Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE AMERICAN PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL AND MISCELLANY. Vol. I. Philadelphia, May 1, 1839. No. 8. ARTICLE I. UTILITY OF PHRENOLOGY. _Phrenology is useful, because it forms the most correct basis of a system of mental philosophy._ In a previous number of this Journal (see Art. I, page 161), we entered somewhat at length upon the discussion of the above proposition. We there contrasted the merits of phrenology, as the _true science of the mind_, with other systems of mental philosophy, particularly Dugald Stewart’s. We pointed out several important defects which have hitherto existed in every system of mental science. We stated that all writers on the philosophy of the mind had committed the following mistakes. First, _they leave out of view almost entirely all connection of the mind with the brain_; and, secondly, _they make their own individual consciousness the chief and principal source of information_. And that, from these two radical defects in their premises, they have fallen into numerous errors. Among others, _they do not recognise all the primitive faculties of the mind_; and throughout all their writings, _they confound primitive faculties of the mind with modes of activity_. Another radical defect in the systems of previous writers on mental science is, _When they admit and treat of the elementary faculties of the mind, they consider them merely as existing by themselves, and disregard almost entirely the influence of combination_.