degree of popularity that in 1832 there were twenty-nine phrenological societies in Great Britain, and several journals devoted to phrenology in Britain and America; of these the Phrenological Journal, a quarterly, edited chiefly by George Combe with aid from others of the Edinburgh confraternity, notably Sir George Mackenzie and Macnish, “the modern Pythagorean,” lived from 1823 to 1847, through twenty volumes. The controversy in many places was heated and often personal, and this largely increased the popular interest. In the Edinburgh Review the theory was severely criticized by Thomas Brown, and afterwards in a still more trenchant manner by Jeffrey. In Blackwood it was ridiculed by Professor John Wilson. Being a subject which lent itself easily to burlesque, it was parodied cleverly in a long rhyme by two authors, “The Craniad,” 87 pages long, published in 1817, while, on the other hand, verse was pressed into its service in the rhyme “Phrenology in Edinburgh” in 1824.[1] The best defence of the system was that by Chenevix in the third number of the Foreign Quarterly, afterwards reprinted with notes by Spurzheim.
The Faculties and their Localities.—The system of Gall was constructed by a method of pure empiricism, and his so-called organs were for the most part identified on slender grounds. Having selected the place of a faculty, he examined the heads of his friends and casts of persons with that peculiarity in common, and in them he sought for the distinctive feature of their characteristic trait. Some of his earlier studies were made among low associates, in gaols and in lunatic asylums, and some of the qualities located by him were such as tend to become perverted to crime. These he named after their excessive manifestations, mapping out organs of murder, theft, &c.; but as this cast some discredit on the system the names were changed by Spurzheim, who claimed as his the moral and religious considerations associated with it. Gall marked out on his model of the head the places of twenty-six organs as round enclosures with vacant interspaces. Spurzheim and Combe divided the whole scalp into oblong and conterminous patches (see the accompanying figures). Other methods of division and other names have been suggested by succeeding authors, especially by Cox, Sidney Smith (not Sydney), Toulmin Smith, K. G. Carus of Dresden, Don Mariano Cubi i Solar, W. B. Powell of Kentucky, J. R. Buchanan of Cincinnati, Hittel of New York. Some, like the brothers Fowler, raise the number of organs to forty-three; but the system of Spurzheim and Combe is that which has always been most popular in Britain.
Spurzheim separated the component faculties of the human mind into two great groups and subdivided these as follows:—
| I. | Feelings, divided into— | ||
| 1. | Propensities, internal impulses inviting only to certain actions. | ||
| 2. | Sentiments, impulses which prompt to emotion as well as to action. | ||
| A. | Lower—those common to man and the lower animals. | ||
| B. | Higher—those proper to man. | ||
| II. | Intellectual faculties. | ||
| 1. | Perceptive faculties. | ||
| 2. | Reflective faculties. | ||
In the following list the locality and the circumstances of the first recognition of the organ are appended to the names, which are mostly the inventions of Spurzheim. Gall's names are placed in brackets.[2]
Propensities.
1. Amativeness (Instinct de la génération), median, below the inion; first determined by Gall from its heat in an hysterical widow, supposed to be confirmed by many observations, and referred to the cerebellum.[3]
2. Philoprogenitiveness (Amour de la progéniture), median, on the squama occipitis, and selected as the organ for the love of children because this part of the skull is usually more prominent in apes and in women, in whom the love of children is supposed to be stronger than in men.
3. Concentrativeness, below the obelion and over the lambda. This is a region of uncertain function, unnoticed by Gall, but described as Inhabitiveness by Spurzheim, because he found it large in cats and in a clergyman fond of his home. It has since been considered by Combe to be the seat of the power of concentration, whereof he believed Inhabitiveness to be a special case.
4. Adhesiveness (Amitié), over the lateral area of the lambdoidal suture. This region was prominent in a lady introduced to Gall as a model of friendship, and is said by him to be the region where persons who are closely attached put their heads together.
5. Combativeness (Instinct de la défense), above the asterion; it was found by Gall by examining the heads of the most quarrelsome of his low companions whom he had beforehand stimulated by alcohol. It was verified by comparing this region with the same part of the head of a quarrelsome young lady.
6. Destructiveness (Instinct carnassier), above the ear meatus. This is the widest part of the skulls of carnivorous animals, and was found large in the head of a student so fond of torturing animals that he became a surgeon, also large in the head of an apothecary who became an executioner.
6a. Alimentiveness, over the temporal muscle and above the ear. Hoppe describes it as being large in a gourmand acquaintance, and he therefore supposes it to be the origin of selecting food.
7. Secretiveness (Ruse, Finesse), the posterior part of the squamous suture.
8. Acquisitiveness (Sentiment de la propriété), on the upper edge of the front half of the squamous suture. This part of the head Gall noticed to be prominent in the pickpockets of his acquaintance.
9. Constructiveness (Sens de méchanique), on the stephanion; detected by its prominence on the heads of persons of mechanical genius. It was found large on the head of a milliner of uncommon taste and on a skull reputed to be that of Raphael.
The organ of Vitativeness, or love of life, is supposed by Combe to be seated at the base of the skull. To this locality Herophilus referred most of the intellectual powers.
Lower Sentiments.
10. Self-esteem (Orgueil, fierté), at and immediately over the obelion; found by Gall in a beggar who excused his poverty on account of his pride. This was confirmed by the observation that proud persons held their heads backwards in the line of the organ.
11. Love of Approbation (Vanité), outside the obelion; the region in which Gall saw a protuberance on the head of a lunatic who fancied herself queen of France.
12. Cautiousness (Circonspection), on the parietal eminence; placed here because an ecclesiastic of hesitating disposition and a vacillating councillor of state had both large parietal eminences.
- ↑ Other burlesque and satirical writings were published at this time, notably The Phrenologists, a farce by Wade (1830); The Headpiece, or Phrenology opposed to Divine Revelation, by James the Less; and A Helmet for the Headpiece, or Phrenology incompatible with Reason, by Daniel the Seer.
- ↑ For topographical purposes Broca's names are adopted as the most convenient for localities on the head.
- ↑ Apollonius Rhodius speaking of the love of Medea for Jason (Argonautica, iii. 760-765) says, δάκρυ δ’ ἀπ’ ὀφθαληῶν ῥέεν ἔνδοθι δ’ αἰεί τεῖρ’ ὀδύνη σμύχουσα διὰ χροὸς, ἀμφὶ ἀραῖας ἷνος καὶ κεφαλῆς, ὑπὸ νείατον ἰνίον ἄχρις, . . .
