One of the boys mentioned, the other evening, in the course of a very
pleasant poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons table-
boarders, which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard
of. Young fellows being always hungry----Allow me to stop dead short,
in order to utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one of
the blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in the
cavity of a geode.
Aphorism by the Professor
In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food
of different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anything
at any hour of the day or night. If old, it observes stated periods,
and you might as well attempt to regulate the time of high-water to
suit a fishing-party as to change these periods.
The crucial experiment is this. Offer a bulky and boggy bun to the
suspected individual just ten minutes before dinner. If this is
eagerly accepted and devoured, the fact of youth is established. If
the subject of the question starts back and expresses surprise and
incredulity, as if you could not possibly be in earnest, the fact of
maturity is no less clear.
--Excuse me--I return to my story of the Commons table. Young fellows
being always hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meager fare of
the evening meal, it was a trick of some of the boys to impale a
slice of meat upon a fork at dinner time and stick the fork holding
it beneath the table, so that they could get it at tea time. The
dragons that guarded this table of the Hesperides found out the trick
at last and kept a sharp lookout for missing forks--they knew where
to find one if it was not in its place. Now the odd thing was that,
after waiting so many years to hear of this college trick, I should
hear it mentioned a _second time_ within the same twenty-four
hours by a college youth of the present generation. Strange, but
true. And so it has happened to me and to every person, often and
often, to be hit in rapid succession by these twinned facts or
thoughts, as if they were linked like chain-shot.
I was going to leave the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it
as an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow
of subsoil in it. The explanation is, of course, that in a great many
thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest
our attention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of the
enormous number of impressions which pass through our consciousness,
until in some future life we see the photographic record of our
thoughts and the stereoscopic picture of our actions. There go more
pieces to make up a conscious life or a living body than you think
for. Why, some of you were surprised when a friend of mine told you
there were fifty-eight separate pieces in a fiddle. How many
"swimming glands"--solid, organized, regularly formed, rounded disks,
taking an active part in all your vital processes, part and parcel,
each one of them, of your corporal being--do you suppose are whirled
along like pebbles in a stream with the blood which warms your frame
and colors your cheeks? A noted German physiologist spread out a
minute drop of blood under the microscope, in narrow streaks, and
counted the globules, and then made a calculation. The counting by
the micrometer took him a _week_. You have, my full-grown friend, of
these little couriers in crimson or scarlet livery, running on your
vital errands day and night as long as you live, sixty-five billions
five hundred and seventy thousand millions, errors excepted. Did I
hear some gentleman say "Doubted"? I am the Professor; I sit in my
chair with a petard under it that will blow me through the skylight of
my lecture-room if I do not know what I am talking about and whom I am
quoting.
Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands to your foreheads
and saying to yourselves that you feel a little confused, as if you
had been waltzing until things began to whirl slightly round you, is
it possible that you do not clearly apprehend the exact connection of
all that I have been saying and its bearing on what is now to come?
Listen, then. The number of these living elements in our body
illustrates the incalculable multitude of our thoughts; the number of
our thoughts accounts for those frequent coincidences spoken of;
these coincidences in the world of thought illustrate those which we
constantly observe in the world of outward events, of which the
presence of the young girl now at our table, and proving to be the
daughter of an old acquaintance some of us may remember, is the
special example which led me through this labyrinth of reflections,
and finally lands me at the commencement of this young girl's story,
which, as I said, I have found the time and felt the interest to
learn something of, and which I think I can tell without wronging the
unconscious subject of my brief delineation.
A Short Lecture on Phrenology
_Read to the Boarders at Our Breakfast Table _
I shall begin, my friends, with the definition of a _pseudoscience_. A
pseudoscience consists of a _nomenclature_, with a self-adjusting
arrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors its
doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tells
against it, is excluded. It is invariably connected with some
lucrative practical application. Its professors and practitioners are
usually shrewd people; they are very serious with the public, but wink
and laugh a good deal among themselves. The believing multitude
consists of women of both sexes, feeble-minded inquirers, poetical
optimists, people who always get cheated in buying horses,
philanthropists who insist on hurrying up the millennium, and others
of this class, with here and there a clergyman, less frequently a
lawyer, very rarely a physician, and almost never a horse-jockey or a
member of the detective police. I did not say that Phrenology was one
of the pseudosciences.
A pseudoscience does not necessarily consist wholly of lies. It may
contain many truths, and even valuable ones. The rottenest bank
starts with a little specie. It puts out a thousand promises to pay
on the strength of a single dollar, but the dollar is very commonly a
good one. The practitioners of the pseudosciences 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. (How many persons can read Judges XV. 16 correctly the
first time?) The pseudosciences take advantage of this. I did not say
that it was so with Phrenology.
I have rarely met a sensible man who would not allow that there was
_something_ in Phrenology. A broad, high forehead, it is commonly
agreed, promises intellect; one that is "villainous low," and has a
huge hind-head back of it, is wont to mark an animal nature. I have as
rarely met an unbiased and sensible man who really believed in the
bumps. It is observed, however, that persons with what the
phrenologists call "good heads" are more prone than others
toward plenary belief in the doctrine.
It is so hard to prove a negative that, if a man should assert that
the moon was in truth a green cheese, formed by the coagulable
substance of the Milky Way, and challenge me to prove the contrary, I
might be puzzled. But if he offer to sell me a ton of this lunar
cheese, I call on him to prove the truth of the caseous nature of our
satellite before I purchase.
It is not necessary to prove the falsity of the phrenological
statement. It is only necessary to show that its truth is not proved,
and cannot be, by the common course of argument. The walls of the
head are double, with a great air-chamber between them, over the
smallest and most closely crowded "organs." Can you tell how much
money there is in a safe, which also has thick double walls, by
kneading its knobs with your fingers? So when a man fumbles about my
forehead, and talks about the organs of _Individuality_, _Size_, etc.,
I trust him as much as I should if he felt of the outside of my
strongbox and told me that there was a five-dollar or a ten-dollar
bill under this or that particular rivet. Perhaps there is; _only he
doesn't know anything about it_. But this is a point that I, the
Professor, understand, my friends, or ought to, certainly, better than
you do. The next argument you will all appreciate.
I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting mechanism of
Phrenology, which is _very similar_ to that of the pseudosciences. An
example will show it most conveniently.
A-- is a notorious thief. Messrs. Bumpus and Crane examine him and
find a good-sized organ of Acquisitiveness. Positive fact for
Phrenology. Casts and drawings of A-- are multiplied, and the bump
_does not lose_ in the act of copying--I did not say it gained.
--What do you look for so? (to the boarders).
Presently B-- turns up, a bigger thief than A--. But B-- has no bump
at all over Acquisitiveness. Negative fact; goes against Phrenology.
Not a bit of it. Don't you see how small Conscientiousness is?
_That's_ the reason B-- stole.
And then comes C--, ten times as much a thief as either A-- or B--;
used to steal before he was weaned, and would pick one of his own
pockets and put its contents in another, if he could find no other
way of committing petty larceny. Unfortunately C-- has a _hollow_,
instead of a bump, over Acquisitiveness. Ah! but just look and see
what a bump of Alimentiveness! Did not O-- buy nuts and gingerbread,
when a boy, with the money he stole? Of course you see why he is a
thief, and how his example confirms our noble science.
At last comes along a case which is apparently a _settler_, for
there is a little brain with vast and varied powers--a case like that
of Byron, for instance. Then comes out the grand reserve--reason
which covers everything and renders it simply impossible ever to
corner a phrenologist. "It is not the size alone, but the _quality_ of
an organ, which determines its degree of power."
Oh! oh! I see. The argument may be briefly stated thus by the
phrenologist: "Heads I win, tails you lose." Well, that's convenient.
It must be confessed that Phrenology has a certain resemblance to the
pseudosciences. I did not say it was a pseudoscience.
I have often met persons who have been altogether struck up and
amazed at the accuracy with which some wandering Professor of
Phrenology had read their characters written upon their skulls. Of
course, the Professor acquires his information solely through his
cranial inspections and manipulations. What are you laughing at? (to
the boarders). But let us just _suppose_, for a moment, that a
tolerably cunning fellow, who did not know or care anything about
Phrenology, should open a shop and undertake to read off people's
characters at fifty cents or a dollar apiece. Let us see how well he
could get along without the "organs."
I will suppose myself to set up such a shop. I would invest one
hundred dollars, more or less, in casts of brains, skulls, charts,
and other matters that would make the most show for the money. That
would do to begin with. I would then advertise myself as the
celebrated Professor Brainey, or whatever name I might choose, and
wait for my first customer--a middle-aged man. I look at him, ask him
a question or two, so as to hear him talk. When I have got the hang
of him, I ask him to sit down, and proceed to fumble his skull,
dictating as follows:
SCALE FROM 1 TO 10
LIST OF FACULTIES FOR CUSTOMER--PRIVATE NOTES FOR MY PUPIL:
_Each to be accompanied with a wink._
Amativeness, 7________Most men love the conflicting sex, and all men
love to be told they do.
Alimentiveness, 8_____Don't you see that he has burst off his lowest waistcoat button with feeding--hey?
Acquisitiveness, 8____Of course. A middle-aged Yankee.
Approbativeness, 7+__ Hat well brushed. Hair ditto. Mark the effect of that plus sign.
Self-esteem, 6________His face shows that.
Benevolence, 9________That'll please him.
Conscientiousness, 8 1/2_That fraction looks first rate.
Mirthfulness, 7_______Has laughed twice since he came in. That sounds well.
Ideality, 9
Form, Size, Weight,
Color, Locality,
Eventuality, etc., Average everything that can't be guessed.
etc. (4 to 6)
And so of other faculties
Of course, you know, that isn't the way the phrenologists do. They go
only by the bumps. What do you keep laughing so for (to the
boarders)? I only said that is the way I should practise "Phrenology"
for a living.
_________
-THE END-
Oliver Wendell Holmes' short story: An Aphorism and a Lecture
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