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author may shelter himself under the juggle of his own words, and tell us that he speaks only of the transmission of our will through the organs of the body. Let him, then, write in more becoming language. But he closes with his own hands his only door of escape. Electricity is almost as metaphysical as ever mind was supposed to be'... and yet electricity is a real thing, an actual existence,' or, in other words, a material existence, (p. 317.*) So mental action may be imponderable and intangible, and yet a real existence,'-that is, a material existence. In the same passage he tells us, that the brain is absolutely identical with a galvanic battery! As well might he say that the human will and the point of a needle are identical, because each of them can produce the contraction of a muscle. Allowing that some of the functions of the brain resemble galvanism, are we to conclude that all its functions are galvanic? We repudiate the rash conclusion. It may be true that galvanic influence transmitted through a nervous chord, soon after death, will produce muscular contraction; and it may be true that, after sudden death, electric action may be transmitted from the hollow of the cranium, down the nerves which supply the stomach, so as to contin- With the like spirit he writes as follows:ue for a short time the operations of diges- 'The fundamental form of organic being is a tion. But what is all this for the author's globule, having a new globule forming within purpose, unless he can re-animate a dead itself, by which it is in time discharged, and body, and continue the higher functions of which is again followed by another and anothlife, sensation, and volition? When he has er, in endless succession,' (p. 175.) If this be done this, we will listen to his materialism; true in certain germs of organic life, we may but not till then. There is an immeasura- doubt whether it be true of all germs, vegetable difference between the material organ- ble and animal. But let us, for the sake of ic combinations of a body, and its associa- argument, accept this principle in all its fulted phenomena of life, sensation, and voli-ness, and then follow the author in the supertion; and there is not the shadow of a rea- natural consequences he draws from it. son why things so different in kind should‘Globules,' he tells us, ' can be produced in cease together at the very moment of death. The doctrine of a vital principle' may have been pushed too far, and brought to the explanation of phenomena which are resolvable on the more vulgar principles of ordinary chemical combination; but this is not our present question. It is said that hair will continue to grow for several days after death. It is said also, in cases of sudden death, when life is arrested while every organ is in a healthly state, that organic action may for a while go on; and that the dead stomach may, in such a case,

be dissolved by the very digestive juice which it has just elaborated. We therefore receive with doubt the digestive experiment of our author. If it be true, we willingly receive its evidence, while we reject the beggarly conclusion he dares to draw from it.

Again, all things living, whether vegetable or animal, may be traced back to some elementary germ, which admits not even of microscopic analysis. Therefore, the author tells us, all things living have one common fundamental and material germ. In tracing backwards the organic structure of different species, we can mark a difference at every step, so long as the things before us are within the ken of sense, and we can aid our senses by instruments of great power; but we lose ourselves at last among the ultimate germs of organic life. Are we then to say that these ultimate and unknown germs are all one and the same; while the phenomena springing from them, by stern unbending physical laws, are all different? One who, like this author, can snatch at the conclusion, has a mind incapable of inductive reasoning, and cheats himself, at every turn of thought, by nothing better than empty sounds.

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albumen by electricity,' (p. 176.) If, therefore, these globules be identical with the cells, which are now held to be reproductive, it might be said that the production of albumen by artificial means is the only step in the process wanting.' The if and might of this precious sentence are words of marvellous import. We believe the author cheats himself by empty sounds; and, because the poverty of language expresses not the dif ference of things inappreciable by vulgar sense, confounds his fundamental organic globule with the inorganic globule of a chemist. The passage of the electric fluid through water will produce a set of aerial globules in rapid and expansive movement; and just as well might he call them also

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organic bodies, as any other globules evolv- his habitation; and the stone jelly to feed ed in a chemical experiment. He calls his little larva is quite affecting. But in this monstrous perversion of sound reason, the third edition, (and in violation of his 'a humble attempt to bring illustration own positive principles,) he follows the from a department of science, on which, lead of some hesitating critic, and adds, at present, much doubt and obscurity rest.' with graceful simplicity, that we should But if his principle be insecure, why build require further proof to satisfy us that the upon it a most complicated dogmatic sys- matter here concerned was actually gelaHe was not called upon to do so, tine.' We tell him not to doubt at allnor was he bound by any duty to desert that a few drops of acid, properly applied, the sober method of Induction. We must will gelatinize some of our hardest minetell him, and his readers, plainly, that he rals-and that rock jelly, floating in the cannot desert his fundamental organic glo- liquor silicum, is an admirable compound bule; and if he cannot create it by purely for a young and tender stomach-that' rock physical means, his whole system is gone, milk' is one of the most vulgar substances and he has not so much as a mathematical wrung from nature's dugs; and, in the point to rest his foot upon. His fundamen- shape of chalk infusion, has been drunk for tal organic globule, and the petit corps géla- ages by the whole race of crowing gallinatineux of his great archetype, Lamarck, are ceous philosophers who were progressively one and the same thing, without which the developed in the central parts of our great authors have not the semblance of a start- southern capital; nay, that the same fecuning-point. The theory of Lamarck, though dating compound has found its way to the baseless as the fabric of a crazy dream, is west of Temple-Bar, and created by its better framed than the one before us. It animating power a celestial sky-blue philogives us, at least, a comprehensible cause scphy, which is soon to fill the world with of organic changes from one species to wonders. But we must leave these delightanother; while our author talks only of ful visions of future good, and come back development—a word without sense or sig- to the analysis of our author's mind. nificance, if he fail to give us any material facts to gloss its meaning.

One example more, and we have done with our exhibition of the idiosyncrasies of his most imaginative mind, which seem to cheat his reason, to lead him by the ears, and to make him the dupe of idle sounds. He tells us, (p. 189,) with some detail, and great simplicity, that Mr. Weeks, by the action of a galvanic battery continued for eleven months, created a multitude of insects, (Acarus Crossii,) minute and semitransparent, and furnished with long bristles.' The creatures thus created were sometimes observed to go back into the parent fluid, and occasionally they devoured each other; and, soon after they had been called to life, they were disposed to extend their species in the vulgar way! So much for the experiment; and let us next read the comment of our author. Toward the negative wire of the battery, dipped in the fluid, there gathered a quantity of gelatinous matter-a part of the process which is very striking, when we mention that gelatine is one of the proximate principles, or first compounds, out of which animal bodies are formed,' &c. .

He cannot give up this experiment without burying his whole household; for, in truth, it is the only prop on which he builds

If he be sometimes led astray by the ears, as we have shown, he is sometimes also cheated by his eyes-a vulgar error, it is true, but requiring from us a passing notice. We affirm, then, that he is sometimes led astray by the most puerile resemblances, (p. 160.) In the frozen vapor on the inside of a window he sees a vegetable form, (and what child has not done the same thing a hundred times before him?) In the Arbor Diana of the chemist he sees a crystallization precisely resembling a shrub. In the brush produced by an electrical detonation, (we have ourselves seen one almost as big as a hearth-brush produced by Mr. Crosse,) he sees the stem and branches of a forest-tree; and then he presumes to tell us, that we can here see the traces of secondary means, by which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable forms with which the earth is overspread!' Noone denies that the combination of chemical elements, and the crystalline forms mechanically resulting from it, are connected with electricity; and every one knows, that if the first attraction of the atoms be interrupted by a second set of disturbing forces, there will result a new set of crystalline forms, often arborescent, but always of extreme complication. The first set of forms can be anticipated, and their modifications

submitted to geometrical rule. The second a general comparison, and all their nobler set are utterly beyond the reach of all anal- organs described under common names. ysis; and it is among them that creative fan- Each animal is perfect of its kind; and its cy may take delight in conjuring up fantas- parts are so related and fitted to one anothtical resemblances. An old woman may er, that the existence of one part (when see a shroud in a candle, or a coffin in a thoroughly understood) implies the existflake of soot; and every child will see ence of all the rest, under the rigid govsteeples, and houses, and the faces of its ernment of a positive organic law. A natfriends, in the flame of the fire or the va- uralist may, therefore, start almost from por of the sky; and these unsubstantial any point he pleases, and reason consistentfancies are every whit as real as the vege- ly through the whole structure of an animal table coatings and the forest-trees of our to all its higher vital functions; and he imaginative author. Comparisons of this may go on from animal to animal, till he kind are childish or superstitious-poetical, has arranged them all in one consistent witty or absurd-according to the manner scheme of mutual relations. But if all in which we use them; but we are certain good systems of arrangement be, in a certhat they belong not to the stern realities of science. We believe that organic structure could not be matured without the presence of imponderable agents, such as heat, light, and electricity; but we give no creative power to these agents, any more than we give creative power to the carbon and oxygen, and other vulgar constituents of our bodies. The frozen vapor on our window may imitate the outer forms of vegetable life, but it has neither organic If these remarks apply to arrangements structure nor any inner principle of repro- of the animal kingdom like that of Cuvier, duction; it grows by aggregation from still more do they apply to the Circular and without, by the simple apposition of new and Quinary system of Mackay, who, not crystalline matter like that which was laid content with the ascending and descending down before; but a true living vegetable scale of older naturalists, and, following out rises from a germ, and is elaborated by an a far wider series of analogies, has thrown internal complicated organic and reproduc- the animated world into a circular arrangetive structure, fitted to the materials sur-ment, and in groups of five, and contrived rounding it, and acting on them by organic to bring into a kind of orderly and geometlaws of endless complication.

To perceive resemblances is the habit of a child; and an excellent habit it is while kept in its proper place. To perceive the differences of things is another faculty essential to advancing knowledge. These truths our author seems neither to have studied nor thought of; and the passages we have now referred to, if they prove nothing else, at least prove this-that he has a mind unfitted for the comprehension of the severer lessons of science; and that by no effort will he be ever able to write a system of philosophy which will be fit to advance the cause of material truth, or give a rational interpretation of what has been done by the labors of other men.

While on the philosophy of resemblances, we may say a few words of the system of arrangements in Natural History, and especially of the vertebrate classes. These classes are formed on one harmonious plan, so that they may be readily brought under

tain sense, natural, in another sense all of them are artificial, for every system implies some starting-point or principle of comparison; and that which is best for the conception of one set of animal structures, may not be the best for another. Not one of them can for an instant be regarded as a type of what was in the prescient mind of the Creator when he called living nature into being.

rical comparison things in former times. most widely put asunder. This scheme may have its uses, and may sometimes assist us in comprehending nature, by submitting new analyses to our view; but it is intensely artificial, and is not accepted by our best physiologists and naturalists; and, on this account, is most unfit to form the basis of one single speculation on the high subject of a creative law. Its remote and sometimes

most fanciful resemblances have a potent charm for this imaginative author; and led him, especially in his first edition, into details offensive to every principle of sound reason and good taste. readers will find the passages to which we refer in his first edition, (pp. 268-271,) but our limits prevent us from quoting them.

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If our author be cheated by his eyes and ears, and misled by his outer senses, he also has an inner principle which continually misleads him. He is not only, as we have said, intensely hypothetical, but intensely

maid, sitting down to a quiet game of whist with a new-fashioned dummy in the form of a solemn poodle; while a lively spitz, or fawning spaniel, is raised on its hind-quarters at the corner of the sofa table, and teaching the knight's move to the younger ladies of the household!

credulous. A drowning man will catch at a feather or a straw to save himself from sinking; but one who resolutely plunges into the water because he sees such things floating, would be counted a madman. Yet our author plunges into the very deepest streams of human speculation, without one quality fitted to bear him up except a blind But to go on with our enumeration. He belief in his own buoyancy; and he then believes that he is a great metaphysician catches at any thing and every thing that that mind and soul (as our fathers unfloats about him upon the surface. A hypo- derstood the word) are all a dream-that thetical spirit is a good spirit, if it be prop- material organs are all in all-that he can erly tempered with knowledge, honesty and weigh a mind as a butcher does a joint, by sagacity. It is but a perpetual upward ten- a steelyard-that he can measure the dency, and a craving for some higher prin- length and breadth of psychology' by tanciple, to bind together new phenomena gents, as a tailor does a piece of broadand disconnected facts. When thus tem- cloth-that he has annulled all difference pered, it leads us not to worship our first between physical and inoral'-that Gall and imaginations, and to made all nature bend Spurzheim are the only mental philosoto them, but it makes them bend to nature. phers since the days of Plato-that he can We may carry as much sail as we please, if swallow their whole system without any we have but proper ballast, and a willing grumblings among his digestive organshand ready to turn the helm whenever we that Comte is a great mathematician-and are steering on a shoal. This has been the governing principle of the two Herschels, father and son, of Black, of Davy, of Dalton, and other great names in modern discovery.

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that photography throws a bright light on the faculty of the memory. He believes that the human family may be (or ought to be) of many species, and all sprung from apes that while he bestializes men and But we must turn again to our author to humanizes beasts, he is a great moralist— affirm, that he has neither knowledge to and that while he tries to set up a system justify the positions he has taken, nor saga- which destroys all semblance of any final city to discover any new means of defending cause,' he is a good theist. Lastly, and them; but that he presses into his service above all, while he rejects the Word of every kind of force that will hoist his co- God, (which tells him that God made man lors for an hour. His credulity is quite on and woman in his own image, and breathed a level with his rashness. Of these quali- into their nostrils the breath of life,) and ties we must give a few examples; but, for thinks he can make man and woman far want of space, it must be in the way only better by the help of a baboon, he believes of simple enumeration. He believes that that he may still remain a good Christian. Mr. Crosse has, by help of his galvanic bat- It may be so; for men are full of strange tery, made an Acarus well fledged and full contradictions. This author is at least of eggs; and he believes that he can build consistent in his own materialism; and as a stable system of animated nature upon its he has adopted a scheme of nature against back. He believes that, by double pro- common sense, reason, and experience, so cess of incubation, he can hatch a rat from may he have embraced a scheme of religion a goose's egg-that a seven month's child that is against the vulgar teaching of his has the brain of a beast-that dogs can own philosophy. It is our business to anaplay admirably at dominoes-and that he is lyze his mind, and to expose his system himself a great philosopher, and born to when we think it wrong, and not to reconimprove the knowledge of mankind, and cile his contradictions. But let no man through that medium their happiness!' or woman be cheated by the pipings of his (p. 387.) Let him, then, no longer com- organ of veneration,' and believe his pose in solitude, and almost without the work, on that account, not to be offensive cognizance of a single fellow-being,' but and mischievous. Many a stagnant shallow set up at once a new school of sky-blue pool will reflect the images of the sky; but philosophy, and he will fill the fashionable if we stoop down to drink it, we only fill world with wonders. Under his celestial our mouths with nastiness.

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teaching we may live to see a grizzly dow- As we have alluded to phrenology, we ager, a wheezing bachelor, and a withered may add a word or two upon it before we VOL. VI.-No. I.

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go on to graver matters. We reject the peculiarities of the system, because they are unsustained by any direct anatomical proof. We have several times seen the human brain dissected, (and twice by Dr. Spurzheim himself,) and we affirm that neither he nor any one else has been able to demonstrate any subdivisions of its structure corresponding to the organ theory. But some one may tell us that it is proved by a wide induction of facts of another kind, derived from the external forms of the cranium. This we also deny; and we need not repeat opinions enforced in former articles of this Journal, but refer to them. Let us, however, remark in passing, that there is one substantial reason why phrenology should maintain its ground with those who have a large capacity of belief, or an obstinacy in maintaining their first opinions. It starts with the assumption of certain qualities of the mind, which belong, with greater or less prominence to every human being. These qualities were known before phrenology was ever thought of; but it gives them a local habitation, and sometimes a new name. When, therefore, a credulous neophyte presents himself for manipulation, and from the bumps upon the outside of his head is told of that which passes in the inside of it, we consider it morally and physically impossible that the oracular response should not touch some prominent points of character, of which the patient must needs be conscious if he have any character at all. It is, in such a case, the property of human nature to be taken with good hits, and to overlook the many mistakes and blunders; and so may the oracles of phrenology, like some others, have their hierophants and their votive of ferings for many generations.

ted, in a general way, by three corresponding developments of the brain, so as to affect the outer form of the head. But when men go on with their most artificial partitions of the brain, and thus proceed to build a regular psychological system on their own inventions, they may become not only ridiculous but very mischievous. Such a system may give us the ready change of hard technical words, with certain material notions to fix their meaning. But let no man fancy, when he has mastered these watchwords and party symbols, that he has reached the philosophy of the mind. He may know no more about it than a stammering boy does of oratory from having learned by rote the jargon of an old beck of rhetoric; or than a bellows blower, or sexton, does of Handel's glorious harmonies, after he has counted all the keys or gilded pipes of his parish organ.

The questions between the materialist and the immaterialist are not, in truth, affected by the phrenological hypothesis. They remain in their old places. It matters not whether all the brain be subservient to every act of the mind, or particular parts of the brain to particular acts. What we call mind is that principle which binds our thoughts together, and makes us intellectually what we are; giving us a unity of consciousness not transferable to another, or separable into parts-a unity of knowledge, a unity of responsibility, and a unity of aspiration after future good. Common language does not confound such things under names descriptive of dead matter, and its actions on things dead and inorganic; because common language is the voice of human nature, and not the echo of an hypothesis. Spurzheim was a clever and honest man; but ridden to death by an hypothesis, In a limited sense, we are all of us phre- as many a good man before him. He was nologists we all of us believe that the sen- not a vulgar materialist, whatever may be sible impressions of external nature are some of his followers; and we know, for conveyed, through the nervous system to we have discussed this point with him, that the brain, and there apprehended by the the theory of spontaneous generation and mind; and we believe that in a reverse or-transmutation of species found no favor der, the intentions of the will are conveyed with him, because he believed it utterly unfrom the brain to the organs of the body. true. This is no new doctrine; and we may ac- A most wretched system of psychology, cept a lofty expanded forehead, and other ending in a chilling physical fatalism, deouter characters of the cranium, as indica- structive of law and social order, or, at tions (though by no means sure ones) of least, depriving them of their purest sanchigh capacity. We will even go a step fur- tions, has been reared on the doctrines of ther, and allow, should it ever be sanction- Gall; and it is on this account that we owe ed by good evidence, (which we very them a grudge. And the system is quite greatly doubt,) that the intellectual, moral, natural if the longings of the soul are to be and animal qualities of a man may be indica- | satisfied with dry technicalities, and not al

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