What's What in AmericaBrewster, Eugene V. (Eugene Valentine)
History
What's What in America
Brewster, Eugene V. (Eugene Valentine)
United States -- Civilization; United States -- Social life and customs
And then, the mistaken notion that there are just and only thirty-five
or so faculties and that each acts independently of the others. As well
might one say that the retina of the eye is divided into compartments,
one to see flowers, one to see trees, one to see letters and figures,
and so on; or that the ear-drum is divided into sections--one section to
hear the voice, one to hear the violin and one to hear other sounds. If
there is a separate compartment for every faculty there should be nearer
thirty-five thousand compartments than thirty-five. But there are not
even thirty-five faculties, and there are certainly not more than two or
three compartments, if any. Aristotle divided the brain into only three
parts. Veneration is the result of fear, admiration, love, respect,
conscientiousness, and a dozen other things. Destructiveness and
combativeness, continuity, stubbornness and many other faculties produce
in greater or less degree, the same emotion and results. Form and size
are the same faculty, the knowledge of extension including both. To say
that each of these faculties has a separate plot or parcel of brains
staked out for its own private and exclusive use is about as sensible as
to say that there is a separate compartment of brains devoted to love of
children, another for the love of parents, another for brothers, another
for dogs, and so on. It requires no philosopher or psychologist to see
that every single faculty is a part of an inseparable indivisible whole.
Instead of endowing the mind with certain faculties and designating
these according to the nature of their function, the phrenologist
designates them according to the nature of object upon which they are
exercised. According to this, to be logical, he should have as many
faculties and compartments as there are things in the universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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