 | STORY
OF THE
THIRD WISE MAN OF GOTHAM. The merry tales of the three wise men of Gotham |  |
3. STORY
OF THE
THIRD WISE MAN OF GOTHAM.
THE PERFECTION OF SCIENCE.
My brother Harmony, began the Third Wise
Man of Gotham, has, it seems, been shipwrecked
in pursuit of the Perfectibility of Man; and my
brother Quominus has fallen a victim to the Perfection
of Reason, or the Wisdom of Ages, I can
hardly tell which—I, on the contrary, am the martyr
of Science.
I was born and educated in the most scientific,
literary, and philosophical city of the world—for
the women were all Blues and the men Metaphysicians.
In truth, I may say, with perfect veracity,
there were so many people running after science,
that there were not sciences enough for them to run
after. The business was overdone; the game was
exhausted, as in countries too thickly settled and too
much cultivated; and nothing was left for them but
the invention of new sciences, to give them employment.
Besides, such had been the unwearied industry,
the deep sagacity, with which they had pursued
the old sciences, that they had driven them from
their most secret recesses; detected all their arcana;
exposed their occult mysteries; and, in fact,
hole and corner where they had entrenched themselves
for ages. Strangers, who were allured to
the city by the fame of its learning, observed with
astonishment, that the women could call every
thing by its scientific name, and that even the very
children talked nearly as wisely as the best of
them. Learning, science, and philosophy, were
becoming vulgar, insomuch that several people
of the highest rank and fashion, began to study
ignorance, and actually sent their children to school
to unlearn every thing. It was high time, therefore,
for the lovers of science to begin to look about
them; for the writers and lecturers upon the old
Grey Beard mathematics, philosophy, botany, and
chemistry, instead of an audience of pretty fashionables,
with nodding plumes, were content to confine
their instructions to classes of rusty students,
who actually came for no other purpose than to
learn. The fashionable young ladies began to yawn
at conversations, where they met to relax themselves
with political economy and metaphysics;
and a universal alarm prevailed, when a great heiress,
who was considered the bulwark of the blues,
backslided, and married a regular dandy, with a thin
waist and no learning.
It was high time to get up something new for
these people, and as the natives of our isle are more
apt to improve upon the inventions of others than
a coterie of philosophers, and sent out into the
world to discover a new plaything for these grown
up children of knowledge. I travelled, and travelled,
and travelled, as the story books say, over divers
countries that have neither latitude nor longitude;
I visited all the colleges, scientific institutions,
and bedlams; sought out the most learned and
adventurous philosophers of christendom; consulted
the Pundits of India; the Chingfoos of China, the
Dervises of Turkey, and the Jugglers of the Flathead
Indians of the Missouri. In short, I ransacked
the uttermost ends of the earth, and was returning
disconsolate, through Germany, to my native city,
with a firm conviction that there was nothing new
under the sun, when an unexpected adventure befel
me on the eve of a long day's journey.
Owing to various untoward accidents, one of
which was the lameness of my horse, I had been
overtaken by twilight in the midst of the forest of
Teutoburgium, not far, as it afterwards proved, from
the spot where Varus and his legions had been cut
off by the German hero Arminius. As the night
gathered thick around me, obscured into Cimmerian
darkness by the overarching shades, I became more
and more confused and uncertain of my way. I
heard the growling of bears, the howling of wolves,
the hooting of owls, and the shrill whistle of the bandit,
mingling with the sighing and moaning of winds
length my progress was arrested by a cold and
heavy hand, forcibly applied to my mouth, with
such excellent aim, considering it was so dark,
that it stopt it entirely and prevented me from
calling for help, had I bethought myself of doing
it. So forcible was the blow, that it knocked me
from my horse, and I lay on the ground for a few
moments insensible to every thing around me. As I
gradually recovered—the pain of my fall—the loneliness
of my situation—and the apprehension that
the bandit would return with his companions, and
finish, perhaps, what he had begun, overcame me
entirely, and I groaned at intervals aloud. Nothing
for a time answered me, but the dismal echoes of
the forest, and once or twice the neighings of what
I supposed my own horse, who had wandered to a
distance. At length, however, my cries were answered
by a voice which seemed close to my ear.
“Who and what art thou, that thus wanderest
alone, at midnight, on the spot where the bones of
tens of thousands have been bleaching for ages?”
cried a hollow and tremulous voice.
“I am a pilgrim,” exclaimed I, “from a far distant
country, travelling the earth in search of a new
science.”
“Thou hast hit the nail on the head,” replied the
invisible voice. “Follow me—give me thy hand
doubt, with a silver spoon in thy mouth.”
“But my horse,” quoth I.
“He is safe,” replied the voice, taking me by the
hand. As I lifted it to my lips in token of thankfulness,
I started back with horror.
“It smells of mortality!” cried I.
“True—It hath handled nothing but the bones of
Varus and his legions, for more than thirty years.”
“Art thou a sexton?”
“No.”
“A grave digger?”
“Follow me, and thou shalt know.”
I again gave him my hand with trembling reluctance,
and we struck to the right in a direction
towards a dim light, which had till now escaped
my notice. After proceeding some distance, we
approached the entrance of a cave, which descended
gently into the bosom of the earth, through a
passage dimly lighted by a lamp, leading into an
apartment that struck me with inexpressible dismay.
It was a charnel-house of skulls, which I
took for granted appertained to thousands of murdered
wretches, made away with by a band of robbers,
of which this wily old wretch was the stool-pigeon,
or chief, I hardly knew which. His whole appearance
was a composition of supernaturalhorrors.
There did not seem a drop of blood in his body, or
an ounce of flesh on his bones. His eye, deep sunk
lamp which obscured rather than illuminated
the passage by which we had descended; and his
cheeks, for want of the support of teeth, had sunk
in on either side, and met together lovingly in the
roof of his mouth. His head was without a single
hair, and the glossy surface of the skull, divided by
lines into different copartments, like the divisions of
a map. Each of these was numbered after the
manner of sheet maps, for teaching children geography.
“Gracious heaven!” exclaimed I, mentally,
“he is not only a robber but a necromancer!
perhaps the wild huntsman! perhaps one of the infernal
quizzical imps of Number Nip! perhaps the
wood demon himself. This forest has long been
famous for evil doings, and these lines and figures
are doubtless the spell by which this diabolical caitiff
works his infernal ends.” I cast my eyes from
the necromancer to the paraphernalia by which he
was surrounded. Nothing was seen but skulls piled
up in various recesses, or lying about in horrible
confusion, so that at every step, they rolled beneath
my feet, and grinned in my face, as if in scorn of
these impotent injuries. The rest of the embellishments
of this Golgotha, have escaped my recollection,
for as I continued to stare around, my courage
deserted me, my senses wandered, and I trembled
from head to foot.
“Thou art cold and doubtless hungry too,” said
the old mystery of horror—“I was inhospitable not
to offer thee something to eat.”
He then arose and went to an obscure part of the
cave. “He is gone to prepare for me the feast of
the worms,” thought I, “or perhaps he will presently
invite me, like the ghost in Don Juan, to an entertainment
of shin-bones and petty-toes. Would I were
home again, and perish all new sciences.” Presently,
however, he returned, and to my very agreeable surprise,
presented a piece of cold venison, some bread
and a flaggon of beer. “Eat, drink and be merry,”
quoth he—“for to-morrow I die!” responded I, inwardly,
with a sigh. However, hunger is lord of
the world, and will swallow up fear, when he is
sharp set. I fell upon the venison, and ate as if it
were my last; I swallowed oceans of beer, in hopes
it would infuse into me a portion of Dutch courage,
but in vain. While I was taking my meal, the necromancer
or whatever he might be, was examining
a large skull, divided and marked in like manner
with his own, and apparently comparing it with
mine, while he ever and anon exclaimed—
“Bless me!—astonishing!—wonderful!—one
would think they had belonged to one and the
same person!—Pray, my good friend, if you can stop
eating for one moment, tell me, had you ever any
other head on your shoulders than the one you
carry now?”
“Not that I know of,” replied I.
“Astonishing—curious—remarkable—never saw
such an identity—wit—locality—amativeness—philoprogenitiveness
—ideality—wonder—
acquisitiveness
cautiousness—tune—size—weight—colouring—language—
—tune—size—weight—colouring—language—
comparison—causality—love of approbation—order—combativeness,
and what not! I would give
thousands for your skull. Why, sir, you must be a
universal genius. You have the finest collection of
organs in the world. You are a poet, a mechanic,
a chymist, a philosopher, a musician, a lover of children,
an artist, a metaphysician, and any thing
else you please, besides.”
I began now to be ashamed of myself, that I
should have dignified this old fellow with the rank
of a bandit and necromancer, when as it now plainly
appeared, he was only a harmless madman. At
once my terrors subsided, and I became quite jocular.
“Pray,” said I, “how came you to know my character
and talents so perfectly in this short acquaintance?—I
don't think I have spoken five words on
any subject connected with these acquirements and
qualifications. Have you the faculty of penetrating
the interior of the brain, or exploring the secrets of
the heart, extemporaneously?”
“The secrets of the heart!” replied the old man
contemptuously—“you talk like a blockhead in defiance
The heart, young man, hath nothing
to do with sensations, affections, impulses, passions,
affinities or antipathies. You might as well locate
them in the liver, the gizzard, the great toe, the seat
of honour, or any other obscure and contemptible
part of the human machine—”
“Did he actually call it a machine?” interrupted
the Man Machine, eagerly.
“He did, upon my honour—he called it a machine,”
said the other, and proceeded.
“Know, young man,” continued the hermit,
“that I perceive by the infallible augury of the only
real science upon the face of the earth, thou art
destined to be a burning and shining light among
the benighted of this earth. Thou shalt carry the
lamp even to the uttermost ends of the earth, and
into the concentric spheres. Listen and learn.”
The whole frame of the old man now dilated into
actual sublimity—his voice gradually swelled in
tones of lofty declamation, and his eye brightened
with what I then supposed was inspiration. But I
have since ascertained that the eye has nothing to
do with the mind, any more than a pair of spectacles.
It is only made to see with.
“I was born and brought up,” continued he,
“within the walls of a college, the name of which
I shall withhold, least it might become too vain of
the honour; and my ancestors had been professors
one of them, so far as my knowledge and belief extends,
ever was out of sight of the venerable Alma
Mater. They studied science in books, and to
books they resorted for that knowledge of mankind
and of the world, which, being the same in all ages,
can only be acquired in the unchangeable lessons of
time and experience recorded in books. My father
was considered a monster of erudition, who, after
having exhausted all the old sciences, imagined new,
which he exhausted with equal facility. He went
on in this way so long that at last he was sorely puzzled
for new sciences to conquer. He came very
near dying of ennui, for want of a new difficulty to
knock on the head, and in the absence of some excitement
of this kind, used to amuse himself whole
days with a parrot and a monkey; one of which he
had taught to talk quite learnedly upon scientific
subjects; and the other to go through a variety of
philosophical experiments.
“He soon, however, got tired of this, and then
found a temporary amusement in studying natural
history in the persons of a great variety of dogs,
that used to congregate for amusement and fighting
in the large court-yard in front of his residence in
the college. Here, for the first time, he noticed
that peculiarity of the canine race which exhibits
itself in two strange dogs when they come together.
He observed that instead of looking into each other's
and intentions of their new acquaintance, they invariably
went round to the rear for that purpose.
At first he was inclined to believe that they carried
their names on the stern, as he had observed was
the case with the boats on the river which ran near
the city; but on examination he could discover nothing
of that kind. It naturally occurred to him,
to ask himself the reason, or rather the instinct, of
this singular practice. After deep reflection it
struck him that it could be no other than a mode
pointed out by nature for gaining a thorough insight
into the character, views and qualifications of
those animals, thus superseding the necessity of
long acquaintance and continued scrutiny. He saw
too, that these animals signified their satisfaction,
and indeed expressed most of their sensations, by
wagging their tails, and became thereupon convinced
that with them at least the eyes and the face
were not the index of the mind. He observed that
a stiff tail denoted hostility, while a wagging tail on
the contrary expressed sometimes pleasure, sometimes
eagerness of anticipation, sometimes confidence,
sometimes doubt, sometimes affection; and
that whenever it hid itself between the hinder legs,
it was the invariable indication of fear. In short, he
had no doubt that a complete system of the operations
of canine instinct might be deduced from the
developments of the organs of the tail; and he
world by the apprehension of being laughed at
by ignorant persons.
“A hint is, however, sufficient for the wise. Newton
caught his idea of gravitation from seeing an
apple fall to the ground; Hutton his theory of the
formation of the earth by the operation of an internal
fire, from a confectioner making sugarplums;
another philosopher from accidentally seeing
a nest of iron pots one within the other, with
pismires crawling between them, conceived his
theory of the concentric spheres; and my father
erected the most stupendous science of modern
times upon the wagging of a mastiff's tail. Reasoning
upwards by the stair-case of analogy, he gradually
arrived from the mastiff's tail to a man's head,
which he found closely resembling each other in a
vast variety of particulars. Both were covered
with hair; both were at the extremity of the animal;
one nodded, the other wagged. There were
other points of resemblance of which expert theorists
make a great use, called analogies of opposition,
in which the likeness or affinity consists in one
thing being the direct antipodes of another. Altogether,
my father, from long and intense observation
and contemplation, came at last to the conclusion
that the tail of the dog, and the head of the man, was
certainly the true index of the mind and propensities
of each respectively.
“I perceive you smile, as if this idea of a man's
head being the seat of sensation and the index of
mind was no very great discovery. In the course
of my details you will see that this was only the
mere threshold, the first step in those speculations
that are destined ere long not only to astonish but
confound the world. The discovery that the head
was the seat of sensation was in fact no discovery
at all. But the improvements he made, and the
ends to which he applied it, are what constitute his
glory. Columbus it is true discovered that there
was actually such a place as the new world; but
this did not deprive those who subsequently explored,
settled, planted, and divided it into separate
states, districts, counties and towns, of their portion
of credit. In like manner, others had, it may be
justly said, discovered a man had a head; but it was
reserved for my father to turn that head to some
account, by dividing it into different sections and
compartments; detailing its peculiarities of soil
and climate; describing its various properties and
productions; the temperature of the air; the animals
that inhabit it; and in fact, giving as it were a
complete statistical account of the whole region.”
Here, perceiving me yawn a little, the old man
took the hint. He proposed retiring for the night,
and resuming his details in the morning. Accordingly
he showed me into a small recess where was
a bed of moss, in which I laid myself down, and
The next morning the good hermit would hardly
allow me time to eat my breakfast, so impatient was
he to continue his story.
“My father,” began he, “next proceeded to lay
down his first principles, which he justly considered
were more than half the battle. He knew he could
look out afterwards at leisure for facts and examples
to sustain them. A true philosopher always
makes his facts and reasonings dependent on his theory,
and not his theory on his facts and reasonings.
When his theory is well digested and arranged, a
man of the least ingenuity will find all nature administering
to his use. Appearances and phenomena
which he never dreamed of before will come,
like Sancho's proverbs, pat to his purpose; and
what in the eyes of indifferent persons will seem
fatal to his hypothesis, to him will afford unanswerable
confirmation. Young man, if thou ever meanest
to become a philosopher, follow the example of
my father, for be assured if thou waitest for experience
to authenticate thy theories, thou wilt die
without ever becoming the father of a single new
one. Aware of this truth, my father, as I said before,
proceeded first to lay down the principles of
his new science, intending afterwards to trust to
Providence, his own ingenuity, and the liberal spirit
of the age, to establish them by facts and demonstration.
“He first laid it down as a maxim, that the head
of a man was, as it were, a great organ full of pipes,
on which the different qualities, propensities and
passions each played their favourite tunes, and on
that particular pipe the tone of which best pleased
the said quality, propensity or passion.
“That as the pipes of the mechanical organ,
being made of materials incapable of expansion,
cannot be dilated or contracted; so the pipes of
the man-organ, being composed in like manner of
materials directly the contrary in their nature and
capacity, it follows by analogy of dissimilitude that
the animate and inanimate organ are one and the
same, for all the purposes of science and philosophy.
“That the form of the brain, and the functions
of the several organs or pipes thereof may be ascertained
by irrefragable indications, especially by
comparing their size, with the power of manifesting
the mental faculties. The more a particular organ
or pipe of the organ was used the larger it would
undoubtedly become; for as friction uniformly diminishes
inanimate machinery, so in like manner
does it not diminish but strengthen, develop and
expand the animated machinery, to wit, the pipes,
organs and cavities of the brain.
“To prove this position, he instanced the rope-dancer's
legs; the fiddler's right elbow; and
above all the female tongue, each of which, he
maintained, was uncommonly large and fully developed
in consequence of continued and violent
were always larger in proportion than those of
grown up people, simply because as every object
was new to the former, they naturally stared and
wondered at every thing. Again: the nostrils of a
snuff-taker were always more dilated than those of
ordinary persons; and people given to listening at
key-holes always had great ears. All these positions
he intended to establish as occasion might
offer; and if it proved upon experience that the
facts were not according to his theory, all they had
to do was to accommodate themselves to it as fast
as possible; for it was not to be expected that a
philosopher should abandon an hypothesis, merely
because it was contrary to facts and experience.
“My father was resolved that his science should
be quite original. Lavater had already taken formal
scientific possession of the face, and as it were,
converted all the seaboard of the country to his
use. My father was for that reason resolved to
have little or nothing to do with the old settlements,
but to travel into the interior and cultivate the
back lands. Accordingly he marched round and
settled himself upon the remote, uncultivated regions
of the cerebellum. Besides the canine example
which had given the first idea, and the determination
to occupy entirely new ground, he had
another argument in favour of this novelty on which
he strongly relied. He compared the head to
built on a side-hill, exhibit a bold front a dozen
stories high, but which when approached in the
rear dwindle into complete insignificance. Thus
there was no such thing as telling what they were
until you examined them from behind; and thus too
by analogy, all conclusions drawn from the face of
a human being were vague and uncertain in the
highest degree. It was, moreover, proverbial for
people to put their best face as well as their best
foot foremost.
“Having thus developed the theory of his new
science, he was just setting about propping it up by
facts and examples, when he fell ill, and died. It
rarely happens indeed that the same person invents,
and perfects his invention. Life is too short for
any but a chosen few, to acquire the glory of beginning
and completing a new science. It was reserved
for me to rear up and bring to perfection
the magnificent edifice of which my father had laid
the foundation.
“At the time of my father's decease, I was a
young man of about forty, and had scarcely ever
been beyond the walls of our college. I once indeed
ventured out into the world to see a fair in the
neighbourhood, but happening to meet a person
whose organ of destructiveness I perceived was
horribly developed, I was afraid he would kill me,
and ran home as fast as I could. As a proof of the
that this very man, or somebody very like him,
was found guilty of manslaughter at a village about
two hundred miles distant. My whole life had
been passed between four thick stone walls, in a
chamber, the light of which was admitted through
the ceiling, where I saw nobody but my parents,
and an old female servant whose organ of languages
bespoke her prowess, for she could out-talk the
whole family. Indeed our prevailing character
was that of shyness, awkwardness, and silence.
We seldom or ever mixed with the world, and
my principle recreation had been to philosophise,
smoke my pipe, and drink small beer. Ever since
my father propounded his theory of the organs to
my alarmed and awakened imagination, I believe I
may say, that I never looked a human being in the
face. Indeed it was the custom of the whole
family to walk leisurely round and examine the
back of the head to ascertain each other's wants,
feelings and sensations. I can proudly say that my
father was never but once mistaken in this infallible
augury, and then he fell into such a passion with
the organs that they ever afterwards took good care
to accommodate themselves to his theory.
“From the period that I became an orphan, I
determined to devote my remaining days to the establishment
of his favourite science, by actual experiment
and observation. I considered it as a
bringing up, and for whose future fate I was in a
great measure responsible. Accordingly I declined
the hereditary professorship which had been
in our family three centuries, and in order that I
might study the human character without interruption,
retired to this forest, and secluded myself
from mankind. I was induced to select this spot
in preference to all others, because it afforded me
the most ample scope and materials for laying the
everlasting basis of what may be emphatically called
the science of human nature, taught, not by the
quick, but the dead; derived not from the lying
tongues and deceitful eyes of living men, but from
the tomb, whence the hollow socket and the tongueless,
fleshless lips, proclaim in accents of eternal
truth, the secrets of the hitherto unvisited brain.
Let no one say that when the brain is out, the man
will die, for it is then only that he may be figuratively
said to live, to speak, and to disclose through
the medium of the sublime organs of the cerebellum
the secrets of his heart and head, the mystery of
what he was when living. Here,” said he, with
lofty enthusiasm, exhibiting a skull divided and
numbered as I have described—“here is the world
I study, and here the history of the human race
written in characters of eternal truth with the pencil
of immortality. I do not want to read Tacitus
to know what the owner of this was when living—
in the very nature of things, he must have been
governed by the organ of combativeness. Look at
it—it is the skull of Quintilius Varus, who was
cut off with his three legions on this very spot by
our illustrious Herman, whom the historian calls
Arminius, to make his name sound like that of a
Roman.”
“How do you know it is the skull of Quintilius
Varus,” asked I.
“By Phrenology.”
“What is that?” asked I again.
“The infallible science invented by my father.
It is called phrenology, from phrenzy or phrenetic;
my illustrious father having been considered mad
during the latter part of his life, like almost all
other daring geniuses who have had the courage to
instruct mankind. They swallow knowledge with
as much difficulty and as many wry faces as they
do physic, and reward their benefactors for enlightening
them, by calling them mad. But to go on
with my story.
“I have mentioned that this cave is in the centre
of the encampment where Varus and his legions
were slain by the Germans, and their skulls piled up
in heaps as recorded by Tacitus. It was for this
reason I selected it for the field of my achievements
in demonstrating the truths of phrenology.
Here I could find innumerable examples to suit my
those reliques which elsewhere the ignorant hold
sacred; and here, above all, I could remain free
from the intrusion of vulgar curiosity, for not a
peasant in forty miles will approach this spot except
unwittingly. You will wonder perhaps that those
skulls should have remained so perfect as you now
see them for such a length of time. But when I
tell you that with the exception of the Egyptians,
the Romans had the thickest and most solid skulls
of any ancient people, you will not be incredulous.
You recollect Herodotus bears testimony to the
thickness of the Egyptian skulls, a fact sufficient in
itself to explode the vulgar opinion that a thick
skull is synonymous with stupidity.
“Here I proceeded to establish my science upon
the eternal basis of demonstration. In the first
place I looked into Tacitus, and found that Varus
had imprudently advanced far into the pathless
forests of Germany—that he had encamped on unfavourable
ground; had finally been surprised by
Arminius, and himself and all his legions slain. It
followed pretty clearly from these premises, that
Varus was a daring, uncalculating sort of a person,
who beyond all doubt had the organ of combativeness
strongly developed, and that of secretiveness
exceedingly small. Accordingly, I selected from
the skulls scattered around me one which exhibited
these two features in the most marked and conspicuous
the skull of Varus; and here it is. Examine it—
Here is the organ of combativeness, or fondness for
fighting; observe how it projects and is expanded.
Here—no—here is the organ of secretiveness, or in
other words, the propensity to hide away when danger
approaches. Observe, it is almost imperceptible.
It is plain that the owner of this skull was without
the sense of fear; of course it must be the skull of
Varus. There is no doubt of it—to disbelieve would
argue absolute stupidity—it would be flying in the
face of demonstration.”
“Without doubt,” said I, for I began to be of opinion
that this old man was a sage, and in all probability
might furnish me with what I had hitherto
sought in vain over half the world.
“Very well,” continued the sage, “we have thus
established the fact, that these particular organs do
actually and invariably indicate the qualities my
father ascribed to them. The next step was to
identify other organs with other qualities until I had
made out a complete system, comprehending all the
moral, physical and intellectual faculties of the human
race. Accordingly I proceeded to select and
classify the skulls that lay scattered around, placing
all those together which exhibited the same or similar
peculiarities. After having done this I proceeded
to christen them agreeably to the nomenclature
of the infallible science. One heap I dubbed men of
—another murderers—some I called lovers of order
—some lovers of tune—some of numbers—some of
novelty—some I disposed of in one class, some in
another, as situation and circumstances required.
For instance, in this very cave which I have now
inhabited almost thirty years, I found on my arrival
a great many skulls lying dispersed on the floor, or
the recesses within. These I took it for granted
appertained to persons who had retreated there for
shelter—had been discovered by the German army,
and put to death. They must therefore have hid
away—and therefore the organ of the brain the
most remarkable and most strongly developed must
of necessity be that of secretiveness or hiding away.
I confess that there was a great diversity in the
phrenology of these runaways, and that not a few of
them exhibited a most provoking development of
the organ of combativeness, or fighting. This was
a formidable obstacle to my progress, but I got over
it at last, by supposing what was very natural, that
these latter might have been the skulls of the valiant
Germans who, pursuing the runaways into
their last retreat, were slain in combat with these
cowards, for cowards will fight when desperate.
“There was one particular projection or development
of the organ common to all the skulls I
examined, which I called the organ of order. The
soldiers of Varus were of the veteran Roman legions,
their lives. Now the distinguishing characteristic
of a soldier, is order and discipline, which are in
fact, one and the same. Therefore that organ
which is most universally and strongly developed
in soldiers, must be the organ of discipline.
“In this manner I continued to build up by degrees
my favourite science upon the impregnable
basis of experience and demonstration, until I had
selected a class of skulls to represent the whole
range of human passions and human faculties. In
this way too, by unwearied patience and assiduity,
I `established' the truth of my father's theory in a
manner that I defy the world to shake. So perfectly
am I convinced of its unerring principles, its
unassailable strength and accuracy, that were I not
so old I would go forth into the world and fearlessly
govern myself by the infallible criterion of phrenology
in my judgment of mankind. As it is I
must leave it to some young and enterprising adventurer
to accomplish the only remaining point necessary
to convince mankind and overturn the mischievous
absurdities of the contemptible science (as
by courtesy it is called) of physiognomy.”
Here Dr. Gallgotha, for that I found was the hermit's
name, concluded his details, which, in their
progress, had entirely changed my first impressions
in relation to his character and pursuits. As he
proceeded in the development of his system, he
before he concluded, I had become a convert to his
principles. It appeared to me impossible, indeed,
that a rational being could shut up his understanding
to the conviction of its irresistible demonstrations;
and my imagination expanded with the hope
of being able, at last, to succeed in the mission
which had cost me so many toils and dangers. I
remained several days in this abode of science,
during which time the doctor gradually unfolded
the minutia of his system, and taught me the whole
mystery of development. Every day we became
more enthusiastically convinced of the impregnability
of the science; and nothing could equal the delight
of the old man at finding such a scholar, except
mine at meeting such a preceptor.
“Thou art just the disciple I should have selected
from the whole world—for thou hast the finest
development of the organ of faith I ever remember
to have seen. Come, I will take my staff and skulls,
and, like the sages of old, go forth into the world to
teach and to enlighten. Wilt thou be my companion,
my disciple, my son by adoption?”
You may suppose I acceded to this proposal
with a transport of delight; and it was accordingly
arranged to depart the very next day, so anxious
were we to begin our scientific pilgrimage. “We
shall want nothing,” said Dr. Gallgotha—“I will
instruct the people, and they in return will gratefully
what we have is spent.”
Accordingly, the next day, having deposited the
skull of Quintilius Varus with other specimens exhibiting
each of the cerebral developments essential
to the demonstration of the doctor's first principles,
in a bag, thrown over my horse, we bade a
final adieu to the cave of Macpelah, and sallied
forth, agreeing to ride and walk by turns. In passing
the spot where I had been knocked from my
horse by the mysterious hand, I observed a limb
projecting over the road, apparently about the
height of my mouth when on horseback, and incrusted
with an icy sleet. It occurred to me, it
might have been this limb that knocked me down
and thus, as it were, became a providential instrument
in bringing about my meeting with this inspired
old man.
Emerging from the forest, we entered a fine picturesque
country, full of grassy verdure, blushing
vines and laughing villages. At one of these last
we stopped for refreshment, and were introduced
into a public room where sat perhaps a dozen travellers
around a large old fashioned oak table. The
old man immediately began to exercise his talent in
demonstrative science. He put on his spectacles,
and walked leisurely round the table, stopping behind
every man and studying the infallible index of
his mind at the back of his head. At length he
with horror. He then approached it again, and as
if impelled by the irresistible fascination of overwhelming
terror, put his fingers upon a part of the
man's skull. The fellow started up, and turning
furiously round upon the doctor, exclaimed—
“D—n you! what are you about with my
head?”
“N—n—n—n—nothing,” replied the doctor, in
a voice quaking with terror—“I—I—Heavens and
earth! what a supernatural development of the
organ of —. Pray, my dear sir, when did you
commit your last m—. I'll give you a hundred
rix dollars for that skull of yours.”
“Old man,” replied the fellow, gruffly, “its well
for you that you are old, and, as I suspect, not very
wise, or I would—”
“O dont—now dont m—m—. Pray now, my
dear sir, dont kill me!”
“Kill you!” said the other, with a contemptuous
smile, “though my trade is killing, it is not such
tough old animals as you I deal with.” He then
quietly sat down again, while the doctor sidled up
to me, and taking my elbow, drew me significantly
out of the room.
“We must depart instantly,” said he.
“What, without our breakfast?” said I.
“Aye—or it is all over with us. That man is
one of the greatest villains in existence—he has the
the great organ at Antwerp—He cannot have committed
less than a hundred assassinations. Come—
come—let us depart secretly that the murderer may
not know which way we go.” What an invaluable
science, thought I, that thus intuitively announces
to us the dangers, which others discover only when
it is too late.
We now moved ourselves quietly out of the inn
unnoticed by any of the domestics, who, as we owed
them nothing, were indifferent to our motions. The
old man, and indeed so did I, often looked back to
see if the murderer was coming after us, but luckily
we turned an angle of the road, and were out of
sight before he made his appearance.
“What a lucky escape!” quoth the doctor.
“Miraculous!” responded I.
We proceeded on slowly till the sun began to
wax low in the western horizon, when being tired
and withal exceeding hungry, we gladly descried a
pretty considerable village, in a rich vale which
spread its soft evening beauties under our eyes as
we reached the summit of a hill, at whose feet it lay
nestling. We pushed forward with new spirits, and
gaily footed down the hill, close to the bottom of
which was an inn, bearing on its sign-post the head
of the great Frederick. “There,” quoth the doctor
triumphantly—“there is a living proof of the
falsehood of that delusive science, which Lavater
in front, it is the head of a blockhead—if in the
rear, it is that of the greatest man Germany ever
produced, with the exception of my father, and one
other, whom I shall not at present name.”
The doctor's self gratulations were speedily put to
flight by the appearance of the tremendous assassin
we had escaped from in the manner just related.
He rode up to the inn, which I afterwards learned
was a place where horses were let, dismounted,
gave his beast to the hostler, and turned away, carelessly
exclaiming, with a significant nod at the doctor—
“O! you're there, are you?”
“Its all over with us,” cried the doctor, in despair—“I
shall perish, and what is worse than all,
the most noble science ever invented will perish
with me?”
“Pray, sir,” said I to the landlord, who had just
made his appearance, with a portly figure, a laughing
eye, and a jolly careless gait, giving shrewd promise
of a pestilent wag—“Pray, sir, what is the
name of the person who rode up just now?”
“Why we call the fellow Abaellino,” answered
mine host.
“The great bandit,” echoed I.
“You may say that,” replied he—“that fellow
is the greatest robber and murderer in a hundred
miles round.”
“I told you so,” said the doctor aside to me.
“Divine science of phrenology!” aspirated I
with fervour.
“A robber and murderer!” resumed the doctor
after a pause—“why is he not secured and punished?”
“O, we can't well do without him,” rejoined the
other—“he is the butcher of the village, and though
he regularly robs us in the way of his business, we
don't like to turn our backs upon his beef and mutton.”
So saying, he invited us into the house, and at our
request showed us into a room he called the moon,
by ourselves. After sitting silent awhile with his
face rather averted, the doctor slowly moved his
head upon the pivot of his neck, and looking me full
in the eye, began—
“This mistake, as it doubtless appears to you
who are not yet thoroughly initiated into the mysteries
of the science, only the more convinces me
of the infallibility of the organs of the cerebellum,
in disclosing to the scientific adept, the mysteries of
every variety of human character. With what unerring
instinct, as it were, did I dive into the secret
propensities of the man who has just left us. That
his trade or profession was murder, I had not the
least doubt; but whether a murderer of men or
beasts, the cerebellum does not sufficiently indicate;
at least I confess I have not yet detected the
precise development of the organ of murder, which
and the slayer of beasts.”
“What a pity!” replied I, sighing.
“Certainly it is to be lamented,” continued the
doctor, “but it is no impeachment of a science, to
say that it is not perfect. There are other defects
in our science, which it is one of the objects of this
pilgrimage to remedy or remove. It is not yet settled
in my system, whether mind operates upon
matter, or matter upon mind; in other words, whether
those developments, which so unerringly indicate
the presence or absence of certain qualities, or
propensities of the animal man—”
“I thought you said he called man a machine,”
interrupted the Man Machine rather impatiently.
“So he did at first,” replied Le Peigne—“but
this time I am positive he called him an animal.”
“He was a fool for his pains—but I beg pardon;
go on, sir.”
Doctor Gallgotha, continued Mr. Le Peigne,
was saying that he was not satisfied in his own
mind whether those cerebral developments, which so
unerringly indicated the presence or absence of certain
decided and governing qualities or propensities
of the animal man, were the cause or the effect of
these qualities and propensities. “This doubt,” continued
he, “has occasioned me infinite trouble and
vexation, since upon its decision depends the great
point, whether mind or matter is predominant in intellectual
and matter the wax, or vice versâ, is what I must of
necessity decide experimentally and demonstrably,
before I publish my system to the universe.”
At this moment there was a loud uproar and
bawling in the passage, which attracted our attention,
and drew us to that quarter, where we found
the jolly landlord chastising a boy belonging to the
house, for some fault or other. The lad roared
manfully, but the landlord continued his discipline,
until at our intercession he let him off. I observed
that doctor Gallgotha took particular notice of
the stick with which the chastisement was inflicted,
and picking it up, examined it with strict attention.
When we returned to our room, he seized my hand,
and squeezing it with trembling enthusiasm cried
out,
“Heureka! Heureka! I have found it!”
“Found what?” said I, a little alarmed least the
doctor had lost some such thing as his wits, rather
than found any thing valuable.
“I have received a full solution of my doubt, in
the simple incident we have just witnessed. Behold
how we philosophers differ from other men, in converting
apparently the meanest, most trivial incidents
into the foundation and supports of a theory.
Look at this stick—it has settled a point that has
puzzled the wits of the wisest of all ages.”
I looked at the stick, and was obliged to confess
that I saw nothing very particular about it—it
was not even a witch-hazel. The doctor smiled
with an ineffable yet condescending look of superiority.
“Didst thou observe how the application of this
stick affected the mind of that boy so as to cause
him to writhe, and shrink, and cry out aloud?”
“I did.”
“And didst thou see or hear any thing of this
kind proceeding from the stick?”
“Verily no.”
“Very well—thus then we have a convincing
example, better than all the argument in the
world, that it is matter which operates upon mind
and not mind upon matter, since we see this stick,
which is altogether composed of matter, is not the
least affected by the stripes, at the same time that
the mind of the lad is entirely overcome, even unto
tears and wailings.”
I could almost have fallen at the feet of the man
whose capacious mind could thus, as it were, like
some potent enchanter, settle the whole universe
with the aid only of a little stick or wand. Every
moment he gained upon my admiration, and I had
forgot even that I had not tasted food all day long,
when the maid servant opportunely came in with
our supper. Scarcely had she placed it on the table
when the doctor cried out—
“Come hither, my pretty girl.”
She approached, blushing and bridling, and really
looking quite charming.
“Pshaw!” said the doctor, “turn your back—I
don't want to see your face—its not worth looking
at. Mercy upon us! what a development of the
organ of amativeness—truly thou hast a neck like a
bull! Thou art over head and ears in love, I warrant
thee—and here—here too is the organ of secretiveness,
big enough to hold a stout strapping
lover as secretly as a kernel in a nutshell. And
here, bless me!—here is the organ of inquisitiveness
swelled out to an enormous size—Damsel, confess
now, thou hast listened at a half-open door, and
peeped through a key-hole many a time and oft—
hey?”
The damsel took this insinuation in dudgeon,
flounced out of the room in a hurry, and proclaimed
in the kitchen that there was a witch, or a necromancer
in the moon. There was no getting her
into the room again the whole evening. After
supper we lighted our pipes, for I had learned to
smoke at the instance of the doctor, who assured
me it was the best medium for philosophising in
the world. Doctor Gallgotha then resumed the
conversation on the mysteries and doubts which
gave him so much trouble and stood so directly in
the way of the progress of this stupendous science.
By degrees we penetrated deeper and deeper
arrived at the conclusion that it was not only the
most noble of all the sciences, but that, if it could
only be brought to perfection, it would supersede
the necessity of all other modes of human knowledge.
In proportion as the smoke of our pipes
became more dense and impenetrable, did our mental
vision seem to become more clear and penetrating,
until we discovered through the mists that enveloped
us, the consummation of all our anticipations
in the universal establishment of the sublime
mysteries of the cerebral development. Then experience
would be unnecessary and knowledge of
the world superfluous—then men would no longer
depend upon the vague and uncertain indications of
character exhibited by human actions—then inexperience
would no longer be the dupe of cunning
and deception—and even children might be taught
a profound insight into the characters of each other,
by studying the infallible auguries of the cerebral
development.
Suddenly however we were brought down to the
level of humanity, by a confusion of voices, screams
and exclamations, which proceeded from the adjoining
room, where we had deposited our baggage.
On hastening thither we beheld a scene which
beggars description. It seems the jolly landlord had
that evening expected a bag of cabbages from a
garden he possessed, a little way out of the village,
whether they were actually arrived. The circumstance
occurred to him while in bed, and as he
was one of those fidgety impatient bodies that can
never sleep with a doubt on their minds, he had
rung the bell and directed the fair damsel with the
organ of inquisitiveness so finely developed, to
search for the bag of cabbages, and let him know
whether it had come. In pursuance of this order,
she at length encountered our bag, and feeling
something round in it, untied the string, put in
her hand and brought out the identical skull of Quintilius
Varus, grinning defiance to Arminius and all
his host. The poor girl screamed and fell flat on the
floor, upsetting at the same time the bag, which poured
forth its contents, rolling in all directions about
the room. The scream brought out every living
thing within the house, not excepting the cat and
the dog. As they entered the room to see what
was the matter, they encountered the implements of
phrenology, and tumbled one upon the other in horrible
confusion, screaming with terror as they discovered
the obstacles that had occasioned their fall.
The jolly host trembled from top to toe, and swore
as loudly as his chattering teeth would permit, as he
stood with his tufted nightcap on one side of his
head; the innamorato of the inquisitive damsel, who
was no other than the hostler, now hovered over
his mistress blubbering, and now fell a kicking the
delighted with so pretty a plaything, was purring
and pawing with the phrenological index of poor
Varus. There was not a face less white than a
sheet in the whole party, except that of the African
cook, which became absolutely ten times blacker
than ever with terror and dismay.
When doctor Gallgotha saw the pillars, as it
were, of his science thus overthrown and rolling on
the floor, subject to the kicks of an illiterate clown
and the pawings of an ignorant pussy, he lost all
patience, and exclaimed in a hollow voice that
seemed to come from one of the tongueless remains
before us, and startled even me—
“Avaunt! base and illiterate plebeians—fly—
skip—and leave the sacred depositories of the most
sublime and incomprehensible of all sciences which
ye have thus impiously assailed—leave them I say
—and thou most sacrilegious of the feline breed, no
longer pollute with thy unhallowed paw the remains
of thy betters. Look at me,” continued he—“I
come from the regions of the dead—I have been
for more than thirty years the companion of these
eloquent remains that speak without tongues and
philosophise without brains—I have conversed all
my life with dead men's bones—and may say without
exaggeration that I come into the world an
envoy from the grave!”
“A ghost—a ghost!” shrieked men, women and
doctor had something extremely supernatural about
him at that moment. His pale and hollow cheeks,
sunken eyes, shining forehead and skull of polished
ivory, unshadowed by a single hair, as he stood
holding up the knob of Varus in his hand, altogether
seemed to justify the renewed terrors of the
group, which now hurried helter-skelter out of the
room into the dark entry, where the jolly landlord
fell over the damsel with the organ of inquisitiveness
so finely developed—the black cook over the
jolly landlord, and the rest one upon another in
horrible confusion. On their departure the doctor
replaced his treasures in the bag, which he desired
me to carry up into our sleeping room, where we
disposed ourselves to rest. The last thing the
good man did before he fell asleep was to observe
to me the singular exemplification of the truth of
his principles which had just occurred. “It was
phrenologically impossible,” said he, “that any
other person in the house, but the damsel with the
organ of inquisitiveness, should have had the curiosity
to open my bag.”
We slept late in the morning, partly owing to the
fatigue of our day's journey and partly to the circumstance
of remaining entirely undisturbed. Not
a soul knocked at the door, and the region about us
seemed as quiet as if inhabited only by Varus and
his speechless companions. Seeing the sun shining
and waking my companion, we descended together
into the room we had occupied the night before.
Not a soul came near us, and there was no symptom
of preparation for breakfast. I opened a door
which led into the bar-room to inquire for somebody,
and detected the inquisitive damsel peeping
through the key-hole. She screamed, and fled
away like a wild crane. “More confirmation of
the sublime science,” exclaimed the doctor, rubbing
his hands—“but I should like something to eat.”
Once more I opened the door and sallied forth, but
could find no living soul save ourselves in the whole
house. I then proceeded to the stable, where by
good luck, as I supposed, I encountered the hostler,
who, the moment he saw me with the doctor at my
heels, who by this time had overtaken me, seized
his pitch-fork and exclaimed, “Doant ee coom noigh
me—now dont ee—oi should'nt mooch loike to kill
a spook, but by gum an ye coom ony noigher oill
make day light shoine through two holes in ee, I
wool—so I wool.” So saying, he retreated under
cover of his fork into the recesses of the stable and
there entrenched himself behind a large goat who
shouldered his horns at us in defiance.
Perceiving no prospect of getting any breakfast
here, after a little preliminary discussion, we decided
to saddle our horse and proceed forthwith to the
next town as fast as possible, least the panic should
and witnessed our preparations without
the least apparent disposition to interfere. When
all was ready, the doctor proffered payment for our
entertainment and that of our horse.
“Noa—noa,” was the reply—“Oi want none of
thy diabolical money, not oi—oi dare to say 'twould
set moi breeches afire or turn into snakes in moi
pocket—noa—noa—goa ee away to the grave where
the old mon says he belongs—art welcome to the
provender—dang it if I did'nt think he eat his oats
different from a Christian horse loike—goa—now
do goa, or dang me if I doant stick ee.”
“Let me first examine your cerebral development
to see if you are really inclined to commit murder,”
quoth the doctor, advancing.
“Shalt see it quick enough if thee comest any
noigher,” said hostler, marshaling his pitch-fork.
“Let us begone,” said the doctor—“I'd as soon
attempt to teach the sublime science to a horse as
to that illiterate Cyclops.”
Accordingly we proceeded to the house still silent
and deserted as before, placed our baggage upon
the horse, and leaving what we supposed sufficient
for our fare upon the table, departed from the village.
As we turned to take a last look at the inn,
we detected the inquisitive damsel, peeping cautiously
out of a garret window. “Still new demonstrations,”
cried the doctor, and for a time forgot
the appearance of the doctor had become a regular
ghost story, already incorporated into the country
legends, and that the jolly landlord would not touch
the money we left on the table until it had been
soundly exorcised.
Proceeding on our journey, about noon we arrived
at a town, which, being the seat of government
of a sovereign prince, who had one sixth of a
vote at the Diet, and whose territory was full a
league and a half square, was a place of some consequence.
Here we determined to stop for the
purpose of refreshment, and with a design to stay
long enough to deliver a lecture at least. Accordingly,
advertisements were posted up in the most
conspicuous quarters—for it is to be observed the
prince would not allow of a newspaper in his dominions,
for fear it might overturn his empire—an
invitation was also sent to the prince and princess,
together with the lords and ladies of the court, to
honour with their presence a lecture on the sublime
science. No further particulars were given. “We
will surprise them,” quoth the doctor, “with an
entire novelty.”
The best apartment of the inn was procured, and
dimly lighted to suit the solemn obscurity of the
science to be illustrated; and the table behind which
the doctor stood to deliver his lecture was covered
with a student's black cloak, borrowed for the occasion.
the lecture began, for the prince always took a nap
after dinner, with his head in the lap of his mistress.
Besides this, some delay occurred in consequence
of several disputes about precedence among the
nobility, which the prince settled on his arrival. It
is currious by the way, that every where else except
at courts, when two well-bred persons are going
into a room together, the contest is not who shall
go first but who shall go last. At length, however,
every thing was settled, and the doctor commenced
his lecture by explaining the first principles, and
general outlines of the sublime science. All this
the company endured with exemplary decorum.
But when, for the purpose of exemplification, he
resorted to his bag, which stood at his side, and one
by one leisurely brought forth the skulls of Varus
and his companions, there was a terrible uproar
among the votaries of science. The sovereign princess
shrieked and fainted; of course the ladies of
the court could do no less than follow her example.
During their insensibility they some way or other
managed to get out of the lecture-room, leaving me
and the doctor alone, like the children in the wood.
The prince was so enraged that he threatened to
shut us up in a prison he had, called the Seven Towers;
but from this he was dissuaded by a cunning
old fox of a minister who reminded him of the practice
of throwing a tub to a whale. “It will keep
government and such dangerous matters,”
said he, “which is the great use of the arts
and sciences.” So we escaped the prison of the
Seven Towers. We heard afterwards that the reigning
princess had been brought to bed of a young
prince whose cerebral development was exactly
that of Quintilius Varus.
I shall pass over the various incidents of the remaining
portion of our journey till we reached
Paris, merely observing that the doctor, by reason
of enlisting every thing that fell in his way among
the demonstrations and exemplifications of the sublime
science, had established it, in his own mind,
ten times stronger than ever, and so firmly convinced
himself and me, that we would have laid down
our lives in defence of its principles. By the time
we arrived at Paris, we were precisely in that state
of enthusiastic excitement, which the vulgar call
madness, but which philosophers and theorists well
know proceeds from an innate and heaven-born
conviction of the truth, connected with a vehement
zeal in its propagation.
At Paris we found the throne of science, as it
were, deserted and vacant. Ever since the fashionable
world became scientific, it has been observed
that nothing but novelty will go down at lectures.
They get tired even of inspiration, if too often repeated,
and the noblest truths of the most sublime
sciences are interesting and attractive only so long
the sciences, as they do with their lovers, and a new
science to a fashionable blue stocking, is as a new
face or a new fashion. In this state was Paris on
our arrival. The astronomers with their great
telescopes had ransacked the heavens until not a
single incognito star remained; the botanists could
find no new plants to christen with unchristian
names; the naturalists having exhausted the living
world, were busily employed upon antediluvian
bones; the chymists having become tired of enacting
the bottle conjuror, were fast relapsing into
their former usefulness and confining their lectures
to those who only came there to be instructed.
In short, the old thread-bare sciences
were quite out of favour with the fashionable
amateurs, as affording nothing but useful practical
knowledge, only fit for musty scholars and
greasy mechanics. There was not a good joke
stirring in all Paris—nor a new tragedy to frighten
the government, with declamations about liberty in
the mouth of a Greek patriot—nor a rumour of a
conspiracy, an intrigue, or a change in the ministry
to keep people from dying of ennui, which they certainly
would have done if it had not been for a certain
ultra-viscount and his new theatre. In short,
we came in the nick of time, and the whole world
was, as it were, before us.
The doctor lost no time in announcing his arrival,
and calling upon some of the most confirmed Mæ
that they consider it a great obligation for
any body to apply for it at their hands. One of
these was a good lady, who immediately got into
her carriage, and before night had engaged half the
beau-monde of Paris to come to the lecture on an
entire new science, which had never before been
heard of among the learned. In truth, a most brilliant
audience collected to hear the doctor, who on
this occasion for the first time promoted me to the
office of handing and returning the cerebral developments
as he had occasion to use them in the course
of his lecture.
The lecture with which Dr. Gallgotha commenced
his course in Paris, was the same that frightened
the sovereign princess and her court into fits; but
I will do the ladies of Paris the justice to say that
they stood the display of our phrenological specimens,
like heroines; whether it be that the French
women are naturally bolder than the German, or
that a certain fashionable philosopher had in some
degree prepared them for scientific horrors, by his
exhibition of fossil remains. The thing took amazingly—there
was something new in the idea of
looking at the back of the head, instead of the face,
to ascertain the peculiarities of human character,
and novelty is indispensable to the existence of people
who have exhausted all other pleasures. There
were indeed some ladies belonging to the coteries of
theory, but even they were effectually silenced by a
discovery of my master, that the organ of tune was
developed in the head of the famous composer Rossini,
to such a degree that it had actually monopolized
nearly the whole of his cerebellum. There
was no resisting this proof, not only that Rossini
was a great composer of tunes, but likewise that the
doctor's science was infallible. The fiddler and
the doctor accordingly were the two greatest men
in Paris. The rage for cerebral developments became
intense, and thenceforward every lady of the
least pretensions to fashion or science procured a
skull, marked and mapped conformably with the
principles of the sublime science, which she placed
on her toilet in order that she might dress and study
at the same time. Two or three of the most zealous
female devotees actually fell in love with the
doctor, being deeply smitten with his cerebral development.
The fashionable gentlemen whose sole
business is to make love, began to grow jealous of
Varus and his legions, and one or two ludicrous
anecdotes occurred which set all Paris tittering. I
will relate them, although I cannot vouch for their
truth any farther than to say that every body believed
them.
A young nobleman was deeply enamoured of a
beautiful lady of high rank, and particularly jealous
of one of his rivals who wore powder in his hair. He
returning to town one evening, proceeded directly
to the house of his mistress intending to surprise her
with a visit. Finding a servant at the door, he inquired
for the lady, and was told that she was so
deeply engaged that she could see nobody. The
jealousy of the lover was alarmed, and pushing the
servant aside, he proceeded silently towards the
lady's boudoir, the door of which he found shut.
Pausing a moment, he heard as he imagined two
voices within exchanging words of most particular
endearment, and something in the pauses that sounded
like kissing. Human nature could stand it no
longer. He peeped through the key-hole where
he saw a sight that drove him to madness. The
lady was sitting by the light of a fire which was fast
going out, caressing and fondling a figure, the whiteness
of whose head too well indicated his detestable
powdered rival. From time to time he heard
the words amativeness, adhesiveness, hope, secretiveness
and elopement, or something that sounded
very like it. The thing was perfectly plain—they
were exchanging professions of love and planning
an elopement. The sight and the conviction was
no longer to be borne. He burst open the door
furiously, and being in full uniform as an officer of
the guards, drew his sword and making a desperate
blow at the powdered head, it flew off the shoulders
and rolled upon the floor. The lady shrieked and
a noise in the outward apartments, and supposing
he had done the gentleman's business pretty effectually,
bethought himself that it was high time to
take care of himself. He accordingly made the
best of his way out of the house, towards the gate
St. Honoré, through which he hurried into the country,
nor stopped till he had safely lodged himself
within his castle in Normandy.
From thence he wrote a letter filled with the most
cutting reproaches—charging his mistress with falsehood,
cruelty, deceit, and all sorts of villany, and
vowing on the cross of his sword, never to see her
more. The lady laughed two full hours on the
receipt of this defiance. When she had done laughing,
as she really had a regard for her admirer, she
sat down and wrote him the following reply:
“Good Monsieur Jealousy—
“You are welcome to call me what you will,
except it be old or ugly. However, I forgive you,
and so does the formidable rival whose head you
so dexterously severed from his body, and who I
give you my honour is not the least the worse for
the accident. I solemnly assure you, you may
come back to Paris without the least danger of
being prosecuted by the family of monsieur M—
or being received by me with ill humour, for I
shall laugh at you terribly.
This epistle puzzled the lover not a little, and
caused him fifty sensations in a minute. First he
would return to Paris, and then he would not—
then he resolved never to see his mistress again—
and next to mount his horse, return immediately,
look her stone dead, and then set out on his travels
to the interior of Africa. This last resolution carried
the day, and he forthwith returned to Paris
in as great a hurry as he had left it. When the
lady saw him, she was as good as her word—she
laughed herself out of breath, and the more he reproached
her, the louder she laughed. However, as
anger and laughter can't last for ever, a truce took
place in good time, and the lady addressed her lover
as follows:
“Cease thy reproaches, my good friend, and hear
me. I am determined to give you the most convincing
proof in the world of my truth and attachment,
by delivering your rival into your hands, to
be dealt with as you think proper. Know that he
is now concealed in this very room.”
“Is he?” replied the other in a rage—“then by
heaven he has not long to live—I shall take care to
cut off his head so effectually this time that the most
expert surgeon in Paris shall not put it on again—
where is the lurking caitiff?—But I need not ask
—I see his infernal powdered head peeping from
under the sopha—come out villain and receive the
reward of thy insolence in rivalling me.”
So saying, he seized the treacherous powdered
head, and to his astonishment drew it forth without
any body to it. He stood aghast—and the lady
threw herself on the sopha, and laughed ten times
louder than before.
“What in the name of woman,” cried he at last,
“is the meaning of all this mummery?”
“It means that I am innocent—and that your
worship is—jealous of the skull, or what is worse,
the plaster counterfeit of the skull of your great-grand-mother,
the immortal author of the Grand
Cyrus. I was but admiring the beautiful indication
of the amative organ, from which it plainly appears
impossible that any other person could have written
such prodigiously long developments of the tender
passion.”
“But why did you kiss the filthy representation
of mortality?”
“You were mistaken,” answered the lady—“as
the room was rather dark, I placed my face eloce to
it in order the better to see and admire its beautiful
cerebral development.”
“Its what?” replied the lover impatiently.
“Its phrenological indications.”
“And what in the name of heaven are these?”
cried the lover in some alarm for the intellects of his
fair mistress. The lady then proceeded to explain
to him the revolution in science which had taken
place during his absence; and a reconciliation
doctor's lecture that he might no longer be an
age behind the rest of the world. The story got
abroad—indeed the lady could not resist telling
it herself to a friend with strict injunctions of secrecy—and
all Paris became still more devoted to the
sublime science for having afforded such an excellent
subject for a joke.
The other story relates to a young nobleman
whose situation near the king, and orthodox ultraism,
made him a very distinguished person in the
beau-monde. But he was distinguished only in a
certain way; that is, he was a sort of butt, on whose
shoulders every ridiculous incident was regularly
fathered, whether it owed its paternity to him or
not. As Pasquin stands sponsor for all the wise
sayings of Rome, so M. the Viscount came in for
all the foolish actions of Paris. He was, as it were,
residuary legatee to all the posthumous follies of his
ancestors, as well as the living absurdities of his
noble contemporaries. He was one of those people
who fancy themselves most eminently qualified
for that for which they are most peculiarly unfit,
and whom folly and vanity combined, are perpetually
stimulating to act in direct opposition to nature
or destiny. He was contemptible in his person—
yet he set up for a beau and Adonis—he was still
more contemptible in mind—yet he never rested
till he had bought the title of a Mæcenas and a
savan, of an industrious manufacturer of ultra-doggerel
He was, moreover, born for a valet, or at
best, a pastry cook—yet he aspired to the lofty chivalry
and inflexible honour of a feudal baron; and
he became a soldier, only, as it would seem, because
he was the greatest coward in all Paris. It was
well known that he gave five hundred franks to a
noted bully to let him beat him at a public coffee
house, and afterwards allowed his brother, a tall
grenadier, a pension not to kill him for it.
The viscount had likewise been absent some
months at a small town, in one of the northern departments,
whither he had gone to suppress an insurrection,
began by two or three fish women, stimulated
as was shrewdly suspected, by an old gardener,
who had, as was confidently asserted, been one of
Napoleon's trumpeters. On his return, he for the
first time heard of the sublime science and its progress
among the beau-monde. The viscount hated
all innovations in science, or indeed any thing else.
He aspired to be a second Joshua, and to make the
sun of intellect at least stand still, if he could not
make it go backwards as he had good hopes of
doing. Without waiting to hear any of the particulars
of our exhibition, he hastened, armed and in
uniform as he was, to the hotel where the doctor
was at that moment just commencing a lecture.
The valiant viscount advanced with great intrepidity
close to the table, and leaning gracefully on
there was any thing that smacked of democracy or
heterodoxy. At the proper moment I put my hand
into our Golgotha, and leisurely drew forth the far-famed
skull of Varus, who I have always considered
the most fortunate man of all antiquity, in having
been surprised and slain in the now more memorable
than ever forest of Teutoburgium. As we
scientific gentlemen have a hawk's eye for a new
comer, one of whom is worth a host of old faces at a
lecture, I took care in bringing the cerebral development
forth, to thurst it directly towards the face
of the viscount with the teeth foremost. The viscount
fell back, fainted, and lay insensible for some minutes.
But the moment he revived, he started
upon his legs in a phrenzy of terror, and began to
lay about him with his good sword so valiantly that
nobody dared to come near him. First he attacked
the doctor and myself, who he charged with the
massacre of the eleven thousand virgins, and the
introduction of infidel skulls into France, which was
tantamount to preaching infidelity. The innocent
cerebellum of poor Varus, next felt the effects of
his terror-inspired valour. He hacked it until the
cerebral development was entirely destroyed, and
then proceeded in like manner to make an example
of the contents of the bag, which he shivered without
mercy, with his invincible sword. In short,
before he fairly came to his senses, the worthy gentleman
room—put out the lights and frightened every soul
from the lecture. The solitude and darkness
which succeeded, brought him gradually to his
recollection, when finding himself thus left alone
with the ruins of so many pagan skulls, he gave a
great shriek, scampered out of the room, and did
not stop until he had sheltered himself in the very
centre of a corporal and his guard, belonging to his
regiment, who all swore they would stand by him
to the last drop of their blood.
This adventure was fatal to my master, Dr. Gallgotha.
In the first place, it deprived him of nearly
the whole of his phrenological specimens, and without
these he was like a workman despoiled of his
tools. Besides, the viscount had the very next
morning demanded an audience of the king, in which
he denounced the doctor, as tinctured very strongly
with liberalism, and its invariable concomitants of
sacrilege and impiety. Now I will venture to
affirm, that the good doctor was not only perfectly
ignorant of the very meaning of the word liberal, but
that he was equally innocent of the other two
charges. The truth is, all his organs of faith, morality
and politics, were swallowed up, or elbowed
out of the cerebellum, by the prodigious expansion
of the organ of ideality or invention. However
this may be, the king was more afraid of the three
abominations of liberalism, than of plague, pestilence
who forthwith decided upon taking the poor doctor
and all his works into custody. The valiant viscount,
who always volunteered in all cases of liberalism
and impiety, undertook the task, aided by a
guard of soldiers armed in proof, for he did not
know but the doctor might have another bag full of
pericraniums. Advancing with great caution they
surrounded the house, while the captain of the guard
with three stout resolute fellows, entered for the
purpose of reconnoitering the ground and especially
of ascertaining that there were no skulls to frighten
the viscount. That gallant soldier, having settled
the latter point to his satisfaction, charged
bayonet, in the rear of his guards, and rushing up
stairs in spite of Varus and his legions, detected the
doctor in the very act of committing to memory a
new lecture he had just composed for the purpose
of demonstrating that there was a certain organ of
the cerebellum, the enlarged development of which
always entailed upon its possessor the absolute
necessity of committing murder. The doctor and I
were clapped up in prison, and his lecture carried to
court to undergo a strict examination by the king's
confessor and the Jesuits.
It was sometime before these expert mousers of
radicalism and infidelity could make any thing of
the doctor's lecture, or discover any offence to
church or state. At length they came to that part
doctrine of the actual necessity certain persons laboured
under of committing murder, and that the
rule applied as well to kings as to their subjects.
“He inculcates the doctrine of equality,” cried
one—“he denies the divine right of kings.”
“He is a republican,” cried a second.
“He is a traitor,” cried a third.
A little farther on they found the following assertion—“I
deny that the three legions of Varus formed
one body.”
“Behold!” said the confessor—“he denies the
trinity—he maintains that three is not one—enough,
let us burn the book and hang the doctor.”
Some of the more moderate counsellers, however,
as I afterwards learned, petitioned for a mitigation
of the sentence, which was finally commuted
into perpetual banishment. We were sent
for to hear our doom, and the viscount who always
liked a good natured errand was the bearer
of the message. As we followed him into the palace,
which we all entered uncovered, the doctor
observed to me that the viscount had a most formidable
development of the organ of self-esteem.
The confessor lectured the doctor upon his vile
infidelity, his liberalism, and disaffection to church
and state, all which came as naturally together as
so many chymical affinities. The doctor demanded
have just repeated.
It was in vain that he referred in turn to the other
members of the sentences thus garbled, to prove that
he was neither alluding to religion or politics in his
lecture.
“No matter,” said a cunning Jesuit, who could
convert a wink of the eye into treason, and a nod
of the head into blasphemy—“no matter—a proposition
may be both treasonable and heterodoxical
in itself, although it has no immediate application
to either politics or religion. The assertion that
three does not make one, is complete in itself, and
requires no reference either to what precedes or
what follows. In two months you must be out of
France.”
And thus were we banished from the paradise of
lecturers, only because doctor Gallgotha had wickedly
and impiously asserted that the physical organs
of kings were the same with those of cobblers, and
that three legions, separately encamped, did not
make one body. The confessor advised us to go
to the new world, where, as there was neither loyalty
or religion, we should be in our element. But
in truth, the doctor was become tired of Paris,
and of the world of fashion, which had begun to
discover symptoms of ennui for some little time
past. Indeed, several of his greatest admirers
had lately absented themselves, to go and see an
organization of man, to the astonishment of
all the fashionable lovers of science. Besides all
this, the determined valour of the viscount had
demolished the precious materials by which he
exemplified his theory, and he knew not where to
supply the loss without resorting to the forest of
Teutoburgium. While we were debating whither
to frame our course, and just as I had almost brought
the doctor to consent to accompanying me to the
city of my nativity, the good old man fell sick, or
rather the fabric of nature sunk under him, and the
lamp which had illuminated it, began to twinkle so
faintly in its socket that it was plain the oil was
quite spent.
He took to his bed, from whence he never rose
again. I was going to send for a physician. “No,”
said he with a languid smile—“I will die a Christian,
but not a martyr. It is cruel to torture age
with unavailing remedies. Besides, I have not
money to pay a doctor, and it would mortify my
pride to be killed for nothing.”
I have a satisfaction, even at this distance of time,
in the recollection that I attended him faithfully to
the last, supplied his wants and administered to his
infirmities, as if he had been my father. About four
o'clock one morning, a little before the dawning
of the day, and just at the period of time when
nature seems to be in her last and profoundest repose,
perfectly still for upwards of an hour, suddenly
raised himself upon his elbow—and with an eye
clear and bright, surveyed the room all around with
a slow and measured turn of the head. For a moment
his eye rested upon me—but he did not speak.
He then sunk easily upon his pillow—I put my face
close to his—he breathed into it once—and there
was a long pause. He is gone, said I—no, he breathed
again, and there was another still longer pause.
It is all over now, said I—but he respired yet once
again—and that was the last—I waited, but he
breathed no more.
They would not let me bury him in a church-yard,
because, as the confessor maintained, he was no
Christian, and therefore was not entitled to Christian
charity and forgiveness, after he was dead. But
I buried the old philosopher, where the grass grew
as green, the flowers bloomed as gay, and the birds
warbled as sweetly as if the spot had been blessed
by the confessor himself. Having done this, I turned
my face towards the Athens of the north, which I
now felt myself thoroughly qualified to enrich with
an entire new science. I had succeeded, indeed,
beyond all expectation, and our society having had
from time to time, mysterious hints of my progress,
was expecting me with anxious impatience.
I accordingly gathered together the wrecks of
my old friend's lectures, which had escaped the
return to my own country.
Without troubling you with the incidents of my
journey which are of no consequence, I arrived in
safety at the seat of the sciences. I had been expected
with anxiety, and was received with rapture,
as one destined to revive the dormant excitement of
the fashionable devotees. I found there had been
a terrible falling off in my absence. Money had
actually got the upper hand of merit; feasts were
preferred to philosophy; dances to dogmatizing;
gallants to gallypots; and what was worst of all,
the most invincible blue stocking, without beauty,
was no match for a country simpleton, with blue
laughing eyes, rosy cheeks, and a partridge figure.
Such was the backsliding which had taken place,
that a fashionable baronet ventured to declare publicly
in favour of downright ignorance; and an
old professor of anatomy, was detected in deserting
a discussion upon fossil remains, to go and look at a
pretty girl who was dancing a cotillion. In short,
the temple of science was tottering, and nothing
could save it but starting new game, and creating an
excitement by some absolute originality.
My accomplices wanted to know very much what
I had brought home with me to tickle the lovers
of science; but I was determined neither they or
the public should learn any thing on the subject, until
I disclosed it in a public lecture. I was determined
Accordingly, it was announced that I would deliver
a lecture on phrenology on a particular evening.
Phrenology! it sounded indeed like something new.
The blues ran to their technological dictionary, but
for once they were baffled—the word had not yet
got there. It was an entire new coinage. The
great difficulty was in procuring the necessary cerebral
developments for the purposes of illustration,
without subjecting myself to the penalty of the laws.
Finding nothing better could be done, I one night
went out of the city upon the common, and picked
up a number of skulls of animals, principally dogs,
to serve me on this one occasion. There was one
which had doubtless belonged to a large bull dog,
that I was resolved should stand for the identical
skull of Varus, which the wrathful viscount had so
inhumanly demolished at Paris. Every exertion
was made by the society and its friends to get together
a fashionable auditory, and accordingly the
capacious lecture-room of the northern Athens was
crowded with bonnets and feathers most magnificently.
There was a brilliant audience, as was
erst said of play-houses, and is now said of churches
and lecture-rooms.
I confess I felt somewhat skittish, in this first attempt
to try on an entire new science. However, I
put a good face on the matter, and lectured away,
regardless of consequences. I must do them the
When I talked of the organ of amativeness,
the young folks tittered, and began to feel for it at
the back of each other's heads—I was assured that
many secret attachments were brought to light by
this scrutiny, three of which resulted in elopements
the next day. But when I brought forth the skull of
the bull dog, which I announced as that of Quintilius
Varus, the effect was sublime. There was a general
scream from the ladies, and two or three heroes
of the Peninsula, in full uniform, were observed to
look hard at the door. However, they stood their
ground manfully, and by putting a bold face on the
matter, reassured the more timid of the auditory.
Upon the whole, I got through with flying colours,
and the debut of the new science was pronounced
eminently successful. By the next lecture, I procured
a real apparatus of cerebral developments,
which I had mapped out to the best of my recollection,
according to the theory of Dr. Gallgotha.
After this successful debut, I continued my course,
and made proselytes at every lecture, until at length
they became sufficiently numerous to form a society,
which was accordingly established under the name
of the Phrenological Institute. So alarming indeed
was my progress, that the old sciences which had once
been belles, and still retained a strong disposition
to coquette it a little with their veteran beaux, began
to wax jealous. Finding themselves, like the ancient
power they had called over in their own defence,
they raised the standard against me and my phrenological
brethren.
They pronounced my science no science at all;
affirming that unlike all others it was subject to no
rules, or at least, to none but imaginary ones, that
were neither susceptible of demonstration, nor
maintainable on the ground of experiment or reasoning.
The physiognomists especially, led the van
against me, as being their most formidable opponent;
and as a wag of our society observed, we were of
necessity in a minority, because all persons without
brains would, of course, take sides against a science
founded on the supposed existence of what nature
had denied them. We continued to make head
against this formidable array, and to maintain our
ascendancy until, in an evil hour, some workmen in
digging among the foundations of a ruined abbey,
discovered the skull of king Robert Bruce, which
falling into the hands of our enemies, was forthwith
arrayed against Varus and his legions. It
was immediately put to the phrenological test, and
found wanting in many of the cerebral developments
characteristic of the known qualities of that
renowned deliverer of Scotland, and destroyer of
phrenology. As ill luck, or destiny, would have it,
the development of his organs was phrenologically
at war with the whole history of his life; and there
by either denying its identity, denying its history, or
lastly, explaining the incidents away in such a manner
as to reconcile them to our theory. “If the
mountain wont come to Mahomet,” said the wag
of a member, “Mahomet must go to the mountain—
if the head of king Robert wont accommodate itself
to our science, we must make his history do it,
which will be just as well.” Accordingly he set
about the task, and at our next meeting produced a
dissertation, in which he proved pretty clearly that
king Robert was altogether a different person from
what all the world had believed him to be for centuries;
and that so far from his cerebral development
contradicting the principles of the sublime
science, it demonstrated their truth beyond question.
This dissertation was immediately made public,
but although every member of our society believed
it would effectually silence all our opponents, such
is the obstinacy of long received opinions, and such
the inveteracy of jealous rivalry, that it had little
influence on the world, and the skull of king Robert
proved in the end the battle of Bannockburn to our
society. Daily desertions took place from the
benches of my lecture-room; the young lovers
began again to look into each other's eyes and study
the changeable velvet of the cheeks, for indications
of the universal passion; and at length it came to
to the rear to study characters. What the head of
king Robert had begun, another head was destined
to finish.
A gentleman just arrived from abroad, brought
with him, and presented to our society, a cast which
he assured me was an exact representation of the
skull of Servin, immortalized in Sully's Memoirs,
as a monster compounded of the sublimest genius
and the most grovelling detestable vices. On examination,
I discovered to my infinite delight that
the cerebral development exhibited the character
and propensities of Servin, with a degree of precision
that, if known, would silence all cavilling, and go far
to establish my system beyond question. I determined
at once to bring it into the field in opposition
to the head of king Robert, and let them fight it out
before the public. Accordingly I announced the
receipt of my treasure, and invited all sceptics to
come and receive a demonstration of the sublime
truths of phrenology. I had not seen such an audience
for many a day, although the evening was
stormy, and commenced my lecture on Servin's
head, in high spirits. I pointed out the development
so exactly corresponding with the character—
here the organ of ideality, announcing the extent of
his genius—and there the organ of cunning and
cruelty, announcing the extent of his crimes and
duplicity. Here the organ of tune, demonstrating
exemplifying his unequalled capacity for their acquirement.
Here philoprogenitiveness—there destructiveness—here
secretiveness—there concentrativeness.
In short, I proved that the head could have
belonged to none but a person of great intellectual
capacity, contrasted with equal depravity. In the
triumph of my heart, I held it up to the audience as
the hero of phrenology, the invincible rival and conquerer
of king Robert. I shook it in the faces of
the unbelievers, and handled it at length with so
little discretion, that it fell from my grasp upon the
floor, and the plaster flew about in all directions. I
hastened to lift it up again, and presenting it to the
light, was struck with horror and dismay. The
scaling of the plaster had exposed to view the rude
outlines of one of those wooden heads which sometimes
ornament the coasting vessels of my native
country. I had not the presence of mind to put
it out of sight, but stood in stupifying embarrassment
without uttering a word, when I was at length roused
by a hoarse voice crying out—“D—n my eyes,
Tom, is'nt that the head of the Lovely Nancy, that
some rascally land lubber stole from her bows the
other night?” Tom immediately confirmed this
with a round sailor's oath, adding—“'Tis a lucky
godsend that we came in here for a harbour from
the storm to-night, to unkennel this thief of the
world, with his outlandish gibberish about serving
served with a baker's dozen at the gangway before
long.” So saying, the two gallant tars advanced to
the table and seizing the head of the Lovely Nancy
bore it off in triumph, amid shouts of laughter on
all sides.
There was no lecturing in the northern Athens
after this untoward accident, which shook the faith
even of the true believers. All my disciples left
me with the exception of a worthy advocate, who
was saved from utter condemnation as an insuperable
blockhead, only by the uncommon development
of the organ of ideality, which sufficiently demonstrated
the extent of his genius. It was neck
or nothing with him—he must either be an ass or a
phrenologist. The others were all laughed away
from me.
There was now but one way left me to establish
the truths of the sublime science, and that was to demonstrate
them by actual practice—to make them
the guides of my conduct in life, and to disregard
entirely the flickering lights of experience, as well
as those vague, uncertain, and delusive indications
of character which are supposed to exhibit themselves
in the conduct and disposition of mankind.
I determined either to show the world the superiority
of the unerring test of the cerebral developments,
over all other touchstones of human passions,
or perish in the attempt. Men have in all ages and
of great truths—nay, many have voluntarily become
victims to the most absurd, vain and mischievous
theories. Superstition has had, if possible, more
enthusiastic and willing martyrs than true religion;
and thousands have shed their blood for the support
of falsehood, who would have shrunk from doing it
in defence of truth. I will therefore, said I, not
flinch from the duty before me. I will become the
high priest, or the martyr of my science; and if I
cannot prove its sublime truths, will at least offer a
demonstration that I believe in them myself.
For this purpose it was necessary to leave for
awhile the path of philosophy and abstraction, for
the busy occupations and pursuits of practical life.
It is these and these only, that in the eyes of the
vulgar and near-sighted of mankind, furnish the
test of truth. They judge of a science, or a theory,
not by the unerring standard of its abstract
beauty, ingenuity or grandeur, but by its pitiful
practical operation, within the sphere of their own
actual experience. The great and radical difference
between the ignorant and the wise is, that the
former persist in obstinately believing what they
see, without being able to explain its causes; while
the latter consider the evidence of the five senses
as only fit for a court of justice, and believe in nothing
but what they can account for. They justly
consider, that as man is emphatically a reasoning
obvious it may be to his senses, unless it is supported
by at least one good substantial reason on
either side, like a bladder under each arm of a swimmer.
The vulgar, for example, believe that beef
killed in the decrease of the moon, will always
shrink in the boiling, because they see it every day,
although they can't account for the phenomenon;
while the wise go upon surer grounds—they first
decide whether a thing is theoretically possible and
then assert that it exists. The vulgar are like the
blind man, who denied the existence of light, because
he could not feel it with his fingers, nor snuff
it up with his nose, nor taste it with his tongue, nor
hear it with his ears; while the wise may be likened
to the ancient philosopher who would not believe
his eyes when he saw his house set fire to by lightning,
because he could not account for the phenomenon.
In fine, the ignorant are the dupes of the
five senses; while the wise are governed by the
imagination alone—that sublime and almost omnipotent
faculty which creates worlds out of nothing,
and makes laws for those that never had an existence.
But to return from this digression.
The practical business of this life, it will be
found, consists principally in three things—getting
married—getting a family—and getting rich.
There are other miscellaneous occupations—such
as driving tandem—running in debt—bilking landlords
streets—but these are not so general as to form any
of the grand divisions of human pursuits. In the
furtherance of my great object of demonstrating
the sublime truths of phrenology by the vulgar mode
of practical application, I resolved to kill two birds
with one stone by entering into business, and looking
out for a wife at the same time. Not knowing
much of the ordinary transactions of the mercantile
world, I found it necessary in the first place to
choose a partner, with whom I could entrust my
capital, and in whose skill I might rely in the transaction
of our business. Some people would have
gone about, inquiring whether this man or that
man was a prudent, honest, sensible and experienced
person; and whether he had been long enough
known in the community to have established, as the
vulgar phrase is, a good character. But I was determined
to go a short way to work. I advertised
for a partner with a head as like Sir Thomas Gresham
as possible, having the zygomatic process very
projecting, the organ of order strongly developed,
and the sentiments of cautiousness, conscientiousness,
veneration, benevolence and firmness all beautifully
exhibited on the cerebellum. Without all
these, I was fully convinced no man could be a great
merchant or build a royal exchange.
In the course of a few days several offered themselves
to inspection, whose characters were excellent,
me they either had been, or would be, in the course
of their lives, consummate rogues. It is astonishing
indeed to see how the world is frequently, not to
say continually, imposed upon by people who actually
go down to their graves, with the reputation of
virtue, although fate and phrenology both ordained
it should be otherwise. I can only account for it
on the ground of deception, or want of opportunity.
Being resolved not to be imposed upon by the specious
seductions of a good character, I dismissed
these applicants one after the other as civilly as
possible. At length a person presented himself,
who underwent the phrenological test greatly to
my satisfaction. He had the finest development
for a merchant I ever saw. The organ of acquisitiveness
was on a great scale.
“Where is that?” asked Mr. Quominus.
“At the anterior inferior angle of the parietal
bone.”
“Hum,” quoth Mr. Quominus—“and what
does the said organ indicate?”
Sometimes it indicates the tendency to acquire
and the desire to possess in general. It is the organ
in which the idea of property first originated. Sometimes
it leads to the collection of coins, minerals,
paintings and other curiosities of science—sometimes
to the collection of bugs, butterflies and beetles.
In men of sense it gives rise to the disposition
to collect those that are worth nothing. In some it
is the love of science; in others the love of money.
A man with the organ of conscientiousness pressing
upon that of acquisitiveness, will, if he has a hundred
acres of land, feel vast delight in acquiring one
hundred more, but he will not resort to any improper
means to attain them; while another man who
hath the organ of acquisitiveness, combined with that
of secretiveness, will become a thief in spite of himself.
He cannot help it if he would. Among the
inferior animals, beavers, bees and ants, are observed
to have the organ of acquisitiveness in great perfection.
Indeed, it is conspicuous in all hoarding
animals.
“What a wonderful science!” exclaimed the
other two Wise Men of Gotham.
To proceed with my story, said Le Peigne, such
was the apt, admirable and harmonious association
of organs in the cerebellum of this person, that I perceived
it was quite unnecessary to make any inquiries
into his character, qualifications and pursuits.
I saw at once that he was destined to be another
Cosmo de Medicis, and forthwith entered into articles
of trade with him on the spot.
My next business was to get an experienced
clerk, which I soon did, by applying the touchstone
of the infallible science. I found a man whose organ
of number was beautifully developed, and most
harmoniously associated with that of individuality.
“Where are they situated?” asked Mr. Quominus.
The organ of number, is designated by the arch
of the eyebrow being either much pressed downwards.
or very much elevated.
“Then,” observed the Man Machine, “it seems
that two appearances exactly opposite to each other,
denote the same thing in the science of phrenzy—
I mean phrenology?”
No such thing, replied the other—it only proves
that two appearances entirely dissimilar may yet
be as like as two peas. The development of
this organ to any extraordinary extent, renders
it impossible for the owner not to be a most expert
hand at figures and calculations; and when associated
with the organ of individuality—
“Where is that?” interrupted Mr. Quominus.
In the middle of the lower part of the forehead.
“And what does it indicate?”
It is the organ of the memory and the sense of
things—and it is always most strongly developed
in children. It is also the organ which indicates a
proneness to adopt new theories—to embrace the
opinions of others, and a vast facility in accommodating
ourselves to customs, manners and circumstances.
Persons with this organ strongly developed,
have moreover a desire, accompanied by the
ability, to know facts and things in general—it
aids in producing a talent for all practical business
involving details, and hence, to the medical practitioner,
the lawyer and the merchant it is invaluable—it
communicates power to the orator—art to
the novelist—it tends to allegory and personification—it
inspired Spenser and John Bunyan—and
above all, it delights in the analysis of specific
existences.
“What an invaluable organ!” exclaimed Mr.
Quominus—“it indicates but every thing, and I
should think ought to have been christened the
organ of universality, rather than of individuality.”
You are mistaken, quoth the other—it is not so
universal as you may imagine. A person having it
strongly developed, retains only general ideas—
he is not able to command his knowledge without
previous preparation, and therefore can hardly ever
become learned, or a great extemporaneous orator.
This has been proved by an examination of the
skulls of almost every species of animals from the
frog to the elephant.
“But what has the head of a bull-frog to do with
that of a man?” asked the Man Machine.
Just as much as the tail of a dog, said Le Peigne,
rather contemptuously.
“I believe it,” said the other dryly. “But really,
with submission, sir, it appears to me that in
your science not only different and opposite developments
more remarkable, the same development of an organ
signifies things altogether different—you first tell us
that the organ of individuality is the source of oratory,
and then that it prevents a man from speaking
extemporaneously, a quality very essential in oratory,
I should think. You tell us it is indispensable
to certain sciences which children cannot comprehend,
and certain pursuits, such as law, physic and
merchandise, which children cannot engage in, and
yet you say it is most strongly developed in children.
It seems to me this savours as it were of
contradiction—two assertions so contradictory cannot,
I should think, be both true.”
Sir, replied Le Peigne—you had better stick
to the perfectibility of man and the counteracting
principles. Do you not know of the modern
discovery, that what is morally impossible, may yet
be scientifically true? No science is now considered
perfect, except it can not only reconcile contradictions,
but impossibilities. My dear sir, I never
doubted the perfectibility of your Men Machines;
pray allow me the perfection of science.
“With all my heart,” said the other. “Be pleased
to proceed, brother Le Peigne. Did you engage
the Man Machine with the supernatural development,
that signified so many opposite yet reconcileable
things?”
You shall hear, returned Le Peigne, whose good
had now got a partner and a clerk, on whom I could
confidently rely, for the successful conduct of our
affairs, and the speedy acquisition of fortune. Nothing
was now wanting but a wife, selected and chosen
with a proper regard to the infallible auguries
of the cerebral development. As this was the
most important matter of all, I resolved to be very
particular, and to apply the rules of my art with
more than ordinary circumspection. In the first
place, it was indispensable that she should have a
perfect development of the organ of amativeness—
“Excuse me for interrupting you,” said Mr.
Quominus—“where is that same organ and what
does it signify?”
It is situated, sir, between the mastoid process on
each side of the projecting point, in the middle of the
transverse ridge of the occipetal bone.
“Any man but an anatomist might as well look
for the northwest passage as for these incognito
organs,” said Quominus—“But the indications?”
The organ of amativeness is placed first in the
sublime science, because it indicates the propensity
to falling in love—the desire of propagating our
species without which there would be neither dog's
tails, nor men's heads, and of course no science of
phrenology. It is in fact the foundation of all the
sciences. Besides this, it is the organ of a variety
of other propensities. Monsieur Flourens, who
discovered that it was the organ for regulating
muscular motion. “On removing the cerebellum
over this part,” says he, “the animal loses the
power of executing combined movements,”—he
can move one leg, but not both at the same time.
It is also the organ of retrograde motions. Doctor
Magendie, who is famous for illustrating the nature
of man by the peculiarities of frogs, in performing
some experiments upon these animals, discovered
that disturbing this organ “occasioned an irresistible
propensity in the animal to run, jump or swim
backwards.” Other scientific inquirers have found
that when one part was cut the animal rolled—when
another, it went forward in extenso—when another,
it bent double.
“O! I see,” interrupted the Man Machine.
“This organ is a sort of jack of all trades—it can
turn its hand to almost any thing. I don't wonder
you think it so indispensable in a wife, who should
always be particularly expert at jumping and swimming
backwards.”
The next indispensable requisite in a wife, continued
Le Peigne, not heeding this interruption,
is the organ of philoprogenitiveness.
“What is that?” said Mr. Quominus.
The organ which indicates an instinctive love of
offspring.
“I should suppose that to be universal.”
By no means. Peg Macquarrie, who murdered
her child, was entirely without it—and so was the
skull of Varus, who I have no doubt, as Tacitus
don't mention his wife or children, was a confirmed
bachelor. Many animals of good reputation drive
their offspring from them when young; and the
birds turn their little ones neck and heels out of the
nest as soon as they are fledged. All these, it is
very remarkable, are destitute of the organ of philoprogenitiveness.
It is situated immediately above
the middle part of the cerebellum, and corresponds
to the protuberance of the occiput. It is large in
the Hindoo, Negro and Carib women.
“Do they love their children better than other
women?” asked the Man Machine.
If they don't, they ought to do it; they are scientifically
under the necessity of being what nature
plainly intended they should be. The next cerebral
development indispensable in the organization
of a good wife, is that of concentrativeness.
“Where is that, and what doth it signify?” interrupted
Mr. Quominus—“I beg pardon, but as I
may one day marry myself it may stand me in stead
to know something of these matters.”
It is just above philoprogenitiveness and just below
self-esteem. It indicates sedentary habits and
love of home—as is proved by the organ being
enormously expanded in a toad that was found imbedded
in a solid block of marble, where he must
strongly developed in snails, who seldom go from
home, as you know.
“I suppose then it must be something like a horn,
such as the snails have,” said the Man Machine.
Le Peigne gave him a queer side look and proceeded.
Doctor Gallgotha observed, in addition to this
love of retirement and indisposition to motion,
that the development of this organ was very perceptible
in the chamois and other animals fond of
climbing heights and browsing upon precipices.
“An excellent quality in a wife,” quoth Quominus.
“And a most exquisite organ,” said the Man Machine—“it
plays so many different tunes. Who
would have thought that the same thing could
signify the propensity of a toad, a snail, and a wife
for staying at home, and the propensity of a goat to
climb perpendicular rocks and browse upon the
edge of precipices?”
The next organ essential to the perfection of
woman, or, as the learned say, the sine qua non of
a good wife, is—
“What?” said the Man Machine, rubbing his
hands eagerly.
The organ of adhesiveness, which is just above
the lambdoidal suture. It is designated by No.
4, on the phrenological map of the skull.
“Have you got the map with you? I should like
him.
I will show it you, when I have finished my
story, said the doctor, and went on. I cannot
better define the indications of this organ than in
the words of one of Dr. Gallgotha's lectures.
“The faculty of adhesiveness,” says the doctor,
“produces the instinctive tendency to attach one's
self to surrounding objects, animate and inanimate.
Those persons in whom it is very strong, feel an
involuntary impulse to embrace and cling to the
object of their affections. In boys it frequently
indicates itself by attachment to dogs, horses, rabbits,
squirrels, birds, and other animals. In girls it
shows itself in affectionate embraces of—
“Of what?” interrupted the Man Machine eagerly.
Of dolls, replied the other. It is stronger, and the
organ is larger in women than in men. When too
strong it produces the disease called nostalgia—
“What's that?” asked Mr. Quominus.
When feeble, Dr. Gallgotha says, it turns men
into hermits, and women into nuns. The organ is
large in Mary Maginnes.[1]
The last cerebral development I was resolved to
insist upon in the phrenology of my wife, was the
organ of order.
“Where is that to be found?” asked Mr. Quominus.
It lies contiguous to the angle of the frontal bone,
and indicates a love of regularity, and habit of keeping
every thing in its proper place. Doctor Gallgotha
established this indication from seeing a Dutch
woman, who had a large development of this organ,
actually faint away at finding a chair out of its place.
It is also prominent in the Termes Bellicosus, the
honey bee, and all animals and insects that live in
communities. No animal, however, exhibits it in
such perfection as the beaver.
“And did you get such a wonder for a wife?”
asked the Man Machine.
You shall hear, returned the other. It was a long
time, and not until I began almost to despair of
meeting a woman phrenologically perfect, that I
succeeded to my wishes. At length, in passing
through a country where I was a stranger, I encountered
one that answered exactly to all these
indications. I inspected her cerebral development
and found all the indications quite perfect.
This was all I wanted—I made no further inquiries,
being determined to put down the enemies of the
sublime science by actual demonstration.
“Had she the sine qua non, as you call it?” quoth
the Man Machine.
Beautifully developed, said the other. I made
short work of it. We were married out of hand,
and after being acquainted just long enough for me
to examine the cerebral development. I brought
her to town in triumph, as a being destined to
insure the triumph of the sublime science. I took
a fine house, and lectured to all the company I
could persuade to visit us, upon her irrefragable
cerebellum. So immersed was I for some time in
this extatic scrutiny, that I forgot my business, my
partner, and my clerk, until a friend came to me
one day, and with a face of concern, hinted that
our business was going on at a sad rate. “Your
partner,” said he, “is either a rogue or an ignoramus—and
your clerk spends his time at taverns and
brothels. Every thing is at sixes and sevens—you
will be ruined to a certainty, if you are not so already.”
“What! in spite of the cerebral development.”
“In spite of fate,” replied my friend.
“Pshaw!” replied I—“fate is a mere flea-bite compared
to phrenology.” He left me shaking his head
with an air of great concern.
I confess, notwithstanding my reliance upon the
cerebral development, I was a little uneasy at these
warnings of my friend. My wife too did frequent
violence to the organs of order and adhesiveness—
for she left my house at sixes and sevens, and seemed
to adhere to nothing but her own will. We
was with the organ of philoprogenitiveness—and as
to that of amativeness, the truth of its augury was
demonstrated—only there was a little mistake—
she embraced her lap-dog ten times oftener than
me. I shall pass over the remainder of my story
with all brevity, as it is not very pleasant to my
recollection, nor very material to my purpose of
establishing the practical truths of the infallible
science. My partner dissolved the firm about two
years after my marriage, by running away, and
leaving me answerable for debts which consumed
all I had in the world. He took with him every
thing he could lay his hands on; even my invaluable
clerk with the beautiful development, accompanied
the second Cosmo De Medicis, and I never
saw either of them again.
My house and furniture, together with all my
phrenological specimens, not excepting my wife,
soon departed from me, either by course of law or
course of nature. Though entirely destitute of the
organ of combativeness, she held John Doe and
Richard Roe at bay three whole days, and defended
the fortress like another Jane de Montfort. At
length, however, they came to terms. She stipulated
for permission to march out with bag and baggage,
and I took it for granted that, like the women
of Abensburg, she would leave all her finery and
carry me off on her back triumphantly. But I was
sadly disappointed, when, after packing up her
to herself, she came up to me, and making a
low courtesy, bade me good bye.
“Where are you going, my dear?” said I—“what
will you do alone in the world, without your faithful
husband. You had better stay and accompany
me to prison.”
“No, thank you, my dear, as much as if I did,”
replied she, making another low courtesy—“I am
too prudent a woman to trust myself alone in the
world, and am not very fond of retirement. One of
my husbands is waiting outside with a hackney
coach to take me home with him.”
“One of your husbands!” cried I—“Why, how
many have you?”
“A baker's dozen,” replied she, gliding gracefully
out of the room.
“A baker's dozen!” cried the Man Machine—
“this comes of the organ of amativeness and the
sine qua non.”
“Well,” said Mr. Quominus gravely—“I suppose
this put an end to all doubts as to the infallible
auguries of the cerebral development?”
“It did,” replied the other—“it established their
truth in my mind beyond all contradiction or question.”
“You don't say so,” quoth the other.
But I do say so, cried Le Peigne, waxing rather
warm—I affirm that the failure of my experiment is
“Of its sublimity—not of its truth,” observed
Quominus.
“Of its truth, sir. Every failure in demonstrating
the truth adds to the certainty of its existence,
and leads most directly to a discovery. You might
as well say that there was no new world before
Columbus discovered it, as that nothing is true
until it is proved to be so. The science of phrenology
may be compared to an undiscovered country—a—”
“A terra incognita,” said the Man Machine.
“An island of Atalantis,” said Quominus.
“An Utopia,” cried the other.
“A survey of a canal across the Alleghanies,”
cried Quominus.
“A rail-way over the Atlantic,” roared the Man
Machine.
“A mountain in the moon,” vociferated Quominus.
“But really,” said the Man Machine, after a short
pause—“were you really—excuse me—were you
really such a goose as to believe in the cerebral
developments after they had treated you so scurvily?
What could possess you?”
“The same spirit that possessed you to believe
in the perfectibility of man, and your friend in the
perfection of reason.”
“And you don't believe in the perfectibility of
man,” roared the Man Machine.
“Nor in the perfection of reason,” exclaimed
Mr. Quominus, half laughing, as if he did not believe
in it himself, though he did not like other people
to call it in question.
“No more than I believe the moon is made of
green cheese, and peopled with Welsh rabbits. But
I do not wonder at your putting these visionary follies
and absurd theories in competition with my
demonstrative science, since I perceive quite plainly,
each of you is entirely destitute of the organ of
comparison.”
“No organ of comparison!” exclaimed the Man
Machine.
“No organ of comparison!” cried Quominus.
“No, sir—nor of wit—nor order—nor time—
nor tune—nor causality—nor constructiveness—nor
colouring—nor number—nor ideality—which is
synonymous with genius. Your cerebral developments
are horrid—your indications abominable—
your cerebellums no better than pine barrens—and
the backs of your heads have no more meaning
than other people's faces.”
“No genius!” cried the Man Machine.
“A pine barren!” exclaimed Quominus.
“He is terribly under the influence of the counteracting
principles.”
“He is worse than Caveat Emptor, or Locus in
quo.”
“I could make better skulls out of a potatoe,”
said Le Peigne, furiously.
“Or the head of the Lovely Nancy,” retorted
the Man Machine, who with Quominus burst into a
roar of laughter at this lucky hit.
I have seen people keep their temper when the
argument was against them, but I never knew even a
philosopher that could stand two to one against him
in a laugh. Le Peigne lifted up a stout ivory headed
cane with intent, as I believe, to let it fall on
the cerebral development of the Pupil of Circumstances;
but that expert Spinning Jenney warded
off the blow with his cocked hat, which was unfortunately
knocked overboard, and the cane lighted
directly on the combative organ of the Perfection of
Reason. Each of the Wise Men now started up
for the purpose of defending his person, or his theory;
and in the confusion the jolly Bowl, being left
without a cockswain, imperceptibly drifted into the
eddying circles of a great whirlpool, supposed to be
the Maelstrom of Norway. Here, after whirling
round and round for some time, it unluckily struck
against the head of the Man Machine, who was dodging
to avoid a second application of the ivory headed
cane. The concussion of these two hard bodies
proved fatal to the Bowl, which parted exactly in
vortex, in which the whole party was suddenly
engulphed. The last vestige of them that was
seen, was the tip of the ivory headed cane, which
the doctor seemed still flourishing in vindication
of the infallible science.
What became of these renowned philosophers is
not precisely known. The most probable, and at
the same time, the most consoling opinion is, that
this tremendous vortex was one of the great avenues
to the newly discovered Concentric Spheres;
and that, consequently, there is a possibility at least
that our illustrious trio may have found in some
other world, what they vainly sought in this.
| STORY
OF THE
THIRD WISE MAN OF GOTHAM. The merry tales of the three wise men of Gotham | |