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Updated: June 21, 2025
Then he talked to me about phrenology, of which he seems a firm believer and skilful practitioner, telling how he had hit upon the true character of many people.
Oliver Wendell Holmes changed his views on phrenology in his maturer years and said: "We owe phrenology a great debt. It has melted the world's conscience in its crucible and cast it in a new mould, with features less like those of Moloch and more like those of humanity." Andrew Carnegie said: "Not to know phrenology is sure to keep you standing on the 'Bridge of Sighs' all your life."
After closing the entertainment the people gathered around, and many of them wanted me to stay in the neighborhood and deliver a lecture the next night on Phrenology. But as we were billed at Elkhart for that date, it was impossible to do so. We remained over night with the school director, and the next morning he requested me to delineate the character of his son by an examination of his head.
To pass over gambling, tippling, and other practices which cannot be easily spoken of in good society, let us look to the other shapes in which man lets himself out for instance to horse-racing, hunting, photography, shooting, fishing, cigars, dog-fancying, dog-fighting, the ring, the cockpit, phrenology, revivalism, socialism; which of these contains so small a balance of evil, counting of course that the amount of pleasure conferred is equal for it is only on the datum that the book-hunter has as much satisfaction from his pursuit as the fox-hunter, the photographer, and so on, has in his, that a fair comparison can be struck?
Like all strong Catholics he has much veneration that "organ," speaking in the vernacular of phrenology, is at the top of the head, and you never yet saw a thorough Catholic who did not manifest a good development of it; he is strong in ideality; has also a fine, vein of humour in him; can laugh, say jolly as well as serious things; and is a positively earnest and practical preacher.
A follower of that now forgotten science, phrenology, would have been impressed by Lionel Varick's head. It was large and well-shaped, with a great deal of almost golden hair, now showing a white thread or two, which did not, however, detract from his look of youth.
For example, every one judges character to a certain extent by facial expression, manner, carriage and dress. A few of the methods used have become organized into specialties, such as the study of the head or phrenology, and the study of the hand or palmistry. All of these systems are really "materialistic" in that they postulate so close a union of mind and body as to make them inseparable.
Animal magnetism, one of the great sciences of antiquity, had its origin in occult philosophy; chemistry is the outcome of alchemy; phrenology and neurology are no less the fruit of similar studies.
The practitioners of the Pseudo-sciences know that common minds, after they have been baited with a real fact or two, will jump at the merest rag of a lie, or even at the bare hook. When we have one fact found us, we are very apt to supply the next out of our own imagination. I did not say that it was so with Phrenology.
Is physiognomy true? or phrenology? or graphology? or cheiromancy? If so, what are their laws? Is there an English hexameter? Is a perfect translation impossible? Will the coloured races conquer? Is consumption curable? Is celibacy possible? Can novels be really dramatised? Is the French school of acting superior to ours? Should literary men be offered peerages? or refuse them?
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