of all signs which imitate objects more or less; it is for this reason that, even now, the rudest men, in order to communicate their sentiments, make use of emblems, that they paint a heart with flames escaping from it, an arrow, &c. This, in fine, is the origin of mythology.

Man, in comparing together the impressions which he has received from abroad, endeavours to imitate them by his language; he becomes an imitator, a painter of the external world. The horse neighs, the lion roars, the sheep bleats, the frog croaks, the ox lows, the dog barks, the wolf growls, the cat mews, the turtle dove coos, the hog grunts, the hen clucks, the serpent hisses, the hand-bell tinkles, the thunder roars, &c.; words which imitate the sound they express. It is thus, that a number of words take birth in the parent languages, and have been transferred into those languages, which are derived from them.

Man acts likewise in regard to his own sentiments. He familiarizes himself with these, as easily as with impressions received from without. Why then do so many philosophers derive our first ideas from impressions on the five senses? The internal sentiments furnish the materials for our language, as early and as abundantly. The sentiments also require to be painted, and the images by which we depict external objects, are as often derived from these sentiments, as those, by which the sentiments are pictured, are from external objects. If we say, the blood boils; the heart palpitates and beats; the soul barns and freezes; beauty fades; that tears my soul; that pierces my heart; reason seizes; the mind penetrates; he has a light, a heavy understanding; sharp or dull faculties ; a narrow mind; the heart corrupted, hard, broken, tender; ripe reason; the soul prostrated; a flat expression; we also say the vine weeps; the weather is dull; the sea rages; the billows roar; the winds howl; the oak braves the storm; he lifts towards heaven an audacious

front; rust gnaws the iron; the sun vivifies; nature awakes; the earth is thirsty; the willow loves moisture; the vine fears the frost, &c.

Almost all proverbs, and all popular modes of speaking, are but comparisons and analogies, arising from accidental observations. The singed cat fears cold water; to put the cart before the horse; to let the wolf into the fold; to strike while the iron is hot; to straighten the tree while it is young; a good name is better than a golden girdle; idleness is like rust, it consumes faster than labor; a rolling stone gathers no moss; you laugh in your sleep, but you will weep at your waking; what is not good for the swarm, cannot be good for the bee.

Now, it will be conceived, why those, who had it more at heart to render a service to humanity, than to gain the reputation of a brilliant eloquence in the instructions which they addressed to they addressed to the people, preferred the form of the parable, and emblematic modes of speaking to every other. This was the vulgar language of the Egyptians, and Pythagoras enveloped his precepts of morality in the veil of allegory and apologue. Let us recollect the woman who seeks the penny she has lost, and who has such great joy in finding it; the shepherd who abandons his flock to go and seek the stray sheep.-"Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.. Ye are the light of the world; a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid; neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it gives light to all that are in the house, &c. -Behold the fowls of the air; they sow not, neither reap, nor gather into barns, &c.-Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. - You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? A good tree cannot bring forth bad fruits, nor a bad tree, good fruits. —

The wise man built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the wind blew and beat upon it, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock. -The foolish man built his house on the sand; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon it, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.".

"When a woman is in travail.......likewise you are now in distress."

"I have given you milk to drink, and have not given you meat; for you were not able to bear it."

"I

We find on each page the most excellent comparisons, in which we manifestly see the intention. have spoken to you in parables." It is thus, that the most wholesome truths are best introduced under the veil of fable.

Esop, who assumed the mask of allegory and the charm of fable, was more listened to at the court of Croesus, than the austere Solon. A senator appeased the sedition of the Roman people by a fable, which the wisdom and authority of the consuls had not been able to repress. And the courtiers of Louis XIV. were more willing to be corrected by the apologues of La Fontaine, by the comic fictions of Molière, and by the poignant pictures of La Bruyere, than by the sublime and profound thoughts of Pascal.

What philosopher would have spoken better to the ambitious, than Petrarch, when he says to them: To look to power, in order to live in security and at rest, is to ascend a high mountain to avoid the winds and the thunder.

We may then maintain, that the education of the human race has been commenced principally by means of the action of the organ of comparative sagacity. Now we may conceive, why nature has placed it in the median line.

Metaphysical Depth of Thought; Aptitude for drawing Conclusions. (Metaphysischer Tief-sinn.)

I have a long time observed, that some men, to whom a great philosophic spirit is attributed, had the anterior superior part of the forehead singularly large and prominent. Such are Socrates, Democritus, Cicero, Bacon, Montaigne, Galileo, La Bruyere, Leibnitz, Condillac, Diderot, Mendelsohn, &c.

But the tendency of the profound genius in these men, is not the same in all of them. The domain of one, is the material world; the domain of another, is the spiritual. One wishes to know what is; endeavours to discover the conditions, under which that which is, exists; makes observation the basis of all his meditations, and investigates the relation of cause and effect; another, disdaining the material world, raises himself into the world of spirits; and, creating to himself a universe of ideal beings, contemplates mind in its effects as mind, and takes no account of the material conditions of its functions; he is occupied in the investigation of general truths, of general principles; and, according to him, all which exists here below!! ought to conform to these general ideas; such is the ideologist, the metaphysician.

In these heads two cerebral parts are developed, one on each side, xxIII. Pl. 1x. at the side of the organ of comparative sagacity. In those the parts of the forehead which immediately touch these cerebral parts, are found prominent, and form, by themselves alone, or jointly with the organ of sagacity, two segments of a sphere, placed on each side of the forehead in the horizontal line.

At Vienna I knew men endowed with very distinguished intellectual faculties, zealous followers of Kant. The too great generality of the assertions, which constitute their doctrine, always convinced me, that it is without any practical utility. Their dogma,

for example, that time and space are only a form to which our understanding is subjected, appears to me so general, that it finds no application to any science or any art. It is on this account, that they and myself have never been able to understand each other. They reproached me, as the followers of the transcendental philosophy have since done in the rest of Germany, with not having raised myself above the lowest step in the ladder of observation. In return, I reproached them with losing themselves in the void beyond the limits of the sensible world; with wishing to determine the laws of the corporeal world according to those of the spiritual; and with constructing the whole external world with pretended materials, collected within themselves, instead of making observation the basis of their reasonings.

out.

During our travels, they gave us a cast, moulded on the head of Kant after his death. It was with a lively pleasure, that we saw the extraordinary prominence of the two frontal parts which I have pointed See his portrait, Pl. LXXXII. fig. 3. Afterward, we became acquainted with Fichte, and found the same region of his forehead still more prominent than in Kant. We saw the same organization in Schelling; we need take no notice here of those numerous followers, who do nothing but repeat the words of their

master.

It seems to be proved by experience, that so long as man is condemned to inhabit this earth, there is no advantage to be drawn by him from the speculations of this sublime philosophy, and consequently that we shall do well to confine ourselves within that sphere of activity, which the world of realities offers us.

Sometimes, it is true, we are forced to admire the depth of the human mind, when, at distant intervals, we see those men, if not by the sole force of reasoning, at least by induction from a small number of data, discover truths, to which the naturalist dares not give his consent till after a numerous and painful succession