Unless he is a profound Anthropologist he has no standard of humanity,
no absolute standard with which to compare himself, and if he should
attempt to form such a standard, his personal defects would vitiate
the result.
I never go into society without witnessing examples of those who need
earnest psychic admonition. For example, among public speakers, I
would mention certain defects: A., with a broad forehead and richly
endowed intellect, has not sufficient development of the highest
regions of the brain to give him moral dignity or to enable him to
discriminate well between the noble upright and the cunning selfish.
His superior intellect is shown not by impressive eloquence, but by
energetic loquacity, and hence fails to receive full recognition. B.
has the dignity and power in which A. is deficient, but lacking in the
organs of love, sympathy and liberality, he becomes harsh, censorious
and bitterly controversial, making many enemies and leading a wretched
home-life. C. has a grand oratorical energy and dignity, but lacking
in the organs of reverence and humility, he overrates himself and
becomes famous for his vanity. D. has the intellect, wit, humor, and
social qualities to shine in company, but from lack of the organ of
self-respect, he fails to maintain the dignity of a gentleman and
command proper respect in society. E. had the power and genius to rank
among the most eloquent and distinguished men of the nation, but the
too broad base of his brain overcame all his nobler qualities, and,
after becoming an object of general contempt, he ended his life a
worthless sot. F. had an intellectual genius of the highest order, and
ought to have left a name among the great scientists of the age, but
the regions of moral energy, cheerfulness, and adhesiveness were
lacking in his brain, and hence he never attained any great success or
retained any satisfactory position. His life ran down into pessimism,
failure, and premature decay. G. had another splendid intellect and
made his mark on the times, but lacking in the region of dignity and
self-control, he failed to reach his just position in political life
and fell into premature mental decay from over-excitement. H., with
much less of intellectual capacity, but a better balanced organization
rose to the highest rank in the esteem of his countrymen. I., with an
intellect adapted to the exploration of the mysteries of science, of
which he gave good evidence, but lacking in all the elements of
strength of character lead a life of uniform failure, obscurity and
poverty, and yet I felt assured that a different education in youth
which would have developed his manhood and ambition and would have
carried him to eminence. J. is a man of superior intellect,
benevolence and strength of character, but the organ of love is
singularly defective in his head and his domestic life is therefore
void of happiness.
Neither the men nor the women in whom I have observed the deficiency
of the faculty of love, ever seemed to be aware of the fact or to
suspect that their intense antipathies were the product of a faulty
organization, and their discords chargeable to themselves.
K. and L. are two gentlemen richly endowed in intellect and in the
other virtues, but not in conscientiousness, in which they are
strangely deficient. This is the only defective region in their heads
and it is fully borne out in their lives, which are void of integrity
and truth, though they have escaped the condemnation of the law.
M. was a lady of intense ambition in whom the regions of love and
religion were deficient. Aspiring to be a leader in philanthropic
reform she had a limited following in an erratic course, but ended her
labors by obtaining a snug position for herself and repudiating all
she had done. N. was another would-be leader in philanthropic reforms,
who was at one time quite conspicuous, but while he had the ideal
speculative intellect to appreciate theories, he was lacking in love
and religion. His philanthropy did not pay, and he abandoned it
entirely for a life of selfish self-indulgence.
I might enumerate many more, with whose organic development I was
familiar, whose lives displayed conspicuously their organic defects of
brain, but who never seemed to understand their own deficiencies or
make any effort to correct them. Could they have been corrected in
adult life? Much might have been done if they had understood and been
admonished by Anthropology. I know of one in whom an organic defect
was pointed out, in his first manhood, who, by persistent effort, so
far overcame it as to modify the form of his head, and increase its
fulness in the moral regions. But, as the world goes, men are not
admonished, and they cherish their defects, refusing to believe that
they are faults.
It is in childhood and youth that the work of reformation is to be
accomplished, when parents and teachers shall have learned the
methods.
But reformation must begin farther back, with parents. It must begin
in the most faithful care and systematic loving culture during the
nine months of unborn life, which may do more than all subsequent
education.
And it must begin still farther back, in the refusal to propagate
evil, in the selection of mothers who are worthy and competent to bear
good children, and the selection of fathers whose characters are worth
reproducing, leaving an unchosen remnant to whom marriage should be
denied.