constantly compare degrees of manifestation and development; should draw conclusions only from well-ascertained facts; should be precise in their definitions, simple and intelligible in their descriptions.

V. A Letter on the Organ of Wit. - By MR. J. R. RUMBALL.

SIR.In a course of phrenological lectures which I have recently delivered, I took occasion to differ from Combe and others, in their definition of Wit; and as my opinion was formed and promulgated three years since, I think it desirable, with your leave, to record it in the pages of your Journal. And although I have come to my conclusions, from deductions from my own knowledge and experience; yet is it pleasant to find, that in deciding against Combe, &c. I am supported by an authority no less than the immortal Locke.

Combe defines wit "to consist chiefly in an intellectual perception of difference, of incongruity amid congruity." Mr. Scott says it is "a mixture of congruity and incongruity, or that incongruity appears where congruity was expected." Mr. Watson argues that "the ludicrous is a mode of manifestation of all the intellectual faculties." Being in the country, and without books, I am unable to refer to the definition of Mr. Hancock. Spurzheim's definition can scarcely be called one: it merely traces the results, and supposes a power, but leaves its root unexamined. Gall calls it "esprit caustique, esprit de saillie," and says, "it considers objects under a particular point of view, finds among them particular relations, which it presents in a manner altogether particular." M. Demangeon, who criticises him, says, "wit has gaiety for its essence ;" and although, as well as Gall, he envelopes the truth, neither of them defines it. Locke describes it thus "This is one of the operations that the mind may reflect on and observe in itself," that it lies "most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy," and says, "it is a kind of affront to go about to examine it by the severe rules of truth and good reason, whereby it appears that it consists in something that is not conformable to them." Thus shadowing out what I shall contend to be the truth, but evidently feeling himself unable to define it.

:

I shall not occupy your pages with any further examination

of other men's opinions; the general opinion seeming to be, that Wit is "a perception of differences in things essentially similar," and Comparison " a detection of resemblances in things essentially different." Now, I contend that the reverse of this is the truth: and first of Comparison. If I go into a painter's studio, and he asks my opinion of the copy from an old master, he may have just finished, I say, "let me compare them," and if I find no essential departure from the original in form, size, or colouring, I give my commendation. So, if he have painted a portrait of a friend, "Do you think it like?" will be his question. I set about to compare it with my conception of my friend's countenance, and judge accordingly. Now it is abundantly evident, that a hasty observation, a furtive glance, would be satisfied of the resemblance in both these instances, and so pronounce; but wishing, as Locke says, to "nicely distinguish one thing from another where there is the least difference," I accurately compare them, and so form a judgment "not likely to be misled by similitude, and by affinity, to take one thing for another." I think it clear that the use of Comparison is to "detect incongruity where congruity appears," and that it is essential to a right judgment.*

Now it is evident that our judgment would be one-eyed, if we had not the "power of detecting resemblances in things essentially different;" and this faculty I attribute to the organ of Wit. Locke becomes confused in contrasting wit and comparison, simply because he was only acquainted with "the mind as one, the brain as one;" and Spurzheim considered them both as modes of comparison, thus attributing to one organ two opposite functions; supposing them to be mere majors and minors of the same faculty. Combe has refuted this; but, strange to say, has himself reversed the truths.

When I ask, "why is a pocket-handkerchief like a venomous reptile? there is wit in the cockney answer" because it is a wiper." Now the question and answer both imply-what the querist knows and the respondent seeks for some hidden resemblance between these two essentially different things; and when it is traced, a laugh is raised by the wit or ingenuity of the discovery. When a gentleman remarked to Curran, on hearing a woman call something a "curosity," "How that woman murders the King's English;" and the wit replied, "No, she only knocks one of its eyes (i) out," the remark and reply both

* We cannot understand, from the writer's modes of expression, whether he is here referring to the general mental power of comparing objects, &c., or whether he refers to the phrenological organ of Comparison. His language seems to imply the latter; but if so, he evidently misconceives the phrenological faculty or function attributed to the organ. · EDITOR.

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trace minute resemblances in things essentially different, and a laugh is the consequence. All conundrums embody wit in their mode of interrogation, and the amount of it seems to depend on the difficulty with which it is detectable : Why is a man up stairs, beating his wife, like a good man?"-" Because he is above doing a bad action. Here not only are the facts dissimilar, but the very word above, in which the wit lies, assimilates in the two sentences only in sound. The resemblance is scarce detectable; but when discovered, is readily allowed, and this constitutes wit. "What is majesty without its externals?" "A jest " is not wit, because it embodies a grave truth which the mind discovers not at first, and therefore the first impulse is to laugh; but which, by comparing the answer with the proposition, the resemblance is greater than the difference, and this is not wit. [We omit two pages of other similar examples here.]

--

I define wit to be," the discovery of a resemblance in things essentially different." The classifying the two objects under the resemblance, instead of under the differences, and the disproportion which the differences and resemblances bear to each other constitutes the amount of wit; which, like all other faculties, will be gratified, in a direct ratio, by the amount of the difficulty, and the perfectness with which it conquers it. The office of Comparison is to detect differences.

P. S.- Mr. Combe coincides with Spurzheim, in believing that the organ in question manifests the sentiment of the ludicrous, and that wit consists in any form of intellectual conception combined with this sentiment. (System, 4th edition, Vol. I. p. 422.)

"Like the gale that sighs along

Beds of oriental flowers,

Is the grateful breath of song

That once was heard in happier hours."

Combe says, truly enough, here is beauty of comparison, but no wit, although the things are essentially different. But I say, because the two things essentially resemble each other, both in their modes of action and in their result. In comparing Hope to a taper,

"Which still, as darker grows the night,

Emits a brighter ray."

The resemblance is perfect, and the analogical difference nothing. This is a metaphor therefore, and not wit.

VI. Fruits of the Hostile Misrepresentations of Phrenology, made to Students of Medicine, by their Teachers. - In a letter from a Physician in Bath, addressed to the Editor of the Phrenological Journal.

SIR,It is now twenty-eight years since I was a pupil, for four years, of the celebrated Dr. John Barclay, Lecturer on Anatomy, in Edinburgh, and I recollect that towards the end of each course, he devoted a lecture or two to the subject of Phrenology. Dr. Gall's cast of the skull was exhibited, and served as a butt against which he hurled all the ridicule and contempt which he could command. Entertaining a sincere respect for his talents and judgment, I went forth into the world, believing as firmly in the truth of his statements against Gall's doctrine as I did in the circulation of the blood, or in muscular motion. I regarded Phrenology as downright nonsense, and phrenologists as fools. This opinion was strengthened by Dr. Gordon's celebrated article in the Edinburgh Review.

I went to India in the practice of my profession, where a copy of Mr. Combe's System of Phrenology was sent to me, by a brother who studied Law in Edinburgh and became an ardent phrenologist. He strongly urged me to study the subject, and assured me of its truth; but I sent only petulant replies to his remarks, and never looked into the book beyond the plates. I continued to laugh at Phrenology, till within the last three years, when I was induced to look into its merits by finding several of my friends, eminent physicians, believing in its truth. I read the Phrenological Journal, Mr. Combe's "Constitution of Man," and other works, and devoted a serious attention to nature. The result has been a complete conviction that Phrenology is true; and I am now one of its steady admirers.

I communicate these facts to you, for the sake of adding, that during my residence in India, I had, for twelve years, the medical charge of a very extensive public Hospital for the Insane, and that I now very deeply deplore my ignorance, during that whole period, of a science which would have been of the highest utility to me in the discharge of my professional duties, and which would have greatly benefited my patients. I cannot now look back, except with extreme regret, to the blind prejudice which led Dr. Barclay to instil his own erroneous prepossessions into my mind; and as I have reason to fear that there still are medical teachers who are pursuing the same injurious course towards their pupils, I send you this letter as a warning to them, of the injury which they are doing to the young minds who look up to them as their

guides, and of the bitter disappointment which will assuredly, on some future day, be expressed against them, when those whom they are now misleading shall discover the extent of the injury which they have sustained.

BATH, 16th April, 1838.

I am &c.

J. W, M. D.

VII. The Dublin Journal of Medical Science versus Phrenology.

THE Dublin Journal of Medical Science, for May last, treats. its readers to upwards of thirty pages of vulgar declamation, under the title of " Dr. Elliotson, Materialism, and Phrenology." The first is well able to take care of himself, if he should deem it worth while to pay a moment's attention to anonymous scurrility. We have nothing to do with the second. But the third subject of the article in the Journal comes into our proper province, and so far invites attention to the paper; more than twenty pages of which are filled with stupid misconceptions and silly arguments against Phrenology, refuted a hundred times already. Anti-phrenology has evidently fallen to a very low ebb. Formerly, we were opposed by writers of ability and information; and their arguments, if unsound, had often the advantage of novelty and ingenuity. Repeated now-a-days by inferior and less-informed minds, the natural weakness and irrelevancy of the arguments become too evident; and we are thus relieved from the wearisome duty of replying to them in detail.

The

The first thing that strikes us, in looking at this vapid effusion in the Dublin Journal, is, that the article has no acknowledged parentage. It is evidently an illegitimate baby, a sort of lawyer's "nullius filius," cast alone on the wide world. editors of the Journal do not adopt it; nor has the writer ventured to subscribe his name. The article professes to come from the pen of the editors' "very humble servant, ANTIQUACK;" thus affording a curious instance of editorial liberality, in allowing the effusions of an enemy-an anti-quack-to appear in the Dublin Journal. The article is itself so clearly one of those not meriting refutation in detail, that we shall deem it almost a work of supererogation, even to give our readers a few examples of the writer's unfitness to grapple with his subject. He is very slenderly acquainted with Phrenology, or with physiology in its more extended sense; and yet he must run his