A shrewd and practical English philosopher, and an uncompromising anti-phrenologist, writes thus: “Mind, connected with body, can only acquire knowledge slowly through the bodily organs of sense, and more or less perfectly according as these organs and the central brain are perfect. A human being, born blind and deaf, and therefore remaining dumb, as in the noted case of the boy Mitchell, grows up closely to resemble an automaton; and an originally misshapen or deficient brain causes idiocy for life. Childhood, maturity, dotage, which have such differences of bodily powers, have corresponding differences of mental faculties; and as no two bodies, so no two minds, in their external manifestations, are quite alike. Fever, or a blow on the head, will change the most gifted individual into a maniac, cause the lips of virgin innocence to utter the most revolting obscenity, and those of pure religion to speak horrible blasphemy; and most cases of madness and eccentricity can now be traced to a peculiar state of the brain.” What the nature and the powers of the human soul may be, we know not, nor can we know, until it is disembodied and disenthralled; until this mortal shall put on immortality, and time and space shall be no more; then, doubtless, the power of ubiquity, and a searching vision to which the diameter of the globe will present no more of an obstacle than does the thinnest glass to the mortal eye, will be among the least of the spiritual powers; but, until then, if we would study the nature of the spirit, we must consider it as trammeled by, and operating through, a corporeal organisation. The difference between the vast majority of thinking men and ultra-phrenologists, we believe to be narrowed down to this; all admit that the spirit of man, manifesting itself through corporeal organisation, is influenced and modified by, and indeed entirely dependent upon, the nature and state of that organisation, particularly of the brain and nervous system; while phrenologists go farther, and say, that according to the length and breadth of certain bundles of fibres in certain compartments of the brain does the spirit manifest its different faculties with different degrees of activity and power. We all of us admit, that even the giant mind of a Newton, or a Napoleon, would struggle in vain against the finger of an infant pressing upon the brain; but phrenologists maintain, that as the finger should be pressed upon one or another organ, so would one or another of the mental powers be immediately affected. Perhaps the truth is beyond the extremes; and while we should strive to attain the _juste milieu_, we should not be deterred by any fears of what may be the inferences from searching for truth in observations upon nature. S. G. H.