Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"These measurements are taken above the muscular integu"ments, and shew the size of heads in these directions; but they are not given as indications of the absolute dimensions of any of the prenological organs. The callipers are not suited "for giving this latter information, for they do not measure "from the medulla oblongata, nor do they indicate breadth of "fibre. The new craniometer is preferable for ascertaining ab" solute length, and the breadth may be judged by means of the "hand or eye. The average of these twenty heads will be higher "than that of the natives of Britain generally, because there are "several large heads among them, and none small.”

It would not be easy to lay down the dimensions of a standard head; but we may remark generally, that when the dimensions are equal to the largest of which the measurements are here given, the brain, if in sound health and possessing corresponding activity, will be one of power; and, on the other hand, if it be greatly less than the least of these, there will be deficiency in energy.

2dly, When we state one part to be large and another small, we indicate only the relative size of each organ to the other organs in the same head; because the preponderance of particular feelings or talent in an individual is owing to the predominance of particular organs in his own head. We refer our correspondent to Mr Combe's Elements for a farther elucidation of the effects of SIZE; and also for an explanation of the doctrine of ACTIVITY.

ARTICLE XII.

PROFESSOR RUDOLPHI AND PHRENOLOGY.

THE anti-phrenologists of the present day seem to be bent upon demonstrating the truth of an assertion which has often been made by the advocates of the new system, from a sincere and deliberate conviction of its truth, viz. that, from the clearness, consistency, and irresistible force of the mass of evidence which supports their science, it is impossible for any person of ordinary candour and attainments fairly to investigate it, without himself becoming a phrenologist; and hence

that it is impossible for any one who really knows the subject, and who is not blinded by prejudice, to speak or to write against it. Dr Gordon, Dr Roget, Dr Barclay, Dr Milligan, and Mr Rennel, have all taken considerable pains to prove to the satisfaction of the public the truth of this statement, by exhibiting, in their own attacks, a degree of ignorance, which, in other sciences, it is rare to meet with. And the public is now indebted to the zeal of a celebrated Professor of this city, for having the name of Professor Rudolphi of Berlin added to the above list. We might not, for years to come, have had the pleasure of knowing the extent of Rudolphi's efforts, had not the Scotch Professor, in the course of last session, strongly dissuaded his pupils from wasting their money and time in purchasing and reading works on phrenology, on the ground that Professor Rudolphi, in a German work then publishing at Berlin,* (and of which scarcely a copy had yet reached this country,) had entirely and utterly demolished the whole science, facts, principles, and applications. Anxious as we have always been to meet with a philosophical opponent, we now thought our wish about to be realized. But when we at last succeeded in getting a sight of this vaunted production, we found it to contain the same kind of misrepresentation, and the same kind of arguments, so often and so unsuccessfully brought forward in Britain against our inductive science. To take up each of these in succession would be tedious and uninteresting to most of our readers. We therefore prefer selecting such specimens as will be sufficient to shew whether the British Professor acted with his usual wisdom, when he rested his friendly and decisive admonition on such a basis. We beg to add, that we entertain a real respect for Rudolphi as a physiologist; but when he chooses to expose himself on a subject of which he is profoundly ignorant, his is the fault, and not ours, if his labours are not rewarded with an increase of his fame.

Grundriss der Physiologic von D. Karl Asmund Rudolphi, &c. Berlin, 1821. vol. ii. 1823.

Professor Rudolphi first states, as an objection to Phrenology, that although we can easily believe different parts of the brain to perform different functions, yet "we can never "regard it, with Dr Gall, as an aggregate of unconnected "parts;" whereas Dr Gall himself says, that, on account of this very connexion," we cannot indicate with precision the "limits of all the organs." Vol. ii. p. 391.

Professor Rudolphi is next of opinion, that "Dr Gall's "marking out of the skull is arbitrary and fantastic ;" and he comments on "the absurdity of the circles which sur"round certain organs." All this would be extremely proper, if the Professor would first take the trouble to prove either that Dr Gall alone, and not Nature, gave a particular form to particular organs; or that their form is, de facto, inconsistent with the functions assigned to them. Until this is done, we think it may be quite as philosophically objected to the theory of the circulation of the blood, that the heart is of a pyramidal shape, and shut up in a bag; or to the function of the kidneys, that they are shaped like a French bean, and lie imbedded in fat; as to the organ of Benevolence that it is of an oval shape, or to that of Tune, that it is somewhat pyramidal.

Professor Rudolphi remarks it as an inconsistency in Dr Gall's system, that "there are spaces left on the skull and "brain possessing in every respect the same properties as "those called organs," but to which Dr Gall has assigned no function. If the Professor had had even a glimpse of the real nature of Phrenology, he would never have reproached Dr Gall with inconsistency for not inventing functions for parts, the real uses of which he had not then discovered. In writing these remarks, the Professor had clearly taken it for granted, that the new philosophy had no other or firmer foundation than that of Dr Gall's imagination, and under this impression he conceived that Dr G. might as easily have fancied functions for 30 or for 50 organs, as for 10 or 20. But in this assumption he will ere long find himself woefully mistaken.

Professor Rudolphi goes on to amuse the German public with Dr Barclay's stale assertion of the impossibility of distinguishing one isolated organ from another, e. g. the sublime one of Veneration, as he calls it, from the unhappy one of Murder; and we shall therefore only refer the reader, for an answer, to the refutation of Dr Barclay's objections in the Phrenological Transactions.

66

The Professor, in another place, confidently avers, that the convolutions of the two sides of the brain" are not sufficiently symmetrical" to execute the important functions assigned them by Dr Gall. If the Professor had known any thing at all about their functions, or about the effects of their greater or less degree of symmetry in modifying the performance of these functions, this objection would have been a little more feasible. In ignorance of both, it is too absurd to require a serious answer. What will such a stickler for symmetry say to the very unsymmetrical appearance of the right and left lungs, connected, as they are known to be, with the very important function of respiration?

Professor Rudolphi next informs us, that not a single organ of Dr Gall's system is ever diseased singly, but "some"times the whole surface, and sometimes here and there a "particular part without any particular rule." Query, Is not this "particular part" in the situation of some particular organ? Our experience says that it is; and Rudolphi does not show that it is not. The diseased appearances, however, generally extend to more than one organ, as it almost always happens that more than one faculty is diseased at the same time.

After enumerating a whole host of facts directly proving that different parts of the brain perform different functions, Dr Gall adduces the analogy of the lower animals in farther support of it, because they possess fewer faculties, and their brains are more simple, and have fewer component parts, than the human brain. Professor Rudolphi objects to this, that among the mammalia we find the brain consisting of precisely the same parts, only proportionally reduced in size

But if this were fact, the brains of the lower animals would present the appearance of a human brain in miniature, and we should find in the ass, the horse, and the whale, the upright head, the broad coronal surface, and the covered cerebellum of man. Our readers can answer for themselves, whether such animals have ever crossed their path, and whether they have ever read, even in fabulous history, of donkeys, for instance, possessing the upright foreheads of a Shakspeare or a Bacon.

But, adds the Professor, "How little depends on the con"volutions," (the very symmetry of which he but a moment before upheld as of vital importance,)" is evident from their "being wanting in the human embryo, and in many of the "smaller mammalia." Where, we would ask the Professor, are the proofs of the great energy of character, or of the great intellectual vigour of an embryo, for which convolutions should be needed, supposing them to be necessary for the manifestations of the mind? Is it really possible that Professor Rudolphi could imagine, even in a dream, that the smaller mammalia, or the human embryo, ever manifest the same faculties, and the same scope of mind, as the more perfect of their species, and the adult man, in whom convolutions exist? We have not yet seen the convolutionless embryo, whose mental powers were equal to the production even of a tirade against Phrenology, the lowest of all kinds of mental exhibitions, much less to that of the novum organon, which may be ranked among the highest.

Professor Rudolphi goes on to furnish us with farther irresistible evidence of his unacquaintance with the doctrines which he attacks, by representing Dr Gall as arguing, that since we see in organic structure different organs for different phenomena, there must be "different organs in the brain for "the different kinds of activity of the faculties," whereas every tyro in Phrenology is aware that its supporters only contend for different organs for different faculties, and not for the different kinds of activity of the same faculty.

Professor Rudolphi proceeds to ask a very important,

« AnteriorContinuar »