Objections to Phrenology: Being the Substance of a Series of Papers Communicated to the Calcutta Phrenological Society, with Additional Notes

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1829 - 198 pages
 

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Page 141 - And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind : and God saw that it was good.
Page 2 - Go, wondrous creature! mount where Science guides, Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, Correct old Time, and regulate the sun; Go, soar with Plato to th...
Page 142 - Reason progressive, instinct is complete ; Swift instinct leaps ; slow reason feebly climbs. Brutes soon their zenith reach ; their little all Flows in at once ; in ages they no more Could know, or do, or covet, or enjoy. Were man to live coeval with the sun, The patriarch-pupil would be learning still ; Yet, dying, leave his lesson half unlearnt.
Page 121 - That the capacities of the human mind have been in all ages the same ; and that the diversity of phenomena exhibited by our species, is the result merely of the different circumstances in which men are placed, has been long received as an incontrovertible logical maxim ; or rather, such is the influence of early instruction, that we are apt to regard it as one of the most obvious suggestions of common sense.
Page 85 - Her memory was capacious, and stored with a copious stock of ideas. Unexpectedly, and without any forewarning, she fell into a profound sleep, which continued several hours beyond the ordinary term. On waking, she was discovered to have lost every trait of acquired knowledge. Her memory was tabula rasa ; all vestiges, both of words and things, were obliterated and gone.
Page 72 - An expert accountant, for example, can sum up almost with a single glance of his eye, a long column of figures. He can tell the sum with unerring certainty, while at the same time he is unable to recollect any one of the figures of which that sum is composed ; and yet nobody doubts that each of these figures has passed through his mind, or supposes that when the rapidity of the process becomes so great that he is unable to recollect the various steps of it, he obtains the result by a sort of inspiration.
Page 156 - Dr. Johnson applied himself to the Dutch language but a few years before his death. Ludovico Monaldeseo, at the great age of one hundred and fifteen, wrote the memoirs of his own times.
Page 85 - But, after a few months, another fit of somnolency invaded her. On rousing from it she found herself restored to the state she was in before the first paroxysm ; but was wholly ignorant of every event and occurrence that had befallen her afterward. The former condition of her existence she now calls the old state...
Page 176 - As we are then more accustomed to beauty than deformity, we may conclude that to be the reason why we approve and admire it, as we approve and admire customs and fashions of dress for no other reason than that we are used to them...
Page 176 - ... only one passes through any other point, so it will be found that perfect beauty is oftener produced by Nature than deformity ; I do not mean than deformity in general, but than any one kind of deformity. To instance...

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