Phil. This is quite in the usual strain of dogmatic absurdity, in which the phrenologists are so fond of indulging. Phren. I beg pardon,-the absurdity is all on the other side.

Phil. So you are pleased to say; but you never shew us that it is so. Have not the anatomists dissected the brain these two thousand years, and discovered no such organs as you speak of; and have not the most eminent metaphysicians carefully analysed every thought and sentiment of the mind, and never discovered such absurd propensities as destructiveness, acquisitiveness, secretiveness? A person cannot know what Euclid's Elements contain who has not studied them, and any declaration that he did not believe in the demonstrations would be a piece of gratuitous absurdity on his part, at which we might smile, but with which we could not be angry; but certainly the brain and the mind have been subjected to examination ere the days of Gall and Spurzheim, and there is nothing ridiculous in saying, on the faith of these investigations, that their doctrines are mere extravagancies, unworthy of the least consideration.

Phren. It is quite true that the brain has been dissected, and the mental phenomena have been analysed by very acute minds, for a very long period of time; but, were the phrenologists to point out fundamental errors in the methods of investigation, followed by all previous philosophers, and to shew that they themselves proceed by a surer path to truth, they would reduce all the opinions on which you found to absolute insignificance, while they would be entitled to challenge a becoming attention to their own discoveries.

Phil. I grant you this, but these are mere general declamations in which your sect habitually indulges, without condescending to lay before us tangible and intelligible principles of philosophy.

Phren. "Tangible, and intelligible principles of philosophy," as you term them, have been repeated in every work on work on phrenology, from Gall's first publication to the present day; but you and those on your side of the question have either deli

berately shut your eyes against them, or, if you have seen them, you have never met them fairly in argument. You have neither refuted nor admitted them, but kept them back in all the discussions, and concealed them from the world, as if they had never been announced.

Phil. with warmth. Sir, I am not aware of any such statements as those you now allude to.

Phren. I beg pardon for any degree of temper appearing in these remarks. They were made more in sorrow than in anger; but, to return to the point, Did you ever hear the principle announced, that "dissection alone is not sufficient to reveal the functions of any corporeal part ?" For example, that although anatomists have dissected the human body for ages, they never discovered in its structure the least indication of the fact, that of two sets of nervous fibres running undistinguishably in the same sheath, one is the organ of motion, and the other the organ of feeling, and that one may be injured, and feeling be impaired, while, if the other continue sound, motion will remain, or vice versá; or are you aware, that although the mesenteric glands have been often dissected, their functions are still a mystery in physiology?

Phil. Yes, I am aware of the principle, and admit the facts.

Phren. Do you not perceive then, that it was absolutely impossible for anatomists, by mere dissection, to discover the functions of the brain?

Phil. Well,-suppose, for the sake of argument, that I do so,—this does not shew that you can discover these functions any more than they.

Phren. Certainly not,-if we pursued no other method than that of dissection. It is a vulgar error to suppose, that Dr Gall assigned different faculties to different parts of the brain, in consequence of dissecting that organ. This notion has been industriously propagated in the public mind, and yet phrenologists uniformly state it as a fundamental principle of their science, that the function of no organic part can be discovered by means of dissection alone: But to proceed.

They farther maintain, that by reflecting on consciousness, or on what passes within our own minds, we could never discover the nature of the substance which lies in the interior of the head, and of course, that although different parts of the brain were de facto the organs of different mental powers, we could never find out that they were so by this mode of exclusively reflecting on consciousness.

Phil. Well, but what then?

Phren. These are two philosophical facts, which the phrenologists found upon as fundamental principles. I have never seen them contested; but their application is not attended to. If they be sound, the inference from them is irresistible, that those philosophers who have hitherto sought to discover the functions of the brain, by dissection alone, or by reflection on consciousness alone, or even by both together, must be as ignorant of these functions as the clown is of Euclid. When, therefore, without pursuing any other mode of inquiry, they are pleased to say, that phrenology is perfectly absurd, they approach much nearer to the supposed conduct of this person than they imagine.

Phil. This may do all very well to shew that philosophers in general know nothing of the functions of the brain; but it does not shew, that the phrenologists are farther advanced.

Phren. True, but they go a step farther. Majendie discovered that motion is attached to one set of nervous fibres, and feeling to another, by cutting these at their origin, and observing that the respective power was instantly lost: Now, nature has to a certain extent performed this operation to our hand, in regard to different portions of the brain. One man has an inch and a half more of brain lying under the middle of the parietal bone than another; and the phrenologists observe (and that observation has been confirmed by many thousand instances, and falsified in none), that he who has the larger portion manifests a strong natural sentiment of cautiousness, and that he who possesses the smaller portion, manifests very little of this feeling. The same observation may be made in regard to ideality, and all the other organs. In the mask of

François of Paris, who was bred a shoemaker, and is author of Zenobia, a tragedy of considerable reputation, the distance from ideality to ideality is 68 inches. In the mask of Henri Quatre of France, it is 5 inches. In that of D. Wilkie, painter, 5 inches; while in D. Haggart it is only 4 inches; and in many individuals who manifest little of this sentiment, it does not exceed that amount. These casts are all in the Phrenological Society's collection.

Phil. It is easy to represent these as observations of vast importance, but you forget that the two tables of the skull are not parallel; and hence, that whatever the external measurements may indicate, you can draw no conclusion as to the size of the brain beneath.

Phren. This is one of the bold assertions made by the opponents, but it is utterly unfounded. Does not the bark indicate the shape of the tree? Does not the shell correspond to the size of the crab? Does not the brain increase in dimensions betwixt infancy and manhood? and does not the skull, in all its varying changes, accommodate itself to its figure? Some persons have averred, that the brain attains its full growth at three, and others at seven years of age; but every hatter's apprentice will tell you that this is a very absurd mistake. It is true, that in cases of disease the skull becomes irregular. In its structure it is then sometimes thicker, sometimes thinner, than in health; but such cases are not those by which phrenology is to be confirmed or refuted. Take a healthy man in the vigour of life, and I affirm, without fear of refutation, that the skull takes its form from, and indicates the real shape of the brain.

Phil. But many anatomists prove the reverse; they exhibit a great variety of skulls presenting the most irregular surfaces.

Phren. I know they do; but they never venture on the assertion, that these form a fair specimen of the skulls of healthy individuals in the prime of manhood. They say nothing on this point, but leave it to their hearers to take it for granted, which they generally do. The phrenologists,

on the other hand, assert, that the skulls thus paraded are selections of diseased and extraordinary cases,-exceptions to the general rule,—and that they no more afford fair specimens of the structure of the healthy skull than the diseased tibia and femora exhibited by the same anatomists afford specimens of the appearance of these bones in a state of health.

Phil. But in every skull which I ever saw, there are differences in the parallelism of the outer and inner tables. Phren. True; and this objection is generally stated in a sophistical manner, without specification, to make it tell beyond its real force against phrenology. Variations from perfect parallelism betwixt the two tables of the skull, to the extent of an eighth or a tenth of an inch, are not unfrequently observed in the skulls even of healthy individuals; but then the difference betwixt the development of a large organ and a small organ amounts to a full inch, and frequently to more. Now, to give this objection force, it ought to be asserted, that the bone in a sound skull in middle life is generally found varying from an inch in thickness in one part, to only an eighth of an inch in another, and this so irregularly, that in no instance where a prominence appears can we tell whether we must penetrate through an inch of bone before arriving at the brain, or whether we may not meet with it at an eighth of an inch below the surface. Do you make such an assertion as this?

Phil. No, I do not; but in your smaller organs this eighth of an inch may be fatal to all your observations.

Phren. This is evading the question, as our opponents always do. If you wish to find the truth, seek for it where it is most palpable in the first place, and afterwards proceed to points of greater difficulty. If you really wish to put phrenology to the test, take a pair of callipers, and measure the dimensions of the larger organs in persons whose characters you know to differ extremely in one point, and if the difference of size does not run from half an inch to an inch and a half, I shall give up the cause. You may then be