The evidence against the system of phrenology. Being the substance of a paper read at an extraordinary meeting of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh ... / [Thomas Stone].

  • Stone, Thomas.
Date:
1828
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The evidence against the system of phrenology. Being the substance of a paper read at an extraordinary meeting of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh ... / [Thomas Stone]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sarily destroyed. According to the phrenological scheme, different states of mind are conceived to originate separate¬ ly, and independently of each other, by the supposed activity of different material organs. Dr Gall attributes to each of these organs live degrees of activity, occasioning Percep¬ tion, Memory, Recollection, Judgment, and Imagination. On the other hand, Dr Spurzheim allows only three, which give rise to Perception, Memory, and Judgment. The brain is thus made an aggregate of so many distinct minds; and, to reconcile their even acting in conjunction, phreno¬ logists must have recourse to a gratuitous supposition, an hypothetical idea, that, by a law peculiar to each, they all act in perfect harmony. Nevertheless, no ostensible reason can be adduced to explain why this should happen; for, as three degrees of activity are attributed to each or¬ gan, and as their functions are all different, it is evident there may be as many different degrees or kinds of action, going on in every part of the brain, as there are organs, multiplied by the degrees of activity in each. Thus, 35 organs, multiplied by 3, equal 105, and including the 5 senses, which make 15 more, we may have no less than 120 actions carried on in the same organ, every 35 of which may be simultaneously in operation. The supposition, that different states of thought and feeling originate separately and independently from one another, through the instrumentality of perfectly distinct agents, will thus be found incompatible with the evidence of our personal or mental identity. Identity, says Dr Brown, is a relative term. “ It implies, in every instance, a double sensation of some sort. The identity of our mind