_Read to the Boarders at Our Breakfast Table _
I shall begin, my friends, with the definition of a _pseudoscience_. A
pseudoscience consists of a _nomenclature_, with a self-adjusting
arrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors its
doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tells
against it, is excluded. It is invariably connected with some
lucrative practical application. Its professors and practitioners are
usually shrewd people; they are very serious with the public, but wink
and laugh a good deal among themselves. The believing multitude
consists of women of both sexes, feeble-minded inquirers, poetical
optimists, people who always get cheated in buying horses,
philanthropists who insist on hurrying up the millennium, and others
of this class, with here and there a clergyman, less frequently a
lawyer, very rarely a physician, and almost never a horse-jockey or a
member of the detective police. I did not say that Phrenology was one
of the pseudosciences.
A pseudoscience does not necessarily consist wholly of lies. It may
contain many truths, and even valuable ones. The rottenest bank
starts with a little specie. It puts out a thousand promises to pay
on the strength of a single dollar, but the dollar is very commonly a
good one. The practitioners of the pseudosciences know that common
minds after they have been baited with a real fact or two, will jump
at the merest rag of a lie, or even at the bare hook. When we have
one fact found us, we are very apt to supply the next out of our own
imagination. (How many persons can read Judges XV. 16 correctly the
first time?) The pseudosciences take advantage of this. I did not say
that it was so with Phrenology.
I have rarely met a sensible man who would not allow that there was
_something_ in Phrenology. A broad, high forehead, it is commonly
agreed, promises intellect; one that is "villainous low," and has a
huge hind-head back of it, is wont to mark an animal nature. I have as
rarely met an unbiased and sensible man who really believed in the
bumps. It is observed, however, that persons with what the
phrenologists call "good heads" are more prone than others
toward plenary belief in the doctrine.
It is so hard to prove a negative that, if a man should assert that
the moon was in truth a green cheese, formed by the coagulable
substance of the Milky Way, and challenge me to prove the contrary, I
might be puzzled. But if he offer to sell me a ton of this lunar
cheese, I call on him to prove the truth of the caseous nature of our
satellite before I purchase.
It is not necessary to prove the falsity of the phrenological
statement. It is only necessary to show that its truth is not proved,
and cannot be, by the common course of argument. The walls of the
head are double, with a great air-chamber between them, over the
smallest and most closely crowded "organs." Can you tell how much
money there is in a safe, which also has thick double walls, by
kneading its knobs with your fingers? So when a man fumbles about my
forehead, and talks about the organs of _Individuality_, _Size_, etc.,
I trust him as much as I should if he felt of the outside of my
strongbox and told me that there was a five-dollar or a ten-dollar
bill under this or that particular rivet. Perhaps there is; _only he
doesn't know anything about it_. But this is a point that I, the
Professor, understand, my friends, or ought to, certainly, better than
you do. The next argument you will all appreciate.
I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting mechanism of
Phrenology, which is _very similar_ to that of the pseudosciences. An
example will show it most conveniently.
A-- is a notorious thief. Messrs. Bumpus and Crane examine him and
find a good-sized organ of Acquisitiveness. Positive fact for
Phrenology. Casts and drawings of A-- are multiplied, and the bump
_does not lose_ in the act of copying--I did not say it gained.
--What do you look for so? (to the boarders).
Presently B-- turns up, a bigger thief than A--. But B-- has no bump
at all over Acquisitiveness. Negative fact; goes against Phrenology.
Not a bit of it. Don't you see how small Conscientiousness is?
_That's_ the reason B-- stole.
And then comes C--, ten times as much a thief as either A-- or B--;
used to steal before he was weaned, and would pick one of his own
pockets and put its contents in another, if he could find no other
way of committing petty larceny. Unfortunately C-- has a _hollow_,
instead of a bump, over Acquisitiveness. Ah! but just look and see
what a bump of Alimentiveness! Did not O-- buy nuts and gingerbread,
when a boy, with the money he stole? Of course you see why he is a
thief, and how his example confirms our noble science.
At last comes along a case which is apparently a _settler_, for
there is a little brain with vast and varied powers--a case like that
of Byron, for instance. Then comes out the grand reserve--reason
which covers everything and renders it simply impossible ever to
corner a phrenologist. "It is not the size alone, but the _quality_ of
an organ, which determines its degree of power."
Oh! oh! I see. The argument may be briefly stated thus by the
phrenologist: "Heads I win, tails you lose." Well, that's convenient.
It must be confessed that Phrenology has a certain resemblance to the
pseudosciences. I did not say it was a pseudoscience.
I have often met persons who have been altogether struck up and
amazed at the accuracy with which some wandering Professor of
Phrenology had read their characters written upon their skulls. Of
course, the Professor acquires his information solely through his
cranial inspections and manipulations. What are you laughing at? (to
the boarders). But let us just _suppose_, for a moment, that a
tolerably cunning fellow, who did not know or care anything about
Phrenology, should open a shop and undertake to read off people's
characters at fifty cents or a dollar apiece. Let us see how well he
could get along without the "organs."
I will suppose myself to set up such a shop. I would invest one
hundred dollars, more or less, in casts of brains, skulls, charts,
and other matters that would make the most show for the money. That
would do to begin with. I would then advertise myself as the
celebrated Professor Brainey, or whatever name I might choose, and
wait for my first customer--a middle-aged man. I look at him, ask him
a question or two, so as to hear him talk. When I have got the hang
of him, I ask him to sit down, and proceed to fumble his skull,
dictating as follows: