c. OBSERVATION OF THE RELATION OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS TO ITS IMMEDIATE ACTUALITY - PHYSIOGNOMY AND PHRENOLOGY.

[[ Translator's comments: In the previous section observation was directed upon the relation of mind to external reality--the natural environment of individuality. The relation of mind to its own physical embodiment furnishes a further object for observation to take up. How observation operates in dealing with this relation forms the subject of the analysis in the present section.

Up to and at the time at which Hegel wrote, the discussion of this relation took the form of what are now looked upon either as spurious sciences or at best as falling within the scope of physiology or psychophysics. Those pseudo-sciences were Physiognomy and Phrenology or Cranioscopy. Both had in one form or another engaged the attention of reflective minds from the earliest times. But about the latter half of the eighteenth century they gained unusual public prominence, in Germany, France and England, through the eloquence and conviction of their exponents; so much so that in Germany a law was passed forbidding the promulgation of phrenology as being dangerous to religion, and in England a law of George II re-enacted a statute of Elizabeth imposing the severest penalties on physiognomists. The chief exponents and propagandists of these studies of the human individual were Lavater (1741-1801), in physiognomy, and Gall (1758-1828), along with his pupil Spurzheim, in phrenology. The personal character and influence of the first, combined with his rhetorical eloquence, compelled the attention not only of the popular mind but of men of outstanding intelligence; while Gall lectured publicly and went from one University to another expounding the generalizations discovered or made.

It was impossible therefore for any philosopher who attempted to discuss comprehensively the methods and procedure of observational science to ignore the claims made by these pseudo-sciences or to refuse to examine the validity of the laws they proposed to formulate. This was all the more necessary because the object they dealt with--the relation of mind to its physical embodiment--was and is unquestionably an important fact of experience and presents a serious problem to philosophy, especially to idealism. Hence we have in the following section an elaborate analysis of the observational "sciences" of physiognomy and phrenology--an analysis the length of which can only be explained and justified by the historical circumstances above indicated.]]