History.— That the phenomena of mind are in some measure connected with the action of the brain has been recognized from a very early age of philosophy. It is true that Aristotle describes the brain as the coldest and most bloodless of bodily organs, of the nature of water and earth, whose chief purpose is to temper the excessive heat of the heart, as the cooler regions of the firmament condense the vapours rising from the earth. In his view, as in that of most of the earlier writers of other nations of antiquity, the heart is the seat of life; to it, not to the brain, the Hebrew writers refer thoughts and affections, while they considered judgment as seated sometimes in the head, sometimes in the kidneys. This was, likewise, the teaching of the ancient Egyptian philosophy; and hence, while many rites were practised and many prayers offered for the preservation of the heart of the deceased, the brains were passed over with very little precaution for their preservation. The influence of the Aristotelian teaching is traceable in that of some of the earlier classic writings on philosophy, as is that of the Hebrews in our own colloquial language; but we learn from Diogenes Laertius that much more accurate physiological views were held by Pythagoras, who believed the mind and the intellect to have their seat in the brain. The theory of Hippocrates was Pythagorean rather than Aristotelian, for, although in one passage in his work De Corde he expresses himself rather doubtfully, yet elsewhere he clearly states that he considers the brain to be the index and messenger of the intellect. The cerebral seat of sense-perception is also taught by Plato, who puts into the mouth of Socrates the theory that the brain is the organ affected by the senses, whereby memory and opinion arise, and from whence knowledge springs. The classic poets also notice this dependence of mind on brain; for example, in the Clouds (v. 1276) Strepsiades accuses Amynias of not being in his right mind, and, on being asked why, responds, “You seem to me as if you had had a concussion of the brain.”

The two founders of anatomical science, Erasistratus and Herophilus, who lived in the days of Ptolemy Soter, taught not only that the brain was the seat of sensation and of intellect, but also that there was therein a certain degree of localization of function. Erasistratus believed that the sensory nerves arose from the brain-membranes, the motor from the cerebral substance. Herophilus was apparently the first who held that the vital forces resided in and circulated from the ventricles of the brain, at least so we gather from Celsus and the other authors who have preserved his views. By the influence of the writings of Galen, which directly teach that the brain is the seat of soul and intellect, the Pythagorean doctrine became universally received among philosophers. According to the Galenical theory of life, the animal spirits arising from the brain are conveyed thence by the arteries through the body. These animal spirits have their origin in the ventricles of the brain, and pass thence to the heart. It is true that in one place (viii. 159) he refers their origin to the cerebral substance, but the ventricular theory was that adopted by his followers. This view is held by the Greek physicians, some of whom even speculated on the relation of the intellect to the shape and size of the head. The Arabians adopted the same hypothesis, so we find Averrhoes correcting Aristotle’s notion of cerebral physiology in favour of Galen’s view. Rhazes also extended this by giving a sketch of a scheme of psychic localization; and Avicenna added to the regions recognized by previous authors by interpolating one of his own. Such of the early Christian authors as had occasion to refer in their writings to the relation of soul to body naturally adopted the teaching of Galen, and suited it to their theology, thereby conferring on it an importance which rendered correction difficult. Thomas Aquinas thus expresses his acquiescence in the theory of localization, as also in a sense does Tertullian.

Early in the 13th century Albertus Magnus gave a detailed description of the distribution of mental and psychical faculties in the head. The anterior region he assigned to judgment, the middle to imagination, and the posterior to memory. A somewhat similar allocation was made by Gordon, professor of medicine in Montpellier (1296), who assigned common sensation and the reception of impressions to the anterior cornua of the lateral ventricles, phantasia to the posterior, this power being twofold (imαginαtiva and cogitativa), judgment or sεstimαtivα to the third ventricle, and memory to the fourth. Figures of a similar division were given by Petrus Montagnana ° and Lodovico Dolce, still later by Ghiradelli of Bologna and by Theodore Gall of Antwerp. That the “vital spirits” resided in the ventricles was doubted by many, and refuted by a few of the anatomists of the 17th century. Bauhin in 1621 attacked the old view, and Hoffmann of Altorf showed that, as the ventricles were closed cavities, they could not transmit any material fluid. That these spirits existed at all was doubted by Alexander Benedictus, Plater, and a few others; but they were believed in by the great majority of 17th and even of 18th century medical writers, many of whom conceived that the ventricles were “semper pleni spiritibus animalibus flammulis similibus, quorum beneficiis intelligimus, sentimus,et movemus,” and the opponents of this view were strongly assailed by Riolan and others as revolutionary. The grey matter of the surface of the cerebrum was first recognized as the true dynamic element by Malpighi and Willis. The latter regarded the convoluted surface of the cerebrum as the seat of the memory and the will, the convolutions being intended to retain the animal spirits for the various acts of imagination and memory. Imagination he described as seated in the corpus callosum, sense-perception in the corpus striatum, and impetus et perturbatio in the basal parts of the cerebrum above the crura. The thalami he regarded as the centres of sight and the cerebellum of involuntary acts. Columbus ridiculed the idea that the convoluted surface can have anything to do with intellect, as the ass, a proverbially stupid animal, has a convoluted cerebrum. According to his view, the convolutions are for the purpose of lightening the brain and facilitating its movements. Succeeding anatomists simply varied these localizations according to their respective fancies. Lancisi placed sense-perception in the corpus callosum, Vieussens in the centrum ovale majus. Descartes supposed the soul to be seated in the pineal gland, Lotze in the pons Varolii. Meyer considered abstract ideas to arise in the cerebellum, and memory to have its seat at the roots of the nerves.

Of later writers three deserve special notice as having largely prepared the way for the more modern school of phrenology. Unzer of Halle in his work on physiology extended the pre-existing theories of localization. Metzger, twenty years before the publication of Prochaska’s work, had proposed to make a series of observations on the anatomical characters of the brains of persons of marked intellectual peculiarity; but it is not known to the present writer whether he ever carried this into effect. In a more special manner Prochaska of Vienna may be looked upon as the father of phrenology, as in his work on the nervous system, published in Vienna in 1784, are to be found the germs of the later views which were propounded in that city twelve years later.

The system formulated by Gall is thus a modern expansion of an old empirical philosophy, and its immediate parentage is easily traced, although, according to Gall’s account, it arose with him as the result of independent observations. These, he tells us, he began to make at an early age, by learning to correlate the outward appearances and mental qualities of his schoolfellows. Gall’s first published paper was a letter in the Deutscher Merkur of December 1798, but his principal expositions were oral, and attracted much popular attention, which largely increased when, in 1802, he was commanded by the Austrian Government, at the instance of the ecclesiastical authorities, to discontinue his public lectures. In 1804 he obtained the co-operation of Spurzheim (1776-1832), a native of Long-wich near Treves, who became his pupil in 1800, and proved a powerful ally in promulgating the system. Master and pupil at first taught in harmony, but they found it advisable to separate in 1813; and we find Spurzheim, several years after their parting, declaring that Gall had not introduced any new improvements into his system since their separation (notes to Chenevix, p. 99). “My philosophical views,” he also says, “widely differ from those of Gall.”

In Paris, where he settled in 1807, Gall made many influential converts to his system. Broussais, Blainville, Cloquet, Andral, Geoffroy St-Hilaire, Vimont, and others warmly attached themselves to it, and countenanced its progress. Gall visited Great Britain, but the diffusion of phrenology there was chiefly due to Spurzheim, who lectured through the country and through America, and, with the aid of his pupil George Combe, soon attracted a large popular following. His most influential disciples were Elliotson, Andrew Combe, Mackenzie, Macnish, Laycock, and Archbishop Whately, and in America Caldwell and Godman. On the opposite side many influential men took up a strongly antagonistic position, prominent among whom were Barclay the anatomist, Roget, Sir Charles Bell, Sir W. Hamilton, Jeffrey, Brougham, T. Brown, and Sir B. Brodie. The nature of the system rendered it eminently fitted to catch public attention, and it rapidly attained to so great a degree of popularity that in 1832 there were twenty-nine phrenological societies in Great Britain, and several journals devoted to phrenology in Britain and America; of these the Phrenological Journal, a quarterly edited chiefly by George Combe with aid from others of the Edinburgh confraternity, notably Sir George Mackenzie and Macnish, “the modern Pythagorean,” lived from 1823 to 1847, through twenty volumes. The controversy in many places was heated and often personal, and this largely increased the popular interest. In the Edinburgh Review the theory was severely criticized by Thomas Brown, and afterwards in a still more trenchant manner by Jeffrey. In Blackwood it was ridiculed by Professor Wilson. Being a subject which lent itself easily to burlesque, it was parodied cleverly in a long rhyme by two authors, “The Craniad,” 87 pages long, published in 1817, while, on the other hand, verse was pressed into its service in the rhyme “Phrenology in Edinburgh” in 1824. The best defence of the system was that by Chenevix in the third number of the Foreign Quarterly, afterwards reprinted with notes by Spurzheim.

The popularity of phrenology has waned, and few of the phrenological societies now survive; the cultivation of the system is confined to a few enthusiasts such as will be found attached to any cause, and some professional teachers who follow phrenology as a vocation. Like many similar systems, it has a much larger following in America than in Europe. Based, like many other artificial philosophies, on an admixture of assumption and truth, certain parts will survive and become incorporated into scientific psychology, while the rest will in due course come to be relegated to the limbo of effete heresies.

The Faculties and their Localities.— The system of Gall was constructed by a method of pure empiricism, and his so-called organs were for the most part identified on slender grounds. Having selected the place of a faculty, he examined the heads of his friends and casts of persons with that peculiarity in common, and in them he sought for the distinctive feature of their characteristic trait. Some of his earlier studies were made among low associates, in jails, and in lunatic asylums, and some of the qualities 1ocated by him were such as tend to become perverted to crime. These he named after their excessive manifestations, mapping out organs of murder, theft, &c.; but as this cast some discredit on the system the names were changed by Spurzheim, who claimed as his the moral and religious considerations associated with it. Gall marked out on his model of the head the places of twenty-six organs as round enclosures with vacant interspaces. Spurzheim and Combe divided the whole scalp into oblong and conterminous patches (see the accompanying figures). Other methods of division and other names have been suggested by succeeding authors, especially by Cox, Sidney Smith (not Sydney), Toulmin Smith, Carus of Dresden, Don Mariano Cubi i Solar, Powell of Kentucky, Buchanan of Cincinnati, Hittel of New York. Some, like the brothers Fowler, raise the number of organs to forty-three; but the system of Spurzheim and Combe is that which has always been most popular in Britain.

Spurzheim separated the component faculties of the human mind into two great groups and subdivided these as follows.

I. Feelings, divided into—

1. Propensities, internal impulses inviting only to certain actions.

2. Sentiments, impulses λvhich prompt to emotion as well as to action.

A. Lower,—those common to man and the lower animals. B. Higher,—those proper to man.

II. Intellectual faculties.

1. Perceptive faculties.

2. Reflective faculties.

In the following list the locality and the circumstances of the first recognition of the organ are appended to the names, which are mostly the inventions of Spurzheim. Gall’s names are placed in brackets. Propensities.

(1) Amativeness {Instinct de la génération), median, below the inion; first determined by Gall from its heat in an hysterical widow, supposed to be confirmed by many observations, and referred to the cerebellum.

(2) Philoprogenitiveness {Amour de la progéniture), median, on the squama occipitis, and selected as the organ for the love of children because this part of the skull is usually more prominent in apes and in women, in whom the love of children is supposed to be stronger than in men.

(3) Concentrativeness, below the obelion and over the lambda. This is a region of uncertain function, unnoticed by Gall, but described as Inhabitiveness by Spurzheim, because he found it large in cats and in a clergyman fond of his home. It has since been considered by Combe to be the seat of the power of concentration, whereof he believed Inhabitiveness to be a special case.

(4) Adhesiveness {Amitié), over the lateral convoluted area of the lambdoidal suture. This region was prominent in a lady introduced to Gall as a model of friendship, and is said by him to be the region where persons who are closely attached put their heads together.

(5) Combativeness {Instinct de la défense), above the asterion; it was found by Gall by examining the heads of the most quarrelsome of his low companions whom he had beforehand stimulated by alcohol. It was verified by comparing this region with the same part of the head of a quarrelsome young lady.

(6) Destructiveness {Instinct carnassier), above the ear meatus. This is the widest part of the skulls of carnivorous animals, and was found large in the head of a student so fond of torturing animals that he became a surgeon, also large in the head of an apothecary who became an executioner.

(6α) Alimentiveness, over the temporal muscle and above the ear. Hoppe describes it as being large in a gourmand acquaintance, and he therefore supposes it to be the organ of selecting food.

(7) Secretiveness (Ruse, Finesse), the posterior part of the squamous suture.

(8) Acquisitiveness (Sentiment de la propriété), on the upper edge of the front half of the squamous suture. This part of the head Gall noticed to be prominent in the pickpockets of his acquaintance.

(9) Constructiveness (Sens de méchanique), on the stephanion; detected by its prominence on the heads of persons of mechanical genius. It was found large on the head of a milliner of uncommon taste and on a skull reputed to be that of Raphael.

The organ of Vitativeness, or love of life, is supposed by Combe to be seated at the base of the skull. To this locality Herophilus referred most of the intellectual powers.

Lower Sentiments.

(10) Self-esteem (Orgueil, Fierté), at and immediately over the obelion; found by Gall in a beggar who excused his poverty on account of his pride. This was confirmed by the observation that proud persons held their heads backwards in the line of the organ.

(11) Love of Approbation (Vanité), outside the obelion; the region in which Gall saw a protuberance on the head of a lunatic who fancied herself queen of France.

(12) Cautiousness (Circonspection), on the parietal eminence; placed here because an ecclesiastic of hesitating disposition and a vacillating councillor of state had both large parietal eminences.

Superior Sentiments.

(13) Benevolence (Bonté), on the middle of the frontal bone in front of the coronal suture; here Gall noticed a rising on the head of the highly-commended servant of a friend, as well as on a benevolent schoolmate who nursed his brothers and sisters when they were ill. To this spot Xenocrates referred the intellectual powers.

(14) Veneration (Sentiment réligieux), median at the bregma. Gall noted when visiting churches that those who prayed with the greatest fervour were prominent in this region, and it was also prominent in a pious brother.

(15) Conscientiousness, unknown to Gall; recognized by Spurzheim usually from its deficiency, and placed between the last and the parietal eminence.

(16) Firmness (Fermeté), median, on the sagittal suture from behind the bregma to the front of the obelion. Lavater first pointed out that persons of determination« had lofty heads.

(17) Hope, not regarded as primary by Gall, who believed hope to be akin to desire and a function of every faculty which desires, and left this territory unallocated.

(18) Wonder, said to be large in vision-seers and many psychic researchers. A second similar organ placed between this and the next is called Mysterizingness by Forster, and is said to preside over belief in ghosts and the supernatural.

(19) Ideality (Poésie), noted by Gall from its prominence in the busts of poets; said to be the part touched by the hand when composing poetry.

(20) Wit (Esprit caustique), the frontal eminence, the organ of the sense of the ludicrous, prominent in Rabelais and Swift.

(21) Imitation (Faculté d’imiter), disposition to mimicry, placed between Benevolence and Wonder.

Perceptive Faculties.

(22) Individuality, over the frontal sinus in the middle line; the capacity of recognizing external objects and forming ideas therefrom; said to have been large in Michelangelo, and small in the Scots.

(23) Form (Mémoire des personnes), capacity of recognizing faces; gives a wide interval between the eyes; found by Gall in a squinting girl with a good memory for faces.

(24) Size, over the trochlea at the orbital edge; described by Spurzheim and Vimont as the capacity of estimating space and distance.

(25) Weight, outside the last on the orbital edge and, like it, over the frontal sinus. The prominence of ridge here is due to large sinus or a projecting bone. Certain old writers, such as Strato Physicus, located the whole intellect in this ridge.

(26) Colour, also on the orbital edge external to the last.

(27) Locality (Sens de localité), placed above Individuality on each side, and corresponding to the upper part of the frontal sinus and to the region immediately above it.

(28) Number, on the external angular process of the frontal bone, large in a calculating boy in Vienna.

(29) Order, internal to the last, first noted by Spurzheim in an orderly idiot.

(30) Eventuality (Mémoire des choses), the median projection above the glabella, supposed to be the seat of the memory of events.

(31) Time, below the frontal eminence and a little in front...