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Innateness. In the conceptions, conversations, writings, and designs of some, we may notice a constant manifestation of a sense of the beautiful, the exquisite, the beau ideal, rendering their descriptions, their reasonings, their enjoyments, and their sufferings far more acute and intense than that of others. Such people are always

in a world of greater beauty or deformity, than those who have but little of this feeling. Every thing which passes their minds goes through a refining process. Such people live in a state of most delightful illusion, whenever this ruling feeling can find objects to gratify it. But no pleasure comes gratis. When deformity is present, and when trouble comes, their suffering is the most intense.

Phrenologists have noticed the manifestation of this trait of character, and have found it uniformly connected with a peculiarity of organization, which has enabled them to discover its cerebral organ. It is located below and beside that of marvellousness, and when large gives. the head an appearance as if a part had been added to each side.

Distinguished poets and artists uniformly have the organ large. It is large in the head of many who are not poets. In such cases you will see it manifested in their actions or prose writings. It was very large in Shakspeare, Milton, Scott, Byron, &c. It was very large in Edmund Burke. It is uniformly small in the degraded and vicious,

It seems to have a fine moral influence by adding to the force of those sentiments, which contribute to morality. Those who have large conscientiousness and

ideality will see a moral beauty in truth and justice, and deformity in error and injustice. The style of one, who has active ideality with a mind well balanced in other points, will be rich, pure, tasteful, elevated, and full of poetic feeling. He will also see a beauty to which he will never attain, but after which he will constantly struggle; hence with active comparison and ideality a person will rather re-compose than copy.

We Te may see the goodness of our Creator, not only in constituting us capable of such exquisite delights and desires of perfection, but in adapting the material universe to its gratification; and the best return we can make for the bestowment of these gifts is, so to improve our faculties as to enjoy them in the greatest perfection of which we are capable. Men, who have the organs of ideality, marvellousness, imitation, and benevolence large, are likely to continue to improve until late in life, but are not apt to be so devotedly engaged in and delighted with business.

When small, the conceptions and productions of the mind will be plain, and characterized by homeliness and naked, unadorned simplicity. But when large, it gives a habit of feeling and thinking, suited to an ideal world, rather than a suitable abode for man. Addison, when speaking of the pleasures arising from objects of sight, makes three divisions,-great, uncommon, and beautiful. In his remarks on the beautiful, his notions are strikingly phrenological, when applied to those who, like himself, have a large organ of ideality and a quick sense of the beautiful. "There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty, which immediately diffuses a secret satisfaction and complacency through the imagination,

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and gives a finishing to any thing that is great or uncomThe very first discovery of it strikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight through all its faculties. There is not, perhaps, any real beauty or deformity more in one piece of matter than another; because we might have been made so that whatsoever now appears loathsome to us, might have shown itself agreeable; but we find by experience that there are several modifications of matter, which the mind, without any previous consideration, pronounces at the first sight beautiful or deformed."

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Analysis. Some people make comparisons, which, from playfulness of mind and unexpectedness, produce mirth or laughter. Sometimes a slight, strange, and ludicrous cause is given for a known effect. Some amuse us by their descriptions and narrations. Sometimes particular feelings are sportively manifested, as secretiveness, reverence, imitation, &c. We may notice that different individuals have this power in very different degrees; and those who possess it in a high degree are termed wits. Phrenologists have noticed that those, who have this character, commonly have an unusual fulness at the corners of the forehead, and have given to the organ here located the name of mirthfulness. It is purely an enjoying organ, given us as an antagonist to those organs which excite us to great seriousness. As reverence magnifies and heightens the conceptions of greatness and power, so mirthfulness gives us a quick sense of the little, unimportant, and laughable, inclining us to take the world as a joke. It is a feeling, and only excites the

other faculties into sportive action. Compared with sober exercises of the mind, it excites the mind to playful, sportive, mock efforts, the object of which is amusement, and not serious business.

It must not be confounded with the simple gratification of other feelings, because this sometimes produces laughter. The boy laughs when you give him a piece of cake or money. As the result of all this we may conclude, that mirthfulness is that feeling which excites any or all the intellectual or affective faculties into playful action, where the object is amusement or sport. Its effect is to change the tone of all the faculties, and send out from the brain through the whole system the most agreeable nervous influences. It acts with peculiar force in people of a lively, sanguine, and nervous temperament, and who have large perceptive organs, secretiveness, and imitation. Comic actors usually have this combination strong. It requires a less degree of activity and power in the organ to perceive wit, than to produce it. Hence to be a wit requires a certain combination of large organs, with mirthfulness to take the lead.

Those, who have this combination, are in danger of indulging their feelings at the expense of their more sober exercises of mind, and to consider every thing as matter of joke, and unworthy the bestowment of a serious exertion of thought. Hence wit and judgment are observed to be opposite, and seldom united in the same person; and hence, too, the business concerns of the community are seldom entrusted to the professed wit. As the thoughts are relaxed from any serious aim, so are the muscles of the face,

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more generally admitted and understood, than that of imitation. The imitation of dress, of manners, of speech, of style, of painting, and of writing, is acknowledged by all; and the character of young persons is formed through its potent agency.

It is possessed in different degrees by different persons, is more active in children, than in adults, is manifested by some brute animals, as the monkey and parrot, and is denied to others. Even idiots sometimes possess a power of imitation beyond any other power. These facts are regarded as proofs of the innateness of the primitive instinct.

Organ, and where located. A course of observations upon individuals who possess the power in large measure, as contrasted with those who are remarkable for a deficiency of this faculty, has resulted in establishing the location of the organ on each side of benevolence. The portraits of Shakspeare, and the casts of the head of Sir Walter Scott, show the organ large.

The writer has noticed many individuals who had the organ large. Among this number is recollected J. C. M., who successfully imitates many distinguished orators, and a young man of Bangor, Maine, who manifests it in every movement, and who has succeeded well on a private stage.

How manifested, &c. -The less obvious activity of this feeling is shown, in what we term mannerism and tone in speaking. It is a rare thing to find a public speaker, who has not adopted the model of other public

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