especially--is delusive: in the first place, since they have long acquired their form and consistency before every species of improvement of the improvable creature takes place, which comes long after the complete fixidity; and secondly, since this form depends so little upon our will, while the influence of external causes is so unavoidable, and a single pressure or stroke can gradually work a change, whose progress no art is capable of restraining. Moreover, even could any thing be deduced from this, still the firm parts yet constitute but a certain and perpetually fixed proportion, a single and insignificant link in the chain of countless circumstances, which go to the formation of the human character. Mr. Traveller.--My God! my head is in a whirligig with all this--with all this rapid German. Freisleben.--One must not allow one's-self to speak of the outer form of the head in which a free spirit dwells, as one would of a pumpkin; as little must we calculate circumstances which depend upon it, as we would calculate an eclipse. Others assert, with equal probability, that the character of a man lies in his countenance, whilst they appeal to the capability of drawing a conclusion on the whole from the indications of a part; as others, supporting themselves on this sufficient ground, assert, that man must act as a machine. And to this class of reasoning belongs--"in a handsome body dwells a handsome soul." Ridicule majis hoc dictum, quam verè æstimo, Quando et formosos sæpe inveni pessimos, Et turpi facie multos cognovi optimus. _Phædrus_. Pittschaft.--Ah, if we could but first rightly understand the changes in the brain itself. But a great visible change in the brain may be a very little change for the soul, and _vice versa_. And how will people draw conclusions from the very vault of the brain? Mr. Traveller.--But, gentlemen, recollect how often phrenologists, from the outward form of the skull, have drawn correct conclusions. Recollect the allocation of distinguished heads as they are to be seen in plaster in the English and German museums.