The principles of phrenology / By Sidney Smith.

  • Smith, Sid.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of phrenology / By Sidney Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    endowed with an equal amount of those passions and sentiments, the. great, force of — which producing moral and intellectual momentum, is the true secret of moving the masses of the community. - They could do nothing in the shape of permanent influ- of the. Church of Scotland, has also an exceedingly large head. . Swift, the Dean of Saint Patrick’s, had almost as much influence with the common people in Ireland, as ~ Saint Patrick himself. His brain was greatly above average. Dr. Johnson was _ equally singular for his large head, and his power of character. So of Captains Parry, Franklin, &c. Men in no situation will be found to submit implicitly to the dominion of persons with heads below an average size. A judge appointed from interest, and not from merit, has, on this account, actually confined some of the bar for contempt of court. It is the same in college, in the army, the navy, the church—every where. An in- sensible impression of insignificance obliterates that instinct of subordination which is at once felt, under the command of large-brained men. Hence it was that the English never could permanently subjugate the bigger-headed Scotch—or the Ger- mans the Swiss; while thirty or forty thousand British, command one hundred mil- lions of Hindoos, with heads one-fourth less-than their own, with the most perfect ease, and assisted by a spirit of willing subjection and subordination. Nature, how- ever, is ever consistent with herself. A Brahmin of this small-headed and”enslaved nation, renounced idolatry, studied Christianity, became a profound Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Sanscrit, Persic, and Arabic scholar, and obtained a mastery of the English language. In this tongue he has written several works, singular for their elegance of style, erudition, and power of argument. He has beaten the Bishop of Calcutta © in Biblical criticism, and converted an English missionary to Unitarianism, who had been sent out expressly for the purpose of making him a Calvinist. This great man —the Rajah Rammohun Roy—had a head twenty-five inches in circumference, being larger than that of any man perhaps in England; and had India possessed many such, Europe would have had more cause to tremble for Oriental invasion, than to send her conquests into the East. While the head of the African slave is much less than that of his white master, the cranium of Toussaint L’ Ouverture—who for a time bade defiance to the whole power of Napoleon, and that too with means which, in the hands of the latter, would have been totally inadequate—who was a model of wisdom, of heroism, of romantic generosity, and the most exalted virtue,—is one of the largest and most beautifully developed that we ever beheld. We have seen that the Hindoos yielded to European sway, and the American In- dians, as well as those of the Brazils, whom the missionaries, according to Koster, “ always regard as children,” have fought under the banners of the very invaders. They have heads much smaller than the British. But the Charibs, New Holland- . ers, and New Zealanders, whose cerebral mass is about as great as that of Euro- peans, although developed in a different direction, have never been subdued, and contemplate strangers with neither fear nor respect. They may be killed, butchered, betrayed; but no influence hitherto discovered, has had power to subdue their hearts _ _ to the yoke of men like themselves. The Caffres and Ashantees, further advanced in civilization, and with heads also of large dimensions, have been indomitable, and- have uniformly maintained a not unequal warfare with the better skilled and civilised Dutch and British settlers. The Chinese, with heads still larger, have never been subdued, and view Europeans with contempt. - Cromwell and Peter the Great, with no powers of oratory or pen, became by far the greatest men of their time, by very large brains. Linn, the Irish parricide, had an enormous head, developed chiefly in the animal region, and he ruled the whole common people of Belfast with a rod of iron. In Pericles, who was so great a man that his name forms the epoch of an historical era, the head was so singularly large, that Plutarch says—* Sometimes he was to be seen sitting in the street, fatigued by the weight of his head, and not knowing what. part to take in the disorders of the state; and at other times thunder and lightning issued from his monstrous head, with a tremendois noise.”’ His cranium was so inuch out of proportion to a handsome body, that sculptors always covered it with a casque. Brown, in his Vulgar Errors, says—‘ I did, I confess, somewhat doubt _that man proportionally hath the largest brain, and think it might have failed in birds; but upon trial, I find it to be very true.” ‘A very large head,” observes the : es