mon to both, while that of Wit detects something in each not shared by the other; or the converse may hold, Wit taking cognizance of something that is common, while Comparison sees something peculiar. This is not demonstrated; but I apprehend that all the facts admit of such an explanation, and that analogy is wholly in favour of it.

In the illustration, taken from the silly arguments of the opposers of Phrenology, about Benevolence and Destructiveness neutralizing each other, as acid and alkali, Mr Hancock appears almost gliding into the same error he had well pointed out in respect to the perception of resemblance and non-perception of difference; for he speaks of " an active organ of Comparison inducing a habit which inclines the individual to infer identity in all cases in which difference is not perceived." Now, according to Mr Hancock's own views, the active organ of Comparison should be peculiarly accurate in reading resemblances, and not be inclined to infer them merely.

My papers before referred to, have furnished the reply to Mr Hancock's queries regarding the more important uses of Comparison and Wit, " than that of merely giving an ornament and a charm to conversation." As to the excitement of laughter by certain styles of wit, I feel disposed to say that it is always in connection with some excitement of the animal organs, if not altogether dependent thereon. The most highly intellectual and moral minds are little prone to laughter, and persons thus endowed rarely or never give " a hearty laugh." I quite agree with Mr Hancock, that the organ called Wit is not the "only organ by means of which the feeling which accompanies that perception" (the perception of wit)" is capable of being excited." I agree with him, from the fact that nine in ten of the witty members of society have Individuality or Eventuality, and often Language and Comparison, better developed than Wit. No class of persons in England is so noted for wit as that of the bar. The prevailing development of successful lawyers is in Individuality, Eventuality, and Language.

Lastly, with regard to Mr Hancock's name of assimilativeness-it is quite inadmissible, being formed of a term already applied to science, and used nearly in its popular sense, which is not that of resemblance simply. It implies the conversion of one thing into another. Animals convert or assimilate their food into parts of their own structure. Until some definite result is arrived at, the old naine of Comparison ought to continue; another might mislead as much.

Before concluding, I beg to express to Mr Hancock an assurance that no personal attack on himself is in any way intended by the comments on his letter, although the necessary intrusion of some egotism in my first paragraph might possibly suggest

VOL. IX.NO. XLVI.

such an idea. It matters not to others who is right or who is wrong, so that truth be at length elicited by the conflict of opinion and argument. An earnest desire that the definitions in Phrenology should assume the precision found in those of other sciences, induces me to watch for whatever can throw light on the essential functions of the organs, very few of which can be regarded as fully ascertained. Phrenology cannot become a mature science until we use exact terms and exact definitions. HEWETT COTTRELL WATSON.

THAMES DITTON, September 2. 1835.

ARTICLE IV.

ON THE USES AND MODES OF ACTIVITY OF DESTRUC. TIVENESS. By Mr ROBERT Cox. (Concluded from p. 424.)

HITHERTO We have considered only those emotions and actions which arise from Destructiveness when roused by disagreeable affections of the other organs. Destructiveness, we have seen, by starting into activity whenever any faculty suffers pain, is of eminent utility as an inciter to self-defence-as the source of an emotion which terrifies unprincipled men from infringing upon our rights and enjoyments. Such, in fact, appears to be the leading object for which we have been endowed with this propensity; and such is almost exclusively the purpose which, in well-regulated minds, it actually serves.

"Ev'n the good patient man, whose reason rules,
Rous'd by bold insult, and injurious rage,

With sharp and sudden check th' astonish'd sons
Of violence confounds; firm as his cause,
His bolder heart; in awful justice clad;

His eyes effulging a peculiar fire:

And, as he charges through the prostrate war,
His keen arm teaches faithless men, no more
To dare the sacred vengeance of the just."

That there exist, however, even in the most civilized countries of Europe, many persons in whom the faculty, from the disproportionate size of its organ, is naturally so active and ener getic that no outward stimulus is necessary to bring it into mischievous exercise, is a fact which, however lamentable, is too notorious to be denied. In such cases there is a tendency, not merely to resent injuries sustained, but to inflict them through pure love of mischief-to curse, defame, torment, mutilate, kill, deface, or destroy. However revolting this doctrine may appear, every one who knows human nature must bear witness to its truth. Observe," says Lord Kames," the harsh usage

66

Thomson's Britannia, v. 156-164.

that tame birds receive from children, without any apparent cause; the neck twisted about, feathers plucked off, the eye thrust out with a bodkin; a baby thrown out at a window or torn to pieces. There is nothing more common than flat stones that cover the parapets of a bridge thrown down, the head of a young tree cut off, or an old tree barked. This odious principle," continues his Lordship," is carefully disguised after the first dawn of reason, and is indulged only against enemies, because then it appears innocent."* Happy would it be if this concluding remark were true to the letter-if, after the dawn of reason, the propensity were always disguised, and its operations directed against enemies alone. But in the wanton cruelties which the history of the world in every age so largely exhibits, there is incontestible evidence that the fact is deplorably otherwise. Of how many horrible practices have not the rulers of mankind, for example, been guilty!

"What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?

What wheels? racks? fires? What flaying? boiling? burning

In leads or oils? What old or newer torture

Must I receive?" +

Nor is man in private life less chargeable with following the suggestions of an unbridled Destructiveness:

"Witness at his foot

The spaniel dying for some venial fault,
Under dissection of the knotted scourge;
Witness the patient ox, with stripes and yells
Driv'n to the slaughter, goaded, as he runs,
To madness; while the savage at his heels
Laughs at the frantic sufferer's fury, spent
Upon the guiltless passenger o'erthrown."+

In one of Montaigne's essays, there is a striking passage on the height to which the passion for destruction sometimes rises. "I could scarcely persuade myself," says he, in allusion to the cruelties practised during the French civil wars of the sixteenth century, "I could scarcely persuade myself, before I saw it with my eyes, that there could be found out souls so cruel and fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would hack and lop off the limbs of others, and sharpen their wits to invent unusual torments and new kinds of death, without hatred, without profit, and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of the gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries, of a man in anguish." S

There are on record many cases of murder and incendiarism committed without any external motive whatever. Two Ger+ Winter's Tale, Act iii. Sc. 2.

Sketches, B. ii. Sk. 1.
Cowper's Task, B. vi.

§ Essays, book ii. chap. xi. p. 160.

Cotton's Transl. London, 1685.

68

man women, Gottfried* and Zwanziger, † were executed a few years ago for poisoning a great number of their relations and friends; the latter exclaiming, after she was condemned, that her death was a fortunate thing for others, as she felt that she could not have left off poisoning had she lived. Dr Gall speaks of an old fiddler who murdered thirty-four persons without any malicious or furtive intent, but for the mere pleasure of killing. + He mentions also a Dutch robber who used to throw people into the canals, purely with the view of enjoying the spectacle of their dying struggles. § Mr Schiotz, a Danish magistrate and phrenologist, reports the case of a boy who was brought before him for setting fire to a house belonging to a neighbour with whom he had always been on good terms. "At the sight of the fire," says Mr S., he ran to his mother and told her of it, but without naming himself as the perpetrator. To the question, Why he had committed the crime? he answered, That he did not know. He has always been inclined to do mischief; has often spoiled the materials on the field; has broken the windowglasses in many houses, &c. &c., at all times the property of people who never had offended him." M. Schiotz states that the boy's "organ of Benevolence was so small, that the cranium at that place formed a concavity so considerable, that it surprised every one who saw him, and bore the appearance of having been produced by external injury; yet, according to the relation of his parents, no such injury had ever been sustained. Destructiveness, on the other hand, was extremely great; it projected on both sides beyond the ears. The forehead was low." || In the head of the woman Gottfried, of which the Phrenological Society possesses a cast, the organ of Destructiveness is enormously developed, while that of Benevolence is very deficient.

It is rare that Destructiveness acts so powerfully as in the foregoing cases, when no disease is present; but among the insane such manifestations are of very frequent occurrence, and indeed are mentioned in almost every treatise on mental derange ment. One writer, for instance, reports the case of a servant girl in the country, happy in her situation, and liked by her master and mistress, but who, one day, when making a toast for the tea, was suddenly seized with a propensity to set fire to the barn-yard, which she instantly went out and did. For this insane act, the poor girl was executed. Sometimes Destructiveness is the only organ diseased-Benevolence, Conscientiousness, Adhesiveness, and the intellect being left unimpaired; in which * Phren. Journ. vol. vii. p. 560. See another case, ibid. p. 498. + Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xvi. pp. 269–275.

Gall, iv. 90.

§ Ibid. p. 93. See also p. 170.

Phren. Journ. viii. 63. Two similar cases are mentioned by Gall, i. 430; iii. 158-160.

Marshal on the Morbid Anatomy of the Brain, p. 275.

case the patient earnestly calls out to his friends to save themselves from his fury by flight, or entreats them to bind him when the paroxysm is felt approaching. "Je suis entraîné," exclaimed a French murderer mentioned by Gall," par une force irrésistible à répandre le sang de mes semblables."*

Neither in destructive insanity, nor in the motive which actuated Gottfried, Zwanziger, and the Danish boy, does any trace of anger, jealousy, envy, or hatred, appear; for these emotions (which are evidently compounds of Destructiveness with Self-esteem or some other faculty disagreeably excited) of course can have no existence where Destructiveness alone is in action. With respect to the origin of anger, some confusion has prevailed among phrenologists. By Dr Spurzheim+ and Dr Caldwell it seems to be regarded as an affection of Combativeness; but this opinion is overthrown by the fact that courage, the universally admitted function of Combativeness, so far from keeping pace with irascibility, is often very deficient where the latter abounds, whereas the tendency to injure is a never-failing attendant of wrath. Others have argued, that no faculty except Destructiveness is concerned in the production of anger were this the fact, however, the emotion ought uniformly to be felt when Destructiveness is much excited, whether that excitement be produced through the medium of other organs painfully affected, or by the inflammation or very great development of Destructiveness itself. There is neither proof nor probability that this organ, rendered active by one cause, gives birth to an emotion different from that accompanying the same activity produced by another cause.

When any propensity is powerful and vivacious, it not only gives a desire to act in a certain way, but causes the individual to take a deep interest in such actions, and to derive pleasure from seeing them, or reading about them, performed by others. He who has Combativeness large, delights in witnessing contention, and reads with pleasure a well-written narrative of daring adventure; the secretive man studies with eagerness a history of the intrigues and machinations of crafty statesmen; and he who has great Locality, is fond of perusing accounts of voyages and travels. In the same way, persons highly endowed with Destructiveness, but whose morality, intellect, or Love of

Gall, iii. 174. In this and another case noticed at p. 177 of the same volume, however, it is not evident that disease was the cause of this "irresistible temptation to kill and shed blood;" the size of the organ having been in both heads enormous. Many additional cases of destructive insanity will be found in Gall, i. 399, 417-423, 447-457; ii. 470; iv. 99-110, 170: Dr Combe on Mental Derangement, p. 258: Simpson on Popular Education, App. No. II., and Phren. Jour. i. 36; viii. 144.

+ Phil. Prin. of Phren. pp. 37, 53.

Phren, Jour. vol. vii, p. 502.