prove? Simply, that if one brute has an aversion to another, it does not feel or show that aversion when it has no means of knowing that the other brute is present. If he had stood near the dog on the other side of a wall, he might equally have proved what common sense required not to be proved. After all I do not understand how it happened that the poor dog did not scent him. I blush for human nature at detailing this experiment; and shall finish by informing my readers that the Memoir containing this, and all the other horrors, obtained the physiological prize from the French Institute in 1826.” (Page 448-9.) Reader! Heartless experiments such as this not only obtain prizes of honour from the Institute of France, but entitle their perpetrators, upon the strength of that honour, to condemn all the observations of phrenologists, unexamined, because they have been obtained without the aid of such cruelties, because they are not founded upon experimental physiology! But is it not a fine thing, is it not an honourable achievement, to become an experimental physiologist by means like these? 66 In speaking of the violent opposition made to Gall's discoveries by envious or prejudiced minds, Dr. Elliotson alludes in no gentle terms to the conduct of Dr. Gordon, Mr. Mayo, Sir Charles Bell, Lord Jeffrey, and, last and least, Mr. Colquhoun the animal-magnetist. He devotes several pages of notes, partly his own, partly taken from Gall's works, in illustration of the contempt and hostility shown to every one who makes any important discovery which interferes with the interests or prejudices of influential persons. The following passage affords an example, sufficiently familiar in respect to the subject, but one so admirably told and so striking in itself that we make no apology for repeating it here: — " But the most notorious modern illustration of the aversion to improvement is the history of lighting with gas. When I was a student, I recollect often going from the Borough Hospitals in the evening to see Pall Mall, which only of all the streets of London, was so lighted. For many years a person named Winser, and a company which he established, lighted that single street, I believe gratuitously. This was a bright spot in London, for comparative darkness prevailed in every other street. For many years, the general adoption of the plan was considered impracticable and therefore absurd. At length, another street was lighted-and another and another and now that the poor man is dead, all London is become Pall Mall, with one exception. Year after year have I amused myself with watching the progress of * • Query, pronounced absurd, and therefore considered impracticable! the usual mode of demonstrating new discoveries to be worthless. EDITOR P. J. illumination, and comparing it with the history of the progress of great truths in physical, moral, and political science. Yet not even is it at this moment universally adopted, any more than many obvious truths. Darkness is still cherished in the very spot of London, where the greatest riches and the highest rank, both transmitted hereditarily in the longest succession, ought to have secured, with Oxford and Cambridge education and every advantage of mental cultivation, from generation to generation, the highest knowledge and discernment. No house in Grosvenor Square has any other than the greasy dull oil lamps, notwithstanding all the streets opening into it, and even the centre of the Square which the parish lights, are brilliantly illuminated with gas. I have taken foreigners into Grosvenor Square to exhibit this moral phenomenon." (Page 402.) These extracts will afford fair examples of the fund of matter interesting to phrenologists, which is to be found in Dr. Elliotson's work, independently of his comments upon the science itself. Many of these latter are equally deserving of attention; but we cannot help greatly regretting that they are mixed up with personal reflections upon phrenologists, especially Dr. Spurzheim, penned in so harsh a tone as must convey an idea to the reader of the work, that the author attacks and censures others either from the mere love of fault-finding, or from the blind impulse of anger and personal enmity. We give Dr. Elliotson credit for more worthy motives, in the belief that an intense friendship and high respect for Gall have greatly contributed to this; but at the same time, we cannot avoid thinking that the public will judge otherwise. Our own regrets are occasioned by the vehemence of the author's language; for we fully concur with him that most of the topics are such as ought to be known, or which require to be investigated more precisely. But whilst the censures are no doubt several of them founded in truth, it does appear to us, that even where based on truth his remarks concerning the faults or failings of others are conveyed in language so strong as to appear most unduly exaggerated; while some of them obviously arise from mistakes or insufficient inquiry concerning the accuracy of circumstances which he only presumes to be true. As instances of this, we refer to his remarks on the application of the Henderson Bequest, an account of which has been some time in print, sufficient of itself to show that the author's comments respecting the application of that fund are uncalled for and unjust. We could also point out some other mistakes on his part, which have led to accusations, conceived by himself to be well-founded, though really false. One of these is unfortunately made the ground of a false accusation against Lord Jeffrey, for writing the abusive article on Phrenology in the 49th Number of the Edinburgh Review; although it has been stated in several English works on Phrenology, to which Dr. Elliotson refers, that the author of that article was Dr. Gordon. In attributing to Lord Jeffrey the coarse and abusive language of that review, Dr. Elliotson has been unintentionally unjust to him; for, whilst Lord Jeffrey did what in him lay to oppose Phrenology, his philippics were not conveyed in the style of low abuse and vulgarity of ideas which characterised the paper of Dr. Gordon. The objections and censures which Dr. Elliotson urges against Spurzheim personally, and against the works of all other phrenologists than Gall, are chiefly supported by extracts and individual examples of alleged defects, and have little relation to the general scope and merit of the works referred to. These will be more conveniently considered in a separate and detailed form. To have continued the subject here, would have too much extended the present notice of a work only in part connected with Phrenology, and would have compelled us to omit notices of other works exclusively devoted to mental or moral science, and, moreover, sent to us expressly for review. We shall again take up the subject in a future Number, and meantime repeat that in our own convictions, some of Dr. Elliotson's censures are strictly just; that others are stated in language too vehement for the occasion, although based on truth; and that others, again, have been induced by mistakes on the part of Dr. Elliotson himself, which must have arisen from his neglecting the English works on Phrenology, just as he accuses their authors of neglecting the works of Gall. II. The Philosophy of Human Nature, in its physical, intellectual, and moral Relations; with an Attempt to demonstrate the Order of Providence in the threefold Constitution of our Being. By HENRY M'CORMAC, M. D. London: Longman and Co. 1837. 8vo. pp. 564. WE mentioned this work in our last number, page 68., and intimated the intention of giving a more extended notice of it here. To those who still linger in the track of the old philosophy (so called) of human nature, which takes for granted that mind is an entity or specific being, self-existent independently of the body, and only using the senses of the latter for maintaining communications with the external world, much as an astronomer might use a telescope to observe the celestial bodies otherwise beyond his ken; to those of the fanciful and unphy siological school of Lords Jeffrey and Brougham, who will not see evidence to prove the unavoidable dependence of mind on body, we can recommend Dr. M'Cormac's work as being well worthy of perusal; for they will find in it nothing to shock their prejudices, except the incidental mention of a few irreconcilable facts, which may be easily skipped over as arguments of no weight, or as matters not well understood. By one who will concede the identity of mind and soul, and consequent non-dependence of the former on corporeal organization, the volume before us may be admired on account of its philanthropic spirit and general liberality. To a phrenologist, however, it will prove an intractable book, from the author not being at all disposed to obey the reins of inductive philosophy. The phrenological reader will doubtless respect the kindly tone of humanity which pervades the volume, while he cannot help feeling many an impatient start at the obsolete opinions in philosophy and physiology, which the author states and reasons upon as though they were unquestioned truths, requiring only to be asserted by him in order to be allowed by his readers. To criticize such a work, with the intention of refuting these fundamental errors, would be to commence with the alphabet of Phrenology, and to proceed step by step through the elementary and now almost universally admitted principles of philosophy and the physiology of the nervous system. Such a course would be quite incompatible with the extent of our pages, and, it may be trusted, wholly unnecessary to our readers. Suffice it to say, that Dr. M'Cormac denies the very foundations of Phrenology, by roundly asserting that the brain is not the organ of mind; and so much is he enamoured of this most unprofessional opinion, that it is repeated over and over again in various parts of his work. We are thus at once separated, by an impassable gulf, from him and from the very few well-informed persons who can sincerely join him in the assertion of such an opinion. As a work of science, therefore, Dr. M'Cormac's Philosophy of Human Nature is not within our pale, and must be assigned over to the remnant of the metaphysical school which attempts to study mind as an abstraction unconnected with organization. Nor is this defamation of the brain the only matter of discord between phrenologists and the author of the work before us. However gratuitous may be the data from which he reasons, — however untenable may be the grounds upon which his opinions are made to rest, it rarely seems to strike him that they require any proof of their stability, beyond the simple assertion that they are as he states them to be. His prevailing form of logic is exemplified in the following passage:"There is no evi dence that the brain is mind, or that it performs the functions of mind; consequently, there is no evidence that the parts of the brain perform the functions of mind." Our author would no doubt be highly indignant if two brothers of the goldheaded cane were to consign him to the safe-keeping of a lunatic asylum, for penning the quoted passage; yet his ancestral bearers of that professional symbol were wont to define lunacy as "right reasoning from false premises." We are more disposed to meet him on his own terms, and ask what he would say of a reasoner who should gravely write, in the same spirit of truth and logic, "There is no evidence that the eye is sight, or that it performs the functions of sight; consequently, there is no evidence that the parts of the eye perform the functions of sight." -- To give some idea of Dr. M'Cormac's work in other respects, we may invent a case, by imagining a person to set himself the task of writing a book, and to choose man for his theme. He proceeds to execute this task by selecting a certain number of subordinate subjects,—for example, man's physical relations consciousness sensation senses instinct ideas faculties of mind, &c. &c. Under each of these heads, or each of their subdivisions, he writes down all the ideas one after another arising in his own brain, and which are either connected with the leading subject or suggested by it. If we suppose the writer following this course, to be one who has acquired a fair amount of knowledge by reading and observation, who has a tendency to esteem his own feelings or consciousness, as undoubtedly correct, and who is disposed to look with kindliness and sympathy on the pains and pleasures of his fellows, it is probable that the result of his efforts would be the production of a book pretty much in the style and spirit of Dr. M'Cormac's Philosophy. There seems to have been no object in making the book, except that of putting forth the individual ideas and opinions of its author, as individual notions, associated together according to the order of their succession in his own mind, but forming no unity or systematic whole, and tending to no special end. There is no regular theory to be established, no system to be constructed or taught, no single point or centre to which all the individual facts and suggestions are made to bear reference. The treatise is a sort of mosaic work of details placed in juxta-position, reminding us of bricks piled regularly into a stack, rather than of bricks converted into a house. Such a work is well fitted for being looked into at odd minutes or hours, though not one to be read regularly through from beginning to end. Opened at random, page after page may be read with pleasure by those who would never seriously at |