Freisleben.--Yes, they have drawn some very neat conclusions, but we
know very well how that stands. The false conclusions have been
carefully put out of sight; and yet sufficient of them have come to the
daylight to render the phrenologists ridiculous. They are, indeed,
often still more innocent, the worthy demonstrators only seeing that
which they knew very well before. Recollect also what a sagacious
German naturalist says:--"The proof of the demonstration which the
phrenologist makes is, in most cases, as superficial as the
demonstration itself. Let a man eat a shovelful of salt, according to
the prescription of Aristotle, with the person upon whose head and
heart he makes so superficial a judgment, and he will then find what
will become of his former judgment. But to err is human, and that not
exclusively, for it is sometimes the fate of angels." Talent, and the
endowments of the spirit, generally have no signs in the solid portion
of the head. To prove this, let the selected casts of thinking heads,
and selected ones of fools and not-thinking men, be placed side by
side; and not the head of the learned man, of a careful education, be
placed in opposition to that of the worst specimen of the totally
uneducated country booby. Bedlam is peopled with inhabitants, who, if
they did not stand staring as if chilled into stone, or smiling at the
stars, or listening to the song of the angels, or would blow out the
dog-star, or stood trembling with folded arms,--if, in fact, they were
not judged by these aberrations, but by the shape of their heads alone,
would command the highest respect. Still less can we draw correct
conclusions from the shape of the living head than from the bare skull
itself. A skilful artist, without exceeding the bounds of the probable,
would be able to cast in wax a covering of muscles and skin for the
head of any skeleton, and give it an expression which should possess
any aspect that he pleased. And thus may the skull of a living person
be, in reality, so covered with an irregular mass of muscular and
cuticular integuments, as shall give an equally delusive effect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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