(_Continued from page 32._)
I would not say that Napoleon's brain was to any great degree
abnormal, but I am satisfied that criminal's brains are generally
abnormal, for there are many criminals whose heads do not, by their
exterior form, indicate their depravity, but wherever I have examined
the interior of the skull I have found the basilar organs active,
growing and imprinted upon the interior table of the skull, while the
superior region reveals the decline of the moral nature by the
increased thickness of the bone which is growing inward and has not
the digital impressions of the convolutions which are marked wherever
the brain is in an active growing condition. The criminal's skull must
be studied by post mortem examination, and the most effective method
is by placing a taper through the foramen magnum at the bottom of the
skull which will reveal the more active organs by the translucency and
thinness of the bones, while the inactive organs are indicated by
their opacity and thickness, as in the following convict skull.
[Illustration: A REBELLIOUS CONVICT.]
The sketch here presented exhibits the degrees of translucency and
opacity in a skull which I obtained at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, about
fifty years ago. It was the skull of a convict killed in the
penitentiary while leading a rebellion in a desperate effort to
escape.
The man was of a respectable family, son of the sheriff of Warren
County, Ky. He fell into bad company and bad habits at New Orleans,
drinking and gaming, until for an act of highway robbery he was sent
to the penitentiary. The reader will observe the general activity of
the intellect and the adjacent social sentiments indicated by the
translucency, and the general torpor, indicated by the opacity in the
regions of Religion, Hope, Reverence, Love, Conscientiousness,
Industry, Cheerfulness, Love of Approbation, Sense of Honor, and
Self-respect. Secretiveness shows opacity, while Combativeness shows
intense activity which extends into Adhesiveness and cautiousness.
The translucency at Firmness, Irritability, and Combativeness, which
were active to the last moments of his life, is quite characteristic.
Upon the whole, the test by the inner light inserted at the foramen
magnum in the base of the skull indicates a very low, lawless,
desperate and unprincipled character, with enough of adhesiveness to
give him comrades in crime, and enough of intelligence to give him
some success.
The most extraordinary instance of this was in the skull of a negro
woman which I examined in Alabama, which had only a slight
translucency at Firmness, while the rest of the upper surface of the
skull was so abnormally thick that in lifting it one was reminded of
the weight of a block of wood. She had, in a fit of temper, murdered
her own child in the field, chopping it down with an axe.
CHAPTER VII.--PRACTICAL UTILITY OF ANTHROPOLOGY IN ITS PSYCHIC
DEPARTMENT.
All science should be useful--Anthropology has the supreme
utility--Importance of self-knowledge and its rarity--Almost
impossible without the aid of Anthropology--Its absence in the
college--Immense waste of labor in abortive
self-culture--Anthropology an exact guide--The selfish do not
want it--Mistakes in education--Unbalanced characters
described--Possibility of reform--Conjugal reform most
important--The powerful agencies of Anthropology.
Before commencing the study of the organs of the brain and faculties
of the soul, it is well to look to its results, its practical
utilities; for the pursuit of science merely to gratify an
intellectual curiosity is not the noblest employment of our time,
although it has been a favorite indulgence of the literary class, and
was regarded by the ancient philosopher, Empedocles, as the noblest
occupation of man. From this opinion I decidedly dissent, regarding
the lawless and excessive indulgence of the intellectual faculties as
a species of erratic dissipation, injurious to the manhood of the
individual, and pernicious to society by the misleading influence of a
bad example.
Not only does this extreme intellectual indulgence, in a life the
primary purpose of which is not meditation, but action, impair the
individual as to his normal usefulness, and thus diffuse by example a
deteriorating influence upon the young, and misleading influence upon
all, but it actually leads to false views of life, and an unsound
philosophy such as transcendental idealism, pessimism, indolence, and
the pursuit of visionary falsehoods which a well-balanced mind would
intuitively reject. These follies are cultivated by a pedantic system
of education, and by the accumulated literature which such education
in the past has developed, feeble and faulty in style, superficial in
conception, and sadly misleading as to the principles and purposes of
life.
Though tempted to such indulgence by the ceaseless activity of my own
mind, I can say that I have never pursued any course of investigation,
or study, without a positive certainty of its beneficence and value.
No other course would be compatible with the demands of duty; but it
is obvious on the face of a large portion of our literature that the
ethical sentiments were dormant when it was written. Pre-eminent above
all other studies in practical value is the science of ANTHROPOLOGY,
so long neglected and unknown; a science which places biology on a new
basis, rectifies therapeutics, reforms education, develops ethics or
religion, and illuminates all spheres of knowledge by psychometry.
The psychic department of Anthropology in which we are now entering
the study of the faculties of the soul, the organs of the brain, and
the effects of their varying development upon the characters of men
and animals, is rich in very practical instruction for the guidance of
life, and the attainment not only of spiritual and physical health and
success in this life, but of that nobler and greater success, which is
chiefly realized in the coming centuries, in which a grander realm is
opened for our expanded powers in the higher life.
One of the most essential things for success in life is a correct
self-knowledge. A strong, well-balanced organization with a clear
intuitive intellect, generally gives this knowledge, and leads to a
correct course in life. But how few are really well developed and well
balanced, with intuitive clearness of perception, and again how many
are there who, in the unrestrained indulgence of all their passions
and propensities, care not whether their lives are right or wrong,
according to a correct standard. This class desire no admonition, no
explanation of their peculiarities, and the causes of their failures
or misfortunes.
Selfish and narrow-minded men charge all their failures and
misfortunes either to inevitable destiny, or to the faults and
misconduct of others. But the truth which science enforces is that we
should charge all our failures to ourselves. Other men have succeeded
splendidly in life, winning wealth, power, renown and friendship. If
we have not, it must be because we have not exercised the same
faculties which made them successful, and we should study most
diligently to learn wherein, or how, we have failed.
Nearly all are disqualified for this task of self-inspection either by
a selfish bias which is unwilling to recognize a fault, or by the
fault itself which biases the judgment. The faculty, or passion, which
misleads one becomes a part of his judging faculty, and cannot condemn
itself. The miser cannot realize the baseness of his avarice, nor the
mercenary soldier the enormity of war. Nor can a defective faculty
assist in realizing the defect. The color-blind cannot appreciate
painting, the thief cannot appreciate integrity, the brutal
wife-beater cannot appreciate love, and a Napoleon cannot appreciate
disinterested friendship.
Nor do they who fail to comprehend their own faults learn much from
the admonition of friends, for _they_ are too desirous of maintaining
a friendly relation to give entirely candid advice, and the criticisms
of those who are not friends excite suspicion and anger. Fortunate is
the man who can profit by the criticisms of his enemies.
How many are there who go through life with glaring defects of
character, injurious to their welfare, who are never warned, either by
kind friends or by conscience, and never realize the necessity of any
higher wisdom than their own, or the necessity of self-culture.
Hence the imperative necessity of psychic science, not that barren
abstraction called psychology in colleges, but a science which, like a
faithful mirror, reveals to us that which we cannot see. As the
gymnastic teacher reveals by a system of measurement (anthropometry)
the defective muscles that need development, so should the
psychologist discover in the conformation of the brain the special
culture needed by defective faculties.
There is nothing of this kind in the universities at present. Glaring
faults are seen everywhere, working out their disastrous results, with
no preventive method. We have orthopedic and orthopraxic institutions,
and gymnastic halls to correct the defects of the body, but no attempt
to recognize or correct the far more important defects and deformities
of the soul. The orthopneumatic institution for the soul has not yet
been conceived. The school or college should be such an institution,
and in THE NEW EDUCATION I have endeavored to show how it may perform
this duty. The pulpit should be a similar institution; but, alas, the
pulpit itself, has no adequate system of ethics--its theology has
starved its ethics, and it lifts its followers, in the main, no higher
than the level of exterior respectability. The task remains for some
able critic to show how many of the important duties of life, though
plainly implied by the fundamental law of Christianity, are ignored by
the pulpit.
Anthropology alone reveals the ethical fulness and symmetry of
character, which all should seek; and when science shall be advanced
far beyond the barriers that circumscribe it at present, men and women
will seek the profound and intuitive anthropologist for consultation,
as they now seek the physician for the attainment of health.
It has been for the attainment of a possible superiority that millions
have submitted to the discipline of collegiate education, while others
with nobler aims have sought in meditation, in prayer, and in
imitation of the illustrious, for the ennoblement of their own lives.
No book has sold more largely than the Imitation of Christ. But was it
not often a blind struggle in the dark, an attempt to reach a goal
never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing
in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious
aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the
boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless
mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science.
Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have we
seen the vast expenditure of spiritual energy in the blind struggle of
aspiring souls.
To all this, Anthropology will put an end, for it will give to each a
definite conception of the full normal development of humanity, and of
the organization or brain development by what it is sustained. To
those who fall far short of that development, it gives the means of a
definite measurement of the defect, and shows by cranioscopy and
psychometry what is to be done in self-culture, as clearly as we learn
in the gymnasium what muscles need greater development.
The desire for such improvement is often absent when it is most
needed. A vast multitude of inferior people are perfectly content with
themselves in a selfish life, wholly absorbed in providing for their
own wants, or, if possessed of wealth, using it only in selfishness
and ostentation,--content in believing themselves as good as their
neighbors, doing nothing to benefit society, unless under the coercion
of public opinion, leading such lives that the world is certainly no
better, and perhaps a little worse, for their advent.
A very different class, who are more apt to profit by anthropology is
composed of those in whom there is a decided predominance of good. In
some cases they are deficient in selfish and combative energy, do not
know how to assert their rights, are credulous and confiding. Children
of that character if reared by timid and over-fond parents, are
deprived of the rough contact with society that is necessary to their
development. There are many whom the lack of self-confidence, the lack
of ambition, and lack of business energy condemn to an obscure life,
when their intellectual capacities would fit them for an influential
position. A kind but mistaken system of training confirms the defect,
and dooms them to an inefficient life, or a stern system of repression
deprives them of all self-confidence and energy. Millions of good
women are victimized in this manner. This amiable class are amenable
to instruction, but are often by their easy credulity, induced to
yield to unworthy teachers, or to the guidance of unsound but
pretentious or delusive literature. They lack in the energy of
criticism which might protect them from error.
Throughout the whole course of education, from infancy to manhood,
Anthropology may be an ever-present monitor, warning against excesses,
against failures, against errors of opinion, while urging the
cultivation of our feebler faculties as the gymnastic teacher urges
the cultivation of the feebler muscles.
Unaware of their errors, many would resent all such criticism, but the
science which cannot help them, because they will have none of it,
will enable us to understand them correctly and know how to deal with
them.
There is an intense curiosity in the young to know their capacities,
their adaptation to various pursuits, their merits and defects of
character, to know what to cultivate, what to repress, and what
estimate to put upon themselves. In the age of adolescence such
knowledge is very valuable, and is generally willingly received.
Moreover, it is very interesting to parents and guardians to know what
estimate to form of their charge. The thorough Psychologist (I prefer
this word to Phrenologist, which has a more limited meaning) is
therefore one of the most useful scientists, and may render invaluable
service in the period from ten to twenty years of age, when a guiding
wisdom is needed.
That wisdom, though seldom sought later in life, is nevertheless a
wisdom which all men need, and especially for this reason, that, with
few exceptions,