and absurd but it may be right to remark that he objects to the hypothesis of Sömmering, that it lies in the liquid found in the fourth ventricle, for two reasons. First, that not all the nerves end in this ventricle, viz. the auditory nerve does not; and secondly, that the existence of this liquor in the living and healthy state of the subject has not yet been proved.

It may be proper to add that experiments were made at Mayence on persons guillotined. The brain was opened immediately, and no liquor found in the ventricle; it may therefore be an accumulation of vapour or gas taking place after the death of the subject.

CHAR

CHAP. VII.

ENUMERATION OF ORGANS.

IN proceeding now to the enumeration of those organs which Dr. Gall supposes he has already discovered, the English reporter of this new German Organology does not hesisate to declare that he is well aware of the first impression which the very pretension to such a science must make on the minds of his readers in general, and that he regrets his author should have possessed so little address in his attempt to remove the obvious â priori objections to his doctrine, Dr. Gall once declared in the writer's presence, when he was hunting for a name for one of his organs, that he was better qualified to detect an unobserved phænomenon of nature, than to find words to state his discovery; hence he has frequently changed the names by which he

distinguishes his organs; and doubtless, should the substance of his science be confirmed, and become current, his vocabulary will not long remain as it now stands. This vocabulary too will be more offensive to an Englishman than a German, on account of the different habits of the scientific men of the two countries, in the use of popular terms. The German philosophers are accustomed, in order to express a natural or moral principle, to borrow some familiar term, commonly applied to an ordinary fact or appearance in life or nature which is derived from such principle; and at the same time, in their scientific use of the term, they make no reference whatever to that ordinary fact or appearance; employing the name of the thing for the principle in which the thing originates. German students are therefore accustomed to construe such popular terms liberally and scientifically, but in England, general readers will always be liable to misconstrue such a language; they will give a gross interpretation to positions which was never intended by the authors of them. On the other hand, were writers to avoid such popular terms, and hunt for a vocabulary in the wilds of metaphysics, they would be, it is true, not mis'understood, but still they would not be understood,

derstood, for they would not be attended to at all. I should not wish to try the virtue of most authors, by placing them between the horns of this dilemma. Gall has made his choice without hesitation he has put his finger upon the human skull, and said: Here is the organ of cupidity, there of murder; this protuberance points out one who has an excellent verbal memory, that, denotes a person who recollects places well; at that corner lies the sign of musical sense, here that of colours, &c. &c. Such being his unqualified assertions, or rather, such being the assertions which it is easy to learn by heart and repeat, while the qualifications which the author makes are disregarded, and not repeated; no wonder that sometimes indignation, and sometimes contempt, indispose judicious persons to enquiry and while Gall himself neglects to point out the different degrees of proof by which his distinct positions are supported, the laughers and the revilers cannot be blamed for chusing as the themes of their merriment or declamation, those assertions which appear the most extravagant and fanciful.

In the mean while, the most unfavorable remark which forces itself on the minds of even the candid and liberal, is the inadequacy of the organs to explain the various phænomena

phænomena of mind. very insignificant and

Some are found for merely accidental cit

cumstances of life and characters, while essential features have no corresponding instrument. Perhaps, however, this objection may be sufficiently invalidated by observing, that we cannot here apply the rule, "De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio," We may well conceive the existence of the organs, tho' we may not be able to point out where they appear. But I need not here anticipate the objections of the judicious readers; the less so, as at the end I have translated the impartial strictures of Huseland, a physician of distinction in Germany, and advantageously known here.

Gall arranges the organs under three distinct classes.

1. Those by which man is immediately

enabled to enter into connection with the external world.

I.

The Organ of Sexual Love.

This organ constitutes the cerebellum. It comprises that part of the os occipitis which lies below the linea semicircularis inferior, towards the great occipital hole, and in living

subjects