Testimonials on behalf of George Combe, as a candidate for the Chair of Logic in the University of Edinburgh.

  • Combe, George, 1788-1858.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Testimonials on behalf of George Combe, as a candidate for the Chair of Logic in the University of Edinburgh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of mental science never consisted of any but a few learned persons, the new may be considered as tending, without the sanction of the learned, to embrace the great body of the people. Its progress would, in my opinion, have been much greater, if its pretensions as a means of discovering character from external signs had not been ignorantly confounded with those of the false sciences of the middle ages Were the me- taphysics presented alone, this obstacle would be in a great measure overcome, and multitudes who have hitherto regard- ed the science as only a new kind of divination or palmistry, would be astonished to view a system calculated to throw the united labours of Aristotle, Locke, Reid, and Stewart, into the shade—an almost exact reflexion of human nature, a code of sublime morality, a means of accelerating to an unprecedented degree the social progress of our race. The objections which have been made to Phrenology as tending to Materialism, appear to me to rest upon mere ver- bal quibbles. The mind may be presumed to be charged, in the present state of our being, upon a material organ, from which it is to be separated at last by the Power which created both. Phrenology, so far from necessarily being in- terpretable into something hostile to religion, is not only con- formable, but favourable to it. If we take the science as a scheme of mind founded upon observation of actual facts, and, in comparing it with Christianity, find it in exact har- mony with both the doctrinal and preceptive parts of that form of faith, can we resist the conclusion that Christianity has here obtained the aid of demonstrative, in addition to tes- timonial evidence ? Phrenology might be described as Chris- tianity thrown into the character of a science; each is calcu- lated to have great force in urging the other upon the con- victions of mankind. If the Patrons of the University should see fit to prefer a professor of this science, whose qualifications in other re- spects are satisfactory—and such I deem Mr Combe’s—I should consider them as laying up a store of future praise amply compensatory of any censure which may be bestowed