nearest brute resemblance to the peculiar manifestations of human beings? Such are the wars of conquest carried on by different nations of the termites, in which the vanquished become the captives and slaves of the victors, and are subjected by them to all kinds of servile labour. Now in these animals, the brain (if there be any) is not only small, absolutely and relatively, but its very existence is exceedingly problematical. Many physiologists, with Linnæus at their head, have denied it." (No. 65, p. 260.)

Before proceeding to a particular examination of this flourish, which rests entirely on a false foundation, we shall make a few remarks on the latter clause of it. That Linnæus has denied a brain to insects generally is true. But it is equally true, that his denial has not verified itself, by taking brain from them. And, in the very sentence which contains the denial, he has himself virtually contradicted and nullified it. The following are his words.

"INSECTS-Spiracles, lateral pores; jaws, lateral; organs of * See Phrenology Vindicated, &c. Lexington, Ky. 1835.

sense, tongue, eyes, antennæ on the head; brain none; ears, none; nostrils, none.' See "GENERAL SYSTEM OF NATURE." This sentence, we say, virtually contradicts and invalidates itself, by granting to insects the external senses, and denying them the organ which constitutes the actual seat or centre of those senses. For that their seat is in the brain and not in the nerves, or the external organs, is susceptible of proof. In the function of sensation, whatever be its kind, the nerves are but instruments subservient to the brain, the latter being the ruling organ, in which the sensitive power immediately resides, and in which the functional action is consummated. It is at once the

In saying that

centre of sensation, and the source of the will. insects have no brain, Linnæus could not have meant that they have nothing tantamount to one. He must have known that they possess a central mass of cerebral matter performing the office of a brain, to which, as just mentioned, the nerves of sense are but ministering appendages. Or if he was unapprized of this, his stock of anatomical and physiological knowledge was more limited than we have thought it, though we have always been aware that it was not great, his attention having been engrossed by other pursuits. He also denies to insects "ears" and "nostrils." By this, however, he could not have meant that they can neither hear nor smell; for many of them are exceedingly acute in both functions. And functions universally indicate appropriate organs, and never exist without them. His meaning, therefore, must have been, that they are destitute of organs technically called ears and nostrils from their forms and situations. Respecting the brain, the same, we think, must have been true. He could have intended no more, in the expression used, than that insects have nothing which, from its figure and location, can he called, in technical language, a brain. A brain of some sort is just as indispensable to a nerve of sense, to render it efficient, as the nerve itself is to the organ of sense. A brain, we mean, is as necessary to give efficiency to the optic and the auditory nerves, as they are to give efficiency to the eye and the ear. And a tongue and a nose can taste and smell as well without gustatory and olfactory nerves, as they can without a mass of cerebral matter constituting a brain, or forming a substitute for it. An animal of any description possessing five external senses and no brain, would be as great an anomaly as a human being alive, and performing all the functions of life, without a head. External senses indicate a brain as certainly as a stream of water indicates a fountain, or a beam of light a luminous body. All this, we think, Linnæus must have known. Be that, however, as it may, we shall shew presently, under the sanction of anatomical and physiological authority much weightier than his, that in

sects do possess a brain. But to return from this digression, if such it be.

The foregoing high-wrought flourish of our author, we say, rests on the allegation that phrenologists contend that the "amount of mind manifested" by man and other animals, is always proportioned to the quantity of brain possessed by them. Than this representation nothing can be more untrue; nor can any thing more fully expose the want of knowledge, or the want of candour, or both, in its authors and propagators. Phrenologists have never, as their writings evince, contended for the notion here ascribed to them; but the reverse. They expressly deny that the abstract bulk of brain is necessarily the measure of the amount of mind displayed by its possessor. Better still; they prove it not to be so; for they do not, like our author and his antiphrenological associates, allow their positions to rest on mere arbitrary assertion. They back their assertions by facts and arguments not to be overthrown. Their doctrine in the present case is, that, all other things being equal, the larger the brain, the stronger are the manifestations in which it is concerned. And this is as true and as plain, as that the whole is greater than a part. In fact it is substantially the same axiom expressed in different words, and in reference to a different subject. No physiologist can deny it but at the hazard of his reputation, or rather with the loss of it so far as a palpable error may affect it, and that error of such a nature as nothing but ignorance of his calling could make him commit; nor can any one deny it, but in defiance of common sense. This simple contradiction is the only reply to which the writer's objection is entitled. Respect, however, to the subject and the reader induces us to subjoin a few further remarks bearing somewhat of an analytical character.

The writer alleges truly, that in several sorts of " vertebrated animals, the proportion of the brain to the rest of the body is larger than in man.” But what of that? Have not phrenologists said the same? Have they not even taken the lead in overthrowing the opposite doctrine inculcated on this point by other physiologists? Certainly they have.* Have they, on the contrary, ever contended, that the superiority of man's intellect arises from the superior proportional size of his brain to that of the rest of his body? Never. They were also the chief subverters of error on that topic. All they have contended for on the subject is, that, other things being alike, the larger the intellectual organs are, whether in man or in the inferior animals, the stronger is the intellect. And, as far as suitable investigations have been carried, that position is susceptible of

* See Gall Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, ii. 284; and Spurzheim's Phrenology, 3d edit. p. 55.

proof, and has already received it. No matter how large the animal organs of the brain are. They confer no intellect; because they are designed for a different purpose. They are the seat of animal appetency, and furnish therefore no knowledge themselves, but the mere impulse to some sorts of action, subservient as well to the acquisition of knowledge as to its application. They are, in fact, but the breeze that urges the vessel onward; the compass, chart, and rudder being furnished by the intellectual and moral organs. The difference between the human brain and that of the inferior animals consists in the presence or absence, and the difference in size, of the several classes of organs, and perhaps also in their temperament and tone. In the former, the intellectual, more especially the reflective organs, and the moral ones, are comparatively large; whereas in the latter they are small, or entirely wanting. Hence man is a moral being, while the animals beneath him are not; and hence also his superiority in other high modes of mental manifestation. Let the moral and reflecting organs be removed from the brain of man, and what remains will be an animal brain, and he will be nothing but an animal in action. His morality and reflection will be extinct. Were the whole brain of an ox made as large as all the rest of his body, its intellectual organs retaining their present size, he would derive from the augmentation no increase of intellectual power. Of man the same may be affirmed. Were his brain tenfold its present size in its animal compartment, the intellectual and moral continuing as they are, the change would only convert him into a greater and grosser animal. His intellectual and moral faculties, receiving no increase of power, would be swallowed up, or held at least in deeper subjection, by his inordinately augmented animal ones. These are facts which should be remembered and acted on, by those who aim at practical craniology. The mistakes made on that score, by ignorant pretenders, are among the most productive sources of mischief to the science. On this topic we shall offer two remarks. We have never seen a skilful craniologist officiously forward in displaying his skill, and very rarely an individual with a head worthy of examination, importunate to have it examined. In a special manner, we have never known an advertising craniologist, who was not a charlatan. Our country is threatened with a brood of phrenological Peripatetics, that promise to rank with Steam Doctors in medicine, and Pedlers in traffic.

The vertebrated animals, then, to which our author refers as possessing large brains, derive from that cause no increase of intellectual vigour. The reason is plain. The animal compartment only of their brain is large, the intellectual compartment being diminutive, or partially wanting. These are some