Phrenology : and its application to education, insanity, and prison discipline / by James P. Browne.

  • Browne, James P.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Phrenology : and its application to education, insanity, and prison discipline / by James P. Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    if language acted as a stimulator or concentrator in these instances, it was to the concentrating influence of a very large organ of Music that the enchanting creations of those masters of song, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, are to be attributed. And in the sublime and beautiful creations of the genius of Kaphael and Michael Angelo we find that large organs of Form, Colour, and Constructiveness are the concentrators of their mental faculties, in/order to display in painting, sculpture, and architecture the noble thoughts which inspired them. And one may be permitted to add that not even a tyro in the practical department of Phrenology, on seeing the heads of Daniel Maclise and William Vincent Wallace, could be led to suppose that the refined and graceful genius of Wallace would be concentrated upon the deli- neation of dramatically expressive human forms, whether they are used to tell an affecting incident in the story of Hamlet, or to depict with great force and beauty the heroic career of William the Conqueror; or that the genius of Maclise would lead him to concentrate his in- tellectual powers upon the composition of such charming operas as Maritana and Lurline. A beautiful instance of the powerful influence of terror, winch is the painful result of the intense action of the organ of Cautiousness, in concentrating the mental faculties upon a single object, to the utter exclusion of every other, is afforded by the genius of Shakespeare, in the banquet scene in Macbeth. Nothing can exceed in earnestness the concentrated attention which that usurper directs to the ghost of Banquo. His faculties are so rivetted upon the object of his apprehensions, that he is not only heedless of the presence of his guests, but insensible of the remon- strances and rebukes of his more determined and less