husband, disinterestedly desiring the happiness of his wife, would meet and rejoice in her Benevolence desiring disinterestedly his enjoyment; Veneration in the one, directed in respectful deference, would meet the same sentiment emanating like a blessed influence from the other's mind, and the perception of this quality would satisfy that faculty itself that its respect was worthily bestowed; with Conscientiousness, regulating all the manifestations of each, would remove the fear of every extreme, either in selfishness or fondness. How then would Adhesiveness and Philoprogenitiveness rejoice and delight in such society! The children would be loved by both parents, not as mere appendages of self, but as being committed by a bountiful God to their care, to be the objects on whom their moral and intellectual faculties were to be in a peculiar degree exercised and employed. The wish which would then animate the parents would be to see their offspring excel in moral and intellectual qualities, convinced by personal experience, that these were the only stable and certain sources of prosperity and enjoyment on earth. The children, treated habitually under the guidance of these superior sentiments, would rise up dutiful, obedient, rational, and delighted; and the result would prove that the Creator has established peace and joy on the basis of the moral sentiments, and given the propensities as additional sources of gratification only when held subordinate to them. Suppose affliction to happen to such a family; that some of their members were removed by death; the pressure of such a calamity would be greatly mitigated by the purity of the sources from which their affection flowed. Benevolence would glow with a redoubled fervor around the sick bed, and sooth its sorrows. Veneration would inspire with a deep sentiment of resignation to the Divine will, easing the mind of more than half its load; Conscientiousness would join the other faculties in looking abroad into the world, and in acknowledging that, as the removal of one being is the signal for transmitting the enjoyments of life to another, there was no just cause for repining that the object had been taken away from this family, seeing others flourished and enjoyed the gifts of the Creator, to be resigned also by them, after a time, into other hands; while Hope would point to a better world into which the sufferer had been received. It is when the animal faculties alone are the sources of affection, that calamity presses with intolerable severity. Philoprogenitiveness, Adhesiveness, and Self-esteem, while principally active, and concentrating all the views and wishes of the mind on self, experience a dreadful agony on the removal of their objects; they possess no source of consolation, time alone being capable of bringing relief by allaying their activity.

Suppose, again, as a contrast, a family animated chiefly by the lower

faculties, to sustain severe loss of property, and to be reduced from competence to poverty; if the chief motives of the parents previously have been Acquisitiveness, Love of Approbation, and Self-esteem, such a visitation would affect them thus: They would see the sole object of their solicitude, their wealth, torn from them in an instant; they would feel their previous life lost, as it were, and annihilated, the only abiding memorial of it being swept away. As they had founded their hopes of the welfare and advancment of their children exclusively on the substance they were to leave them, they would feel desolate and bereft, and be overwhelmed with regret and mortification, that their offspring were now to be left beggars and unprovided for. As they had founded their claims to rank and consideration in society, chiefly on their possessions, and moved in the world in all the splendor of affluance, more to gratify their own Self-esteem and Love of Approbation, than to shed the sunshine of prosperity on others; and as the loss of property would hurl them from this throne of selfish magnificence, bitter would be the pang, deep and poignant the distress on their fall: yet all these miseries, it will be observed, originate from the merely animal feelings.

To reverse the picture, and shew the result of conduct flowing habitually from the higher sentiments, let us, as a last illustration, take the opposite case of a family whose parents have been habitually animated by the higher sentiments, and suppose some dire calamity, some wasting flood or deadly wreck, to blast the fruits of their toils, and leave them poor and unprovided for at an advanced period of life. Such misfortunes, we may observe, would not be very likely to happen to them, because the evils sent by Providence, altogether independent of our own misconduct, are comparatively few; but let us suppose them to occur. Then, as their chief sources of enjoyment, when in prosperity, were the gratifications of the higher sentiments, it is not difficult to perceive that they would be bereft comparatively of little. If their consequence in society was founded on the kindliness, the generous interest, which they felt for others, on the humility of their own deportment, their respectful deference to their fellow men, and on the rigid justice which they observed in all their conduct, how little of these qualities would the loss of wealth impair? If, in the days of their prosperity, Self-esteem and Love of Approbation did not seek gratification in the display of mere magnificence and selfish superiority, the loss of external circumstances would not deprive those faculties of their objects; they might still love their fellow men, although their sphere of active benevolence were contracted; they might still love God, and bow with submission to his will; they might still be upright in all their dealings; and while they were so, their

Self-esteem and Love of Approbation would meet with a full and ample share of legitimate gratification. The moral sentiments of society would, by the very law of their nature, flow towards them in their misfortunes with a more profound homage than would be paid to them even in their prosperity. The deep wounds of adversity are suffered solely by the propensities; and it is because the sentiments have not been the sources of habitual conduct while fortune smiled, that it is so painful, or even impossible to throw one's self on them for consolation, and to rely on them for respect, when the clouds of misfortune have gathered around

us.

In regard to the children of the family which we have supposed, the parents, being convinced that prosperity and happiness depend altogether on obedience to the dictates of the higher sentiments, would see that the moral dispositions and intellectual cultivation of their offspring were to constitute the real sources of their advancement in life; they would perceive that, if they sent them into the world qualified to discharge the duties of their station, they had the pledge of the Creator that the just recompense would not be withheld from them; and, trusting thus in the goodness of God, and in the supremacy of the moral faculties, they could even die in peace and hope, unrepining and undejected by all the bereave ments that had befallen them.

In short, viewing the world on every side, we discover that while the undirected gratification of the lower propensities are selfish, unstable. unsatisfactory, and often impossible, the enjoyments afforded by the higher sentiments, acting in combination with intellect, are pure, elevated, generous, entirely satisfactory, and, to an amazing extent, independent of time, place, and outward circumstances.

It may be asked, what has phrenology to do with all the doctrine now delivered, which, it may be said, is neither more nor less than old common-place morality, easily preached, but utterly impracticable in society? The answer is, that till phrenology was discovered, the theory, or philosophical principle on which this morality is founded, was unknown, and that in consequence it was infinitely more difficult to carry it into practice. The faculties exist, and each of them fills the mind with its peculiar desires; but men who do not know phrenology, experience far greater difficulty in discriminating uses from abuses of the propensities, than those who, by its aid, are in the habit of referring every feeling to its source. In fact, so much is this the case, that, at the writings of the most moral authors, and even from the pulpit in the present day, we occasionally observe errors of a grave description committed in characterizing abuses of the lower feelings as virtues, and in estimating falsely

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the merit of various actions. We are far less likely to be misled by the inspirations of Acquisitiveness, Secretiveness, Self-esteem, and Love of Approbation, when we have become familiarly acquainted with all the forms and degrees of these faculties, with the effect which each manifestation of them produces on other minds, and with the barren and unsatisfactory, consequences to which they all lead, when permitted to run to excess, than if we were acquainted with these principles and results. In the next place, phrenology, by revealing to us, with clear and demonstrable evidence, the existence of the higher sentiments in men, by making us familiarly acquainted with their sphere of activity, objects and enjoyments, opens up to our view the most beautiful feature of human nature, and enables us to trust in it and love with a far sincerer sympathy and respect than while the existence of such elements was either disbelieved, or was the subject only of cold conjecture. While every individual drew his philosophy from his own internal feelings, the selfish man could see the race only as selfish, the ambitious man could see it only as ambitious, and those persons alone whose natural dispositions were of the highest order could obtain a glimpse of its really excellent qualities. Phrenology, by demonstrating the existence of the higher sentiments, removes this circumscribing and chilling influence of ignorance, and enables us with confidence to address ourselves to the moral feelings of our species, and to rely on their operation; it removes countless fears, which the animal feelings, when blind, suggest about the arrangements of Providence in this lower world, and, finally, by rendering us acquainted with the natural language of the higher powers, and with their objects and desires, it enables us to go directly to their fountains, to call them forth, and cause them to flow around us in a pure, copious, and fertilizing stream.

ARTICLE IV.

ON THE DEVELOPEMENT AND FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM IN

ANIMALS. *

"The brain differs most widely in quadrupeds, birds, fishes, insects-and there is equal difference in their intellectual phenomena, appetites, instincts, every variation in construction being accompanied with a corresponding modification of function." -Sir Wm. Lawrence.

When we examine any given portion of the nervous system-the brain, the spinal chord, the ganglions, or any part of these we can * Communicated to the Edinburgh Phrenological Journal (No. 16,) by Thomas Sandwith, Surgeon, of Hull.

VOL. III.-30.

discover nothing of the functions which any of these perform. We do not, as in some of the other organs, perceive a mechanical connexion between the structure and its particular uses; but when we take a comparative survey of the nervous systems of the entire animal kingdom, the result is very different. It is then "the simplification or degradation of the organization is immediately perceptible." Perfection of function is seen in connexion with full developement of nervous matter, deficiency with imperfect organization, and absolute negation of function, with a corresponding chasm in the structure of the nervous system; and this is true, not only" of the four great departments of the animal kingdom, but is equally so in each department." Being strictly experimental, this evidence is highly valuable. To compare a perfectly organized animal, in which there is a corresponding perfection of function, with another in which structure and function are alike defective, is the same in effect as to ascertain the functions of the more gifted animal by the mutilation of its organ. It is, indeed, with the exception of the facts supplied by pathology, the only kind of evidence open to the physiologist. The nerves themselves admit of mutilation and division, and to experiments of this kind, we are indebted for our recent knowledge of the functions of the spinal marrow. But when the centre of the system is invaded by the knife, many impediments besides death defeat the purposes of the experimenter. "The animals of inferior classes," says Mr. Lawrence, "are so many subjects of experiments ready prepared for us, where any organ may be observed under every variety of simplicity and complication in its own structure of existence alone, or in combination with others." Being presented, then, with experiments prepared by the hand of nature, who has, as it were, performed the necessary mutilations, and left no wound or scar, and no embarrassing disturbance of function, it is our business to examine them with attention, in order to ascertain whether they agree with the conclusions at which we have arrived by their means.

In the lowest order of animals, zoophytes, many of which seem to form the connecting link between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and in some worms, which again connect zoophytic animals with the tribes above them, no nervous system is discoverable. The actions of these animals being apparently automatic, as in plants, which the radicated ones so greatly resemble, neither brain nor spinal chord are necessary; and indeed the existence of nerves has only been inferred from their being apparently endowed with sensation. But this mode of proof is by no means conclusive, since in them, as well as in the mimosa and other vegetables, which are sensible to the action of light and other