Sir William Hamilton and phrenology : an exposition of phrenology, shewing the complete inefficacy of the objections lately advanced in the Royal Society, and the real grounds on which the system ought to be assailed.

Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir William Hamilton and phrenology : an exposition of phrenology, shewing the complete inefficacy of the objections lately advanced in the Royal Society, and the real grounds on which the system ought to be assailed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    too, mere shades of faculty for faculties them- selves. They have made a faculty of Firm- ness, though that is only the intensity with which any power impels to activity. They have rigorously distinguished from each other Combativeness and Destructiveness, as if a broken head never could be the consequence of a battle. They have taken care to sepa- rate Cautiousness and Secretion, as if cunning and caution had nothing in common to do. They have multiplied an organ of Conscien- tiousness, as if that had not been already ex- hausted by Benevolence or Veneration. They explain the same mental developments some- times by the presence of one faculty, and sometimes by the absence of another. And all this, though nature is “ frugal ” of her mechanism, and never forms “ two ” instru- ments to produce the same effect! Eheu, mendaces! After all, we gather, that these people had some nebulous conception that they were making sad work of Faculty and its organs. This we collect from their industrious ab- surdity, in marking out those faculties, which they consider most important, and denomi- nate “ primitive,” from such as they conceive tobe only of doubtful reputation. Blind as they were to the simple fact, that, before “ facul- ties” could be classified, it might be fit to prove that they existed, there is something specially instructive in the stolid ingenuity of