cases to be assigned to hereditary tendency; and this is more striking when we find that in one out of every eleven cases no other cause was known. The author remarks that "where the disease has assumed any particular form, this is also very frequently inherited, especially in cases of suicide. In illustration of this, the case of a female is given, who had a strong inclination to suicide, and who eventually succeeded in carrying her wishes into effect, by hanging herself when unobserved: her mother and two of her sisters had hung themselves. The hereditary tendency to particular forms of insanity admits of a phrenological explanation. Insanity is often induced by strong excitement of, or sudden shocks to, the predominant organs; and when brought on by other causes, the manifestations usually have reference to the functions of these leading organs. Now, since organic peculiarities are very often hereditary, we have here an explanation how particular forms of insanity appear to become hereditary. The disposition to suicide, for instance, is commonly found in connection with large organs of Cautiousness and Destructiveness; and if this organic peculiarity should descend from parent to child, the disposition to suicide will appear to descend. We say appear, because we doubt much whether any habits or tendencies can be hereditary which are not altogether dependent on organic peculiarities. The remarks on the treatment of insane patients are particularly interesting and highly practical. Employment and conciliation are the grand moral remedies, in the absence of which there seems to be small benefit from physic. At Hanwell, the author writes, "454 out of 610 are regularly at work; and many of them at trades, with which they were totally unacquainted until they were taught them at the institution." Whilst alluding to this subject, we cannot resist copying the following striking instance of ignorant prejudice and opposition to beneficial changes. - "When the system [that of agreeable employment] was commenced by myself and my wife, on the opening of the Asylum for the West Riding of Yorkshire, at Wakefield, so great was the prejudice against it, that it was seriously proposed, that no patient should be allowed to work in the grounds outside the walls without being chained to a keeper. Another suggestion was, that a corner of the garden should be allotted for their labour, and that they should dig it over and over again all the year round. The kind feeling and good sense of the people in the neighbourhood soon overcame these prejudices." (Page 8.) The author afterwards dwells particularly upon the silly practice of depriving patients of all customary enjoyments, and condemning them to brood over their morbid sensations in disgust and ennui, in solitude, or in society that is hateful to them. He forcibly points out the melancholy situation of persons of birth and education, previously accustomed to refined society, but doomed in Asylums to spend their lives in company only with coarse and ignorant keepers, who are perhaps also brutal and tyrannical. And he asks whether it is to be expected, that a mode of treatment, so injurious even to a sane mind, "should tend to restore a diseased one?" "In a well-regulated institution," the author writes, "every means ought to be invented for calling into exercise as many of the mental faculties as remain capable of employment. We must remember, that the happiness of man, whatever be his situation in life, consists in the proper and harmonious exercise of all his powers, moral, mental, and physical. Insanity, brought on from moral causes, is the result of too great and partial exercise of some of the feelings or faculties; the patient therefore ought to be surrounded with objects calculated to attract attention, and to divert the mind from the contemplation of its sufferings." Unfortunately, the greater number of keepers of Asylums- we cannot give such men a better name are still ignorant of Phrenology, which, above all other means, would enable them to know, to distinguish, and to call into due and regular activity, all the moral or mental powers. But on this subject we must express some disappointment, felt on reading the treatise of Sir William, valuable as it is in other respects. In his certificate to the British Government, of the utility of Phrenology, Sir William wrote, "If it was necessary, I could mention a great variety of cases in the treatment of which I have found the little knowledge I possess of this interesting science of the greatest utility." Bearing this in recollection, we expected to find Sir William speaking of insanity more directly and explicitly as a phrenologist, and pointing out the applications of phrenological knowledge, both in explaining the causes of insanity, and in directing the treatment of the patients. Two instances, indeed, have been given under our head of "Cases," in the present Number. We see also that there is much more in this volume which the author could scarcely have arrived at without the aid of Phrenology. But many of his readers will not see this; and suggestions which we, as phrenologists, can see to be sound and philosophical, they will regard as mere opinions or sensible-looking speculations; and they will blunder in attempting to apply the suggestions in practice, because they will lack the understanding of the principles upon which they depend. Besides this, what an amount of evidence in support of Phrenology might Sir William's experience have enabled him to adduce, which could not have been out of place in a work on insanity! We must not, however, lead our own readers to suppose that Sir William has feared to express his conviction of the practical value of Phrenology. On the contrary, the following recom mendation will show them the opinion entertained of this science, and of its applications to the treatment of the insane, by a physician of long experience, and whose admirable management of the Asylum at Hanwell has justly procured for him the highest reputation: "In connexion with insanity I should strongly recommend the study of Phrenology; the tendency which it gives carefully to note, and the facility with which it enables us easily to distinguish variations in conduct, which, though minute, and apparently of little consequence, are, in reality, the marks of important changes of action in the brain, would alone be sufficient to recommend it to our most serious attention. But I have no hesitation in saying, that in addition to its being indirectly useful, in thus helping us to a more accurate acquaintance with the state of the patient, it may be applied directly to most valuable purposes. One instance of its use has already been detailed: I could mention others, where the mere examination of the head, without any previous knowledge or information whatever as to the habits of the patient, has suggested the trial of a particular course of moral treatment, which subsequent events have fully proved to be correct. Nor will this be a matter of surprise, when we remember that those organs, through the actions of which the grand distinctions of character are produced, form large masses of brain, and that to distinguish their relative size and natural operation, it is not necessary to have recourse to callipers, or to determine their extent to a hair's breadth. A single glance will show, to a person in the habit of observing, whether the formation of the head indicates a naturally bold and passionate, or a timid and retiring man; will enable us to distinguish between one highly gifted with the intellectual and nobler faculties, and consequently proportionally responsible for their active and continued employment, with direct reference to the glory of God, — and his neighbour, less liberally endowed, who has to struggle against a constitutional tendency towards mere animal gratification." (Page 255-6.) We would add to this recommendation the further reason, that those, who profess to treat disordered minds, ought to acquire the best possible knowledge of minds in health, as a preliminary. The oculist makes himself acquainted with the functions of the eye in a state of health; the aurist must do the same with the functions of the ear; the general physician must study general physiology; and, in like manner, the mental physician ought to study mental physiology: Phrenology is mental physiology. The volume is adapted to the general reader, as well as to the professional practitioner; a circumstance which renders it less necessary to proceed with our extracts, though numerous passages of interest are offered to our choice. . II. The Education of the Feelings. London: Taylor and Walton. 1828. Small 8vo. pp. 195. What THE author of this volume has kept back his name. ever other reason he may have had, there was no call to be ashamed of his book. He commences with an intimation that the education of the feelings, or disposition, has been very much neglected: it has rather been misunderstood and mismanaged. Every advertising schoolmaster pretends to pay "the strictest attention to the morals of his pupils ;" every parent will say that he or she does the same, and believe it too. Yet both masters and parents, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, are utterly ignorant what is a judicious education of the feelings; and in consequence, their efforts, when best intentioned, not uncommonly produce effects exactly the opposite of what they wished to see. They then lament over the dullness or untowardness of their children and pupils, without the slightest conception that the chief causes of their illsuccess lie in their own ignorance; and they would be highly offended if told that such was the case. - The author of the volume before us defines Education of the Feelings, as being "the cultivation, by exercise, of those feelings which make us wish to do that which we ought to do." This is not a clear definition, for the reader is left to find out and we cannot do it whether the author intends the primitive faculties, or only temporary states of these, by his use of the term "feelings." We should prefer to call Education of the Feelings "the art of rendering habitual those wishes (that is, states of the faculties), the gratification of which is conducive to our well-being." In working out his plan, the author copies, from Combe's Constitution of Man, the descriptive list of the mental faculties supposed to be the primitive powers of the human mind; and after some preliminary explanations, he treats each faculty in detail, suggesting what he conceives to be the proper and requisite exercise of it, and illustrating his ideas by examples of successful management, or of failure through errors. The treatise is thus rendered somewhat diffuse and interrupted, it being impossible actually to treat of each faculty by itself; but many useful hints may be found, not only for the management of children, but also for self-discipline on the part of the parent or teacher. We are rapidly approaching the end of our current Number, or we should have copied the pages devoted to one of the faculties, as an example of the work; but having two or three points to notice, in which we dissent from the author's views, it is necessary to restrain the pen. Though the author, as stated, has given a list of the phrenological faculties, he has, either through timidity or through the want of a comprehensive insight into the full bearings of his subject and its relation to Phrenology, prefaced the list by the unphrenological assertion, that it is unnecessary, " in speaking of the cultivation of the mental faculties, to assume their connexion with the brain." This is most certainly erroneous. The author, indeed, has himself neglected the connexion, and written of the education of the faculties as if they had no connexion with the brain; but this, in our opinion, is a great oversight; for no one can properly educate the mind, who does not allow for the connexion of the mind and brain, and use his knowledge of it as a means in education. While we know as a fact, that very slight changes in the circulation of blood in the brain may make the utmost difference, for the time being, in the feelings and intelligence of a child; that differences in the form or proportions of the brain may cause the widest possible differences in natural disposition and capacity, it must be highly erroneous to say that it will not "be necessary, in speaking of the cultivation of the mental faculties, to assume their connexion with the brain." In point of fact, the great light which Phrenology has thrown upon educational tactics is mainly derived from its clear exposition of the absolute dependence of the mental manifestations upon the brain, and the dependence of the special faculties each on its appropriate part of the brain. For a phrenologist to talk of cultivating the mental faculties, without reference to their connexion with the brain, is pretty much the same departure from sound philosophy, as it would be for a physiologist to talk of cultivating the faculty of respiration, without assuming its connexion with the lungs, or for an oculist to talk about cultivating the faculty of sight, without assuming its connexion with the eye. If it be true that the brain is as necessary to any act of mind, as the eye is necessary to any act of sight, or, as a lung |