We are nearing the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign. A London writer, reviewing the changes which have taken place in the period marks these notable points: A strange country was England in those far-off days; there was but little difference between the general state of society under William and the general state of society under George II. If we compared the courts of George IV. and William with the company of a low tap-room, we should not flatter the tap-room. Broad-blown coarseness, rank debauchery, reckless prodigality, were seen at their worst in the abode of English monarchs. A decent woman was out of place amid the stupid horrors of the Pavilion or of Windsor; and we do not wonder at the sedulous care which the Queen’s guardians employed to keep her beyond reach of the prevailing corruption. A man like the Duke of Cumberland would not now be permitted to show his face in public save in the dock; but in those times his peculiar habits were regarded as quite royal and quite natural. Jockeys, blacklegs, gamblers, prize-fighters were esteemed as the natural companions of princes; and when England’s king drove up to the verge of a prize-ring in the company of a burly rough who was about to exchange buffets with another rough, the proceeding was considered as quite manly and orthodox. Imagine the Prince of Wales driving in the park with a champion boxer!
A strange country indeed was England in those times; and to look through the newspapers and memoirs of fifty years ago is an amusement at once instructive and humiliating. The king dines with the premier duke, makes him drunk, and has him carefully driven round the streets, so that the public may see what an intoxicated nobleman is like. The same king pushes a statesman into a pond, and screams with laughter as the drenched victim crawls out. Morning after morning the chief man of the realm visits the boxing-saloon, and learns to batter the faces and ribs of other noble gentlemen. We hear of visits paid by royalty to an obscure Holborn tavern, where, after noisy suppers, the fighting-men were wont to roar their hurricane choruses and talk with many blasphemies of by-gone combats. Think of that succession of ugly and foul sports compared with the peace, the refinement, the gentle and subdued manners of Victoria’s court, and we see how far England has travelled since 1837.
Fifty years ago our myriads of kinsmen across the seas were strangers to us, and the amazing friendship which has sprung up between the subjects of Victoria and the citizens of the vast republic was represented fifty years ago by a kind of sheepish, good-humored ignorance, tempered by jealousy. The smart packets left London and Liverpool to thrash their way across the Atlantic swell, and they were lucky if they managed to complete the voyage in a month—Charles Dickens sailed in a vessel which took twenty-two days for the trip, and she was a steamer, no less! For all practical purposes England and America are now one country. The trifling distance of 3,000 miles across the Atlantic seems hardly worth counting, according to our modern notions; and the American gentleman talks quite easily and naturally about running over to London or Paris to see a series of dramatic performances or an exhibition of pictures. When Victoria began to reign the English people mostly regarded America as a dim region, and the voyage thither was a fearsome understanding.
There is something in the catalogue of mechanical devices which almost affects the mind with fatigue. Fifty years ago the ordinary citizen picked up his ideas of all that was going on in the world from a sorely-taxed news-sheet; and a very blurred idea he managed to get at the best. Poor folk had to do without the luxury of the news, and they were as much circumscribed mentally as though they had been cattle; we remember a village where even in 1852 the common people did not know who the Duke of Wellington was. No such thing as a newspaper had been seen there within the memory of man; only one or two of the natives had seen a railway engine, and nobody in the whole village row had been known to visit a town. But now-a-days the villager has his high-class news-sheet; and he is very much discontented indeed if he does not see the latest intelligence from America, India, Australia, China—everywhere. An American statesman’s conversation of Monday afternoon is reported accurately in the London journals on Tuesday morning; a speech of Mr. Gladstone’s delivered at midnight on one day is summarized in New York and San Francisco the next day; the result of a race run at Epsom is known in Bombay within forty minutes. We use no paradox when we say that every man in the civilized world now lives next door to everybody else; oceans are merely convenient pathways, howling deserts are merely handy places for planting telegraph poles and for swinging wires along which thoughts travel between country and country with the velocity of lightning. We see that the world with its swarming populations is growing more and more like some great organism whereof the nerve-centres are subtly, delicately connected by sensitive nerve-tissues. Even now, using a lady’s thimble, two pieces of metal, and a little acid, we can speak to a friend across the Atlantic gulf, and before ten years are over, a gentleman in London will doubtless be able to sit in his office and hear the actual tones of some speaker in New York.
So much has the magic half century brought about.
If we think of the scientific knowledge possessed by the most intelligent men when the Queen ascended the throne, we can hardly refrain from smiling, for it seems as though we were studying the mental endowment of a race of children. The science of electricity was in its infancy; the laws of force were misunderstood; men did not know what heat really was. They knew next to nothing of the history of the globe, and they accounted for the existence of varying species of plants and animals by means of the most infantine hypotheses. A complete revolution—vital and all-embracing—has altered our modes of thought, so that the man of 1887 can scarcely bring himself to conceive the state of mind which contented the man of 1837. We have dark doubts now, perplexing misgivings, weary uncertainties, painful consciousness of limited powers; but along with these weaknesses we have our share of certainties. Are we happier? Nay, not in mind. A quiet melancholy marks the words of all the men who have thought most deeply and learned most. The wise no longer cry out or complain—they accept life and fate with calm sadness, and perhaps with prayerful resignation. We have learned to know how little we can know, and we see with composure that even the miracles already achieved by the restless mind of man are as nothing.
There is a far better reason than this for the sadness of thinking men. It is that, with all the progress of science, art, and education, poverty, misery, disease, and crime still afflict society as they did in ruder ages, and our progress is onward, but not upward. It is upward progress to which the Journal of Man is devoted.
In the foregoing sketch very little is said of the real progress of the age—the increase of education, the uprising of the people into greater political power and liberty, the prostration of the power of the church, which is destined to disestablishment, and the uprising of spiritual science.
What is there in the reign of Victoria to be celebrated? Was there ever a more perfect specimen of barely respectable commonplace than the reign of Victoria? What generous impulse, or what notable wisdom has she ever shown? What has she done for the relief of Ireland, for the improvement of a society full of pauperism, crime and suffering, or for the prevention of unjust foreign wars? When has she ever given even a respectable gift to any good object from her enormous income? But virtue is not expected in sovereigns; they are expected only to enjoy themselves hugely, to make an ostentatious display, and consume all their benighted subjects give them.
Mrs. Stanton says:—“The two great questions now agitating Great Britain are ‘Coercion for Ireland,’ and the ‘Queen’s Jubilee,’ a tragedy and a comedy in the same hour.”
Speaking of the Queen’s Jubilee she says:
“In this supreme moment of the nation’s political crisis, the Queen and her suite are junketing around in their royal yachts on the coast of France, while proposing to celebrate her year of Jubilee by levying new taxes on her people, in the form of penny and pound contributions to build a monument to Prince Albert. The year of Jubilee! While under the eyes of the Queen her Irish subjects are being evicted from their holdings at the point of the bayonet; their cottages burned to the ground; aged and helpless men and women and newborn children, alike left crouching on the highways, under bridges, hayricks and hedges, crowded into poorhouses, jails and prisons, to expiate their crimes growing out of poverty on the one hand and patriotism on the other.
“A far more fitting way to celebrate the year of Jubilee would be for the Queen to scatter the millions hoarded in her private vaults among her needy subjects, to mitigate, in some measure, the miseries they have endured from generation to generation; to inaugurate some grand improvement in her system of education; to extend still further the civil and political rights of her people; to suggest, perchance, an Inviolable Homestead Bill for Ireland, and to open the prison doors to her noble priests and patriots.
“But instead of such worthy ambitions in the fiftieth year of her reign, what does the Queen propose? With her knowledge and consent, committees of ladies are formed in every county, town and village in all the colonies under her flag, to solicit these penny and pound contributions, to be placed at her disposal.
“Ladies go from house to house, not only to the residences of the rich, but to the cottages of the poor, through all the marts of trade, the fields, the factories, begging pennies for the Queen from servants and day-laborers.”
These forced collections are not entirely for the benefit of the Queen, but are to be appropriated also to a vast variety of local objects and institutions.
The ancient philosopher Diogenes, whom even the presence of Alexander could not overawe, is one of the most marked and heroic figures of ancient history. It is said “The Athenians admired his contempt for comfort, and allowed him a wide latitude of comment and rebuke. Practical good was the chief aim of his philosophy; for literature and the fine arts he did not conceal his disdain. He laughed at men of letters for reading the sufferings of Ulysses while neglecting their own; at musicians who spent in stringing their lyres the time which would have been much better employed in making their own discordant natures harmonious; at savants for gazing at the heavenly bodies while sublimely incognizant of earthly ones; at orators who studied how to enforce truth, but not how to practice it. * When asked what business he was proficient in, he answered, ‘to command men.’”
Psychometry brings up these ancient characters as vividly and truthfully as history. Such psychometric descriptions are a continual miracle. How the psychometers, knowing not of whom they are speaking, guided only by a mysterious intuition, should speak of the most ancient characters as familiarly and truly as of our acquaintances to-day, will ever stand as a psychic miracle, to illustrate the Divine Wisdom that established such a power in man. This is the daily experience of Mrs. Buchanan. Her description of Diogenes was as follows:
“I think this is an ancient. There is something quaint about him. He does not seem to follow anything or anybody. He lived a natural life, indifferent to current teachings. He had peculiar original ideas of his own as to life and its purposes, and seems to be a man of philanthropic nature, not æsthetic, but very indifferent as to personal appearance and habits, or as to pleasing people, not at all fastidious. He did not mind people’s opinions in the least. They never disturbed him.
“He had enough combativeness to fight his way through difficulties. He had great self-reliance, and did not mind obstacles. If he had to take part in disturbances, he was ready, and had tact and tactics. He had a peculiar power of governing men, and a peculiar way of gaining confidence and esteem. He did not show off at all, and was not at all condescending. He had a great deal of sagacity. He regarded as trifles things people considered as momentous.
“(To what country did he belong?) He was probably a Greek, but he did not accord with anything of his time. He lived in the future and anticipated great changes. He did not agree with any contemporary religion, politics, fashions or manners, but was very sarcastic upon them. He was a philosopher, devoted to the useful, and cared nothing for the ornamental, either in architecture, fashions or anything else. He might not make war on the religion as he was not rancorous or rebellious, but he had different ideas in himself, and was candid in expressing them. He does not give much attention to modern times, but if he were here he would enjoy modern improvements and benevolence, but would denounce our fashions and our bigotry, and teach a primitive style of living.”
Let us invoke the strong spirit of Diogenes whose sturdy freedom of thought was like that of Walt Whitman, to coöperate in the review of modern life. Such men are greatly needed to review a corrupt civilization; and where is the civilization now, where was there ever a civilization that was not corrupt? The function of Diogenes is not performed either by the pulpit or the press. A few special journals are terribly severe on special evils, but the reformatory words of the press generally are few and far between, in comparison to what is needed. The Journal of Man does not propose to fill the hiatus and make war upon the myriad evils of society, but it must speak out, now and then, like Diogenes, especially when others neglect their duty.
What is the condition of our legislative bodies? Where is there one that does not provoke sharp criticism? The Albany correspondent of the N. Y. Sun, speaking of the legislative adjournment, says; “Mr. William F. Sheehan, leader of the Democratic minority to the Assembly, summed up the work of the Legislature of 1887 when in his address on the floor of the Assembly on the day of final adjournment, he said: ‘Prayer will ascend from thousands of hearts of the citizens of this State at noon to-day for their deliverance from this Legislature. It began its session with the corrupt election of a United States Senator. It lived in bribery, and it dies a farce.’ No one here regrets the adjournment except the gamblers and the lobbyists. Even the lobbyists would be glad for a vacation, as their labors in bidding for the legislative cattle the last month have been most arduous. The people of Albany look on the Legislature as a pestilence to which they must yearly submit, and they welcome its departure as a farmer does the going of a swarm of locusts from his fields.
“Whatever else may be said about the Legislature of 1887, no one ever accused it of being honest, and there is no doubt that it was industrious.”
This corrupt Legislature passed two very discreditable bills which would have been made positively infamous if it had not been for the active opposition of a few friends of liberty. One of these bills was designed to add to the stringency of the present obstructive medical law; the other was designed to assist the labors of Anthony Comstock in interrupting the circulation of popular physiological literature, under pretence of suppressing obscenity.
In the Legislature of Pennsylvania, the law designed to suppress the cultivation of spiritual science by severe penalties, was favorably reported by a committee but prevented by popular indignation from passing. Yet the people were not sufficiently alert to prevent legislation in favor of that monopoly the Standard Oil Company, which is considered a betrayal of justice.
In Illinois a bill was passed in the Senate and came near passing in the House, which would have abolished all medical freedom and made it a crime for any one but a licensed doctor to help the sick in any way, even by a prayer. Verily the spirit of American liberty does not pervade American communities and American legislatures.
In Massachusetts the Old Puritanic Sunday Laws having fallen into “innocuous desuetude,” an attempt to give them a partial enforcement in Boston compelled a little legislative action and the result was what might have been expected in a State in which religious opinions are allowed to interfere with the credibility of a witness, and in which Diogenes, if he were here, would be struck with the vast inconsistency between the creed of Christendom and its practice, and the vast disparity between the progress of modern knowledge and the effete system of education in our Universities. He would wonder why modern colleges are more interested in the details of Greek life and letters than in the beneficent sciences of to-day of which the Greeks knew nothing.
He would wonder why the edicts of the Pagan emperor, Constantine, concerning the observance of Sunday are observed and enforced as a religious duty, while the Divine love inculcated by Jesus Christ, which forbids all strife and war, is no more regarded by Christian nations than by the rulers of ancient Rome.
He would look into the schools and universities professedly devoted to science and literature, and ask why they have even less freedom of discussion and thought than the schools of Athens, every professor being interested to discourage the investigation of novelties in philosophy instead of being ready to welcome original investigation.
Under the new Sunday law of Massachusetts, Sunday trains and steamboat lines are at the mercy of the railroad commissioners, who can stop every one of them; but boating, yachting, and carriage driving on Sunday are free to all who have the money to pay for them. But while outdoor frolic is free-and-easy, indoor enjoyment is prohibited. Everybody is liable to five dollar fines for attending “any sport, game, or play” on Sunday, unless it has been licensed, and private families never ask a license for their own amusements. But to be present on Sunday “at any dancing,” brings a liability to a $50 fine for each offence! What a terrible thing dancing is to be sure, that looking on should cost $50, while a frolic in boating and yachting is unexceptionably holy, and the fast young men may kick up a dust, kill the horses, and smash the buggies with impunity, or kill themselves by rowing in the hot sun, under whiskey stimulus on Sunday.
The laws for hotels and restaurants are even more absurd. Travellers, strangers and lodgers may be freely entertained, but if anybody else (who is he?) comes into the house, or remains on the grounds about it, on Sunday, the landlord can be fined as much as $50 at the first pop, $100 at the second pop, and at the third pop he is to be shut up and deprived of his license. Somebody else must be a terrible fellow on Sunday—and he is a dangerous customer on Saturday too, for if he comes in on Saturday evening, or even lounges on the grounds, it is a fine of five dollars for the landlord. But who is he? How is the poor landlord, or victualler to discover somebody else, who is neither lodger, stranger, nor traveller. The landlord cannot detect him, but all sheriffs, grand jurors, and constables are required to hunt for him! Vive la bagatelle!
Strictly private gambling is safe on Sunday, and our Chevaliers d’Industrie may ruin a dozen families, and provoke suicide and murder,—“plate sin with gold” and it is protected, and the swindling shyster is protected too on Sunday, for no civil process can be served on that holy day; the rogue who is bothered on that day can get exemplary damages by this law of Sunday asylum. But the poor keeper of a restaurant or of an inn, is the victim for old legislative boys to throw stones at. They have provided a hundred dollar fine for every innholder or victualler who keeps, or “suffers to be kept,” on his premises, any implements “used in gaming,” or which may be used for “purposes of amusement,” and does not prevent such things from being used on Sunday. So if he is not extremely vigilant throughout his house and grounds, he may be caught with a hundred dollar fine, OR be imprisoned three months in the House of Correction at the pleasure of the magistrate!! and for every subsequent offense may be imprisoned in the House of Correction as much as one year, and then required to give security for obeying the law. Under such a law a malicious young hoodlum may contrive to send a landlord to jail.
To open a shop, warehouse, or workhouse on Sunday is a fifty dollar offense, and it is fifty dollars also for doing “any manner of labor, business or work” on Sunday, unless the judge considers it a matter of necessity or charity; nevertheless, the “making of butter and cheese” is good Sunday work, if we do not open the doors which would bring on a $50 fine. So is the work of steam, gas and electricity, newspapers, telegraphs, telephones, druggists, milkmen, (bakers before 10 and after 4,) boat houses, livery stables, ferry boats, and street cars. But to catch a fish or fire a pistol on Sunday is a $10 offense, and to look on at a game of chess is a $50 crime. However, the law does not punish whistling on Sunday, unless the whistler has spectators, then it is a $50 business for all concerned. To read Longfellow’s Excelsior on Sunday to a parlor of company is a $50 crime. Reading Milton’s Paradise Lost, or the American Declaration of Independence would also rank as criminal business, being an entertainment, and a party of twenty playing a game of croquet may be fined a thousand dollars.
Verily, if it were not for such hypocritical and asinine legislation as this, we might forget the history of New England witchcraft, and the hanging of Quakers in sight of the spot where this law was enacted as an improvement on a still worse, but practically obsolete statute.
Such Sunday legislation is a fair evidence of the absence of true religion, and the predominance of hypocrisy. It is not enforced, and is not expected to be. All the Sunday legislation in New York did not prevent the immense Syracuse Salt Works from carrying on their work day and night. Gov. Hill and the N. Y. Legislature have shown their character by increasing the penalties of the Sunday laws, but they have not approached the Massachusetts standard.
The Puritans of New England and the Cavaliers of Virginia alike treated the Indians as though they had no rights of manhood. The Catholics, Baptists, and Quakers treated them kindly and justly. The Puritans took Indian lands without permission or compensation. The Catholics, Baptists and Quakers bought lands from the Indians in an honorable way.
The two policies have been in conflict for nearly three centuries.
The Government has held to the policy of buying lands from the Indians, thus recognizing their ownership; but it has not always paid the price agreed upon. Now, under the lead of Senator Dawes Congress has passed a bill which annuls the treaties, and overrides all proprietary rights of every tribe, except nine of the most civilized.
His bill is the “Indian Land in Severalty Bill.” It pretends to be in the interest of the Indians, but that pretense is a fraud. It is wholly in the interest of railroad companies, land syndicates, and private white settlers.
The treaties of 1868 and 1876 guarantee the Sioux tribes undisturbed possession of their reservation in Dakota. Not an acre of that land can be taken from them without the consent of three-fourths of them. So read the treaties signed by the United States Commissioners and confirmed by the United States Senate.
The Dawes Severalty Bill takes the Sioux reservation from the control of the Sioux without asking the consent of a single Indian, surveys it as though it was a body of public land, and then says to the Sioux: The Government will return a small homestead for each of you, as individuals, and after twenty-five years you shall have titles to these small tracts, but the remainder of the reservation, (about four-fifth) must be opened to white settlers.
The Sioux protest against this outrage, and have appealed to the National Indian Defence Association at Washington, D. C., to protect their rights. This association has resolved to test the constitutionality of this bill in the Supreme Court of the United States, and asks all friends of justice to sustain them in this legal contest.
The Seybert Commission has reported against the claims of Spiritualism. Their report will not even have the effect of the French Academy report against animal magnetism, which checked its progress in the medical profession but not among the people; but before the century passed, the medical profession has taken up the science in earnest, and re-named it hypnotism. The Seybert report will not even be a temporary damper, for while thousands of inquirers, fully as competent as the commission, and many of them far more competent to the investigation, have made themselves familiar with the facts, the commission has done nothing but to emphasize the fact already familiar among the intelligent, of the prevalence of fraud among mediums. Notwithstanding the wonderful powers of Slade, no one acquainted with his history would place any reliance on his integrity. The more intelligent Spiritualists understood such matters, and the Ladies’ Aid (Spiritualist) Society of Boston, recently had considerable amusement in the exhibition in their parlors of the materializing and dematerializing wire apparatus used by the fraudulent medium, Mrs. Ross, which was said to have been carried in her bustle. Mrs. Ross when prosecuted for her frauds was found to be protected by the law of coverture which makes the husband alone responsible. This is a relic of the idea of female subordination and obedience which ought to be abolished. The progress of spiritualism has been marked by as many follies as that of any popular movement, and the bequest of $60,000, by Mr. Seybert, to the old fogies of the Pennsylvania University was among the stupidest of these follies. If a friend of Galileo had made such a bequest to the Catholic church in his time, to get an opinion of the new astronomy, it would have been as sensible a proceeding. It will however have one good result; it will erect a permanent monument to the ignorance of the universities, a record from which they cannot hereafter escape. Prof. Leidy was one of the salaried commissioners whose mental status was thus exhibited in the last journal:
"Your doctrine of life eternal,
And everything else supernal,
Might well be pronounced an infernal
Delusion!"
The Evils that need attention, mentioned in the Journal for May, are as rampant as ever. The big combination in Chicago to raise the price of wheat by a corner, utterly burst on the 14th of June, leaving a few ruined speculators. The Chicago News says: “What is called buying and selling futures in grain, is no more buying and selling in the innocent and proper interpretation of the words than the wagering on horse races is buying and selling horses. It is a species of gambling as pernicious to public morals as it is contrary to public policy.” The Chicago Herald says, “No one is in love with a cornerer who corners. Nobody wastes any pity on a cornerer who gets cornered himself.” Such crimes in a petty way may be punished, but we need law for the millionaire gamblers who not only rob each other, but fleece the entire nation at the same time.
Condensed Items.—Mesmerism, in Paris. M. G. de Torcy has introduced a mesmerized woman into the lion’s cage, where she unconsciously puts her head in the lion’s mouth: then, in a state of cataleptic rigidity, head and feet resting on two stools, the lion is made to jump over the rigid body, then with paws resting on her body, to pull a string by his teeth and thus fire a pistol. Of course this draws enthusiastic audiences. Medical Freedom. The attempts at restrictive medical legislation have been defeated in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine. In Maine, the bill had passed the Legislature and was approved by Gov. Bodwell, but upon re-consideration he vetoed it and the Senate then rejected it. The Allopathic State Society is quite indignant and calls it “atrocious” that they cannot enforce a law which the Senate and governor rejected. Mrs. Post in Iowa has been acquitted and will not be punished at all for the awful crime of healing a patient by prayer! The acquittal appears to be on the ground of the unconstitutionally of the law. The Victoria Jubilee in Faneuil Hall, Boston, called out an immense indignation meeting, and many eloquent protests. But for the energy of the police a riot might have occurred at the time of the festival. Delightful Homes. Asheville, N. C., 2339 feet above tide water, has a delightful climate, especially for pulmonary invalids. Northern Georgia is an elevated region of remarkable general health, and freedom from malarious and consumptive diseases. California has still more delightful homes of health and beauty. Colorado has twelve towns over 5,000 feet above the sea, and ten over 10,000.
The Study of the Comparative Development of the Brain through the Cranium—Importance of Cranioscopy—First Step—Facial organs—Miller, Pestalozzi, Danton, Mirabeau—Caricatures—Upper and lower parts of face—Female faces—Mode of comparing organs—Mode of manipulation—Bony irregularities—Profile comparison of height and depth—Vacca Pechassee and Lewis—Old errors—Difficulties in estimation—Morbid conditions—Criminals—Napoleon—Negro murderer.
HUGH MILLER.
PESTALOZZI.
DANTON.
MIRABEAU.
The reader now understands the conformation of the brain, and the general character of its different regions. It is important that he should as soon as possible begin the study of heads, and learn to judge correctly their development. When he can do this, he has an inexhaustible source of knowledge continually with him, and every new acquaintance becomes an interesting study in ascertaining the indications of his head and comparing them with his daily conduct and manners. The more thorough and careful the study, the greater the satisfaction and delight that it yields. The good cranioscopist continually grows in knowledge, and solves all the problems of character presented in society. But he who simply studies the elements of character or organic faculties, and does not become acquainted with the organs and their measurement, soon finds his knowledge too abstract and remote from his daily life; and, instead of increasing his stock of knowledge on this subject, he continually loses more and more of what he has gained. It was for this reason, mainly, that the medical profession gradually dropped the discoveries of Gall, which would never have ceased to interest them if they had learned to apply them to the study of men and animals.
I hope that no reader will neglect this chapter, or fail to reduce its instructions to practice, for on that it depends whether he shall become a practical master of cerebral science, and be able to read every character with which he meets.
The first step in studying a head is to observe its general contour,—whether the forehead projects far in front of the ear, to indicate intellect; whether the upper surface rises above the forehead sufficiently to indicate the nobler qualities, and whether it is balanced or overpowered by the breadth and depth of the base of the skull and thickness of the neck. In connection with this, we may observe that the base of the brain is also expressed in the lower part of the face which corresponds to the organs for the expression of animal force, while the upper part of the face is devoted to the expression of the upper and anterior parts of the brain. The expressional faculties shown in the face do not always coincide exactly with the real power of the organs thus expressed; but if they do not, they at least indicate their activity and habitual display; for faculties habitually indulged will show their organic indications in the face, while those which are suppressed or restrained will be less conspicuous in the face.
The reader will understand that organs located for observation on the face are organs of the brain lying behind the face, which may be reached and stimulated through it, as other organs are reached and stimulated through the cranium and integuments. The contour of the face cannot reveal the organs behind it by physical necessity, as does the contour of the skull, yet observation induces me to rely upon estimates based on facial development. I think there is a correspondence of development between the brain and face, based upon vital laws, and also a direct influence of each organ upon the surface that covers it, so that when the organ is excited the surface becomes flushed, and when it is kept inactive the surface becomes pale and withered. This may be most readily observed at the organ of Love of Stimulus, immediately in front of the cavity of the ear. The surface presents a shrunken appearance after many years of rigid abstinence, but becomes plump, bloated, or high-colored, in those whose habits are intemperate. I have also observed an itching sensation at the surface when the organs behind it were active. Any one may observe a warmth and fulness in the upper part of the face when the social sentiments are very active. In the act of blushing, the flush comes upon the part of the face associated with modest and refined sentiments, the centre of which is below the external angle of the eye, at the lower margin of the cheek-bone.
The contrasting development of the upper and lower parts of the face may be seen when we compare such characters as the enthusiastic philanthropist and educational reformer, Pestalozzi, and the high-principled and intellectual Hugh Miller, the Scotch geologist, with such as Danton, the terrible demagogue of the French revolution, and Mirabeau, the brilliant but unprincipled orator.
No skilful artist in caricature fails to observe these principles. When he would degrade a character, he magnifies the lower part of the face; and when he would represent a more refined character, the lower part of the face becomes correspondingly delicate.
When Puck would represent, a miserable wretch, he presents such a head as the following; and when a New York journalist desired to caricature an opponent as a saloon politician, he diminished the upper and developed the lower part of the head, as presented here.
All observers of countenance and character unconsciously act upon these principles and recognize a great difference in the expressions of two faces,—one predominant in the lower and the other in the upper portion of the face. That there was any scientific basis for this was entirely unknown before my discoveries of the organs behind the face, which modify its development and expression. My lectures upon this subject in 1842 were attended by the physiognomical writer, Redfield, who derived from them many important suggestions.
When the lower part of the face is massive, broad, and prominent, while the basilar region is broad and deep, with a stout neck, we know the great force and activity of the animal nature, and unless the upper surface of the brain is well developed all over, we may expect some excess in the way of violence, temper, selfishness, perversity, sensuality, dishonesty, avarice, rudeness of manners, moral insensibility, slander, contentiousness, jealousy, envy, revenge, or some other form of wickedness, according to the especial conformation.
In the faces of women, we find the activity of the amiable sentiments marked by the fulness and roseate color of the upper part of the face, while the lower portion is more delicate than in the masculine face.
But although the facial developments generally correspond with the activity of the organs expressed, the rule is not invariable, as the reader will learn hereafter that the facial developments may be moderate when the character is not excitable or demonstrative.
If the upper surface of the head is sufficiently high, we know that great capacity for virtue exists, capable of restraining evil inclinations, and producing admirable traits of character, according to the organs especially developed.
When we study the special organs we determine the special virtues or vices. For example, a head may have a good general development upward, giving many very pleasing traits of character, and yet be so deficient in the region of conscientiousness (while the selfish group that gives breadth at the ears is large) as to produce great moral unsoundness and a treacherous violation of obligations or disregard of principle.
The most delicate task in craniological study, and the most important, is the balancing of opposite tendencies belonging to antagonistic organs; and it was for the want of the knowledge of antagonisms that the Gallian system so often failed in describing character and its representatives before the public have made the most disastrous blunders. Shrewd and honest observers discovered the imperfections of the science.2
While the eye readily gives us the contour of heads that have not much hair, there is but little accurate judgment without the use of the hand, which is the first thing to be learned. Not the tips of the fingers, but the whole hand should be laid upon the head gently, to cover as much surface as possible, while with a gentle pressure we cause the scalp to move slightly, and thus feel through it the exact form of the cranium as correctly as if the bones were exposed to view. If in this examination we find any sharp prominences, which might be called bumps, we attribute them to the growth of bone, which does not indicate the growth of the brain. The latter is indicated only by the general contour.
A little anatomical knowledge will prevent us from being deceived, and enable us to make due allowances. There are no great difficulties in making a correct estimate, and the anatomists who have taught their pupils that correct cranial observations could not be made, only showed their own ignorance of the subject. We must consider the cranium as though all osseous protuberances had been shaved off, leaving the smooth, curving contour of the skull. The principal projection to be removed is the superciliary ridge corresponding to the brow at the base of the forehead. It is formed by the projection of the external plate of the skull, leaving a separation or cavity between it and the inner plate, which cavity is called the frontal sinus, and is sometimes half an inch wide. As there is no positive method of determining its dimensions in the living head, there must ever be some doubt concerning the development of the perceptive organs which it covers. The superciliary ridge at the external angle of the brow extends really as much as three-quarters of an inch from the brain. From this angle a ridge of bone (the temporal arch) extends upward and backward, separating the lateral surface of the head from the frontal and upper surfaces. This ridge is a convenient landmark, but must be excluded from an estimate of development as it is merely osseous. It extends back on the head a little behind its middle. The sagittal suture on the median line of the upper surface usually presents a slight, bony elevation or ridge (see the engraving of the skull, Chapter III.), and the lambdoid suture on the back of the head is frequently rough. A superficial practical phrenologist (of great pretensions) at Cincinnati, in examining the head of a gentleman of mild character, found the lambdoid suture quite rough, and gave him a terrifically pugnacious character, not knowing enough to distinguish between osseous and cerebral development. The occipital knob on the median line between the cerebrum and cerebellum, has been already mentioned. The mastoid process, the bony prominence behind the ear is a projection exterior to the cerebellum. Where it starts from the cranium above and behind the cavity of the ear, we may judge of basilar development by the breadth of the head, but the basilar depth which is more important is to be judged by the extension downward, which was illustrated in the last chapter by comparing the skulls of J. R. Smith and the slave-trading count.
To judge the comparative strength of the higher and lower elements of character, we look for the height above the forehead and the depth at and behind the ear, which is ascertained by placing the hand on the base of the cranium behind the ears, while the height of the head is best appreciated by placing a hand on the top with the fingers reaching down to the brow.
In a profile view the human head may be divided into three equal parts, the length of the nose being the central part, from the nose to the end of the chin another, and the remainder above the nose the third part. In inferior heads these three measurements are equal, the upper third extending to the top of the head; but in heads of superior character the upper third extends only to the top of the forehead, and the outline of the head rises a half breadth above the forehead, as the following profiles show. In heads of the lowest character the basilar depth exceeds the height, as in the French Count and the Indian Lewis.
The contour of a well-developed head forms a semicircle above the base line through the brow, and its elevation above that line is equal to one half of the antero-posterior length of the head, while in the inferior class of heads the elevation is but four-tenths of the length or even less, and is hardly equal to the depth, while in the highest class the elevation is one-half greater than the depth or even more. We obtain another view of the comparative height and depth by drawing lines from the brow to the vertex and the base of the brain and comparing the two angles thus formed. In the good head we observe the great superiority of the upper angle over that formed by the line to the ear, the lower end of which corresponds to the lowest part of the brain, the base of the cerebellum.
To take an illustration from nature, I would present the outlines of two Indian crania that I obtained in Florida,—Vacca Pechassee, or the cow chief, who headed a small tribe, and bore a good character among the whites, and Lewis, an Indian of bad character in the same neighborhood (on the Appalachicola River), who was shot for his crimes. (I might have obtained many more, but as the Seminole war was not then over, I found that my own cranium was placed in considerable danger by my explorations.)
In Vacca Pechassee the height is to the depth as 11 to 9; in Lewis as 9 to 11. In J. R. Smith the height is to the depth as 12 to 10; in the slave trading count as 9 to 14. This is the correct method of cranial study, for comparing the moral and animal nature.
The basilar depth was entirely overlooked in the old method of phrenologists, and hence they were very often mistaken in judging the basilar energy by breadth alone, of which there has been no more striking example than that of the Thugs of India, whose heads (though a tribe of murderers) were below the European average in basilar breadth. These facts are so conspicuous to any careful observer that I became very familiar with them in the first six months of my study of heads fifty-two years ago.
When the circulation of the brain is vigorous and regular, all portions being in regular activity, the fulness of the circulation being shown in the face, we may be sure that the character is fairly indicated by the cranium. The younger the individual the thinner the cranium, and the less the liability to deception by the thickness of the bones. Female skulls are generally more delicate than male, and also more normal or uniform in their circulation. Hence there is less difficulty in making an accurate estimate of women and of youth. The greater difficulty is found in men of thick skulls and abnormal brains, and these difficulties are in some cases insurmountable by mere measurement. It will become necessary in the depraved classes to look at the condition of the circulation about the head, and the facial indications of the organs that have been cultivated. If these are not sufficient to guide us we must fall back upon psychometry.
The morbid condition of the brain is a conspicuous fact, which we must not ignore, and it is important to learn how to detect it in the appearance of the individual, or in his psychometric indications and Pathognomy, which is itself a profound science and important guide to character. (Pathognomy is the science of expression, and has an exact mathematical basis.)
We should bear in mind that it is just as possible to have impaired and unhealthy conditions in any part of the brain as to have them in the stomach, liver, lungs, or spinal cord. Physical diseases are contagious and so are moral. It is generally impossible to preserve the moral organs and faculties of a youth in healthy condition who is allowed to associate habitually with the depraved; and it is very difficult indeed for the mature adult to preserve his brain and mind in sound condition when compelled to associate with the depraved. To those who are very impressible, the contagion of vice, bad temper, profanity, turbulence, lying, obscenity, sullenness, melancholy, etc., is as inevitable as the contagion of small pox.
Our criminals are generally exposed to the contagion of crime in youth, and as they advance they are immersed in this contagion in prisons, which are the moral pest-houses in which law maintains the intense contagion of criminal depravity. Napoleon was an admirable subject for such contamination, and when we learn how he was reared amid the lawlessness and general scoundrelism of Corsica, we do not wonder that he became an imperial brigand. The low ethical standard of mankind, generally, and especially of historians, has heretofore prevented a just estimate of the character of Napoleon. Royal criminals have escaped condemnation; but the recent review of Napoleon’s career by Taine gives a just philosophic estimate of the man, which coincides with the impartial estimation of psychometry.