"In proportion as any branch of study leads to important and useful results--in proportion as it tends to overthrow prevailing errors--in the same degree it may be expected to call forth angry declamation from those who are trying to despise what they will not _learn_, and wedded to _prejudices_ which they _cannot defend_."--ARCHBISHOP WHATELY. Having pointed out in the introductory chapter the great end and aim of all learning--THE ADVANCEMENT OF MANKIND IN RELIGION, MORALITY, AND VIRTUE, we shall proceed to point out the advantages of Phrenology, in enabling man to become wiser, better, and happier. It will be universally conceded, that this life is a state of probation, that if we do well--that is, if we become God's people, we shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but if we do evil, we shall have our portion in the lake which burneth with everlasting fire; for this reason St. Paul exhorts us to press forward to the prize of our high calling. "Let us go on unto perfection," says he, and again, "let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us"--and in another place he tells us, that "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment." Such then, being our situation, how imperative is the command to, "cease to do evil, and learn to do well." We must first learn what is imperfect and then strive to improve,--we must look upon SELF IMPROVEMENT, as something possible, something allied to the better portion of human nature, something worthy of the noblest care and the mightiest efforts that human beings, aiming at perfection, can even hope to aspire to. We must recall the past, watch over the present, and strengthen ourselves against the future,--we must learn what we _are_ and what we _may be_, for we have in ourselves the power of controlling as well as of watching our passions and our energies, and it is this prerogative that causes human responsibility. Phrenology teaches us that mental energy is invariably accompanied by an increase of the brain, in the portion which is acted on by that energy; if the intellect be expanded, the perceptive faculties in active operation, the nobler energies of charity and veneration employed for good, it is at once apparent; so too with the baser passions, the sensualist, the ignorant, and the depraved alike reveal by their organization the spirit that moves within them, and as we know by endless facts that the brain alters in proportion to the use or disuse of faculties, sentiments, or passions; so if we are right-minded we must infer that God created no such master-piece of unerring workmanship without designing it for our good; and if so, how culpable, how criminal must they be, who dare to doubt the hand of a nobler being in a design so beautiful,--how culpable must they be who neglect to use the means laid down for their advancement,--how criminal, when they know, yet slight or