We

we are far enough from doing. might admit, if it regards the action of the brain as the effect, and not the cause, of the sentiment, thought, or moral emotion, that it is harmless and free from the charge of materialism, although, in that case, inconsistent and absurd, and far enough from being the phrenology of Gall or Spurzheim. These, however, we do not regard as the most important elements in the system, nor as constituting that department in which reside its chief errors. Like the corresponding political scheme of Mr. Hurlbut, it is to be condemned more for what it wants, than for what it has; more for its fatal defects, than for any positive faults, although these are numerous enough. It divests man utterly of that in which his personality consists, which constitutes the unity of his nature, and makes him distinctively man-we mean, a true WILL, aside from and above the propensities. In the phrenological scheme, as exhibited on the map of the skull, there is no controlling will, no Ego, as some of our Teutonic philosophers are fond of saying, no man himself, aside from the predominant faculty or faculties.

To prove that such a separate power would be inconsistent with the orthodox phrenology, we refer to the great authority Spurzheim. He makes the will to be no distinct faculty, but the predominance, for the time being, of the balance of power in certain propensities. The common idea he regards as an old invention of moralists and theologians, designed to uphold their false and injurious systems. In section 10, entitled Of Desire and Will, he says:

"Moralists commonly say that the will

is the cause of our actions and omissions, and even that mankind is degraded by any other explanation than this. The will is considered as an entity, and styled, weak or strong good, or bad. These terms, however, are vague and require consideration. The will is no more a fundamental power than the instinct of animals. It is only the effect of every primitive faculty of the mind, and synonymous with desire. Each faculty, being active, produces an inclination, a desire, or, a kind of will, and in this signification, there are as many species of wills, as there are faculties. The strength, too, of each is in proportion to the activity of the individual faculties, and exists involuntarily. That desire which overwhelms the others is also called will. Now, in this sense every faculty in its turn becomes a will.”

This, perhaps, to some minds, would

seem a very good idea of a will. They would be wholly content with this philosophy, and might be unable to understand why anything more should be wanted, just as in a State, they cannot, for the life of them, see what a man would be driving at, who would have the State to be anything more than an aggregation of men and women living and breathing in a certain locality, and law anything more than the balance of propensities of the individual parts for the time being. Talk to them of law as an abstract will, distinct from the temporary desire of the masses, and grounded upon an abstract reason, which, with all its imperfections in its human manifestations, is allied to, or rather an emanation from The One, Divine, Eternal, Abstract Reason of the Universe-and tell them that it is this which gives the State its true unity, its. true ideal life, its abiding permanency amid all the flowing and changes of the individual component parts-and you might as well talk to blind men of colors.

When, however, we come to trace the consequences of this view, and to show how, in its practical results, it is impossible to deduce from it a true unity to man or the State, the necessity of something higher may be made apparent even to such minds as would not be able to comprehend the direct or à priori argument.

Let us, by way of illustration, return to our phrenological map of the skull. Here, that which has heretofore been regarded as the most obscure and difficult department of knowledge, namely, the knowledge of ourselves, the heaven-descended gnothi seauton, is invested with all the simplicity of Parley's Geography; just as in the system of the book before us, the true nature of the State, and of law, and of all political relations, is made as easy as the doctrine of simple equations in algebra. Both sciences may now be taught in the infant school, or learned from the phrenological almanac, or the mental and political primer. A phrenological lecturer will present to us a model of the brain, all mapped off, and divided into its various towns and counties.

Here we have the primary division of the propensities, moral sentiments, and perceptive powers, with their thirty-five subdivisions (the mesmero-phrenologists, we believe, go nearer to three hundred) down to each particular organ. He will then proceed to tell you that here, in the parts of the brain, of which this is a model, is contained the whole of man; or to state the

matter to their best advantage, those who would at all avoid the most gross materialism, and who partially admit the mind to be a spiritual substance, insist that the parts thus set forth represent the whole soul, and that it possesses no faculty which does not act, or is not acted upon, through these divisions of the brain, or by means of a motion or excitement in Bome one of these organs in which man is summed up. The lecturer will then proceed to describe to his astonished audience, the province and action of each organ. In so doing, he will make many quotations from Shakspeare, both pertinent and impertinent, and will spread before us much useful information, a great part of which, however, might be predicated on any other system as well as on phrenology. He will, for example, tell us how this science has revealed the long hidden truths, that man is governed by various motives, that there are striking differences in the intellectual and moral habits of different individuals—that if one is malevolent, he violates the law of charity-if he don't take care what he eats, he will violate the law of the stomach; if a man has large veneration combined with marvelousness, he will be inclined to be religious, and very probably fanatical; if he have much imagination, the chance is, that he will be a poet; if he have excessive combativeness, he will love to break heads, and if he has large causality, he will be inclined to make steam engines and wooden clocks. There is nothing on which the lecturer -unless he is remarkably different from every one that we have seen-will be so sure to enlarge, as on the evils of exces. sive Faith and Veneration, and to explain, at great length, how these organs, unless most carefully watched, are in great danger of becoming sources of most serious mischief; so much so, that if he had not told us that all the faculties and propensities were good, we might be almost led to suppose, that he regarded these as the worst in the collection. Along with all this there are also presented many sage directions, especially to mothers, in regard to the proper cultivation of the organs, and a proper course of phrenological education for young children. Finally, the lecturer assures us, that every one of these propensities, moral sentiments, &c., has its own peculiar organ, and its own fixed mode of action, each one performing its own part and never obtruding into the province of another

So far all is plain sailing. The phre

nological orator, in setting forth the various functions of the different parts of the cerebral empire, has as smooth a course before him as Counsellor Hurlbut discoursing on human rights. In the midst, however, of all this display of eloquence and philosophy, the objection will somehow creep into the mind of some intelligent hearer, that all this looks very much like making man a machine, and a machine too of a very low order. If these propensities are blind-as Spurzheim says they are--and act not simply through, but by matter, and act by fixed natural laws, and invariably act when the object is present or imagined, and are in every respect as the organ for the time being (just as vision will always be as the eye, and hearing as the ear,) and are all, in this respect, alike, from the seemingly highest to the lowest, being all, physiologically, similar agitations in similar pieces of the same fibrine substance-if this is so, and these objections arise in the mind (as they naturally will, while that common sense which God has given us remains among mankind,) and the system is accordingly charged with destroying the foundation of accountable action

the lecturer is ever ready with his stereotyped answer. With a confident smile of anticipated triumph over an opposition so frivolous and so easily put down, he will tell you, that a man can and ought to control his propensities; that he may do this by directing special attention to those which require it, or are in danger of wrongfully getting the upper hand, and thus devouring the liberties of the other members of the democracy. He can deny exercise to those that are too predominant, although the lecturer is very careful not to explain how it can ever come to pass, that that, which is predominant, shall be prevented from ruling. He can call into action those that are deficient. He can balance the action of one that is salutary, against another that is hurtful and destructive. When he finds too strong a tendency in his cerebral state to radicalism and anarchy, he can become conservative; if veneration is getting too wild, he can cure this mischievous excess of religion, by giving the loose rein for a season to acquisitiveness, or arousing the action of his sleeping cautiousness. And thus, says the lecturer, your objection is triumphantly answered; thus man becomes an accountable being, and a subject of moral law.

Brave words these, and bravely spoken. Who shall dare to charge such a system

with materialism. But hold! what does the quack mean by all this? What right has the Samaritan so suddenly to use the Jew's language in place of his native dialect of Ashdod? Is he not, we ask, adopting a mode of speech utterly at war with his own system and from which, by his own hypothesis, he is certainly excluded. The man can do so and so, can he! He can repress; he can call out; he can balance; he can cultivate: he can exercise. And who is the man aside from these very organs which compose him? What is he apart from that locofoco rabble of sentiments and propensities, over which he is to exhibit such a marvelous display of autocratic power? Where is this identical Homo, this Ipseity, this Auroraros as Aristophanes would style him, this wondrous HE, who is to perform all these miracles, who cannot exist apart, and yet has no spare corner left in the brain for his peculiar residence, or an inch of ground, throughout his own dominions, on which he can plant his foot. Every lot has been taken up and mapped out long ago for other purposes. On the whole estate not a solitary acre is left for the lord of the manor.

Here certainly seems to be a small difficulty in the way of this first and best of sciences, whether regarded as applied to the State or to the human soul. In systems of mental philosophy existing previous to this famous discovery that man is but a bundle of faculties and the State only a collection of people, there was something regarded as Supreme, and therefore distinct from the inferior. There was held to be a true will, which, although it might, in its fallen state, subject itself to the propensities, was yet distinct from them, and might aspire to control them when it found its true strength in union with the Supreme and Holy Will of the universe. It was a will, in its rectified state, in perfect alliance with a reason, which was not carried about by each man individually, or had its location in an inch of brain, but of which the individual partook as of one common reason, on that account justly styled universal, immutable, and eternal.

Here then was something truly supreme something which had an inalienable and indefeasible right to rule over the propensities, because it was not allied to them by a common nature, but was, in truth, of a higher order of being. If we dared to use such language in a democratic land, we would say it had a right to reign, because it was of the divine

and royal family. Here was that which could determine ranks and precedence. Here was something of a nobler birth, which could speak such authority to the rebellious tenants of the brain, which could, in truth, control, repress, exalt, because its very right and nature was to have the dominion. Here, in short, was a power far above what Spurzheim would style the predominating influence for the time being of the majority of the propensities.

But, on the other scheme, where is this rightful supervisory power? Where since we have got again into our old habit of asking questions where is the State House of this phrenological empire; if we should not rather inquire, where is the demagogue speaker's stand in this phrenological mass meeting? Where is the true Executive Power, which is to direct these blind moral sentiments? for no position is regarded as more firmly established in phrenology than this, that all the moral feelings act blindly, as Gall and Spurzheim both tell us -Veneration, for example, being just as likely, of itself, to reverence an Indian taboo, or ichneumons, or crocodiles, or old bones of saints, or whatever may come in its way, as any higher object of worship. What, in short, is to control the mob of propensities? Can the subjects, or if any are fastidious about the term, can the citizens be held accountable for sedition and disorder, when there is no governor, and no law out of themselves, to keep them in restraint?

And which organ, as they are described and located by phrenologists, can rightly claim this preeminence---which can with authority quell the dangerous fanaticism of excessive Veneration, or restrain the vagaries of excessive Hope; which can say to Combativeness," peace, be still," and to Destructiveness, "stay thy hand." Counsellor Hurlbut sometimes, it is true, talks of "the superior nature," but nothing can be clearer, than that, for this, he has no orthodox phrenological authority, and that all such language, whatever blunders of speech some of its inferior disciples may occasionally fall into, is directly opposed to the inevitable conclusions of the science. In other places he agrees with his masters, and is consistent with his philosophy, in regarding them as all alike developments of one nature, and all equally entitled to be gratified. "Wherever Nature," he says, (page 13,) "has ordained desire, we infer the right to its indulgence, and hence,

'THE RIGHTS OF MAN.'" Again he says"In regard to the right of its exercise, no question is involved but the existence of the innate faculty, and the objects presented by Nature for its gratification: the manner of its exercise is another thing that presents a question of morals." But this trifling question of morals, which our author skips over so lightly, and with so much indifference, is the very pith of the whole matter. Here is the unobserved torpedo which blows up his whole theory. This little question of morals, which the writer distinguishes from natural rights, brings us at once on higher grounds, and presents a problem for which his philosophy finds no means of solution. In phrenology, as well as in ultra democracy, the only rule of morals can be—“ equal rights, and equal rank, and an equal portion for all." If, then, one inquire-Which, in this mass meeting of faculties, is to be moderator, which is to determine excess, define ranks and precedence, declare what may be indulged, what is to be restrained, what is high and noble, what is mean and groveling the only answer can be, that, as far as we can learn, they are all on a par, unless some element is brought in which does not belong to phrenology. Physiologically, (and we have been told on the highest authority of this school that the whole is a question of physics, and that metaphysics has been totally exploded,) physiologically, then, all are alike. The difference, certainly, cannot be said to arise from the distance of a few inches to the right or left. Each has about an equal space and an equal portion on the brain. Each is independent in its own dominions, and no one has more right than another to step beyond its own department, and become a Will.

Counsellor Hurlbut says of the people, (page 37,)" If one be a king, then all are kings; if one be a lord, then all are lords: whatever exists of natural right, all are equally entitled to." "Government, then, (by which he means in a State the present will of a present majority, and of course in the brain the majority of the organs or propensities,) can bestow no privileges without violating the sanctity of natural rights, whose protection is its only function." Suppose, then, that some of these organs aspire to be a nobility among the rest; that what are called the moral sentiments, for example, seek to elevate themselves above the others, and affect distinctions between high and low, refined and base, intellectual and sensual.

What if Veneration be allowed to rule. This, as we have shown, is generally set forth by phrenologists as one of the most dangerous of the organs, and requiring to be watched, by the others, with that eternal "vigilance which is the price of liberty." Counsellor Hurlbut, too, according to the most perfect analogy, seems to take the same view of religion and all divine sanctions in relation to the State (see chap. 4). Shall Order, then, or Ideality, or Benevolence say to Destructiveness, thou art vulgar, and to Alimentiveness, thou art ignoble? Shall some affect to be more spiritual than others? Why so? The brain which they occupy, as far as we can learn, is no better brain than that possessed by what they might style the lower faculties.

Each has its seat in about the same amount and about the same quality of phosphoric fat, of the same fibre, of the same consistence, the same chemical structure. Their various occupations therefore, should give rise to no distinctions of rank; just as all democrats are equally good, although one writes poetry, another conducts a Review, and another carries a hod.

The phrenologist may say, that some are by nature better; but what gives him a right to affirm this, without resorting (unconsciously perhaps) to some truths out of his system? Unless he gets something which, although pertaining to man individually, is yet, at the same time, out of and above him, something universal and eternal, he cannot depart an inch from his law of a necessary equality, arising from the fact of that physiological equality which is the basis of the whole scheme. The organs of causality and conscientiousness, as they are styled, and to which he might perhaps appeal, are of the same origin, the same mechanical action, and of the same material, too, with their fellows. They have no more right to control combativeness in the gratification of its delightful propensity, than destructiveness has to destroy them. If the others refuse to obey, there is no higher arbiter to adjudge submission. Even should we admit that the intuitive moral reason is, in any way, or in the least degree, represented by their miserable wooden-clock-making causality, still its like location on the brain confines it down to a par with all the rest. It does not seem to have as high or as good a position as firmness, (or obstinacy,) or self-esteem, or love of approbation. There may, however, be differences; all

that we contend for is, that we must go out of phrenology, and seek the aid of a higher light, to determine them.

But this, after all, does not touch our main difficulty, namely, the want of a distinct, separate and supreme will, or acting personality. Reason, in any sense, is no substitute for that great power we have so long been seeking in the physiological domains. The office of reason is judicial, and in a certain sense passive. It decides upon matters brought before it. It deduces conclusions from acts and premises presented to it. But where is the executive power of the soul, which is to bring turbulent propensities before reason's tribunal, and carry into execution its decisions after they have been rendered? In itself it is as powerless as the Supreme Court of the United States, when what should have represented the executive will, identifying itself with the basest passions of the mob, refused to enforce its mandamus against the State of Georgia.

We have dwelt on this at some length, because it is the great objection which applies equally to phrenology and to that political system which Mr. Hurlbut has attempted to found on this flowing basis. In neither can there be anything final, universal, or eternal. Neither has anything ideal, in the true sense of that important, yet much-abused term. Neither has, for human rights and human duties, any sure foundation, which, although connected with, is distinct from, human nature itself. The one has no State, aside from the present impulses of the present mass: the other has no man, distinct from the majority of his blind sentiments and unreasoning propensities.

We cannot conclude without introducing from Spurzheim a most appropriate illustration of that doctrine of a will, for which we formerly referred to his pages. It contains the substance of this whole philosophy. The dog furnishes him with a common comparison, which seems, from the manner of his using it, to have been as great a favorite as the Shoemaker or the Pilot of Socrates. "That desire (says he, as we have previously quoted,) which overwhelms the others, is called will; and in this sense, every faculty in its turn becomes a will. A dog, for instance, (continues this most profound philosopher,) is hungry, but having been punished for eating the meat found upon the table, he, (that is, the dog,) without ceasing to feel appetite, for fear of a repetition of the blows, does not in

dulge. He desires to eat, but will not. Will, then, cannot be any fundamental power by itself," &c. It is indeed delightful to observe the naïve simplicity with which this most remarkable sage selects the dog as furnishing as good a demonstration of the want of a proper will, as could have been derived from man himself. The comparison is really admirable. Nothing could more beautifully or more clearly have illustrated this whole canine philosophy, whether regarded in its application to the soul or the State.

Every faculty in its turn becomes a will." Let us endeavor to expand the precious truth, and the striking illustration by which it is set forth. The dog, for instance, is hungry. Here the dog's organ of alimentiveness is the will. But having been punished for eating the meat, he, for fear of blows, does not indulge. He desires but he wills not to eat. A more overwhelming power has intervened. Now the dog's cautiousness becomes will. And so on our philosopher might have continued his illustration through the whole catalogue. If the dog seizes the meat, his destructiveness predominates; and if another dog interferes for a share, his combativeness immediately becomes will. This divinest faculty of the soul, as it has been styled, this most purely spiritual part of our nature, is the same, then, in men and dogs-in beings accountable and unaccountable-in those that have a conscience, and those that have not. It becomes anything, and everything, according to the organ which is predominant.

The application which Doctor Spurzheim and Counsellor Hurlbut might make of this to the body politic is very obvious. Very much in the same way as Spurzheim, in the extract quoted several pages back, speaks of a will distinct from the propensities, as being a mere invention of old moralists and theologians, so might our political philosopher say, that former politicians, in the old days of ignorance, had foolishly regarded the State as an entity, distinct from the present mass, and law as something higher than the present balance of the present propensities of a majority. They had talked of something abiding and permanent, under the name of a Пorea, or a constitution, which represented the reason or fixed principles, in distinction from the everchanging desires. But this was all a mistake. It all came from that miserable philosophy, which prevailed in the world before "man was demonstrated." There