poet an ear as well as the musician? How then does the author reconcile these common or analogous qualities, and the complex impressions from all the senses implied in poetry (for instance) with his detached, circumscribed, local organs? His system is merely nominal, and a very clumsy specimen of nomenclature into the bargain.— Poetry relates to all sorts of impressions, from all sorts of objects, moral and physical. Music relates to one sort of impressions only, and so far there is an excuse for assigning it to a particular organ; but it also implies common and general faculties, such as retention, judgment, invention, &c., which essentially reside in the understanding or thinking principle at large. But suppose them to be cooped and cabined up in the particular organ:-do they not exist in different degrees, and is this difference expressed merely by the size of the organ ?-It cannot be. The circumstance of size can only determine that such a one is a great musician; not what sort of a musician he is. Therefore this characteristic difference is not expressed by quantity, and therefore none of the differences themselves, or faculties of judgment, invention, refinement, &c., which form the great musician, can be expressed by quantity; and if none of these component parts of musical genius are so expressed, why then "it follows, as the night the day," that there can be no organ of music. There may be an organ peculiarly adapted for retaining musical impressions, but this (without including the intellectual operations, which is impossible) would only answer the purposes of a peculiarly fine and sensitive ear.

"Natural philosophers were wrong in looking for organs of common faculties."-[That's true.]—" A speculative philosopher may be satisfied with vague and common expressions, which do not denote the particular and determinate qualities of the different beings; but these general or common considerations are not sufficient for a naturalist who endeavours to know the functions and faculties of

every organic part in particular. Throughout all natural history, the expressions are the less significant the more general or common they are; and a distinct knowledge of any being requires a study of its particularities."1

Take away the human mind and its common functions, operations, and principles, and Dr. Spurzheim's craniology gives a very satisfactory and categorical view of human nature. In material science, the common properties may be the least significant; but in the mind of man, the common principle (whatever it be) that feels, thinks, and acts, is the chief thing.

I do not believe, then, in the Doctor's organs, either generally or particularly. I have only his word for them; and reason and common sense are against them. There may be an exception now and then, but there is everywhere a total want of classification and analytic power. The author, instead of giving the rationale of any one thing, runs on with endless illustrations and assumptions of the same kind. The organs are sometimes general and sometimes particular; sometimes compound and sometimes simple. You know not what to make of them: they turn over like tumbler-pigeons. I should be inclined to admit the organ of amativeness as a physical reinforcement of a mental passion; but hardly that of philoprogenitiveness—at least, it is badly explained here. I will give an instance or two. "A male servant," Dr. Spurzheim observes, "seldom takes care of children so well as a woman.' Women, then, are fond of children generally; not of their own merely. Is not this an extension of the organic principle beyond its natural and positive limits? Again: "Little girls are fond of dolls," &c. Is there then an express organ for this; since dolls are not literally children? Oh no! it is only a modification of the organ of philoprogenitiveness. Well then, why should not this organ itself or particular propensity be a modification of Page 275.

philanthropy, or of an amiable disposition, good-nature, and generosity in general? There seems no assignable reason why most, if not all of these special organs should be considered as anything more than so many manifestations or cases of general dispositions, capacities, &c., arising from general irritability, tenderness, firmness, quickness, comprehension, &c. of the mind or brain; just as the particular varieties and obliquities of organic faculties and affections are attributed by Spurzheim and Gall to a common law or principle combined with others, or with peculiar circumstances. The account of the organ of inhabitiveness is a master-piece of confusion. It is an organ seated on the top of the head, and impelling you to live in high places, and then again in low places; on land and water; to be here and there and everywhere; which is the same and different, and is in short an organ, not for any particular thing, but for all sorts of contradictions. First, it is the same as the organ of pride, and accounts for the chamois climbing rocks, and the eagle the sky; for children mounting on chairs, and kings on thrones, &c. But then some animals prefer low marshy grounds, and some birds build in the hollows, and not on the tops of trees. Then it looks like a dispensation of Providence to people different regions of the earth; and one would think in this view that local prejudices would be resolved into a species of habitual attachment. But no, that would not be a nostrum. It is therefore said

Nature, which intended that all regions and countries should be inhabited, assigned to all animals their dwellings, and gave to every kind of animal its respective propensity to some particular region;" that is, not to the place where it had been born and bred, but where it was to be born and bred. People who prefer this mode of philosophy are welcome to it. No wonder our author finds it "difficult to point out the seat of this organ;" yet he assures us, that "it must be deep-seated in the brain."

The organ of adhesiveness is evidently the same as the general faculty of attachment. The organ of combativeness I conceive to be nothing but strength of bone and muscle, and some projection arising from and indicating these. The organs of destructiveness and constructiveness are the same, but " so as with a difference "—that is, they express strong will, with greater or less impatience of temper and comprehensiveness of mind. The conqueror who overturns one state, builds up and aggrandises another. I can conceive persons who are gifted with the organ of veneration to have expanded brains as well as swelling ideas. "The head of CHRIST," says our physiologist, "is always represented as very elevated."-Yet he was remarkable for meekness as well as piety. Spurzheim says of the organ of covetiveness, that "it gives a desire for all that pleases." Again, Dr. Gall observed, that " persons of a firm and constant character have the top of the brain much developed;" and this is called the organ of determinativeness. Now if so, are we to believe that the difference in resolute and irresolute persons is confined to this organ, and that the nerves, fibres, &c. of the rest of the brain are not lax or firm, in proportion as the person is of a generally weak or determined character? The whole question nearly turns upon this. Say that there is a particular prominence in this part, owing to a greater strength and size of the levers of the will at this place. This would prove nothing but the particular manifestation or development of a general power; just as the prominence of the muscles of the calf of the leg denotes general muscular strength. But the craniologist says that the strength of the whole. body lies in the calf of the leg, and has its seat or organ there. Not so, in the name of common sense! When Dr. Spurzheim gets down to the visible region of the face, the eyes, forehead, &c., he makes sad work of it: an infinite number of distinctions are crowded one upon the back of the other, and to no purpose. Will anybody believe that

there are five or six different organs for the impressions of one sense (sight,) viz., colour, form, size, and so on? Do we see the form with one organ and the colour of the same object with another? There may be different organs to receive different material or concrete impressions, but surely only the mind can abstract the different impressions of the same sense from each other. The organ of space appears to me to answer to the look of wild, staring curiosity. All that is not accounted for in this. way, either from general conformation or from physiognomical expression, is a heap of crude, capricious, unauthenticated trash. I select one paragraph out of this puzzling chaos, as a sample of what the reader must expect from the whole.

"What, then, is the special faculty of the organ of individuality and its sphere of activity? Persons endowed with this faculty in a high degree are attentive to all that happens around them; to every object, to every phenomenon, to every fact: hence also to motions. This faculty neither learns the qualities of objects, nor the details of facts it knows only their existence. The qualities of the objects, and the particularities of the facts, are known by the assistance of other organs. Besides, this faculty has knowledge of all internal faculties, and acts upon them. It wishes to know all by experience; consequently it puts every organ into action: it wishes to hear, see, smell, taste, and touch; to know all arts and sciences; it is fond of instruction, collects facts, and leads to practical knowledge." 1

In the next page he affirms that "crystallography is the result of the organ of form," and that we do not get the ideas of roughness and smoothness from the touch. But I will end here, and turn to the amusing account of Dousterswivel in the Antiquary! 2

1 Page 430.

2 It appears, I understand, from an ingenious paper published by Dr. Combe of Edinburgh, that three heads have caused considerable