Letter from George Combe to Francis Jeffrey, esq. [in answer to his criticism of 'Phrenology' contained in no. 88 of the Edinburgh Review] / [George Combe].

  • Combe, George, 1788-1858.
Date:
1826]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter from George Combe to Francis Jeffrey, esq. [in answer to his criticism of 'Phrenology' contained in no. 88 of the Edinburgh Review] / [George Combe]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The flourish with which you introduce the third attack is in the following terms :—“ Every one, of course, has heard ^ of Dr Gall’s Craniology, and seen his plaster heads, mapped out <c into the territories of some thirty or forty independent faculties. c< Long before this time, we confess, we expected to have seen them “ turned into tops for children, and this folly consigned to that “ great limbo of vanity to which the dreams of alchemy, sympathe- “ tic medicine, and animal magnetism had passed before it.” It seems really to provoke you that Phrenology will not die. You tell us in this article, that “ the dogmatism and arro- c< gance of its advocates were really beginning to be tire- <£ some, and the folly had lasted rather too long.’1 No wonder ! It has lasted twenty-three years after you had de- I prived it of every shadow of plausibility ! It is now believed I in and supported by full-grown men, who were not in exist- ; ence when you first attacked it. This is lasting “ rather too long.” You assure us, however, that <f it would, no I “ doubt, decline of itself in no very long time ; and, in supposing i “ that we have now done something to accelerate its cessation, we ■ “ are probably vainly arrogating to ourselves an honour that will “ belong entirely to the progress of reason, or the more fortunate “ distraction of some newer delusion.” It was this passage, cou- j pled with the two previous attacks of the Review, that sug¬ gested the motto to the present Letter. The strong contempt which you entertain for Phrenology has kept you sadly ignorant of its history and progress. You have written sixty-six pages replete with hostile arguments, original, no doubt, to yourself, but the most of them familiar, as a thrice-told tale, to those who have attended to the dis¬ cussions about the science. Did the public not know your genius and originality, it would be impossible for them to doubt, that you had ransacked the pages of Blackwood’s Magazine, the Literary Gazette, and other equally philosophi¬ cal oracles,—picked up every argument they contain against Phrenology, and spun them into this web of your own. Your objections, almost without a single exception, have been al¬ ready propounded, refuted, and given up by their advocates, and, what is more, by the public. It shall be my business to prove this as we proceed.