Strictures on phrenological doctrines upon the human intellect : in a letter addressed to Dr. Spurzheim / by John Manesca.

  • Manesca, John, approximately 1780-1838.
Date:
1832
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Strictures on phrenological doctrines upon the human intellect : in a letter addressed to Dr. Spurzheim / by John Manesca. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    bid us to concede ; more than this, reason would not authorize you to exact; and yet, sir, see how far phrenologists would have us go with them ! Upon the shadowy evidence of their coincidences, we must pro- ceed along with them to the autopsy of the human mind, adopt their division of it into four distinct independent faculties, subdivided into smaller groups, each of which having its particular location and deve- lopement behind this or that section of the brain ! But, sir, how do phrenologists know that mental energy (self energy) opera'tes from the centre to the periphery ? Can they tell that that energy is not centripetal ? What good reasons have they to think that such energy does not operate in zig-zags ? But this is not all: phrenologists have located their discovered faculties in the vicinity of the surface ; yet, they will not pretend, I hope, that there are none in or towards'the centre of the brain ; they will not probably reduce the functions of its inner organs to a mere sinecure ; they will surely admit there are as many faculties below as they have been pleased to mark out upon the surface. Now. then, since they will have it, that the physical developement which is observed upon the surface of the brain, is the necessary effect of the developement of some mental faculty located in the section so developed ; unless they are prepared to show that the inner faculties have no developement at all, they must give us good reasons why those protuberances, observed upon the surface of the brain, which are considered by phrenologists as signs of facul- ties there located, are not wholly, or at least partially, the effect of the developement of faculties underneath, more or less deep, in a more or less straight direction towards the centre of the brain. For it is evi- dent, that the expansion of any internal locality could not take place without encroaching upon the contiguous one which, in consequence of the impulse, would, in its turn, press upon the next immediate, and so on, up to the faculty lying at the surface ; an operation which would, of course, make the latter not the real, but merely the apparent cause of the external protuberance so confidently asserted by phre- nologists to be its exclusive effect and sign. A man, standing in the middle of a suffocating crowd, should not blame his immediate neigh- bour who innocently presses upon him ; for the real cause of the pressure is equally remote from both. Neither have phrenologists ascertained, that among the many hun- dred millions of human beings who breathe life upon our earth, there are not millions who possess the faculties and propensities without having the respective external signs ; and millions of others upon whose heads the latter may be found, although they are deficient in the correspondent mental attributes. The various conformation of heads, among different nations and tribes, is the effect of causes as yet unknown, incident to climate and to atmospheric and other phenomena in the physical world, for some ends, likewise unknown, but no doubt necessary for the preser- vation of the species; but such a variety of conformation, in my humble opinion, is not the effect, or the cause of, and still less an ob- stacle to, the developement and expansion of the human mind. Place a new born Hottentot among the best civilized people ; allow