nevertheless these are said to be highly imaginative, and certainly are so. Thus, in judging of genius, Phrenology teaches us to be minute and discriminating in our analysis, and to avoid the error of inferring the presence of all the powers of the mind in an eminent degree, because one great talent is possessed.

Improvisatori are able, without study or premeditation, to pour out thousands of verses impromptu, often of no despicable quality, upon any subject which the spectators choose to suggest. I have not seen any of these individuals, but Phrenology enables us to conjecture the constituent elements of their genius. In the first place, we may infer that they possess a high nervous or sanguine temperament, communicating to the brain great internal activity. They would require, in the next place, Language, Individuality, Eventuality, Comparison, Tune, and Ideality, all large. The great and uncommon activity supposed, would produce the readiness of conception and warmth of feeling which are the first requisites; large endowment of Individuality and Eventuality would supply facts and incidents necessary to give substance and action to the composition; Comparison would afford similes, metaphors and illustrations; Ideality would contribute elevation; Tune give rhythm, and Language afford expression to the whole ideas so formed and combined. Observation only can determine whether these conjectures be correct, but the causes here assigned appear to be adequate to the effects, and this, in a hypothesis, is all that can be expected.

MEMORY also is a mode of Activity of the faculties. In most individuals, the mind has no power of calling up, into fresh existence, the emotions experienced by means of the propensities and sentiments, by merely willing them to be felt, and hence we hold these faculties not to possess Memory. The ideas, however, formed by the Knowing and Reflecting Faculties, can be reproduced by an act of recollection, which powers are, therefore, said to have Memory. Memory is thus merely a degree of activity of the Knowing and Reflecting Organs. I have said that Conception and Imagination also result from the internal activity of the

organs; and the question naturally arises, in what respect does Memory differ from them? The difference appears to be this, -in Conception and Imagination, new combinations of ideas are formed, not only without regard to the time or order in which the elementary notions had previously existed, but even without any direct reference to their having at all existed before. Memory, on the other hand, implies a new conception of impressions previously received, attended with the idea of past time, and consciousness of their former existence; and it follows the order of the events as they happened in nature. Each organ enables the mind to recall the impressions which it served at first to receive. Thus, the organ of Tune will recall notes formerly heard, and give the memory of music. Form will recall figures previously observed, will give the memory of persons, pictures, and crystals, and produce a talent for becoming learned in matters connected with such objects. Individuality and Eventuality will confer memory for facts, and render a person skilled in history, both natural and civil. A person in whom Causality is powerful, will possess a natural memory for metaphysics. Hence there may be as many kinds of memory as there are Knowing and Reflecting Organs; and an individual may have great memory for one class of ideas, and very little for another; George Bidder had an almost inconceivable power of recollecting arithmetical calculations, while in memory of history or languages he did not surpass ordinary men. As the recollection of facts and occurrences is what is commonly meant, in popular language, by a great memory, individuals so gifted will generally be found to possess a good developement of Individuality, Eventuality, and probably of Language.

There appears to be a quality of brain, which gives retentiveness, so that one individual retains impressions much longer than another, although their combination of organs be the same. It is said that Sir Walter Scott possesses this characteristic in a high degree; but the cause of it is unknown. This fact does not invalidate the theory of Memory now given; because in every individual, the power of retaining one kind of impressions is greater than that of retaining another, and this power bears a uniform relation

to the size of the organs. The celebrated Cuvier affords another striking illustration of this remark. He possessed the quality of retentiveness, the cause of which is unknown, in an extraordinary degree; but the power was strongest in his largest intellectual organs. De Candollo describes his mental qualities as follows: "His range of knowledge was surpassingly great. He had all his life read much,-seen much,—and had never forgotten any thing. A powerful memory, sustained and directed by sound judgment and singular sagacity, was the principal foundation of his immense works and his success. This memory was particularly remarkable in what related to forms, considered in the widest sense of that word: the figure of an animal, seen in reality or in drawing, never left his mind, and served him as a point of comparison for all similar objects. The sight of a map, of the plan of a city, seemed sufficient to give him an almost intuitive knowledge of the place; and among all his talents, that memory which may be called graphic seemed most apparent: he was consequently an able draughtsman, seizing likenesses with rapidity and correctness, and had the art of imitating with his pencil the appearance of the tissue of organs, in a manner peculiarly his own, and his anatomical drawings were admirable."-Edin. New Philosophical Journal, vol. xiv. No. 23.

Dr. Watts seems to have anticipated, by a very acute conjecture, the real philosophy of Memory. He says, "It is most probable that those very fibres of the brain which assist at the first idea or perception of an object, are the same which assist also at the recollection of it; and then it will follow, that the memory has no special part of the brain devoted to its own service, but uses all those in general which subserve our sensation, as well as our thinking and reasoning powers."* This conjecture coincides exactly with Mr. Hood's case of the person in Kilmarnock, who, although able to articulate, lost all power of recollecting arbitrary signs, and, with a sound judgment and clear understanding, forgot, through disease, his own name and the names of every person and thing with which previously he was most familiar. This could be accounted for only on the principle, that the organ of Language * Page 18.

had lost the power of internal activity at command of the will, while the organs of the reflecting powers remained entire. The fact, also, of the memory failing in old age, before the judgment is impaired, is accounted for on the same principle. Age diminishes the susceptibility and activity of the organs; and hence they are unable to receive and to reproduce impressions with the vivacity of youth. Judgment is an exercise of the faculties on present objects, and does not require the same portion of internal and spontaneous excitement for its execution. It is known, that, after the mind has become dead to the recollection of recent occurrences, it recalls, with great vivacity, the impressions of youth and boyish years. These were first imprinted at a time when the whole system was extremely susceptible, and subsequently have been often recalled; hence, perhaps, the organs are capable of resuming the state corresponding to them, after they have ceased to be capable of retaining impressions from events happening when their vigor has decayed.

The doctrine that memory is only a degree of activity of the faculties, is illustrated by the phenomena of diseases which particularly excite the brain. Sometimes, under the influence of disease, the most lively recollections of things will take place, which had entirely escaped from the memory in a state of health. "A most remarkable example of this kind occurred some years ago at St. Thomas's Hospital.* A man was brought in, who had received a considerable injury of the head, but from which he ultimately recovered. When he became convalescent, he spoke a language which no one about him could comprehend. However, a Welsh milk-woman came one day into the ward, and immediately understood what he said. It appeared that this poor fellow was a Welshman, and had been from his native country about thirty years. In the course of that period, he had entirely forgotten his native tongue, and acquired the English language. But when he recovered from his accident, he forgot the language he had been so recently in the habit of speaking, and acquired the knowledge of that which he had originally acquired and lost!" Such a fact as

* Tupper's Inquiry into Gall's System, p. 33.

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this is totally inexplicable, on any principle except that of the existence of organs by which the faculties are manifested for it could not be the mind itself which was affected, and its faculties impaired by the fever, or which recovered long lost knowledge, by the influence of disease. At the same time, the manner in which such an effect is produced, is entirely unknown. Old people, when feeble, relapse into the use of the dialect of their youth.

The case of which the following is an abstract, was communicated by Dr. Dewar to the Royal Society, and although high.y interesting, is at present inexplicable.

. In a "Report on a communication from Dr. Dyce of Aberdeen, on Uterine Irritation, and its effects on the female constitution,"* Dr. Dewar states, that "It is a case of mental disease, attended with some advantageous manifestations of the intellectual powers; and these manifestations disappearing in the same individual in the healthy state. It is an instance of a phenomenon which is sometimes called double consciousness, but is more properly a divided consciousness, or double personality, exhibiting in some measure two separate and independent trains of thought, and two independent mental capabilities, in the same individual; each train of thought, and each capability, being wholly dissevered from the other, and the two states in which they respectively predominate subject to frequent interchanges and alternations."

The patient was a girl of sixteen, the affection appeared immediately before puberty, and disappeared when that state was fully established. It lasted from 2d March to 11th June, 1815, under the eye of Dr. Dyce. "The first symptom was an uncommon propensity to fall asleep in the evenings. This was followed by the habit of talking in her sleep on these occasions. One evening she fell asleep in this manner, imagined herself an Episcopal clergyman, went through the ceremony of baptizing three children, and gave an appropriate extempore prayer. Her mistress shook her by the shoulders, on which she awoke, and appeared unconscious of every thing, except that she had fallen asleep, of which she showed herself ashamed. She sometimes dressed herself and the

* Read to the Royal Society in February, 1822.