Phrenological bust by LN FowlerPhrenological bust by LN FowlerThe History of Phrenology on the Web

by John van Wyhe


George Combe's A System of Phrenology, 5th edn, 2 vols. 1853.

Vol. 1: [front matter], Intro, Nervous system, Principles of Phrenology, Anatomy of the brain, Division of the faculties 1.Amativeness 2.Philoprogenitiveness 3.Concentrativeness 4.Adhesiveness 5.Combativeness 6.Destructiveness, Alimentiveness, Love of Life 7.Secretiveness 8.Acquisitiveness 9.Constructiveness 10.Self-Esteem 11.Love of Approbation 12.Cautiousness 13.Benevolence 14.Veneration 15.Firmness 16.Conscientiousness 17.Hope 18.Wonder 19.Ideality 20.Wit or Mirthfulness 21.Imitation.
Vol. 2: [front matter], External senses, 22.Individuality 23.Form 24.Size 25.Weight 26.Colouring 27.Locality 28.Number 29.Order 30.Eventuality 31.Time 32.Tune 33.Language 34.Comparison, General observations on the Perceptive Faculties, 35.Causality, Modes of actions of the faculties, National character & development of brain, On the importance of including development of brain as an element in statistical inquiries, Into the manifestations of the animal, moral, and intellectual faculties of man, Statistics of Insanity, Statistics of Crime, Comparative phrenology, Mesmeric phrenology, Objections to phrenology considered, Materialism, Effects of injuries of the brain, Conclusion, Appendices: No. I, II, III, IV, V, [Index], [Works of Combe].


8. ACQUISITIVENESS.

THE organ of this faculty is situated at the anterior inferior angle of the parietal bone. By Dr Spurzheim it was called Covetiveness ; Sir G. S. Mackenzie suggested the more appropriate name of Acquisitiveness, which Dr Spurzheim subsequently adopted.

The primitive faculty manifested by the organ appears to be the sense of property, of which the desire to acquire is the active form.1

1 Traité de Phrenologie, par Dr Vimont, tome ii, p. 262,

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The metaphysicians have not admitted a propensity to acquire, which is gratified by the mere act of acquisition without any ulterior object, as a faculty of the human mind. Dr Hutcheson says : " Thus as soon as we come to apprehend the use of wealth or power, to gratify any of our original desires, we must also desire them ; and hence arises the universality of these desires of wealth and power, since they are the means of gratifying all other desires?'1 In like manner, we are told by Mr Stewart, that " whatever conduces to the gratification of any natural appetite, or of any natural desire, is itself desired, on account of the end to which it is subservient ; and by being thus habitually associated in our apprehension with agreeable objects, it frequently comes, in process of time, to be regarded as valuable in itself, independently of its utility. It is thus that wealth becomes with many an ultimate object of pursuit ; though, a first, it is undoubtedly valued, merely on account of its subserviency to the attainment of other objects.''1

The same author says in another place, that " avarice is a particular modification of the desire of power, arising from the various functions of money in a commercial country. Its influence as an active principle is much strengthened by habit and association.''2

Dr Thomas Brown3 admits the desire of wealth to be a modification of the desire of power, but he endeavours to shew that Mr Stewart's theory is defective in accounting for avarice, and enters into a most ingenious argument, to explain how that feeling arises from association. He takes time into account as an ingredient ; and adduces the example of a boy purchasing an apple. " Before the boy lays out his penny in the purchase of an apple or orange," says he, " it appears to him valuable chiefly as the mode of obtaining the apple or orange. But the fruit, agreeable as it may have been while it lasted, is soon devoured ; its value, with respect to him, has wholly ceased ; and the penny, he knows, is still in existence, and would have been still his men.

1 Elements, p. 388. 2 Outlines, p. 92. 3Lectures, vol. iii. p. 474.

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if the fruit had not been purchased. He thinks of the penny, therefore, as existing now, and existing without any thing which he can oppose to it as an equivalent ; and the feeling of regret arises,-the wish, that he had not made the purchase, and that the penny, as still existing, and equally capable as before of procuring some new enjoyment, had continued in his pocket." This produces " a slight terror of expense, which the habits of many years may strengthen into parsimony."

Nothing can be more ingenious than this speculation, and it is a beautiful instance of the nature of metaphysical science ; but it is not sound. The question occurs, Why is this " slight terror of expense " experienced only by some boys and some men, since association and the love of enjoyment are universal qualities of human nature 1

It is proper to mention, however, that Lord Kames (who has been censured by the regular metaphysicians for admitting too many faculties), recognises the existence of this feeling as a primitive propensity in man, and calls it the " hoarding appetite. Man," says his Lordship, " is by nature a hoarding animal having an appetite for storing up things of use ; and the sense of property is bestowed on men for securing what they thus store up. 'n He adds, that '' the appetite for property, in its nature a great blessing, degenerates into a great curse, when it transgresses the bounds of moderation." And in another work he observes : " The notion of property arises from an innate sense, which teaches even infants to distinguish between yours and miner'1

The observer of the passion of avarice in real life, is not satisfied with such theories as those of Mr Stewart and Dr Brown. Dr King, in his Anecdotes of his Times, remarks, that an avaricious man " is born wA framed to a sordid love of money, which first appears when he is very young, grows up with him, and increases in middle age, and, when he is old, and all the rest of his passions have subsided, wholly

1 Sketches, B. I. Sketch 2.

2 Loose Hints upon Education, 2d edit. p. 100.

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engrosses him." (P. 101.) He mentions Lord Chancellor Hardwick, the Duke of Marlborough, Sir James Lowther, Sir Thomas Colby, and Sir William Smith, as remarkable instances of it.

The metaphysical notions of Mr Stewart fail entirely to explain the phenomena of avarice, under which passion no enjoyment is sought, except that of accumulating wealth. The character of Trapbois, as drawn in The Fortunes of Nigel, is a personification of the faculty of Acquisitiveness, operating as a blind animal instinct, exalted to the highest degree of energy and activity, and extinguishing every feeling of the mind, except that of fear, which it had cultivated and increased to minister to its protection. This character is recognised as natural ; highly coloured, indeed, but true to life in its leading features. It appears absurd, to ascribe, as the metaphysicians do, so intense a passion to a mere law of association as its source-to an error of the understanding, in mistaking wealth for the objects which it is fitted to obtain. The very essence of the character is a desire for wealth, independent of every purpose of application. Phrenologists have observed that the intensity of the desire to acquire bears a proportion to the size of a certain part of the brain, and they therefore regard it as an original propensity of the mind. It gives that innate sense of property which exists in man, and in many of the inferior animals. The organ was discovered in the following manner.

When Dr Gall was employed in comparing mental manifestations with cerebral development, he was in the habit of collecting in his house individuals of the lower orders, with the view of more easily discovering the different primitive propensities, which he supposed would be found to operate in them with greater simplicity and vigour than in persons of higher rank. On many occasions, the individuals assembled, encouraged by him to familiarity, accused each other of petty larcenies, or of what they styled chiperies, and took great pleasure in pointing out those who excelled in such practices ; and the chipeurs themselves advanced in front of

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their companions, proud of their superior savoir-faire. What particularly attracted his attention was, that some of the men shewed the utmost abhorrence of thieving, and preferred starving to accepting any part of the bread and fruit which their companions had stolen ; while the chipeurs ridiculed such conduct, and thought it silly.

To discover whether this tendency to pilfer was connected with any particular cerebral organ, Dr Gall divided the persons whom he had assembled into three classes : the first included the chipeurs; the second, those who abhorred the very idea of stealing ; and the third, those who seemed to regard it with indifference. On comparing the heads of these three classes, he found that the most inveterate chipeurs had a long prominence extending from the organ of Secretiveness, almost as far as the external angle of the superciliary ridge ; and that this region was flat in all those who shewed a horror of theft,-while in those who were indifferent about it, the part was sometimes more and sometimes less developed, but never so much as in the professed thieves : and on repeating the experiment again and again with a new assemblage, he found the same results uniformly present themselves.1

Having thus ascertained the constancy of the facts, the idea naturally occurred to the mind of Dr Gall, that the propensity to appropriate must be somehow connected with the peculiarity of cerebral configuration which had so strongly attracted his notice. It could not be the effect of education, for most of the subjects of his observations had received none. They were the children of nature left to their own resources. Some who detested stealing happened to be precisely those whose education had been most completely neglected. The wants and circumstances of all of them were

1 The effect of the moral sentiments in directing Acquisitiveness is not sufficiently adverted to by Dr Gall in this description. This organ may be large in an individual, who may nevertheless have an abhorrence of theft, if his organs of Conscientiousness, Benevolence, and Reflection be also large. He will be fond of property, but will desire to obtain it honestly.

316 ACQUISITIVENESS.

nearly the same,-the examples set before them were the same,-and to what causes, therefore, could the difference be ascribed, if not to an original difference of mental constitution ?

At this time Dr Gall was physician to the Deaf and Dumb Institution, where pupils were received from six to fourteen years of age, without any preliminary education. M. May, a distinguished psychologist, then director of the establishment, M. Venus, the teacher, and he, had it thus in their power to make the most accurate observations on the primitive mental conditions of these children. Some of them were remarkable for a decided propensity to steal, while others did not shew the least inclination to it ; some of them were easily reformed, but others were quite incorrigible. The severest punishments were inflicted upon one of them, but without any effect. As he felt himself incapable of resisting temptation, he resolved to become a tailor, because, as he said, he could then indulge his inclination with impunity. On examining the heads of all these boys, the same region was found to be developed uniformly in proportion to the endowment of the propensity. Dr Gall made casts of those of them who were confirmed thieves, in order to compare them with such other heads of thieves or robbers as might afterwards fall in his way.

About this time, also, Dr Gall met with another very decisive proof of the connexion between this propensity and a particular development of brain. In the House of Correction he saw a boy of fifteen years of age, who had been a notorious thief from his earliest infancy. Punishment having had no effect upon him, he was at last condemned to imprisonment for life, as absolutely incorrigible. In a portrait of him in the 26th plate of Dr Gall's Atlas, a remarkable prominence in the lateral region of the head is conspicuous, corresponding to what is now ascertained to be the organ of Acquisitiveness. The forehead is low, narrow, and retreating, and his intellect is stated to have been exceedingly weak and

ACQUISITIVENESS. 317

defective ; and hence the ascendancy and activity of the propensity in question are easily explained.

In the cut of the " old miser" on p. 308, the organ of Acquisitiveness, No. 8, is large.

This propensity, when viewed in its most active form, that of an instinctive appetite for accumulation, presents a mean and vulgar aspect, and we are apt to regard the individual in whom it predominates, as a base and sordid being, cased in selfishness, and dead to every generous sentiment. But when we contemplate it in its results, it rises vastly in dignity and importance. The first demand of nature is to live and to enjoy; the other feelings of the mind, independently of Acquisitiveness, would prompt man to kill and eat, or to weave and wear, for the satisfaction of his present wants. But if he bounded his industry by his necessities, and lolled in idleness when not employed in indispensable pursuits, he would never become rich. Wealth consists of the savings of the products of industry, after supplying immediate demands. According to the metaphysicians, there is no instinctive propensity in man, prompting him, by a natural impulse, to save and to accumulate ; they imagine that the calls of nature for immediate gratification, or the love of power, are the only motives to such exertions. In the faculty of Acquisitiveness, however, the phrenologist perceives an instinct prompting the human being, after his appetites of hunger and thirst are appeased, and his person protected against the inclemency of the seasons, to continue to labour, induced to do so by the mere delight of accumulating ; and to the ceaseless industry which this instinct produces, is to be ascribed the wealth with which civilized man is everywhere surrounded. It prompts the husbandman, the artizan, the manufacturer/the merchant, to diligence in their several vocations ; and, instead of being necessarily the parent only of a sordid appetite, it is, when properly directed, one of the sources of the comforts and elegancies of life. Its regular activity distinguishes civilized man from the savage. The prodigal, who consumes the last shilling which he can command, dies and leaves behind

318 ACQUISITIVENESS.

him no useful trace of his existence. The laborious artizan, on the other hand, who, under the impulse of this faculty, saves half the produce of his labour, leaves it as a contribution to the stock of national capital, to set in motion the industry of unborn generations. These, if animated by the same spirit, will transmit it with new accessions to their posterity ; and thus the stream of public prosperity will be swelled, in an increasing ratio, to the remotest periods of time. When, however, the pursuit of wealth becomes the chief business of life, Acquisitiveness engrosses the intellect, deadens the moral sentiments, and debases the whole faculties of the mind.

The propensity takes its direction from the other faculties with which it is combined. Acquisitiveness and Individuality both large, are necessary to a spirited collector of objects in natural history : When it is combined with large Form, Colouring, and Ideality, it takes the direction of pictures ;- when with large Veneration, it may lead to collecting old coins. In no instance where the wish to acquire and possess is strongly manifested, is this organ deficient ; while, on the other hand, in those in whom there is no appetite for accumulation, who allow their substance to slip through their hands, from incapacity to retain it, I have always seen it small.

Mr Owen lately of New Lanark maintains, that the desire for wealth, or individual property, is not a natural propensity of the human mind ; and, in his own head, this organ (like that of Destructiveness, the feeling attached to which he also denies) is by no means largely developed. So differently do those feel in whom Acquisitiveness is large, that they wish to acquire for the mere sake of acquisition. If a person so endowed be owner of fifty acres, it will give him delight to acquire fifty more ; if of one thousand or one hundred thousand, he will still be gratified in adding to their number. His understanding may be convinced that he already possesses ample store for every enjoyment, and abundant provision against every want ; yet, if this faculty

ACQUISITIVENESS. 319

be active, he will feel his joys impaired if he cease to amass. This explains the insatiable nature of the passion for acquiring, and also one source of the disappointment generally experienced by persons whose lives have been devoted to commerce, when they retire from business with a view to enjoy the fruits of their industry. The gratification of Acquisitiveness in accumulating wealth constituted the chief pleasure of their previous lives ; and when this propensity has ceased to be gratified, and no other faculty has been cultivated with equal ardour, ennui and disgust are the natural and unavoidable results of their new condition.

It has been stated, as an objection to this propensity, that property is an institution of society, and that an organ cannot exist in the brain for a factitious desire. The answer to this argument is, that the love of property springs from the natural suggestions of the faculty in question ; and that the laws of society are the consequences, not the causes, of its existence. Laws are intended to regulate the desires of mankind for possessions ; but this purpose clearly supposes such desires antecedently to exist.

Many persons, in whom Benevolence and Love of Approbation are large, as well as Acquisitiveness, can with difficulty believe that the latter influences their feelings. They are so ready to disburse and to bestow that they never accumulate, and hence persuade themselves that they have no tendency to acquire. But such persons are keen in their dealings ; they cheapen in making purchases, know where bargains are to be obtained, and, on consulting their own minds, they will find that schemes for acquiring property frequently haunt their imaginations. They are also prone to admire the rich. Persons, on the contrary, in whom the organ is small, think of every thing with more interest, and pursue every object with more avidity, than wealth. They may be industrious in order to live, but there is no intense energy in their pursuit of gain ; and their fancies, in building castles in the air, rarely erect palaces of gold, or place happiness in hoards of accumulated riches.

320 ACQUISITIVENESS.

The effects of this faculty are greatly modified by the strength of Self-Esteem. Acquisitiveness desires to acquire : Self-Esteem produces the love of self; the two conjoined give rise to the love of acquisition for self-gratification ; and if both organs be large, the individual will have a strong tendency to sordid selfishness, unless the moral powers be active and energetic. The passion for uniques, also, seems to arise from this combination.

Dr Gall observes, that the Negroes are little prone to steal, and that the organ is moderately developed in them. This observation, however, is too general. There are great differences in negro heads, and in the corresponding dispositions. Dr Gall had an opportunity of observing among the Spanish troops, that both the Arragonese and Castilians have the anterior part of the temporal region a good deal flattened, denoting a small Acquisitiveness ; and he was assured that they are faithful servants, and equally incapable of stealing and of lying. The Kalmucks, again, are the very opposite. They are renowned for thieving and bad faith ; and, in accordance with this, Blumenbach, in describing the Kalmuck skull, observes that it is almost globular, and projects in the region of Acquisitiveness-" globosa fere calvario forma' -" capita ad latera extantia.'1' Dr Gall possessed two Kalmuck skulls, both corresponding with Blumenbach's description. Dr Spurzheim also mentions, " that a young Kalmuck, brought to Vienna by Count Stahrenberg, became melancholy, because his confessor, who instructed him in religion and morality, had forbidden him to steal. He got permission to steal, on condition that he should give back what he had stolen. The young man, profiting by this permission, stole his confessor's watch during high mass, but joyfully returned it after mass was over."

It is difficult to conceive a miser without a great endowment of this propensity, although an individual may be a thief with a moderate portion of it. Avarice arises from Acquisitiveness, raised to the height of a passion. Theft implies a want of regulating and directing influence from

ACQUISITIVENESS. 321

the moral faculties, as much as an excessive and intense desire to acquire property for the sake of possessing it. Strong sensual propensities, which cannot be gratified without money, may lead individuals to resort to theft as a means of supplying their wants, without the love of property itself being strong ; but Conscientiousness must be weak, before such an expedient will be resorted to.

The existence of this organ throws light on the tendency to steal, which some individuals, whose external circumstances place them far above temptation, manifest in a remarkable degree. In them, it seems to be in a state of diseased activity, and not to be controlled by the moral and reflecting faculties. Dr Gall mentions several cases of diseased affections of this organ. M. Kneisler, governor of the prison of Prague, spoke to him and Dr Spurzheim about the wife of a rich merchant, who stole continually from her husband in the most adroit manner, and who was at last shut up in a house of correction, which she had scarcely left, when she stole again, and was again confined. She was condemned to a third and longer imprisonment, and again commenced her operations in the jail itself. With the utmost address, she made a hole in the stove which heated the apartment where the money was deposited, and committed repeated depredations, which were soon noticed. Every means were adopted to detect the offender, and bells were suspended at the doors and windows, but all in vain. At length a spring-gun was set, the wire of which was connected with the strong box. She was so dreadfully frightened by its explosion, that she had not time to escape through the stove. At Copenhagen, Drs Gall and Spurzheim saw an incorrigible thief, who sometimes distributed the produce of his larcenies to the poor ; and, in another place, a robber, who was in confinement for the seventh time, assured them with sorrow, that he felt himself unable to act otherwise. He begged to be detained in prison, and to be provided with the means of supporting himself.

At Munster, a man was condemned to imprisonment for

x

322 ACQUISITIVENESS.

eight years, on account of some robberies : he was no sooner liberated than he committed fresh depredations, and was then imprisoned for life. Sixteen years afterwards he revealed a conspiracy which had been formed among the criminals, and it was proposed to reward him by setting him free. The judge stated, that it would be dangerous to do so, as the man himself had previously assured him that his thievish propensity was so rooted in his constitution that he could not by any possibility resist it. About a year afterwards, he escaped from prison, betook himself to his old practices, and was again arrested ; shortly after which he hanged himself. " During ten years that I have known this man in the prison," said Werneking, from whom Drs Gall and Spurzheim got these details, " he was remarkable for activity, and also for devotion during divine service ; but I learned after his death, that he had constantly been committing theft, even in the prison itself.''

Dr Gall mentions, that among the young men confined in one of the prisons of Berlin (Stadtvogtey), one in particular attracted the attention of Dr Spurzheim and himself. They strongly recommended that he should never be set at liberty, as they thought it impossible he could abstain from stealing. They explained their opinions to the gentlemen who accompanied them, and, on examining the registers, the latter were much surprised to find that the man had from infancy manifested the strongest tendency to thieving. The organs of the higher sentiments were extremely deficient, while that of Acquisitiveness was developed in the highest degree. There was, moreover, an immense endowment of Secretiveness. The man was little and deformed ; his forehead ' ' villanously low,'' retreating backwards immediately above the eyebrows ; but the lateral regions, or temples, were broad and prominent. In such a case no phrenologist would hesitate to give the same advice.

In the prison at Bern, Drs Gall and Spurzheim saw a rickety and badly-organized boy of twelve years of age, who could not refrain from stealing ; and who, with his pockets

ACQUISITIVENESS. 323

filled with his own bread, purloined that of others. At Haina, the officers spoke to them about an incorrigible robber, named Fesselmayer, whom no punishment could amend. He stole in prison to such an extent, that a mark was put upon his arm, that all might be upon their guard against him. Before seeing him, Drs Gall and Spurzheim stated what his development ought to be, and their prediction was verified at the first glance. He had the appearance of being sixteen, although he was in reality twenty-six years of age. His head was round, and about the size of that of an infant of one year. He was, moreover, deaf and dumb.

Mr Schiotz, a Danish magistrate, reports the case of an incorrigible thief, in whom he found the organ of Acquisitiveness very large.1

Numerous examples of the diseased activity of this propensity occur in all lunatic asylums, and afford strong proof of the independent existence of the faculty and organ. Pinel tells us, that it is a matter of common observation, that men who, in their lucid intervals, are justly considered as models of probity, cannot refrain from stealing and cheating during the paroxysm ; and Dr Gall gives four cases of women, who, in their ordinary state, had no such tendency, but when pregnant manifested it in a high degree.

Two citizens of Vienna attracted his notice, both of whom had led irreproachable lives previously to becoming insane. After that time both were distinguished for an extraordinary inclination to steal. They wandered over the hospital from morning to night, picking up whatever they could lay their hands upon-straw, rags, clothes, wood, &c.,-which they carefully concealed in the apartment which they inhabited in common ; and, although lodged in the same chamber, they stole from each other. In both the organ was very much developed. I have seen several patients in asylums for the insane, in whom the propensity to steal was a predominant trait, and the organ was largely developed in them all.

1 Phren. Journ. viii. 64,

324 ACQUISITIVENESS.

M. Esquirol, physician to the Saltpétrière of Paris, gave Dr Gall an account of a Knight of Malta, who had quitted the army at the beginning of the French revolution, and who, from excessive indulgence and disappointed love, had become weak in intellect, violent in temper, and at last a thief. On his way to M. Esquirol's asylum, he contrived to steal spoons, covers, &c., from the inns at which he dined. He then went about accompanied by a servant, and not unfrequently refreshed himself in coffee-houses, and, instead of paying, put the cup, saucer, and spoon into his pocket, and walked away. In other respects he was sufficiently reasonable. This inclination to theft was cured, although his intellect remained weak.

Acrel mentions a young man who was trepanned, in consequence of a severe wound on the temple, in the region of the organ of Acquisitiveness. After his dismissal from the hospital, he manifested an irresistible propensity to steal : after committing several larcenies, he was imprisoned, and would have been condemned, had not Acrel declared him insane.

" There are persons," says that accurate and philosophical observer and physician Dr Rush of Philadelphia,1 " who are moral to the highest degree as to certain duties, but who, nevertheless, live under the influence of some one vice. In one instance a woman was exemplary in her obedience to every command of the moral law except one-she could not refrain from stealing. What made this vice more remarkable was, that she was in easy circumstances, and not addicted to extravagance in any thing. Such was the propensity to this vice, that, when she could lay her hands upon nothing more valuable, she would often, at the table of a friend, fill her pockets secretly with bread. She both confessed and lamented her crime." A case of the same kind is recorded in The Phrenological Journal ;2 and Montaigne refers to similar instances which had fallen under his own observa-

1 Rush's Medical Inquiries. ' Vol. ix. p. 450.

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tion.1 In 1839 when I was in the United States of North America, my portmanteau was robbed of five hundred dollars by the wife of a rich merchant. She had committed many other thefts. After her detection, her husband restored the stolen property. She was not prosecuted, the persons robbed having been satisfied that she laboured under a diseased propensity to steal.

The Journal de Paris of 29th March 1816, states, that " An ex-commissary of Police, Beau-Conseil, has just been condemned to eight years' confinement and hard labour, and to the pillory, for having, when still in office, stolen some pieces of plate from an inn. The accused persisted to the last in an odd enough species of defence. He did not deny the crime, but he attributed it to mental alienation, occasioned by wounds which he had received at Marseilles in 1815.'' Dr Gall observes, that if the previous conduct of Beau-Conseil was irreproachable, and if he really did receive a wound in the head, either his counsel was inexcusable in not making the defence available, or the court was blameable for not listening to it.

This propensity is found also in the lower animals. Lord Kames observes, that " the beavers perceive the timber they store up to be their property ; and the bees seem to have the same perception with regard to their winter provision of honey." Dr Gall mentions a variety of the lower animals which manifest the sense of property. The same pair of storks, swallows, nightingales, and redbreasts, return in spring or in autumn, to the same country in which they had passed the season in the preceding year, and establish themselves, the storks on the same chimneys or steeples, the swallows under the same roofs, and the nightingales in the same bushes. If another pair of birds attempt to seize the place already appropriated, war is immediately waged against them, and the intruders are forced to depart. Cows returning from the pasturage, occupy each its own stall in the byre, and de-

1 Essays, B. ii. ch. 8.

326 CONSTRUCTIVENESS.

fend it.1 The cat and dog, in hiding food, to be used when hunger returns,-and the squirrel, hamster, and jackdaw, which collect provisions for the winter,-undoubtedly have the notion of property in the stores they accumulate. These animals, however, do not enact laws ; and the sense of property is in them clearly an instinct of nature. In the human race, says Dr Gall, the process is the same : Nature inspires the mind with the notion of property, and laws are made to protect it. Dr Vimont (tome ii. p. 268) says, that he has found this organ large in quadrupeds and animals which steal or lay up provisions ; and he gives drawings of the skulls of a fox, an ouran-outang, and of several cats whose habits he had observed. The organ was moderately developed in one cat not addicted to stealing, and very large in another that was an incorrigible thief. The organs of Secretiveness, Alimentiveness, and Acquisitiveness, were all ver y largely developed in the head of a dog, of which Dr Broussais said, that " it was such a thief as perhaps never before existed." In all birds, continues Dr Vimont, which have a tendency to steal or lay up provisions, such as the magpie, the jay, the crow, the organ of Acquisitiveness is situated immediately above the organ of Secretiveness. The two together, enlarge the lateral region of the skull. The skulls of the crow and magpie contrast singularly in this respect, with those of the cock and the turkey.

See farther notices of this faculty in the Phrenological Journal, xii. 212 ; xiv. 44, 361 ; xv. 97, 213, 366. The organ is regarded as established.


Vol. 1: [front matter], Intro, Nervous system, Principles of Phrenology, Anatomy of the brain, Division of the faculties 1.Amativeness 2.Philoprogenitiveness 3.Concentrativeness 4.Adhesiveness 5.Combativeness 6.Destructiveness, Alimentiveness, Love of Life 7.Secretiveness 8.Acquisitiveness 9.Constructiveness 10.Self-Esteem 11.Love of Approbation 12.Cautiousness 13.Benevolence 14.Veneration 15.Firmness 16.Conscientiousness 17.Hope 18.Wonder 19.Ideality 20.Wit or Mirthfulness 21.Imitation.
Vol. 2: [front matter], external senses, 22.Individuality 23.Form 24.Size 25.Weight 26.Colouring 27.Locality 28.Number 29.Order 30.Eventuality 31.Time 32.Tune 33.Language 34.Comparison, General observations on the Perceptive Faculties, 35.Causality, Modes of actions of the faculties, National character & development of brain, On the importance of including development of brain as an element in statistical inquiries, Into the manifestations of the animal, moral, and intellectual faculties of man, Statistics of Insanity, Statistics of Crime, Comparative phrenology, Mesmeric phrenology, Objections to phrenology considered, Materialism, Effects of injuries of the brain, Conclusion, Appendices: No. I, II, III, IV, V, [Index], [Works of Combe].

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