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brain. The Essay on the Human Understanding would be the result of those faculties and circumstances combined.

Comparison and Causality would confer on Milton depth, scope, and vigour of intellect, not inferior to Locke's; while Ideality, largely developed, would carry him far as the wide diurnal space beyond and above the region of Locke's imaginings; and his powerful Veneration would prompt him to seek for gratification of his feelings amid the glories which surround the Almighty's throne. This combination, with much of the faculties of Language and Tune, would constitute the natural elements of Milton's genius; and to a capacity for improvement by education, exercise, and travel, equal to Locke's, it would add a susceptibility of elevated emotion, and a consequent power of forming vast, splendid, and lovely conceptions, altogether unattainable by the latter by any "habits of study or of business.”* Thus endowed, Milton's mind would be adequate to the conception and execution of that stupendous poem, the melody, and taste, and beauty of which are surpassed only by its grandeur and magnificence. The Garden of Eden would owe its origin principally to Locality, Order, Colouring, and Ideality. Individuality and Comparison appear not only to have supplied particular illustrations of exquisite elegance and beauty, but also to have suggested some allusions to heathen mythology, and incidents of common life, neither dignified, appropriate, nor refined.

These remarks are offered not as a complete analysis of the genius of these two illustrious men, but merely as an elucidation of the difference between the metaphysical and phrenological modes of accounting for their productions. To us the latter appears, in the present instance, to make the nearer approach to nature and the common apprehen

The busts and portraits of Lord Bacon indicate a development of ideality closely resembling that of Milton, and over all his works this faculty sheds a brilliant and fervid illumination. Locke approaches him in some degree in vigour, scope, and profundity of thought; but he is immeasurably behind in that gorgeousness of fancy which abounds in Bacon almost to excess

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sions of mankind; but Mr Stewart has said, "Arbuthnot now to chastise the follies of our craniologists?" And he is a great philosopher! The world must decide be

tween us.

ARTICLE IV.

SECOND DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PHILOSOPHER OF THE OLD SCHOOL AND A PHRENOLOGIST.

Phren. In our last conversation we discussed the principles of Phrenology. Have you considered these, and are you prepared to admit their truth, or to overthrow them by philosophical objections?

Phil. Indeed I have given them very little consideration. The world has gone on well enough with the philosophy of mind it already possesses, which, besides, is consecrated by great and venerable names, while your system has neither symmetry of structure, beauty of arrangement, nor the suffrages of the learned to recommend it. Its votaries are all third-rate men-persons without scientific or philosophical reputations. You are not entitled, therefore, to challenge the regard of those who have higher studies to occupy their attention. You complain that they only ridicule and abuse you, and do not venture to challenge your principles or refute your facts; but you do not yet stand high enough in their esteem to give you a right to expect any other treatment. Since I last conversed with you, therefore, I have not thought at all of the subject, farther than taking an occasional laugh at it with the ladies in the drawing-room.

Phren. Ferdinand of Spain thinks the world goes on admirably without liberty, and the Grand Turk conceives his people to be blessed by ignorance;-if you belong to their school, and imagine knowledge to be of no value, because men can eat, drink, and sleep, without it, I rejoice that the

old philosophy continues to be honoured by your support. The admirers of the new system reckon no moral or physical truth unimportant, just because it is necessarily of divine origin. Besides, you are deciding without examination, and consequently without knowledge, that there is no symmetry or beauty in phrenology. It possesses these attributes in the highest degree; for Nature is ever beautiful and harmonious. You smile at this assertion; but you have no authority for the opposite opinion. You are aware, moreover, that all great discoveries have been treated with derision at their first announcement. It is little more than ten years since I heard a celebrated poetical baronet play off more bad jokes against an ingenious gentleman, who asserted the possibility of lighting London with gas, than he has uttered even against phrenology itself; and yet London is now lighted in the way then ridiculed;-aye, and the baronet's house, too, shines in all the splendour of gas-illumination!

Phil. I grant that the ridicule with which phrenology has been treated argues nothing against it, and proves only its wide departure from preconceived ideas; but you have not answered my remark, that there are no distinguished names among the votaries of your doctrine, the weight of whose reputation might afford some reason for condescending to examine it.

Phren. You have admitted its novelty; and you are aware that men who possess reputation in physiology or mental philosophy would appear to lose rather than gain renown, were they to confess their present ignorance of the functions of the brain and the philosophy of mind, an almost necessary prelude to their adoption of phrenology; and the subject does not lie directly in the department of other scientific men. In this manner it happens, oddly enough, that those who are most directly called upon by their situation to examine the science, are precisely those to whom its triumph would prove most humiliating. Locke humorously observes on a similar occasion, "Would it not be an insufferable thing for a learned profess"or, and that which his scarlet would blush at, to have his

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"authority of forty years standing, wrought out of hard "rock, Greek and Latin, with no small expense of time and "candle, and confirmed by general tradition and a reverend "beard, in an instant overturned by an upstart novelist? "Can any one expect that he should be made to confess, "that what he taught his scholars thirty years ago was all "error and mistake, and that he sold them hard words at a "very dear rate? What probabilities, I say, are sufficient to prevail in such a case? And who ever, by the most co"gent arguments, will be prevailed with to disrobe himself "at once of all his old opinions and pretences to knowledge ❝and learning, which with hard study he hath all his time "been labouring for, and turn himself out stark-naked in quest of fresh notions? All the arguments that can be "used will be as little able to prevail as the wind did with "the traveller to part with his cloak, which he held only "the faster." Human nature, sir, is the same now as in

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the days of Locke.

Phil. Your allusions, sir, are impertinent.

You will never convert mankind to phrenology by such means.

Phren. Pardon, sir; I made no individual application of these remarks. There is, however, another answer to your observations, to which I solicit your attention. Some individuals are born princes, dukes, or even field-marshals; but I am not aware that it has yet been announced that any lady was delivered of a child of genius, or of an infant of established reputation. These titles must be gained by the display of qualities which merit them; but if an individual quit the beaten track pursued by the philosophers of his day, and introduce any discovery, although equally stupendous and new, do you not perceive that his reputation is necessarily involved in its merits? Harvey was not a great man before he discovered the circulation of the blood, but became such in consequence of having done so.

Book iv. c. 20, § 11.

What was Shakspeare before the magnificence of his genius was justly appreciated? The author of Kenilworth represents him attending as a humble and comparatively obscure suitor at the court of Queen Elizabeth, and receiving a mark of favour in an "Ah! Will Shakspeare, are you there?" And he most appropriately remarks, that here the immortal paid homage to the mortal. Who would now exchange the greatness of Shakspeare for the splendour of the proudest lord that bowed before the Maiden Queen? Or imagine to your self Galileo, such as he was in reality, a feeble old man, humble in rank, destitute of political power, unprotected by the countenance or alliance of the great, poor, in short, in every thing except the splendid gifts of a profound, original, and comprehensive genius-and conceive him placed at the bar of the Roman pontiff and the seven cardinals, men terrible in power, invested with authority to torture and kill in this world, and, as was then believed, to damn through eternity; men magnificent in wealth, and arrogant in the imaginary possession of all the wisdom of their age-and say who was then great in reputation-Galileo or his judges? And who is now the idol of posterity-the old man or his persecutors? The case will be the same with Gall. If his discoveries of the functions of the brain, and of the philosophy of the mind, stand the test of examination, and prove to be a correct interpretation of nature, they will surpass, in substantial importance to mankind, the discoveries even of Harvey, Newton, or Galileo; and this age will in consequence be rendered more illustrious by the introduction of phrenology, than by the butcheries of Buonaparte, or the victories of Wellington. Finally, the assertion that no men of note have embraced phrenology, is not supported by fact. In the New Monthly Magazine for January 1823, it is said, "There are many men here (Paris) amongst the most "eminent for their medical and physiological knowledge, "who, though differing widely upon other scientific topics, yet agree in saying, that there is much not only of proba66 bility, but of truth, in the system of Dr Gall." It is

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