The natural history of the human temperaments : their laws in relation to marriage, and the fatal consequences of their violation to progeny, with the indications of vigorous life and longevity : followed by a fugitive essay on the protection of society against crime / by W. Byrd Powell.

  • Powell, W. Byrd (William Byrd), 1799-1866.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The natural history of the human temperaments : their laws in relation to marriage, and the fatal consequences of their violation to progeny, with the indications of vigorous life and longevity : followed by a fugitive essay on the protection of society against crime / by W. Byrd Powell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have said that all great men have large heads, and gave his own as an illustration!! And when he was informed by some of the professors of the medical college, that we could determine the temperament of a person (and, if a Caucasian,) the complexion of the hair, eyes, and skin, by an examina- tion of the cranium, he is reported to have said, Such pretension is pre- sumptuous. . We could not receive such gossip as truth; because it seemed to us that his sense of propriety would not have permitted the first, and that his learning, if not his knowledge, would have taught him better than to risk his reputation on the last. His learning has long since taught him, admit- ting he does not know it, that Nature always observes adaptation in hei works; consequently, it is just as consistent to suppose that a sanguine mans head holds a certain relation to those conditions that constitute his temperament, and, therefore, is unlike that of the bilious man, as that the class, and even genus, of an animal can be determined by the articulating extremity of a single bone. In view of all this, we could not venture to publish the gossip we heard as truth. We now i^ropose to show how far the gossip he treasured up, for two years, is false. It is true, as he remarks, Phrenology recognizes no one given form of religion; but it is also true, that it is the peculiar province of the science to ascertain whether this or that doctrine and form of reli- gious administration be useful or injurious to the mental organization, when viewed in reference to the happiness of individuals and society. In reference to this subject, and based on the principle that action increases organization, we did teach in New Orleans, and elsewhere, and demon- strated, the differences that exist between Calvinistic, Armenian, and Cath- olic heads; and we did profess to distinguish, by an examination of the head, the progeny of one religious ancestry from that of another. C. C. and we can not be at issue on this subject. He is too well informed to doubt that a particular religious doctrine and form of administration will, in the process of numberless generations, produce cerebral peculiarities. Let the Presbyterians, or Methodists, or any other Christian sect, live as ex- clusively, and for as long a time, within the pale of their own society, as the Jews have, and they will become as distinctly marked; indeed, some of them are now, to our observation, as strongly marked. But we never did say that we could distinguish one sectarian professor from another; and when we associate with the statement of C. C, the fact that many ijersons believe and practice a very different religion from the one under which they were educated, we can not conclude that he believed it at the time he wrote it for the press. W. B. P.