[334] One always endeavours to find some former indication or presentiment, although even confused and full of obscurity, beyond the origin of positive science; it is curious to find in the works of the _potter physician_ a sort of germ which, when developed, may have given birth to cranioscopy,--a sort of foresight of the importance which the measurement of the skull would one day acquire. It is in the _Recepte Véritable_: one of two speakers relates a dream in which he saw the different instruments used in geometry dispute about precedence: he answers them, that man is above them all; they exclaim, that man cannot even use one of them in order to measure any part of his body. [We think it best to give the original here.--EDITOR.] “Quoy voyant, il me print envie de mesurer la teste d’un homme, pour scauoir directement ses mesures, et me sembla que la sauterelle, la reigle, et le compas me seroient fort propres pour ceste affaire, mais quoy qu’il en soit, ie n’y sceu iamais trouver une mesure asseurée.” Bernard Palissy, _Œuvres_, p. 93, 12mo, Paris, 1844. Blumenbach says somewhere, “The habit and constant use of my collection of skulls makes me understand every day the impossibility of subjecting a variety of skulls to the rule of any possible angle, the head being susceptible of so many forms, and the parts which compose it being of so many different proportions and directions.” See Morel, _Traité des Dégénérescences dans l’espèce humaine_, p. 68. M. Aitken Meigs, at the present day, shows no less than twenty-nine different measurements of the skull which must be obtained if we wish to have anything like a satisfactory idea of the same. [335] See above, chap. iv. [336] See _Indigenous Races of the Earth_, p. 320. [337] See Strope, _Description d’une Momie très-ancienne_ (_Recueil Périod. d’Observ. de Médecine_, vol. iv, p. 290, Jan. 1756). One may see in reading the account of a very able and judicious narrator how much ancient scientific observations alter with the times, when no care is taken to refer to the original sources. [338] See Vivien, in the _Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique_, vol. ii, p. 59. [339] _Portfolio_, Philadelphia, 1814. [340] W. Edwards, _Des Caractères Physiologiques des races humaines_, p. 45, has especially noticed the great importance of external characteristics; he has only done wrong in excluding the hair, and attending solely to the form of the skull, which never concerns us when we endeavour to picture or recall to our mind the features of a man. [341] See Michelet, with regard to the paintings in the Sixtine Chapel, _Histoire de France, Renaissance_. [342] “Philology is at once the most elevated and the most positive branch of the natural history of the human race.” Chavée, _Moïse et les Langues_ (_La Revue_). M. Flourens seems to give philological a superior rank to physical characteristics. [See above, p. 77, _note_.--EDITOR.]