Spurzheim and Cranology

Spurzheim is a good man, and I like him; but he is dense, and the most ignorant German I ever knew. If he had been content with stating certain remarkable coincidences between the moral qualities and the configuration of the skull, it would have been well; but when he began to map out the cranium dogmatically, he fell into infinite absurdities. You know that every intellectual act, however you may distinguish it by name in respect of the originating faculties, is truly the act of the entire man; the notion of distinct material organs, therefore, in the brain itself, is plainly absurd. Pressed by this, Spurzheim has, at length, been guilty of some sheer quackery; and ventures to say that he has actually discovered a different material in the different parts or organs of the brain, so that he can tell a piece of benevolence from a bit of destructiveness, and so forth. Observe, also, that it is constantly found, that so far from there being a concavity in the interior surface of the cranium answering to the convexity apparent on the exterior -- the interior is convex too. Dr. Baillie thought there was something in the system, because the notion of the brain being an extendible net helped to explain those cases where the intellect remained after the solid substance of the brain was dissolved in water.[1]

That a greater or less development of the forepart of the head is generally coincidedent with more or less of reasoning power, is certain. The line across the forehead, also, denoting musical power, is very common.