In Peveril of the Peak, we have the following dialogue. "Your Grace holds his wisdom very high," said the attendant.

"His

cunning at least, I do," replied Buckingham, “which, in Court affairs, often takes the weathergage of wisdom."

The organ is established.

8.-ACQUISITIVENESS.

THE organ of this faculty is situated at the anterior inferior angle of the parietal bone. By Dr. Spurzheim it was called Covetiveness; Sir G. S. Mackenzie suggested the more appropriate name of Acquisitiveness, which Dr. Spurzheim has since adopted.

The metaphysicians have not admitted a faculty in the mind, the function of which is to produce the propensity to acquire, and which is gratified by the mere act of acquisition, without any ulterior object. Dr. Hutcheson says, Thus, as soon as we come to apprehend the use of wealth or power to gratify any of our original desires, we must also desire them; and hence arises the universality of these desires of wealth and power, since they are the means of gratifying all other desires." In like manner, we are told by Mr. Stewart, that, "Whatever conduces to the gratification of any natural appetite, or of any natural desire, is itself desired, on account of the end to which it is subservient; and by being thus habitually associated in our apprehension with agreeable objects, it frequently comes, in process of time, to be regarded as valuable in itself, independently of its utility. It is thus that wealth becomes with many an ultimate object of pursuit ; though, at first, it is undoubtedly valued, merely on account of its subserviency to the attainment of other objects."*

The same author says in another place, that "avarice is a particular modification of the desire of power; arising from the various functions of money in a commercial country. Its influence as an active principle is much strengthened by habit and association." † Dr. Thomas Brown‡ admits the desire of wealth to be a modi * Elements, p. 388. Vol. iii. p. 474.

+ Outlines, p. 92.

fication of the desire of power, but he endeavors to show, that Mr. Stewart's theory is defective in accounting for avarice, and enters into a most ingenious speculation, to explain how that feeling arises from association. He takes Time into account, as an ingredient; and takes the example of a boy purchasing an apple. "Before the boy lays out his penny in the purchase of an apple or an orange,' says he, it appears to him valuable, chiefly as the mode of obtaining the apple or orange. But the fruit, agreeable as it may have been while it lasted, is soon devoured;-its value, with respect to him, has wholly ceased; and the penny, he knows, is still in existence, and would have been still his own, if the fruit had not been purchased. He thinks of the penny, therefore, as existing now, and existing without any thing which he can oppose to it as equivalent; and the feeling of regret arises, the wish, that he had not made the purchase, and that the penny, as still existing, and equally capable as before of procuring some new enjoyment, had continued in his pocket." This produces a slight terror of expense, which the habits of many years may strengthen into parsimony.'

Nothing can be more ingenious than this speculation, and it is a beautiful instance of the nature of metaphysical science; but it is not sound. The question occurs, Why is this "slight terror of expense" experienced only by some boys and some men, since association and the love of enjoyment are universal qualities of human nature?

It is proper to mention, however, that Lord Kames (who has been censured by the regular metaphysicians for admitting too many faculties,) recognises the existence of this feeling as a primitive propensity in man, and calls it the "hoarding appetite. Man," says his Lordship, "is by nature a hoarding animal, having an appetite for storing up things of use; and the sense of property is bestowed on men for securing what they thus store up.”* He adds, that "the appetite for property, in its nature a great blessing. degenerates into a great curse, when it transgresses the bounds of moderation."

* Sketches, B. i. sect. 2.

The observer of the passion of avarice in real life, is not satisfied with the theories of Mr. Stewart and Dr. Brown. Dr. King, in the Political and Literary Anecdotes of his own time, remarks, that an avaricious man "is born and framed to a sordid love of money, which first appears when he is very young, grows up with him, and increases in middle age, and, when he is old, and all the rest of his passions have subsided, wholly engrosses him." He mentions Lord Chancellor Hardwick, the Duke of Marlborough, Sir James Lowther, Sir Thomas Colby, and Sir William Smith, as remarkable instances of it.

The metaphysical notions of Mr. Stewart fail entirely to explain the phenomena of avarice, under which passion no enjoyment is sought, except that of accumulating wealth. The character of Trapbois, as drawn in the "Fortunes of Nigel," and admirably represented on the Edinburgh stage by Mr. Mason, is a personification of the faculty of Aquisitiveness, operating as a blind animal instinct, exalted to the highest degree of energy and activity, and extinguishing every feeling of the mind, except that of fear; which it had cultivated and increased to minister to its protection. This character is recognised as natural; highly colored, indeed, but true to life in its leading features. It appears absurd, therefore, to ascribe, as the metaphysicians do, so intense a passion to a mere law of association as its source, to an error of the understanding, in mistaking wealth for the objects which it is fitted to obtain. The very essence of the character is a desire for wealth, independent of every purpose of application. Phrenologists have observed, that the intensity of the desire to acquire, is in proportion to the size of a certain part of the brain, and they, therefore, regard it as an original propensity of the mind. The organ was discovered in the following manner :

When Dr. Gall was employed in comparing mental manifestations with cerebral developement, he was in the habit of collecting in his house numbers of the lower orders, with the view of more easily discovering the different primitive propensities, which he supposed would be found to operate in them with greater simplicity and vigor, than in persons of a higher rank. On many of these

occasions, the individuals assembled, encouraged by him to familiarity, accused each other of petty larcenies, or of what they styled chiperies, and took great pleasure in pointing out those who excelled in such practices; and the chipeurs themselves advanced in front of their companions, proud of their superior savoir-faire. What particularly attracted his attention was, that some of these men showed the utmost abhorrence of thieving, and preferred starving to accepting any part of the bread and fruit which their companions had stolen, while the chipeurs ridiculed such conduct, and thought it silly.

To discover whether this tendency to pilfer was connected with any particular cerebral organ, Dr. Gall divided the persons whom he had assembled into three classes; the first included the chipeurs; the second, those who abhorred the very idea of stealing; and the third, those who seemed to regard it with indifference. On comparing the heads of these three classes, he was much surprised to find, that the most inveterate chipeurs had a long prominence extending from the organ of Secretiveness, almost as far as the external angle of the superciliary ridge, and that this region was flat in all those who showed a horror of theft, while in those who were indifferent about it, the part was sometimes more and sometimes less developed, but never so much as in the professed thieves; and on repeating the experiment again and again with a new assemblage, he found the same results uniformly present themselves.

Having thus ascertained the constancy of the facts, the idea naturally occurred to the mind of Dr. Gall, that the propensity to appropriate must be somehow connected with the peculiarity of cerebral configuration, which had so strongly attracted his notice. It could not be the effect of education, for most of the subjects of his observations had received none. They were the children of nature left to their own resources. Some who detested stealing happened to be precisely those whose education had been most completely neglected. The wants and circumstances of all of them were nearly the same,-the examples set before them were the same, and to what cause, therefore, could the difference be ascribed, if not to an original difference of mental constitution ?

At this time Dr. Gall was physician to the Deaf and Dumb Institution, where pupils were received from six to fourteen years of age, without any preliminary education. M. May, a distinguished psychologist, then director of the establishment, M. Venus, the teacher, and he, had it thus in their power to make the most accurate observations on the primitive moral condition of these children. Some of them were remarkable for a decided propensity for stealing, while others did not show the least inclination to it, some of them were easily reformed, but others were quite incorrigible. The severest punishments were inflicted upon one of them, but without any effect. As he felt himself incapable of resisting temptation, he resolved to be a tailor, because, as he said, he could then indulge his inclination with impunity. On examining the heads of all these boys, the same region was found to be uniformly developed, in proportion to the endowment of the propensity. He made casts of those of them who were confirmed thieves, in order to compare them with such other heads of thieves or robbers as might afterwards fall in his way.

About this time, also, Dr. Gall met with another very decisive proof of the connexion between this propensity and a particular developement of brain. In the House of Correction he saw a boy of fifteen years of age, who had been a notorious thief from his earliest infancy. Punishment having had no effect upon him, he was at last condemned to confinement for life as absolutely incorrigible. In a portrait of him in the 26th plate of Dr. Gall's work, a remarkable prominence in the lateral region of the head is conspicuous, corresponding to what is now ascertained to be the organ of Acquisitiveness. The forehead is low, narrow, and retreating, and his intellect is stated to be weak and defective to a great degree; and hence the ascendency and activity of the propensity in question are easily explained.

The instinctive appetite for accumulation, produced by this faculty, viewed only in itself, presents a mean and vulgar aspect, and we are apt to regard the individual, in whom it predominates, as a base and sordid being, cased in selfishness, and dead to every generous feeling. But when we view it in its results, it rises vastly