The very conception of science had then scarcely begun to be formed in
the minds of the wisest men of the time; and if it had been, who was
there to suggest that the handful of pulp contained in the human skull,
and the soft string of marrow in the spine, and cobweb lines of nerves,
apparently of no more account than the hairs of the head, could transmit
thoughts, emotions, passions--all the scenery of the spiritual world!
For two hundred years more there was no effectual recognition of
anything of the sort. At the end of those two centuries anatomists
themselves were slicing the brain like a turnip, to see what was inside
it,--not dreaming of the leading facts of its structure, nor of the
inconceivable delicacy of its organization. After half a century of
knowledge of the main truth in regard to the brain, and nearly that
period of study of its organization, by every established medical
authority in the civilized world, we are still perplexed and baffled
at every turn of the inquiry into the relations of body and mind. How,
then, can we make sufficient allowance for the effects of ignorance in
a community where theology was the main interest in life, where science
was yet unborn, and where all the influences of the period concurred
to produce and aggravate superstitions and bigotries which now seem
scarcely credible?
[The reviewer appears to be a half believer in Phrenology, and yet
unwilling to acknowledge his indebtedness to its teachers for the light
he has received in the organization and phenomena of the brain.]