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Objections to Phrenology; Being the Substance of a Series of Papers Communicated to the Calcutta Phrenological Society, With Additional Notes
Objections to Phrenology Being the Substance of a Series of Papers Communicated to the Calcutta Phrenological Society With Additional Notes Author:David Drummond General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1829 Original Publisher: pr. for the Author Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you ... more »can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: First. -- It is demonstrable that if two organs so act, in opposition, they might as well save themselves the trouble of acting at all; for, the consequence must be, that, like an acid and an alkali, they would mutually neutralize each other; or, (to borrow an illustration from another science) as in the contact of two opposing bodies possessed of equal momentum, the impetus of both would be annihilated. Secondly. -- If a certain number of organs are conjoined in one individual impulse -- why not the whole bundle of them ? and if this be admitted, there is, at once, an end of Phrenology; and this branch of the science of mind remains exactly where it was in the days of Aristotle! Gentlemen, I will not thank you for admitting that " a whole is equal to all its parts," for it is not in your power to conceive the contrary. It must, therefore, follow, that if all the faculties are in action at the same instant, mind is as much a unit as any Philosopher, since the beginning of the world, imagined it to be : and as it is an acknowledged law in philosophizing, that more shall not be assumed as a cause than is necessary to its consequent, a variety of organs must be rejected as a useless and unnecessary complication. Should the Phrenologists adopt a middle course, and say, that the various organs sometimes act the one way, and sometimes the other, this resort will not avail them much. I shall request to be informed how it happens that, when under a raging fit of jealousy, or any other violent passion, with the trusty steel grasped in my hand, and the object of my wrath ...« less