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1. Sentiments common to Man and the lower Animals.

10. SELF-ESTEEM.

THIS organ is situated at the back part of the mesial region of the vertex, where the coronal surface begins to decline toward the occiput, and a little above the posterior or sagittal angle of the parietal bones. When it is large the head rises far upward and backward from the ear, in the direction of it.

Dr. Gall gives the following account of the discovery of the organ: A beggar attracted his attention by his extraordinary manners. He reflected on the causes which, independently of an absolutely vicious conformation or of misfortunes, could reduce a man to mendicity, and believed that he had found one of the chief of them in levity and want of foresight. The form of the head of the beggar in question confirmed him in this opinion. He was young and of an agreeable exterior, and the organ of Cautiousness was very little developed. Dr. Gall moulded his head, and, on examining it with attention, remarked, in the upper and back part of the middle line, a prominence extending from above downward, which could arise only from developement of the cerebral parts there situated. He had not previously observed this prominence in other heads; and, on this account, he was very anxious to discover what it indicated. The head, moreover, was small, and announced neither strong feelings nor much intellect. After many questions, addressed to him with a view to discover the re

Phrenological observations on the head and character of this arrogant and dissolute pope will be found in Dr. Spurzheim's Phrenology in Connexion with the Study of Physiognomy, p. 71. It was Alexander who assumed the power of dividing the new world between the kings of Spain and Portugal, granting to the former the territory on the west of an imaginary line running from north to south through the Atlantic Ocean.

markable traits of his character, Dr. Gall requested him to reiate his history. The beggar said that he was the son of a rich merchant, from whom he had inherited a considerable fortune; that he had always been so proud as not to be able to condescend to apply to business, either for the preservation of his paternal fortune, or to acquire a new one; and that this unhappy pride was the only cause of his misery. This, says Dr. Gall, "called to my recollection those persons who forbear to cut their nails, He with the view of supporting the idea that they never need to work." made several remarks to the beggar, and showed him that he doubted his veracity; but the man always reverted to his pride, and seriously stated, that even now he could not resolve to follow any kind of labour. Although it was difficult to conceive how pride should cause any one to prefer begging to working,* yet Dr. Gall was led, by this person's reiterated assurances, to reflect upon the sentiment, and to observe the organ; and he found, at length, incontrovertible proofs of their connexion.

He mentions a variety of cases in illustration, of which I select only the following:

A young man, endowed with faculties above mediocrity, had manifested, from his infancy, insupportable pride. He constantly maintained that he was of too good a family to work, or apply himself to anything. Nothing could free him from this absurdity; he was even put, for eighteen months, into a house of correction at Hainar. A physician of Vienna, an otherwise amiable man, carried the feeling of pride to such a height, that every time when called to a consultation, even with practitioners older than himself, or with public professors, he regularly took the precedence, both in entering and coming out of the apartment. When any document was to be subscribed, he insisted on affixing his signature first. He had connected himself with the director of the great hospital, but solely, as he himself told afterward, for the purpose of supplanting him. At Heidelberg Dr. Gall saw a girl of eighteen, of a remarkable character. Every word or gesture in the least familiar revolted her. She called on God on every occasion, as if he took a special interest in her affairs. When she spoke, assurance and presumption were painted in her features; she carried her head high, and a little backward, and all the movements of her head expressed pride. She was not capable of submission; when in a passion, she was violent, and disposed to proceed to all extremities. Although only the daughter of a quill-merchant, she spoke her native language with extraordinary purity, and communicated with none but persons of a rank superior to her own. In all these individuals the organ of SelfEsteem was very largely developed. Dr. Gall mentions, that he had examined also the heads of a number of chiefs of brigands, remarkable for this quality of mind, and that he had found the organ large in them all.

The faculty inspires with the sentiment of Self-Esteem or Self-love, and a due endowment of it produces only excellent effects. It imparts that degree of satisfaction with self which leaves the mind open to the enjoyment of the bounties of Providence and the amenities of life; it inspires us with that degree of confidence which enables us to apply our powers to the best advantage in every situation in which we are placed. It also aids in giving dignity in the eyes of others; and we shall find, in society, that that individual is uniformly treated with the most lasting and sincere respect, who esteems himself so highly as to contemn every action that is mean or unworthy of an exalted mind. By communicating this feeling of self-respect, it frequently and effectually aids the moral senti*From the description given of this individual's head, it is plain that he must have approached to idiocy; and his beggary seems to have been the result of a general imbecility of mind, accompanied with an inordinate endowment of Self-Esteem.

ments in resisting temptation. to vice. Several individuals in whom the organ is large, have stated to me that they have been restrained from forming improper connexions, by an overwhelming sense of the degradation which would result from doing so; and that they believed their better principles might have yielded to temptation, had it not been for the support afforded to them by the instinctive impulses of Self-Esteem.*

When the organ is too small, a predisposition to humility is the result. In such a case the individual wants confidence and a due sense of his own importance. He has no reliance upon himself; if the public or his superiors frown, he is unable to pursue even a virtuous course, through diffidence of his own judgment. Inferior talents, combined with a strong endowment of Self-Esteem, are often crowned with far higher success than more splendid abilities joined with this sentiment in a feebler degree. Dr. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, remarks, that it is better, upon the whole, to have too much, than too little, of this feeling; because, if we pretend to more than we are entitled to, the world will give us credit for at least what we possess; whereas, if we pretend to less, we shall be taken at our word, and mankind will rarely have the justice to raise us to the true level.

It is only when possessed in an inordinate degree, and indulged without restraint from higher faculties, that it occasions abuses. In children it then shows itself in pettishness and a wilful temper. Those children in whom the organ is small are generally obedient, and easily directed according to the will of others. In later life a great developement of the organ, with deficiency of the moral powers, produces arrogance, superciliousness of deportment, and selfishness. The first thought of persons so endowed is, how the thing proposed will affect themselves; they see the world and all its interests only through the medium of self. When it is very large, and Love of Approbation small, it prompts the individual to erect himself into a standard of manners and morals. He measures himself by himself, and contemns the opinions of all who differ from him. Men of this character sometimes marry beneath their rank, through sheer Self-Esteem. They cannot risk the mortification of a refusal from a lady of their own grade, and therefore address an inferior. They also set the opinions of society proudly at defiance.

I have seen individuals mistake the impulses of the sentiment under discussion for the inspiration of genius, and utter common-place observations with a solemnity and emphasis suitable only to concentrated wisdom. The musician, under its predominating influence, is sometimes led to embellish a tune with decorations of his own inventing, till its character is changed and the melody destroyed. In short, when the organ is inordinately large, it communicates to the individual a high sentiment of . his own importance, and leads him to believe that whatever he does or says is admirable, because it proceeds from him. It inspires him with magnificent notions of his own respectability, and prompts him, on comparing himself with others, to depreciate them, in order to raise himself in the scale of comparative excellence. It is an essential element in the disposition to censoriousness and envy. Persons who are fond of discussing the characters of others, and feel the tendency to vituperate rather than to praise them, will be found to have this organ large. It is the comparison with self, and a secret satisfaction at fancied superiority, that gives pleasure in this practice. Envy is the result of Self-Esteem, offended by the excellencies or superior happiness of others, and calling up Destructiveness to hate them.† To make way for this effect, however, Benevolence and Conscientiousness must be deficient.

* See The Phrenological Journal, iii., 85.

t See Phren. Journ., ix., 413. Jealousy arises from the same combination, with the addition of Secretiveness and Cautiousness.-Ibid.

An

Another effect of a predominating Self-Esteem is, to render the indivi dual extremely well satisfied with whatever belongs to himself. eminent phrenologist sailed as a passenger from the Clyde to a foreign port, in a vessel commanded by a person in whose head the organ was very largely developed, and saw many striking manifestations of it on the voyage. The captain said, that he estimated the vessel very lightly when he first saw her, but, after commanding her for some time, he thought her the first ship belonging to the Clyde. This was evidently because she had become his vessel. On his voyage he assumed the most dictatorial airs; told the passengers he would send them before the mast, that he was sole commander here, and that all must obey; spoke habitually of himself, and seemed to have an insatiable appetite for power. He possessed little reflection, and was deficient in Conscientiousness.* When Self-Esteem predominates, it gives an intense feeling of egotism; there is a proneness to use the emphatic I: "I did this, I said the other thing." The faculty then gives a solemn gravity to the manners, an authoritative commanding tone to the voice, and a kind of oracular turn to the mind, which frequently shows itself in the most ludicrous manner. Cobbett's whole life and writings indicate an excessively active SelfEsteem, aided by Combativeness ;† and he maintained, at different times, every variety of opinion that could enter the human imagination, and upon every point of his changeful creed he dogmatized with more than oracular assumption. Madame de Stael describes most graphically another illustrious example of the effects of an inordinate Self-Esteem, even on a powerful mind." Speaking of one of the heroes of the Revolution, she says, that he possessed considerable talents, "mais au lieu de travailler i s'etonnoit de lui même." Some individuals manifest a solemn good-natured patronising tendency toward others, indicated in discourse by epithets such as "my good sir," "my good fellow," and the like. This arises from Self-Esteem and Benevolence both large.

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Self-Esteem enters largely into the composition of that intolerant zeal which is so frequently displayed by professing Christians on behalf of their sectarian views. "There is no grace," says Cowper in one of his Letters, "that the spirit of self can counterfeit with more success than a religious zeal. A man thinks he is fighting for Christ, and he is fighting for his own notions. He thinks that he is skilfully searching the hearts of others, when he is only gratifying the malignity of his own; and charitably supposes his hearers destitute of all grace, that he may shine the more in his own eyes by comparison. When he has performed this noble task, he wonders that they are not converted: he has given it them soundly, and if they do not tremble, and confess that God is in him of a truth, he gives them up as reprobate, incorrigible, and lost for ever." Under the influence of this faculty some authors fall unconsciously into the excessive use of pronouns of the first person. The following example is taken from the works of Dugald Stewart, who was familiarly known among his friends by the appellation of "the amiable egotist :" "When I first ventured to appear before the public as an author," says he, "I resolved that nothing should ever induce me to enter into any controversy in defence of my conclusions, but to leave them to stand or fall by their own evidence. From the plan of inductive investigation which I was conscious of having steadily followed, as far as I was able, I knew that whatever mistakes might be detected in the execution of my design, no such fatal consequences were to be dreaded to my general undertaking, as might have been justly apprehended, had I presented to the world a connected system, founded on gratuitous hypothesis or on arbitrary definitions. The detections, on the contrary, of my occasional errors would, I flatter myself, from the invariable consistency and *See details in The Phrenological Journal, i., 259. + Ib., ii., 216.

harmony of truth, throw new lights on those inquiries which I had coa ducted with greater success; as the correction of a trifling mis-statement in an authentic history is often found, by completing an imperfect link or reconciling a seeming contradiction, to dispel the doubts which hung over the more faithful and accurate details of the narrative.

"In this hope I was fortified by the following sentence of Lord Bacon, which I thought I might apply to myself, without incurring the charge of presumption: Nos autem, si qua in re vel male credidimus, vel obdormivimus et minus attendimus vel defecimus in via et inquisitionem abru pimus, nihilo minus 118 MODIS RES NUDAS ET APERTAS EXHIBEMUS, ut errores nostri notari et separari possint; atque etiam, ut facilis et expedita sit laborum nostrorum continuatio.'

"As this indifference, however, about the fate of my particular doctrines arose from a deep-rooted conviction, both of the importance of my subject and of the soundness of my plan, it was impossible for me to be insensible to such criticisms as were directed against either of these two fundamental assumptions. Some criticisms of this description I had, from the first, anticipated; and I would not have failed to obviate them in the introduction to my former work, if I had not been afraid to expose myself to the imputation of prolixity, by conjuring up objections for the purpose of refuting them," &c.

Another amusing instance of a similar style of writing will be found in an account of himself by Flechier, Bishop of Nismes, prefixed to an edition of his "Oraisons Funebres," printed at Paris in 1802. I infer this to arise from a great endowment of Self-Esteem. A portrait of the author last-named is prefixed to his work, and a strong expression of Self-Esteem appears depicted on the countenance. The portraits of Gibbon also indicate this expression in a remarkable degree.* By pointing out these tendencies of the faculty, persons in whom the organ is large will be put upon their guard to avoid such ludicrous modes of its

manifestation.

Mr. William Scott has published, in the first volume of The Phrenological Journal, p. 378, an able exposition of the effects of a large SelfEsteem upon the character, when combined with each of the other faculties greatly developed; and additional illustrations will be found in vol. ii., pp. 57, 58, 60, 213; iv., 495; viii., 306, 496, 592; ix., 64, 258, 412. Perhaps there is no faculty of which a weak endowment is co rarely found as of Self-Esteem.

The feeling of individual personality has been supposed by some phrenologists to arise from this faculty; and they have been led to this conjecture by the undoubted fact, that the prominence which the firs! person assumes in the mind bears a proportion to the size of the organ of Self-Esteem.

Self-Esteem is an ingredient in the love of uniques. The high valu attached by some persons to objects which no other person can possess seems resolvable, to a great extent, into a gratification of this feeling In possessing the article they enjoy a superiority over the whole world

The

A ludicrous example of egotism in an antiphrenological Essay by the Rev. R. W. Hamilton, of Leeds, is quoted in The Phrenological Journal, (vol. iii.. p. 473,) where the following remark was made by the editor: "We have heard of an author whose MS. was detained in the press from his printer wanting a sufficient stock of capital I's to set up a single sheet of his work, but Mr. Hamilton, it appears, far surpasses that famed composer. present article has actually been returned to us, with an intimation, that it is difficult for our printers to find so many Roman capital I's, ME's, and MY's, as we had marked, and he has solicited to be allowed to use Italics. Our extracts extend to only four pages of Mr. Hamilton's pamphlet; what a store of I's the sheet would have required!"