An essay on craniology, being the substance of a paper submitted to the Philosophical and Literary Society, Leeds, December 2, 1825 / By Richard Winter Hamilton.

  • Hamilton, Richard Winter, 1794-1848.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on craniology, being the substance of a paper submitted to the Philosophical and Literary Society, Leeds, December 2, 1825 / By Richard Winter Hamilton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    original distinction of intellectual capability. I have no doubt of the same fact; I only doubt this organic mode of explaining jt. It is surely not mere poetry to speak of heaven-born genius, of mental originality, of those precious specimens of character which are “just shewn to the earth, but are not suffered to abide.” Are there no native germs which spring up in spontaneous lux¬ uriance ? Of all my antipathies, the opposite doctrine creates the strongest: that man is a mere creature of circumstances,—that he, without a plas¬ tic energy of soul, is moulded by the most foreign influences,—that he has no determining impulse,— that “ he is a pipe for fortune’s Anger to sound what stop she please.” Commend me to the schools in which skull-meters teach the maxims of intellectual inequality, illustrated by unequal con¬ formation, rather than to those parallelograms in which men are cooped to be blended and assimi¬ lated ; where as on the bed of Procreustes, all characters are racked or lopped to a standard. Materialism has in some cases been maintained in connection with craniology,—but hundreds who hold the latter, contend most religiously and unequivocally for the necessary distinctness of mind from all modifications of matter,—and candor must allow that the very idea of organs implies a superior independent power which can use them. The very objectors speak of the eye