Abridgement of Elements of Phrenology (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Abridgement of Elements of Phrenology Knowing of no phrenological work free from what appears to me great defects in its explanations of human nature in its connections with the brain, and thinking any aid would be wel comed, in advancing this noblest of sciences from its infantile condition toward maturity, I offer the following svnopsis. Gall, the first successful explorer in this field, and his succes sors, Spurzheim, Combe, and others strong men and among the most meritorious of the race, have been merely pioneers in this philosophy of human existence, in its conditions, workings, in activities, regulations, sufferings, enjoyments. In extension and modification of the current philosophy of the brain and of humanity, many of my opinions here offered do not fully accord with the publications in this field. To extend our knowledge here we want 'the investigations and more or less erring and differing conclusions of thousands of men confering together; as, to improve the greatly imperfect English diction aries it would be well to organize a congress of a hundred or so philologists; for inventing, another congress of athousand or so inventors; as there will be, in the future, congresses for a thousand purposes. The great John Stewart Mill said: Di versity of opinion is not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognizing all sides of the truth. We know much of this human philosophy, but have yet to learn greatly more though much less of the groundwork than the application. Horace Mann said of the ancient leaders in philosophy, that they were great men, but with not enough of great men around them to correct their errors, and as a consequence they propagated more of error than of truth. This is evidently the case with Gall, Spurzheim, and their successors in this complicated science of the human race, in this new and vast field. Men of this century are raising it from its infancy. Generations yet unborn will bring it into stalwart maturity, as a full, god-given revelation and philoso phy of the spiritual and physical mechanisms which produce and regulate all human thought and feeling and conduct holding all the sciences and philosophies based on man; intellectual, phy sical, political, social, moral, religious giving a full explanation of humanity, in all its savagism, barbarism, civilization, through all its past and future. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.