cell. The sentiment is as impious as it is untrue. Matter clog and incarcerate mind, and prevent it from acting in a manner suitable to its powers! The assertion is a slander on HIM who made and governs both mind and matter. If the inferior substance be thus prejudicial to the superior, and so unworthy of it as many pronounce it, why did the Deity link them together? No good motive could have led him to this; and who will dare to charge him with an evil one? Did he unite them through inadvertence or mistake, or because he did not know what influence matter would have on mind, until he had made the experiment? or, did they, when created, rush together forcibly, he having no power to restrain them? Did he yoke them, in sport and wautonness, that they might fall to civil war, and try which could do the other most harm, he enjoying their strife and suffering as an amusement? or, was his motive a desire to shew how unharmoniously and incongruously he could pack the works of creation together? No one will openly impute to him faults or weaknesses like these. Yet all virtually do that, or something worse, who pronounce matter a hinderance to mind in any of its operations. For aught that man can shew to the contrary, mind would be as imbecile without matter, as matter would be without mind. What can the latter do without the aid of the former? Can it sce, hear, taste, smell, feel, or move? Can it lift a pound weight, make a pin or pen, or use them if already made, think, reason, judge, or perform a single useful act, intellectual or moral, theoretical or practical? If it can, let that act be specified and proved. I say 'proved,' because I wish for realities, not suppositions or fancies."-Pp. 66, 67.

The author proceeds to treat of the physical education of the brain, which he explains phrenologically, as it cannot be explained otherwise. It resolves into proper exercise of the various organs; avoiding over-exertion on the one hand, which will weaken the power, and dormancy on the other, which will for the time annul it entirely. He deprecates excessive exertion of feeble organs, as both useless and dangerous, and counsels parents never to attempt to make a scholar a professional character, or man of science, of a boy whose brain is unusually small. The great end of the physical education of the brain, is to strengthen the whole of it, and maintain a due balance among its several parts -from which comes longevity, the common and marked consequence of calmness and equability of character. Dr Caldwell adds the following among other curious facts, on the subject of the comparative longevity in different employments, according to the way in which they affect the brain :

"The less impassionate the pursuits of men of genius are, the greater is the average longevity of each class of them. Mathematicians and natural philosophers have but little in their studies to excite feeling or stir up passion. The tenor of their lives is generally tranquil. Hence the aggregate age of twenty of them, taken promiscuously, has been found to amount to 1504 years, giving to each the average of seventy-five.

"Poets, on the contrary, are proverbially an irritabile genus,' -men of strong and easily excited feelings, and a burning imagination. Their productions, moreover, being works of passion, their minds must be in tumult during their composition. From these causes, the aggregate age of twenty distinguished poets has been ascertained to be 1144 years, giving to each an average of fifty-seven a very striking balance in favour of a mind free from passion!"-Р. 84.

Much curious matter follows on the tendency of the embroilment of party politics and religious differences to over-excite the brain, and produce insanity, and also dyspepsia or indigestion, which, says Dr Caldwell, is more nearly allied to insanity than is commonly supposed. "So true is this," he adds, "that the one is not unfrequently converted into the other, and often alternates with it. The lunatic is usually a dyspeptic during his lucid intervals; and complaints which begin in some form of gastric derangement, turn, in many instances, to madness. Nor is this all. In families, where mental derangement is hereditary, the members who escape that complaint are more than usually obnoxious to dyspepsia. It may be added, that dyspeptics and lunatics are relieved by the same modes of treatment, and that their maladies are induced, for the most part, by the same causes."-P. 87. The passions of grief, jealousy, anger, &c. injure the digestion. Dyspepsia is very frequently cured, when curable, by abandoning care and business, and giving rest to the brain. This is the chief reason why watering-places so often succeed. The agitations of wealth-getting and commercial speculation, have the same effect as political and religious controversy, in over-exciting the brain. All these he looks upon as the causes of the inordinate sum of insanity and dyspepsia which prevails in the United States. We recommend to the perusal of parents the author's description of the frightful consequences of the solitary abuse of Amativeness, which runs like a contagion through schools, often destroying the individuals, and, at the least, seriously injuring the race. Even in Britain, this bane.. ful practice prevails to an extent which we should have thought incredible, had not the clearest evidence of the fact been within our knowledge. We must also refer to the volume for the author's judicious observations upon dress, in which he exposes the mischiefs arising from the tightened corsets of the ladies; a subject fortunately now so well understood, as to have nearly banished the practice from rational society. Dr Caldwell thus concludes his lecture :

"Finally, One of the leading benefits to be bestowed on our race, by Physical Education judiciously practised and carried to the requisite extent, is the production and preservation of a well-adjusted balance, not only between the different portions of the brain, but of the whole body. Few persons, if any at all, bring into life with them a system perfectly balanced in all its parts. Some organs predominate in size and strength, while others are comparatively small and feeble. This is a tendency to disease, and can be removed or amended only by competent training. Let it never be forgotten, that the proper exercise of a part, and that alone, increases both its bulk and power, and, at the same time, diminishes any excess of sensitiveness it may possess. And this is precisely what small and feeble parts require, to place them on a par with others, and secure their health. To illustrate my meaning, and shew it to be true:

" Is the chest of a boy narrow, and are his lungs weak and irritable? Let those parts be habitually exercised, according to the directions already given, and such a change may be produced in him, as will give an equipoise to his body, and prevent dis

ease.

His chest and lungs may be enlarged not a little, and as weil secured from complaints as his other organs. From the free and constant exercise which their calling gives to their arms, shoulders, and thoracic walls and viscera, London boatmen have large chests, and are strangers to consumption. The loud and habitual call, moreover, by which they announce their business and solicit employment, aids in the development and strengthening of their lungs. From these causes, though perpetually exposed to the damp and chilling air of the Thames, they rarely experience any form of pectoral disease.

" Of every small and feeble part of the system the same is true. A judicious scheme of training will enlarge and strengthen it. But hereditary predisposition to disease is nothing else than the want of an equipoise between all the different portions of the body. Some organs, being comparatively weak and sensitive, are preternaturally prone to actual derangement. By well directed exercise, therefore, continued through successive generations, may every predisposition of the kind be eradicated.

" Such is the best outline of my views of Physical Education, that my other engagements have allowed me to prepare. Sensible of its imperfections, but unable at present to remove or lessen them, I must throw it, for acceptance, on the indulgence of those to whom it has been presented."-Pp. 132, 133.

If we have a stricture to offer on so excellent a treatise, it is this-that in treating of the physical education of the brain, Dr Caldwell departs from the restrictions he previously imposed on himself, and trenches too much upon what, distinctively speaking, constitutes moral and intellectual education. It is not a question of substantial truth,-for he is right in affirming that even intellectual and moral education are to a great extent material; but it is an important question of classification, and we take it there would be more convenience in limiting physical education, directly applied, to all the other corporeal systems but the brain.

ARTICLE II.

OWENISM AND PHRENOLOGY.

In March last, at the conclusion of one of Mr J. D. Holm's lectures on Phrenology, delivered in his rooms, No. 12 North Crescent, Bedford Square, London, Mr Robert Owen read to the audience certain remarks on the influence of external circumstances in forming the human character, and gave it as his opinion that phrenologists ascribe too much efficacy to innate qualities, and too little to external circumstances. The substance of these remarks, and a reply by Mr Holm, appeared in the 26th number (25th April 1835) of "The New Moral World," a periodical conducted by Mr Owen. We subjoin, without comment, what is said on both sides: readers who desire to pursue the subject farther, are referred to a phrenological analysis of Mr Owen's views in the first volume of this Journal, p. 218. "The New Moral World" contains also two dialogues on the same subject, but the whole substance of the controversy appears to us to be sufficiently embodied in what is here subjoined.

REMARKS BY MR OWEN.

Mr Holm has this week given a more full answer than he did last week to the observations which were made in our previous dialogues, in which Phrenology was very partially discussed. The subject is one of deep interest, second to none, perhaps, except the "science of the influence of external circumstances over the formation of the human character."

Upon these subjects it may be useful to submit to our readers the following observations, that an accurate knowledge of these two parts of the same science may be elicited. Our remarks are, of course, open to refutation, if they can be proved to be

erroneous.

Since the year 1812 I have stated, in various publications which may be referred to, that man is a compound being, formed in part at birth by that power which gives existence to all organized beings; but, in a more essential part, by the influence

which external circumstances make upon the infant, from the hour of its birth to the end of its life.

Now this has been the solid foundation on which the system of the New Moral World has been raised. It was this view of the subject that created the first ideas from which the system originated. It was this view of the subject that induced me to make the great and singularly successful experiment for so many years at New Lanark. It was this view of the subject which produced the motives which originated the first Infant School, the foundations of which were laid in 1812, and which, before the second was established in Westminster by Lord Brougham, the late Henry Hase, cashier of the Bank of England, and others of my friends, had attained so much perfection as to be the wonder, astonishment, and unlimited praise of the most intelligent of all classes of natives and foreigners; indeed of all educated or uneducated persons who visited that establishment, except the bigot, the fanatic, or the grossly superstitious, who could not approve of any measure, however beneficial in practice, that did not originate or fall in with their own sectarian notions, or erroneous, inexperienced, and confined views of human nature.

The difference of opinion between Mr Holm and other phrenologists and myself, arises from one party attributing more in the formation of the human character to the original faculties of human nature, and less to the influence of circumstances; while the other places more power in the external circumstances as they may, and no doubt soon will, be applied, and less to the original germ of the natural organs of mankind. The difference is only in degree; but this, for practice, is a most import

ant difference.

It is to me, however, satisfactory to observe, that the most intelligent and experienced among the phrenologists have gradually given more and more importance to the power of external circumstances over the natural faculties and organs of human nature, and as they advance in knowledge they will discover the necessity for allowing much more to the almost overwhelming influence of external circumstances over all the propensities, faculties, powers, and feelings of all human kind.

Although the blind, accidental, and, as they appear, random circumstances which existed or have arisen, in various times, in various countries, and which now exist in all countries, have had the influence to form various national and tribinal characters most opposite to each other, in language, religion, laws, dispositions, habits, manners, and conduct; yet the full power which external circumstances may be made to possess, through a knowledge of the science of circumstances over human nature, no one among phrenologists appears yet to have been permitted to acquire the knowledge duly to appreciate.