explain the mechanism of the clock by the position of the figures on its dial.

The subject of the convolutions is one which might furnish an instructive chapter, did space permit; but I must content myself with affirming that the researches of anatomists have disproved every point advanced by Gall. Curiously enough, M. Camille Dareste has placed beyond dispute the fact, that the number and depth of the convolutions bear no direct proportion to the development of intelligence, whereas they do bear a direct proportion to the size of the animal. Thus, given the size of the animal in any genus, and he can predict what are its convolutions; or vice versa, given the convolutions, and he can predict the size of the animal. Toutes les espèces à cerveau lisse ont une petite taille; toutes les espèces à circonvolutions nombreuses et compliquées sont, au contraire, de grande taille.'*

In a word, the convolutions cannot be accepted as the 'organs' of the faculties; nor even as correctly indicating the organs. They are simply folds of an uniform tissue; this tissue has a peculiar property, Sensibility, which applied in different connections serves various functions; but the organs constituted out of these connected parts are no more to be identified with the particular portions of the vesicular tissue which supply their Sensibility, than the telegraph is to be identified with the plates which supply its electricity. Thus it is that the area of convolution which in one man might be connected with a peculiar mechanism, in another might be so imperfectly connected with that mechanism, or might supply so imperfect a mechanism, that the results would be different or even opposed. Of this Cranioscopy can tell nothing. It is limited to the surface. And hence it is that the skull is considered sufficient evidence. The surface of the skull tells as much as the surface of the brain; as much and as little.

I will merely in passing observe, that the axiom of which so much use is made by phrenologists, other things equal,

* Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 3ième série xvii. 30 and 4ième série i. 73. VOL. II.

F F

size is the measure of power,' though indisputable, is fallacious, since the other things' never are equal. If the external indications were expressions of the internal structure, size would be a measure of power, and Cranioscopy a guide to character: unhappily it is not so.

Let us now pass to the second position on which Phrenology is based, that the cerebrum only is the seat of the psychical faculties. Gall has here the vast majority of biologists on his side. There is scarcely one teacher in a hundred who does not declare the Brain, and the Brain exclusively, to be the organ of the mind. I have elsewhere* marshalled abundant facts and arguments in disproof of this illogical and obstructive hypothesis; but for the present it is enough to point out that Gall was in opposition to his own principles when he thus limited the seat of psychical faculties. In opposition to logic, for he thereby implied that community of structure did not carry community of property: implied that ganglia in one part of the system had not the same Sensibility as ganglia in another. In opposition to zoological observation, for he thereby implied that the instincts and propensities exhibited by animals with brains could not be manifested by animals without brains, whereas it is notorious that the instinct of propagation, the instinct of destructiveness, the instinct of constructiveness, and others, are manifested by animals having no brains, nothing but simple ganglia.

He had indeed a glimpse of the logical error when he was treating of the grey substance of the convolutions as the origin of the nerves, for he there asks 'pourquoi auroit-elle dans le cerveau une destination différente de celle qu'elle a dans les autres systèmes nerveux ?'+ Had he not been

* Physiology of Common Life, vol. ii. RUDOLPH WAGNER finds himself compelled by the evidence of experiment to retract his former views and to admit the existence of psychical manifestations in the absence of the brain. Je rea nais même qu'un certain nombre de phénomènes psychiques persistent chez les pigeons auxquels on a enlevé le cerveau, le cervelet, et une partie du mésocépha'c' Brown-Séquard's Journal de la Physiologie, 1861, iv. 551. My experiments on reptiles and insects showed the persistence of psychical manifestations after the head had been cut off.

+ GALL: Anat. et phys. i. 242.

misled by his hypothesis of the nutritive office of the vesicular substance (long since refuted), and had he conceived Sensibility as the property of this tissue, he would have reversed his question and asked, 'Why has this tissue Sensibility in the convolutions, and not in every other ganglionic mass?'

Gall's principles demanded that the subjective analysis should correspond with the biological analysis, and that mental manifestations should be affiliated on the physical organs; but his Cranioscopy could not accommodate itself to such a procedure: it demanded that the cerebrum should be the exclusive seat of the psychical faculties, and that the surface of the cerebrum should in its varieties reveal the organs of those faculties.

If the reader has followed these few pages with assent, he will see that the basis of Phrenology is laid on shifting sand; and that if men of science have long since declined to occupy themselves with the hypothesis, it is because the alleged facts of Cranioscopy are not found to be sufficiently accurate and general to warrant confidence in that Art, and because the Psychology and Physiology which Gall and his successors offer us, are neither reconcileable with psychological analysis, nor with the present condition of Anatomy and Physiology.*

The course of our History now leads us to the important movement in Germany, which, begun by Kant, ran a rapid and brilliant career till it came to a crisis in the Hegelian school. I have placed Gall before Kant, although chronology is thereby somewhat disturbed, in order that from Kant the course of evolution might be followed without interruption.

Space has not permitted the citation of a tithe of the arguments and observations which discredit Phrenology. The student is referred to LELUT: Rejet de Organologie, and his subsequent work La Physiologie de la Pensée, for conclusive examples against the special localisations; also to PEISSE, La Médecine et les Médecins. With regard to Anatomy and Physiology almost any and every modern work may be consulted; but LEURET and GRATIOLET, Anatomie Comparée du Système Nerveux; or WAGNER, Neurologische Untersuchungen, may be specially named, the former abounding in facts drawn from comparative anatomy, which admit of no escape.

436

NINTH EPOCH.

Recurrence to the fundamental question respecting the Origin of Knowledge.

CHAPTER I.

KANT.

§ I. LIFE OF Kant.

MMANUEL KANT was born at Königsberg, in Prussia,

IMM

22nd of April, 1724. His family came originally from Scotland, and changed their name of Cant into Kant to suit the German pronunciation. This Scottish origin, when taken in conjunction with his philosophical connection with Hume, has some little interest. His father was a saddler, a man of tried integrity. His mother was somewhat severe, but upright, speaking the truth, and exacting it. Kant was early bred in a love of truth and had before him such examples of moral worth as must materially have contributed to form his own inflexible principles.

Madame de Staël has remarked, that there is scarcely another example, except in Grecian history, of a life so rigorously philosophical as that of Kant. He lived to a great age, and never once quitted the snows of murky Königsberg. There he passed a calm and happy existence, meditating, professing, and writing. He had mastered all the sciences; he had studied languages, and cultivated literature. He lived and died a type of the German Professor: he rose, smoked, drank his coffee, wrote, lectured, took his daily walk

always at precisely the same hour. The cathedral clock, it was said, was not more punctual in its movements than Immanuel Kant.*

He was early sent to the University. There he began and there he ended his career. Mathematics and physics principally occupied his attention at first; and the success with which he pursued these studies soon manifested itself in various publications. He predicted the existence of the planet Uranus; and Herschel himself, after discovering it, admitted Kant's having first announced it.

But none of these publications attracted much attention till the renown of his Critique of Pure Reason had made everything produced by him a matter of interest. Nor did the Critique itself attract notice at first. The novelty of its views, the repulsiveness of its terminology and style, for some time obscured its real value. This value was at length discovered and made known. All Germany rang with praises of the new philosophy. Almost every 'chair' was filled by a Kantist. Numberless books and not a few pamphlets came rapidly from the press, either attacking or defending the principles of the Critical Philosophy. Kant had likened himself to Copernicus. The disciples likened him both to Copernicus and Newton, declaring that he had not only changed the whole science of Metaphysics, as Copernicus changed the science of Astronomy, but had also consummated the science he originated.

The Critique was, he tells us, the product of twelve years' meditation. It was written in less than five months. These two facts sufficiently explain the defects of its composition. In his long meditations he had elaborated his system, divided and subdivided it, and completed its heavy and useless termind. In the rapidity of composition he had no time for the graces of style, nor for that all-important clearness of structure which (depending as it does upon the due gradation of the parts, and upon the clearness with which the parts

He mentions having once been kept two or three days from his promenade by reading Rousseau's Émile, which had just appeared.