Imagine another individual to commence life in the thorough conviction that the higher sentiments are the superior powers, and that they ought to be the sources of his habitual actions, the first effect would be to cause him to look habitually outward on other men and on his Creator, instead of looking habitually inward on himself as the object of his highest and chief regard. Benevolence would shed on his mind this conviction, that there are other human beings all as dear to the Creator as he, as much entitled to enjoyment as he, and that his duty is to seek no gratification to himself which is to injure them; but on the contrary, to act so as to confer on them, by his daily exertions, all the services in his power. Veneration would add a strong feeling of reliance on the power and wisdom of God, that such conduct would conduce to the highest gratification of all his faculties, and it would add also an habitual respect for his fellow men, as beings deserving his regard, and to whose reasonable wishes he was bound to yield a willing and sincere obedience; and, lastly, Conscientiousness would prompt him to apply the scales of rigid justice to all his animal desires, and to curb and restrain each so as to prevent the slightest infraction on what is due to his fellow men.

Let us trace, then, the operation of these principles in ordinary life. Suppose a friendship formed by such an individual; his first and fundamental principle is Benevolence, which inspires with a sincere, pure and disinterested love of his friend; he desires his welfare for his friend's sake; next Veneration re-enforces this love by the secret and grateful acknowledgment which it makes to Heaven for the joys conferred upon the mind by this pure emotion, and, also, by the habitual deference which it inspires towards our friend himself, rendering us ready to yield where compliance is becoming, and curbing our selfish feelings when these would intrude by interested or arrogant pretensions on his enjoyments; and, thirdly, Conscientiousness, ever on the watch, proclaims the duty of making no unjust demands on the Benevolence of our friend, but of limiting our whole intercourse with him to an interchange of kindness, good offices, and reciprocal affection. Intellect, acting along with these principles, would point out, as an indispensable requisite to such an attachment, that the friend himself should be so far under the influence of the sentiments, as to be able, in some degree, to meet them; for, if he were immoral, selfish, vainly ambitious, or, in short, under the habitual influence of the propensities, the sentiments could not love and respect him as an object fitted to be taken to their bosom; they might pity and respect him as unfortunate, but love him they could not, because this is impossible by the very laws of their constitution.

Let us now attend to the degree in which such a friendship would

VOL. III.-27.

gratify the lower propensities. In the first place, how would Adhesive ness exult and rejoice in such an attachment! It would be overpowered with delight, because, if the intellect were convinced that the friend habitually acknowledged the supremacy of the higher sentiments, Adhesiveness might pour forth all its ardor, and cling to its object with the closest bonds of affection. The friend would not encroach on us for evil, because his Benevolence and Justice would oppose this; he would not lay aside restraint, and break through the bonds of affection by undue familiarity, because Veneration would forbid this; he would not injure us in our name, person or reputation, because Conscientiousness, Veneration, and Benevolence, all combined, would forbid such conduct. Here then, Adhesiveness, freed from the fear of evil, from the fear of deceit, from the fear of dishonor, because a friend who should habitually act thus could not possibly fall into dishonor, would be at liberty to take its deepest draught of affectionate attachment; it would receive a gratification which it is impossible it could attain while acting in combination with the purely selfish faculties. What delight, too, would such a friendship afford to Self-esteem and Love of Approbation! There would be an internal approval of ourselves, that would legitimately gratify Self-esteem, because it would arise from a survey of pure motives and just and benevolent actions. Love of Approbation also would be gratified in the highest degree; for every act of affection, every expression of esteem, from such a friend, would be so purified by Benevolence, Veneration and Conscientiousness, that it would form the legitimate food on which Love of Approbation might feast and be satisfied; it would fear no hollowness beneath, no tattling in absence, no secret smoothing over for the sake of mere effect, no envyings and no jealousies. In short, friendship founded on the higher sentiments, as the ruling motives, would delight the mind with gladness and sunshine, and gratify all the faculties, animal, moral and intellectual, in harmony with each other.

By this illustration the reader will understand more clearly what we mean by the harmony of the faculties. The fashionable and commercial friendships of which we spoke, gratified the propensities of Adhesiveness, Love of Approbation, Self-esteem and Acquisitiveness, but left out as fundamental principles all the higher sentiments-there was, therefore, a want of harmony in these instances, an absence of full satisfaction, an uncertainty and changeableness, which gave rise to only a mixed and imperfect enjoyment while the friendship lasted, and to a feeling of painful disappointment, and of vanity and vexation, when a rupture occurred. The error, in such cases, consists in founding attachment on the lower faculties, seeing the Creator never intended them to form a

stable basis of affection, instead of building it on the higher sentiments, which he meant to form the foundation of real, lasting and satisfactory friendship. In complaining of the vanity and vexation of attachments springing from the lower faculties exclusively, we are like men who should try to build a pyramid on its smaller end, and then lament the hardness of their fate, and speak of the unkindness of Providence, when it fell.

(To be continued.)

ARTICLE V.

CONTINUED REMARKS UPON VARIOUS MENTAL PHENOMENA.

BY J. R. BUCHANAN, M. D.

A large developement of Locality produces a vivid and never-ceasing consciousness of the place where we are, and the direction in which we are going. It is therefore impossible for persons thus endowed to lose their way in travelling. If the organ be small, the action of the faculty cannot be so vigorous and unremitting; when the attention relaxes, when some other faculty is brought into play more vigorously, or when our attention is fixed upon something else, we fail to perceive the direction correctly, and perhaps for a moment we are quite unconscious of locality or course-in this manner we make successive mistakes, increasing our error until we are so far mistaken as to be lost. If the organ be still smaller, we are continually forgetting where we are, and are momently unconscious of place. We wake up in the house of a stranger, fancy that we are at home, and discovering our mistake, forget how we came there. Thus far is absence of mind connected with deficient Locality, and by this specimen which we present for illustration, the whole philosophy of absence of mind may be conceived. When the oculoperceptive organs are large, we have always that presence of mind which consists in a vivid consciousness of objects around us. When the meditating philosopher unconsciously walks into the canal, those organs which would observe external objects are manifestly inactive. But large organs do not slumber or cease to act in the presence of their proper objects; on the contrary, they have a greater tendency to activity than any others, and experience the highest excitement when their proper stimuli are presented. If their perception frequently fails, and such absence of mind is common, we may infer that the perceptive organs

are small. In the case of a clergyman of Mississippi, I found these organs very small, and an incident which happened with him will show the effect. Riding on a tour, he was engaged in meditation and reading some good book, leaving his movements chiefly to the guidance of his horse. The sagacious animal went on correctly and arriving at the Big Black river, passed down into the ferry boat; his rider finding that he had stopped, and unconscious of the cause, urged him on, and actually rode through the boat plump into the river! We doubt not his presence of mind was fully restored as he swam ashore, holding up his book.

In the Illinois Legislature, finding Judge B. deficient in the power of auricular perception, I pronounced him liable in that respect to absence of mind. It was said of him that when engaged in study, it was useless to speak to him; his attention was absorbed, and was entirely unconscious of being spoken to. Almost every one has heard of some instance of absence of mind-of persons who sit in company unconscious of what passes, and unconscious of being addressed. The humorists have collected or manufactured a great number of amusing or ridiculous scenes growing out of this absence. The absence of mind as to external objects and sounds, is occasionally complicated with an absence of mind as to time, and as to the usual course of events-(a deficiency of Eventuality and Time.) This was the case with the clergyman who is said to have taken his horse to go to church, and who then forgetting to mount him, walked the whole way, leading him. The story is improved by the additional circumstance that his horse having slipped off his bridle on the way, the reverend gentleman appeared at church before his parishioners with the bridle dragging from his arm.

Absence of mind may thus have a varied character, depending upon a deficiency in observation, either auricular or ocular, and sometimes upon a deficiency in memory. There is another species of absence of mind equally injurious, dependant upon a deficiency of the organ of the sense of feeling. The locality and function of this organ, I discovered in 1837, and have since taught in my lectures. Lying upon the external wing of the sphenoid bone, its developement is easily ascertained. Upon this organ, however, I shall make no farther remark at present, than that it may be subdivided into the organ of touch and the organ of sensation. By means of the organ of the Sense of Feeling, we are conscious of the existence of our body, and of all its sensations. Whatever, internally or externally, makes an impression upon our nerves of sensation, the impression is recognized by the organ of Feeling. But if the organ be very small, the impression is not recognized-we sit with a draft of

cold air blowing upon the back, and unconscious of it at the time, we are surprised next day at finding that we have a cold. While engaged in conversation, we may cut the fingers with a pen-knife, or endure the bites of insects, without being at all conscious. For the same reason, we may observe that some persons are very apt to drop a whip, handkerchief, or pair of gloves, when they are looking at other objects, as the sense of touch then does not keep them conscious of what they are holding. Others continue engaged in conversation until they shiver in the cold, without thinking of the need of fire, and go through arduous or fatal labors without being conscious that they are breaking down their constitutions. This form of mental absence is occasionally seen to an unfortunate extent in those idiots who are very narrow at the basis of the brain, and thus defective in the vital, self-preservative forces. These poor creatures require our constant care.

There is another species of absence of mind which is connected with the faculty of Time. Those who have a great endowment of this faculty are never mistaken as to the hour, and need no watch. Those who are defective in it, commit the grossest mistakes if they have not something near them for a standard. Time with them flies either too fast or too slow. Great excitement in some cases increases the apparent length of time, and in others causes it to slip by unperceived, as when we are listening to an eloquent address, or engaged in interesting conversation. In poetical phrase,

"Noiseless falls the foot of Time, that only treads on flowers,"

and we may add equally noiseless in other cases when his path is not very flowery. A woman in Florida who had fled in the night from the attack of the Indians upon her house, remarked that it seemed the shortest night that she had ever known. Intense attention and excitement seem thus to suspend the action of the faculty of Time; and the merry parties of the young, when summoned from their festivities, generally express their surprise at the lateness of the hour.

After I had been testing and teaching for two or three years the foregoing doctrine as regards the organ of Sound, I read with pleasure an able article upon the subject in the Edingburgh Phrenological Journal, presenting substantially the same idea, from the pen of Jas. Simpson, Esq. Mr. Simpson is not only an excellent phrenologist, but is one of our best living writers, and I should be happy to learn that his time was more devoted to the cultivation of phrenology. We need the labors of many such minds to give it a place among the practical and accurate sciences.

As every organ seeks action or indulgence, a large developement of