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DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER.

The Plate of the Phrenological Bust faces the Title-Page.

The Plate, representing Ideality in CHAUCER, &c., faces p. 310.

A

SYSTEM OF PHRENOLOGY.

INTRODUCTION.

PHRENOLOGY, derived from gony mind, and hoyos discourse, professes to be a system of Philosophy of the Human Mind, and, as such, it ought to throw light on the primitive powers of feeling which incite us to action, and the capacities of thinking that guide our exertions till we have attained the object of our desires. It was first presented to public consideration on the Continent of Europe in 1796, and in Britain in the year 1814. It has met with strenuous support from some individuals, and determined opposition from others, while the great body of the public remain uninstructed in its merits. On this account, it may be useful to present, in an introductory form, 1st, A short notice of the reception which other discoveries have met with on their first announcement; 2dly, A brief outline of the principles involved in Phrenology; 3dly, An inquiry into the presumptions for and against these principles, founded on the known phenomena of human nature; and, 4thly, A historical sketch of their discovery.

I shall follow this course, not with a view of convincing the reader that Phrenology is true, because nothing short of patient study and extensive personal observation can produce this conviction, but for the purpose of presenting him with motives to prosecute the investigation for his own satisfaction.

1st, Then, one great obstacle to the reception of a discovery is

the difficulty which men experience of at once parting with old no tions which have been instilled into their minds from infancy, and become the stock of their understandings. Phrenology has encountered this impediment, but not in a greater degree than other discoveries which have preceded it. Mr. Locke, in speaking of the common reception of new truths, says, "Whoever, by the most cogent arguments, will be prevailed upon to disrobe himself at once of all his old opinions and pretensions to knowledge and learning, which, with hard study, he hath all his lifetime been laboring 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." (Book iv. c. 20. § 11.)

Professor Playfair, in his historical notice of discoveries in physical science, published in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, observes, that "in every society there are some who think themselves interested to maintain things in the condition wherein they have found them. The considerations are indeed sufficiently obvious, which, in the moral and political world, tend to produce this effect, and to give a stability to human institutions often so little proportionate to their real value, or to their general utility. Even in matters purely intellectual, and in which the abstract truths of arithmetic and geometry seem alone concerned, the prejudices, the selfishness, or the vanity of those who pursue them, not unfrequently combine to resist improvement, and often engage no inconsiderable degree of talent in drawing back, instead of pushing forward, the machine of science. The introduction of methods entirely new, must often change the relative place of the men engaged in scientific pursuits, and must oblige many, after descending from the stations they formerly occupied, to take a lower position in the scale of intellectual improvement. The enmity of such men, if they be not animated by a spirit of real candor and the love of truth, is likely to be directed against methods by which their vanity is mortified, and their importance lessened."-Dissertation, part ii. p. 27.

Every age has afforded proofs of the justness of these observations. "The disciples of the various philosophical schools of

Greece inveighed against each other, and made reciprocal accusations of impiety and perjury. The people, in their turn, detested the philosophers, and accused those who investigated the causes of things, of presumptuously invading the rights of the Divinity. Pythagoras was driven from Athens on account of his novel opinions; and for the same reason Anaxagoras was confined in prison. Democritus was treated as a fool by the Abderites for endeavoring to find out the cause of madness by dissections; and Socrates, for having demonstrated the unity of God, was forced to drink the juice of hemlock.”—Dr. Spurzheim's Physiog. Syst.

But let us attend in particular to the reception of the three greatest discoveries that have adorned the annals of philosophy, and mark the spirit with which they were bailed.

"Gal

Mr. Playfair, speaking of the treatment of Galileo, says: ileo was twice brought before the Inquisition. The first time, a council of seven cardinals pronounced a sentence which, for the sake of those disposed to believe that power can subdue truth, ought never to be forgotten; viz. That to maintain the sun to be immovable, and without local motion, in the centre of the world, is an absurd proposition, false in philosophy, heretical in religion, and contrary to the testimony of Scripture ; and it is equally absurd and false in philosophy to assert, that the earth is not immovable in the centre of the world, and, considered theologically, equally erroneous and heretical.”

Mr. Hume, the historian, mentions the fact that Harvey was treated with great contumely on account of his discovery of the circulation of the blood, and in consequence lost his practice. An eloquent writer, in the 94th Number of the Edinburgh Review, when adverting to the treatment of Harvey, observes, that "the discoverer of the circulation of the blood-a discovery which, if measured by its consequences on physiology and medicine, was the greatest ever made since physic was cultivated-suffers no diminution of his reputation in our day, from the incredulity with which his doctrine was received by some, the effrontery with which it was claimed by others, or the knavery with which it was attributed to former physiologists, by those who could not deny and would not

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