PHRENOLOGY (Greek, phren, mind; logos, discourse), the science which teaches that there exists a relation between the several faculties of the mind and particular regions of the brain, and that these are the organs of those faculties; in accordance with this theory phrenologists chart the cranium of man in sec tions, each section being taken to represent the seat in the brain .of some definite faculty or mental or moral disposition. That the brain as a whole is the organ of mind we should in cline to regard as an instinctive judgment were it not that some of the most highly gifted races, as the Hebrews, the Egyptians, nay even the Hellenes, as is proved by their vocabularies and their literature, recognized various organs and viscera as the seats of the intellective and of the emotional faculties; the heart, for ex ample, was for the primitive Romans the seat of understanding, of wisdom, as also for the Egyptians, the Hebrews, the Greeks; but at the same time it was for them the organ of feeling and emotion. But Pythagoras (6th century B.c.) held the brain to be the seat and organ of understanding; yet Aristotle, 200 years later, taught that the heart is the master organ of life and inelligence, and that the brain is a cold, inert, bloodless organ, the sole function of which is to temper the heart's excessive heat. But for Plato the heart was the chief organ of intellect, and the great naturalists, anatomists, and physicians who lived later adhered to Pythagoras' view despite the very high authority of the Stagirite. Even in the Middle Ages when Aristotle's authority was supreme, the scholastic philosophers rejected his doctrine on this point, and Albertus Magnus, in the 13th century, and very many other philosophers and naturalists after him, divined a localization of faculties in the brain. Albertus saw in the anterior region the seat of judgment or ratiocination, in the medial, that of imagination, and in the posterior region the seat of the mem ory; and his successors in a similar way dis tributed the seats of the several faculties of the soul in the different regions of the brain. Hence, Francis Joseph Gall, though justly ac counted the founder of modern phrenology, did but revive the ancient knowledge and de velop it further. He expounded his views on the subject in lectures at Vienna in 1796 and later, but in 1802 was compelled to discontinue them by order of the Austrian government prompted by the ecclesiastical authorities. Gall• had already attached to himself a gifted pupil and efficient coadjutor in the person of John Gaspar Spurzheim, and the pair pursued their investigations in concert and delivered lectures on phrenology throughout France and Great Britain. In both countries they gained enthu
siastic disciples not only among the less edu cated class but among the learned also — such men as Sir George Mackenzie, Archbishop Whately, Laycock, Macnish, Andrew Combe: the last named was universally recognized as the ablest expositor of the doctrine in Great Britain, and its indefatigable propagandist. Phrenological societies sprang up everywhere in England and the United States, and the prin ciples of the science were propounded and de fended in a number of periodicals, British and American, the first both in point of time and in authority being the British Phrenological Jour nal, published in Edinburgh and edited by Dr. Combe till his death in the United States, 1847. The popular interest in phrenology which for 30 years or more was at fever heat languished and died away till now phrenological societies are heard of no more and phrenology for years had but one representative in the periodical press of the United States. Fowler and Wells of New York were the last publishers to take an active interest in the science, and Nelson A. Sizer was the last of active phrenologists.
Phrenology, as finally developed, is the work rather of Spurzheim and of Combe than of its first founder, Gall. Gall located 27 special faculties out of the 35 usually recognized; but to Spurzheim is due the credit of having sys tematized and justified Gall's data and of hav ing enriched the science with important dis coveries. Not the least of Dr. Spurzheim's merits is the improvement made by him in the nomenclature of the science: for example, when what in Gall's scheme is called murder, Spurz heim calls destructiveness, a term which is more comprehensive as well as more exact ; or when of Gall's two terms veneration and religion Spurzheim retains only the first, in which the second is comprised. The 27 faculties identified by Gall are by Gall himself named and num bered as follows: 1, veneration; 2, love of off spring; 3, friendship; 4, courage, self-defense; 5, murder; 6, cunning; 7, the sentiment of property; 8, pride, self-esteem, haughtiness; 9, vanity, ambition; 10, cautiousness; 11, memory of things, educability; 12, local memory; 13, the memory for persons; 14, memory for words; 15, memory for languages; 16, colors; 17, music; 18, number; 19, aptitude for draw ing conclusions; 22, wit; 23, poetry; 24, good nature; 25, mimicry; 26, religion: 27, firmness of character. (The numerical figures do not apply to Spurzheim's phrenological chart).