Yet phrenology has some points of exceptional importance. It is one of the few pseudo-scientific cults which has possessed vitality enough to change with the years so that, in a variety of disguises, it exists and flourishes to-day. The readers of personality from photographs, the advisers on personality who examine complexion, the graphologists and other psychological fakers who guess at vocations and aptitudes, are all the descendants of phrenology. This practical use for phrenology was one of its earliest claims. The name of “the employment consultant, Theophrastus of Eresos,” who flourished 372 B.C., is drawn into the controversy. And in the 1840’s, advertisements like the following from the New York Sun were by no means uncommon: “An apprentice wanted—a stout boy not over fifteen years of age of German or Scotch parents to learn a good but difficult trade. N.B. It will be necessary to bring a recommendation as to his abilities from Messrs. Fowler and Wells, Phrenologists, 131 Nassau Street, New York. Apply corner West and Franklin Streets.”
Combe emphasizes the practical value of phrenology by pointing out that banks could avoid engaging clerks whose organ of Acquisitiveness overbore the organ of Cautiousness. Another Scotch phrenologist demanded that judges should be chosen for the size of the phrenological development in Conscientiousness. The problem of educating children could be solved by discovering to a fraction their various faculties and tendencies. Here phrenology touched on a subject which was particularly attractive at the time for, in addition to discovering the proper faculty which each individual ought to make his mastering impulse, phrenology also announced its own version of the doctrine of “self-help.” Action, according to the phrenologists, is the great means of strengthening every peculiarity in our nature; “self-made or never made” is the motto of O. S. Fowler and, according to Dr. Bartlett:
“This is strictly true of every intellectual power, and it is as true of the animal instincts as it is of the knowing faculties. The love of children is made strong and fervent by loving children. Hate becomes a burning and ferocious passion only by hating. And, furthermore, as strictly true as this is of the intellect and the instincts, is it of all the higher sentiments. Hope can be nourished only by its own ambrosial food,—the bright colors, the ever-blossoming flowers, the fairy enchantments of the future. Conscientiousness, that deep-seated sentiment of right and wrong, the stern monitor within us, can be crowned with the supremacy which it was designed to possess, only by our being just. Ideality,—the versatile power,—constituting, as it may be said to do, the wings of the spirit, can acquire strength and freedom only by soaring aloft into a pure and celestial atmosphere, and by visiting, in the heavens and on the earth those scenes of beauty and sublimity and order, those manifestations of the perfect, the excellent and the fair, which have, been created for its gratification. Benevolence can be quickened into a divine and soothing sentiment only by our being compassionate and humane.”
Retreating from this flight, we find other phrenologists a little more practical in developing the same theory. There was moral imbecility, a disease which phrenology made famous in connection with murders a century before it appeared in our Sunday papers. Through phrenology this was to be recognized before it led to crime. The sufferer was then to be taken to a moral reformatory where the opposite faculty of conscientiousness, and other desirable traits, were to be exercised until an equilibrium was established in the brain and the potential murderer was changed into a good citizen. The phrenologist established a hierarchy of the faculties and objected to contemporary education because it developed only the intellectual powers and omitted the exercise of moral and religious feelings. These, according to his theories, needed only to be put in use, by a sort of gymnastics, to make them dominant. Combe was particularly interested in education:
“One general defect in the mental condition of all of us is, that in ten instances we act from impulse and habit for once that we do so from reflection. This arises from imperfect training in youth. Our impulsive faculties, being early developed, and possessing great natural energy, are constantly liable to err, and to lead us into evil, when not controlled and directed by enlightened intellect. One object, therefore, in teaching the young, should be to communicate knowledge, and another to train the propensities and sentiments to submit to the control of the intellect. . . . Reflection, when founded on knowledge, produces habits of self-denial, self-restraint, and obedience. The want of this practical training and discipline is seen in the males, in the recklessness with which they dash into speculation and adventure, pursuing their leading impulses at all hazards; and in the females, in the pertinacity with which they adhere to practices which they know to be injurious to health, and in their deficiency of mental resolution to submit to the temporary sufferings which always accompany a change of evil habits.”
Phrenology condemned free love and vindicated marriage, which was, of course, to be regulated on phrenological principles. The dangers of unscientific mating are vividly described by Nelson Sizer in Thoughts on Domestic Life; or Marriage Vindicated and Free Love Exposed (1857):
“Phrenology opens the only direct avenue to the feelings, and the hidden under-current of passion, that give tone to the character. These, being suppressed during courtship, gather strength by confinement. As volcanic fire, long smothered in the bowels of the earth, bursts forth with redoubled fury, covering whole cities with its burning flood; so, a smiling swain, may be all kindness and condescension till the Rubicon be passed, and she is made his own, when casting off his borrowed character, he assumes his native ferocity, causing the doating wife to ‘curse the day that made them one, and wish the priest speechless, who knit the knot.’”
In the thirty odd faculties, that of Amativeness is usually placed first, but phrenologists warned even those whose Amative faculty was over-developed to indulge this feeling only “in pure love and virtuous wedlock,” as to which, says another:
“Phrenology would be of blessed use in forming that most important and dear of all earthly ties, the marriage relation. Gentle maiden, study it; study it, as you value your peace, as you would mate yourself into a happy home, and especially as you would train yourself to make that home a paradise to the chosen of your heart. This is no laughing matter, although you may mirthfully read it. Could you see with the Perceptions our science would put into your power, you would infinitely prefer life-long singleness in your native abode, or severest toil among strangers, to the hand which otherwise might crush you, body and spirit, to uttermost misery.
“Young hopeful man! the same doctrine will apply to you. With our science, you would often find beauty as but ashes, aye, ashes with fire in them, too. On the altar of wedlock they would shoot up the flame of sacrifice indeed—the sacrifice of a husband’s peace. Wisdom, enshrined in Phrenology, calls aloud to both sexes: ‘Come unto me and learn. Get understanding; it is better than rubies, whether in the casket of manhood, or on the countenance of woman!’”
Another one of its leading theories was that there should be no punishment for children; instead, the organ counteracting the one responsible for misdeeds was to be exercised and developed.[2] At this point, we begin to see that phrenology was undermining not only the Calvinist theory of damnation, but the common principle of human responsibility. This was one of its chief contributions to the stream of liberal ideas which eventually wore through the bedrock of Calvinist prejudice but, before we come to it, there is a single, almost ludicrous, circumstance which needs to be mentioned. For as the phrenologists found themselves on the defensive before medical science, they embraced as proof the very quackery which they had supplanted, to wit, Mesmerism. At Barnum’s Museum, Mr. Peale gave exhibitions of phreno-magnetism and the Reverend La Roy Sunderland, of New York, claimed to be the first to apply magnetism to phrenology with scientific objects. Mr. Sunderland, in the presence of phrenologists whose organ of Cautiousness was highly developed and who were ready to reject all unorthodox principles, magnetized the organ of Adhesiveness, “appertaining to that exquisite tendernes
s and blending of soul with soul which should exist and be prominent in the marriage relation.” The subject “immediately began to express the strongest attachment to an individual. ‘Who is he?’ was the inquiry. At first, with the most natural but unaffected delicacy, she declined answering, but at length confessed that it was a little boy she knew many years ago. She was asked his name. This she would not divulge at first, but, on being solicited, gave it. The witness then suggested to the magnetizer to influence Hope, which he did. She immediately expressed the most gladdening anticipations of again seeing her earliest love. But when the witness informed her that he knew several of that name, and saw them every day, and would inquire if one was not the individual in question, she became almost frantic with the joyfulness of hope. ‘Will you, will you?’ exclaimed she, her countenance kindling into an intense glow of pleasure, even ecstasy, which no art could possibly counterfeit.
“As in this description we would somewhat observe the order we have followed in our work, we will here state that at a third and different place Philoprogenitiveness was magnetized, and the lady expressed the most intense desire for a child to caress and pour out her affection upon. A shawl, rolled up, was placed in her lap, and she was willed by the magnetizer to believe it a child. She enfolded it in her arms, pressed it to her bosom, and kissed it over and over, as if she had been a mother who, after months of separation, had been permitted to embrace her babe. We may remark, as we pass, that the organ doubling with Philoprogenitiveness is one producing affection for pets.”[3]
From these and similar experiments it was deduced that every living being has a peculiar magnetic nature, that magnetic forces are the means of motion and sensation, that the magnetic forces in the different organs terminate in the face and may be excited separately by magnetism and, finally, “that this magnetic nature is governed by laws peculiar to itself, and may be communicated from one person to another.” This is still in the region of orthodox phrenology heavily weighted with orthodox mesmerism; but there were of course tangents even to these eccentric sciences. Etherology, in which Prof. J. S. Grimes tried to combine the philosophies of mesmerism and phrenology, announced that “There is a material substance occupying space, which connects the plants and the earth, and which communicates light, heat, electricity, gravitation, and mental emotion, from one body to another, and from one mind to another.” This the author announces merely as an inference; and it is interesting to note his type of monism, which identifies as etherium the substance which quickens material objects and communicates mental phenomena. He says however that etherium is an exceedingly “subtile and elastic substance.” Etherium is evolved from the blood in combination with oxygen, and Submissiveness, Kindness, and Credenciveness (among other faculties in the horrible jargon of the phrenologist) produce etheropathic phenomena “which have never heretofore been understood, even by phrenologists themselves.”[4] Motions of etherium transmitted from the operator to the medium cause clairvoyance, and etherium itself accounts for the most amazing phenomena of phreno-magnetism. A Dr. Engledue reported the magnetization of a young woman whose forehead was gently rubbed at the required spot and who cried out, “ ‘It makes me know what time it is,’ and then told the time with almost perfect accuracy. The organ called wit or mirthfulness being excited she very soon began to laugh involuntarily,” although the mesmerizer remained very grave. This particular operator had a faculty not often mentioned by others; he could paralyze an organ as well as excite it.
In spite of these fancies to which the incautious abandoned themselves, phrenology had a great vogue. Like mesmerism, it attracted people of intelligence and position as much as it did the ignorant, and again warns us against the assumption that only “the boobs” support superstition and quackery. We find the name of Spurzheim falling into place in one of Emerson’s categories of great minds with Locke, Lavoisier, and Bentham. Combe examined the head of the Prince of Wales, at the request of Albert and Victoria, and Julia Ward Howe found phrenology of great assistance to her in educating the blind, deaf, and dumb Laura Bridgeman. It was used as an argument against drinking, since it proved that alcohol aroused and stimulated only the lower faculties while it weakened the higher and moral powers. John Brown’s cranium was read by Sizer and, although the phrenologist never saw his patient’s face, he declared that “this man has firmness and energy enough to swim up the Niagara River and tow a 74-gun ship, holding the tow line in his teeth.” James A. Garfield, as a young man, was advised to exercise his combativeness until it was as great as that of Stephen A. Douglas so that he might become Chief Justice. General George A. Custer called at Sizer’s office in 1875, when he was en route to Phil Sheridan’s wedding in Chicago. Walt Whitman and Greeley frequented the same phrenological depot and, on the boardwalk at Atlantic City, you may still see Henry Ward Beecher’s statement, “All my life I have been in the habit of using phrenology as that which solves the practical phenomena of life.”
As a science, phrenology was ultimately discredited. But it was also a vague philosophy, a way of approaching moral problems. At first, it seemed only a scientific restatement of the principle of determinism; we are damned by our faculties as surely as we are damned by our God. But especially in the self-confident, pushing, acquiring, self-improving society of America, the doctrine of developing the faculties corrected the excesses of Calvinistic dogma. Phrenology was, therefore, subject to attack on the ground of being utterly anti-Christian and of destroying all sense of responsibility. One judges from the following onslaught (in the 1850’s) that people went to the phrenologist as they now go to the psychoanalyst and that, rightly or wrongly, the same motives were ascribed to them:
“The moral aspect of phrenological doctrines is that, however, which renders the humbug the most mischievous and deplorable. Multitudes go to the science for the purpose of easing a loaded conscience, by learning that their delinquencies and vices are constitutional, and depending wholly on organization. Such find a false peace,—an imaginary comfort in the doctrine, that virtue and vice are alike the result of organs implanted by the Creator, and thus persuade themselves into the disbelief of human accountability. And learning, as they do, that they are irresistibly under the influence of their propensities to which the animal organs impel them, they despair of reformation, notwithstanding its necessity is so obvious to themselves and others. And here they are taught to regard the lascivious man to be prompted by the organ of ‘amativeness’ formed by muscles of the neck;—the liar to be driven by the development of ‘secretiveness’—the thief by that of ‘acquisitiveness’—the desperado by ‘combativeness’—the drunkard by ‘alimentiveness’—and the murderer by ‘destructiveness.’ While on the other hand, the virtues of charity, truth, honesty, peaceableness, and brotherly kindness are the results either of the absence or diminished size of these organs, or the counteracting influence of others. Hence a man is religious, or otherwise, by reason of a physical necessity, since the prominence, or the depression of the top of the head, where the organs of veneration, theosophy, and marvelousness are located, must irresistibly result in one or the other character. But we must not call this materialism or fatalism, else a hue and cry of persecution is raised, as though the sympathy of heaven and earth should be moved in behalf of this precious humbug.”
The phrenologist tried to square his doctrine with Christianity and, to avoid the taunt of materialism, declared that his system was the most moral in the world because it taught that happiness is derived from the exercise of certain faculties and misfortune from the over-indulgence of others. But no such concession could break down the hostility of the devout Christian who still asked, “What has become of sin?” It gives us an insight into the progressive decay of the strict Calvinist doctrine, to read a letter written by a Dr. Taylor, a moderate divine, and then to note the comments of an intelligent phrenologist. Dr. Taylor writes:
“I do not believe that the posterity of Adam are, in the proper sense of the language, guilty of his sin; or
that the ill-desert of that sin is truly theirs; or that they are punished for that sin. But I do believe, that, by the wise and holy constitution of God, all mankind, in consequence of Adam’s sin, become sinners by their own act.
“I do not believe that the nature of the human mind, which God creates, is itself sinful; or that God punishes men for the nature which he creates. But I do believe that sin, universally, is no other than selfishness, or a preference of one’s self to all others,— of some inferior good to God; that this free voluntary preference is a permanent principle of action in all the unconverted, and that this is sin, and all that in the Scriptures is meant by sin. I also believe, that such is the nature of the human mind, that it becomes the occasion of universal sin in men in all the appropriate circumstances of their existence; and that, therefore, they are truly and properly said to be sinners by nature.”
The Stammering Century Page 39