vague. The measurements of the latter are liable to several objections. The distances are by some measured in a straight line; by others, along the convex surface of the head. By some they are measured from one point, by others from another; so that scarcely any two are comparable. The ear is not unfrequently selected, and is one of the most advantageous points on the surface; but this does not give the measure of the organs. One of the most usual methods is to give the distance between the corresponding points of opposite sides, as from Cautiousness to Cautiousness, Ideality to Ideality, &c., and no doubt many readers are led into the belief that these are the measures of those organs, for I see no care used to guard against such a conclusion. Whereas, in fact, this only gives double the base of a right-angled triangle, of which the hypothenuse is the length of the organ, and the other side unknown. The problem of course not only remains unsolved, but indeterminate for want of data which such measurements can never furnish. In deducing inferences from measurements of the same head in different directions, allowance is of course to be made for the normal and average difference between the lengths of the different fibres. For example, those of the cerebellum are much shorter in almost every individual than those of the anterior lobes of the cerebrum. The standard human head is not a sphere; and allowance for its deviation from this form, is always required in estimating the relative power of different cerebral organs in the same individual, and equally required whether we have aimed at arriving at the lengths by a perfect or imperfect instrument, or by no artificial instrument at all. Such an instrument as I propose, appears to be necessary for determining, by numerous observations, the very data which phrenology requires in making these allowances, and which-if phrenology were out of the question-would form an interesting addition to our knowledge of the anatomy of the head. I allude, of course, to the mean proportions of the lengths of the different fibres. A comparison in this respect might be made between races, sexes, and ages, as well as individuals. The use of such an instrument as the above, in connection with observed mental manifestations, would contribute to the solution of several other interesting problems. One is the effect on the powers of any organ, produced by the relative deficiency of circumjacent organs, and the consequent narrow prominence or bump, which forms an essential element in the vulgar conception of phrenology, and the precise influence of which, as compared with that of absolute length of fibre, even scientific phrenologists have never, so far as I know, attempted to determine. In the present state of phrenology, this instrument, considered with reference to the application of the science instead of its advancement, will be at first chiefly useful in measuring the corresponding parts of the brain, or organs of the same name in different hands. B. F. J. ARTICLE IV. REVIEW OF DR. VIMONT'S WORK ON COMPARATIVE PHRENOLOGY.* A Treatise on Human and Comparative Phrenology, accompanied by a Grand Atlas in folio, containing 120 Plates, executed in the best style. By J. VIMONT, Doctor of Medicine of the Faculty of Paris, Honorary Member of the Phrenological Societies of Paris and of London. (With an Epigraph.) Second edition. Brussels, 1836, pp. 558, royal octavo. La L'orgueil, la superstition, la crainte, ont embarrassée la connoissance de l'homme de mille préjugés que l'observation doit détruire. religion est chargée de nous conduire dans la route du bonheur qu'elle nous prepare au-delà du temps. La philosophie doit étudier les motifs des actions de l'homme pour trouver de le rendre meilleur et plus heureux dans cette vie passagère (G. Leroy, Lettre Philos. sur l'homme et les animaux). Second edition. Bruxelles, 1836. As we are not aware that either a full review, or an analysis even, of Dr. Vimont's great work on Human and Comparative Phrenology, has yet been given by any journalist on this side of the water, we shall endeavour on the present occasion to supply this omission, making, the while, such incidental remarks as may seem to grow out of the subject before us. If, in the performance of this latter part of our task, we should press a little hard upon certain doctors of law and divinity, judges and politicians, including an ex-president, we hope to be excused on the plea of self-defence against those who, for the nonce, have taken into their heads to masquerade, in the garb of philosophy, and under their assumed characters, to elbow somewhat rudely those who differ from them in opinion. Dr. Vimont, a physician of Caen, in Normandy, and the author of the work before us, gives, in an introduction, the causes of his beginning the course of study and the series of observations which ended in his adoption of the doctrines of phrenology. These we shall present to our readers as briefly as possible. From the Eclectic Journal of Medicine for August, 1839, edited by Dr. John Bell. In 1818, the French Institute having offered a prize for the best memoir on the anatomy of the brain in the four classes of vertebral animals, Dr. Vimont resolved to apply himself to this subject of enquiry, and to submit the result of his investigations to that learned body. In 1820, he was already master of a considerable collection of anatomical facts, the more valuable, in his opinion, because they had been made with great care and fidelity. Hitherto, his observations had been restricted to the anatomy of the nervous system; and although he was desirous of ascertaining at the same time the functions of this system, and felt that he had a richer collection of facts than Haller and Vicq d'Azir, he found it at the time impossible to detect the relations between the encephalic mass and its functions. "I was struck, nevertheless," continues Dr. Vimont, "with the kind of conformation of brain exhibited by certain birds and quadrupeds. I may cite, for instance, the migratory birds, sixty of the brains of which were in my possession, and those of carnivorous quadrupeds, which I had studied with still more care, and which I preserved in spirits of wine. It was impossible for me to believe that with such numerous varieties of organisation there should not be connected special faculties; but how to ascertain these faculties, unless, before all, I were to make a long study of the manners and habits of animals. I began, accordingly, to read with ardour the most celebrated works on the subject, and in order to judge of the accuracy of the authors, I determined to raise a great number of animals, and to study their manners, to note their most remarkable ways, and to compare my own observations with those made by these illustrious men." Pliny and Buffon were read; the first with a feeling of admiration at the prodigious extent of mind displayed in his Natural History, enriched as it was by the accumulation of facts by a still greater genius— Aristotle. Buffon disappointed Dr. Vimont, who saw in him great beauty of style, but who felt that he was reading the production of a poet rather than that of a naturalist. This is, we believe, the verdict of impartial judges generally on the merits of Buffon. Linnæus gave more satisfaction to our author, by the greater exactness of his anatomical descriptions, whereby he marked out the course, following which the cultivators of the natural sciences have been most successful. Reference is next made, in terms of approbation, to two authors who are not sufficiently known, viz. George Leroy and Dupont de Nemours. Dr. Vimont had not at this time any knowledge of the works of Dr. Gall; and he little believed, then, that they would furnish him with the dominant idea for the direction of his numerous researches. All that he had heard and read, was calculated to exhibit Gall in the light of a charlatan, and to deter him from paying any attention to the labours of this celebrated man. Still, however, he was not willing to condemn him without hearing him. This commendable resolution, and yet one of common sense and common justice, might be imitated advantageously by many of our pseudo-critics, D. D.s and LL. D.s, and even sundry M. D.s, teachers, and lecturers, and authors of lectures we wot of. But what was the result of Dr. Vimont's impartial enquiry? "No sooner had I read his (Gall's) works," says Dr. V., " than I saw at once that I had made acquaintance with a man removed above his fellow-men; one of those whom envy is always eager to thrust aside from the position to which they are called by their genius, and against whom she employs the weapons of cowardice and hypocrisy. The qualities which seemed to me to render Gall conspicuous, were extensive cerebral capacity, great penetration, good sense, and varied acquirements. The indif ference which I at first had entertained for his writings, was soon converted into a feeling of profound veneration." But this conversion did not make Dr. Vimont a blind follower. Continuing a course of independent observations and experiments, he discovered that although Gall had opened the true road, and had made great advances in it, yet that he had not marked it out with all the requisite distinctness for future travellers. It is in the department of comparative anatomy that Gall is most open to criticism. Dr. Vimont, then, in place of contenting himself with retaining his original prejudices against Gall and phrenology at one period, or of eulogising the science and its founder without stint and limitation at another, set about supplying the deficiencies which he believed to exist in both; whilst he took no pains to conceal the fact, that through them he had been placed in the true path both of cerebral physiology and of mental philosophy. He was not satisfied with giving merely a plausible statement of phrenology, and then introducing exceptions and special pleadings in the form of an alleged refutation of the sciencea refutation, the fallacy and absurdity of which had been already fully exposed by Gall himself. With the delicate tact of his nation for perceiving the ridiculous, he could not think of displaying such illtimed pleasantry as to elicit from the dignitaries of the church, doctors of the school of law, popular members of the Chamber of Deputies, and some flash litterateurs, testimonials in favour of certain anatomical and physiological exceptions. Even if he had been so inconsiderate as to seduce these persons to give publicity to their own ignorance, the Parisian press would soon have shown the absurdity of a set of men exerting themselves as either judges or umpires on a scientific question, the very elements of which they never learned. It was reserved for an anti-phrenologist in our own country to be instrumental in inducing such a display of absurdity. The exhibition is certainly a novel one, in this nineteenth century, and in the United States of America—that of a scientific question being determined by votes, without any reference to the qualifications of the voters.* of this more anon. We continue for the present our account of the steps pursued by the French author, in order to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. But In 1827, nine years from the time when he began his studies and observations on the brain and nervous system generally of animals, and on their habits and manners, Dr. Vimont sent to the institute a memoir for the prize of physiology, in which he introduced a portion of his numerous anatomical and physiological investigations. This memoir, of which honourable mention was made, was accompanied by twenty-five hundred heads belonging to animals of different classes, orders, genera, and species; fifteen hundred of which were those of animals whose habits were perfectly known to him. In addition, he sent also, moulded after the originals, four hundred copies of brains in wax, and an atlas of more than three hundred specimens of the cerebral system, and of its bony case, represented with the greatest fidelity. In the prosecution of his experimental enquiries, Dr. Vimont, as already stated, brought up a large number of animals, whose dominant faculties he noted daily. The tribes of dogs and cats furnished him with a great many observations. He availed himself, at the same time, of those which were contributed by reflecting and truth-loving men; and conversed much and often with hunters and others, who, by their situation, were enabled to note the most remarkable traits of animals. By arranging and comparing these observations, Dr. Vimont was put in the route of what he justly believes to be true experimental physiology. We have not here the narrow limits marked out by the scalpel; but the wider and more philosophical domain of the mental acts of the cerebral system of animals-acts determined and appreciated in a truly physiological condition of the organs-very different from that painful and convulsive state during vivisection, in which they are not cognisable. All this must seem to be a very needless trouble, if not a very absurd course of proceeding, to the metaphysician, who, sitting in his closet, writes from his imagination of the differences between man and animals, and talks of the reason which is characteristic of the * See the commendatory notices appended to the second edition of Dr. Sewall's two Lectures on Phrenology. Boston, 1839. |