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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].

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ORGAN OF THE LOVE OF LIFE.

in conversing with a variety of individuals about their mental feelings, no fact has more forcibly arrested my attention, than the difference which exists in the love of life. It will be assumed by many, that this is an universal desire, glowing with equal intensity in all ; but the fact is otherwise. All possess the feeling, but its degrees vary much more than is generally understood. Some individuals desire life so intensely, that they view death as the greatest calamity ; they declare, that, rather than part with existence, they would submit to live in endless misery : the bare idea of annihilation is unsupportable to their imaginations ; and they found an argument for immortality on the position, that God cannot be guilty of the injustice of making them conscious of so great a boon as life, and subsequently depriving them of it :-to have lived, according to them, gives an indefeasible title to continue to live for ever.

" Could'st thou persuade me the next life could fail
Our ardent wishes, how should I pour out
My bleeding heart in anguish, new as deep !
Oh ! with what thoughts thy hope, and my despair,
Abhorr'd annihilation, blasts the soul,
And wide extends the bounds of human wo!"

Young's Night -Thoughts, B. vii. v. 645.

¹ See Phren. Journal, vol. x. p. 249, and 545. The paper on page 249 is an able view of the state of knowledge respecting this organ by Mr Robert Cox, and is well worthy of perusal. See also in vol. x, p. 158, a case reported in which a morbid affection of the organ of Alimentiveness, coincident with Inflammation of the Stomach, was relieved by an application of leeches behind the mastoid process, and afterwards to the temporal region. Also, vol. xiii. p. 260. In vol. xv. p. 358, 359, 360, 367, cases are reported in which this organ was excited by mesmerism.

T

290 LOVE OF LIFE.

Sir Walter Scott draws a vivid picture of intense love of life in Morris the exciseman, when on the point of being drowned by order of Helen Macgregor. " He prayed but for life ; for life, he would give all he had in the world : it was but life he asked ; life, if it were to be prolonged under tortures and privations ; he asked only breath, though it should be drawn in the damps of the lowest caverns of their hills." Rob Roy, vol. iii. p. 121 ; edition 1818.

Other individuals, again, experience no such passion for existence ; they regard pain, and parting with the objects of their affections, as the chief evils of death :-so far as the mere pleasure of living is concerned, they are ready to surrender it with scarcely a feeling of regret ; they discover nothing appalling in death, as the mere cessation of being ; and do not feel the prospect of immortality to be essential to their enjoyment of the present life. I have found these different feelings combined with the most opposite dispositions in all other respects : the great lovers of life were not always the healthy, the gay, and the fortunate ; nor were those who were comparatively indifferent to death, always the feeble, the gloomy, and the misanthropic : on the contrary, the feeling existed strongly and weakly in these opposite characters indiscriminately.

Neither does the difference depend on the moral and religious qualities of the individuals ; for equal morality and religion are found in combination with either sentiment. This is a point in human nature not generally adverted to ; nevertheless, I have obtained so many assurances of the existence of these different feelings, from individuals of sound judgment and unquestionable veracity, that it appears to me highly probable that there is a special organ for the Love of Life. We seem to be bound to existence itself by a primitive and independent faculty, just as we are led by others to provide for its continuance and transmission. Byron expresses his surprise at his own instinctive efforts to preserve himself from drowning, when, in his moments of reflection, he wished to die. The late excellent Dr John Aikin could

LOVE OF LIFE. 291

hardly comprehend the feeling of the "Love of Life/' " I have conversed," says he, " with persons who have avowed a sentiment of which I confess I can scarcely form a conception-a strong attachment to existence abstractedly considered, without regarding it as a source of happiness."¹ Dr Thomas Brown treats of this faculty under the name of Desire of our own continued Existence. This desire, he beautifully remarks, " is, as a general feeling of our nature, a most striking proof of the kindness of that Being, who, in giving to man duties which he has to continue for many years to discharge in a world which is preparatory to the nobler world that is afterwards to receive him, has not left him to feel the place in which he is to perform the duties allotted to him as a place of barren and dreary exile. He has given us passions which throw a sort of enchantment on every thing which can reflect them to our heart, which add to the delight that is felt by us in the exercise of our duties ; a delight that arises from the scene itself on which they are exercised -from the society of those who inhabit it with us-from the offices which we have performed, and continue to perform."2

The organ is probably situated in the base of the brain. The only fact tending to illustrate its position is one observed by Dr A. Combe, and recorded in The Phrenological Journal, vol. iii. p. 471. In describing the dissection of the brain of a lady upwards of sixty, who for many years had been remarkable for continual anxiety about her own death, he observes, that " the enormous development of one convolution at the base of the middle lobe of the brain, the function of which is unknown, was too striking not to arrest our attention ; it was that lying towards the mesial line, on the basilar and inner side of the middle lobe, and consequently of Destructiveness. The corresponding part of the skull

¹ Letters to his Son, vol. ii., Letter on the Value of Life, in which the origin of the feeling is discussed at some length.

* Lecture 65, vol. iii. p. 390.

292 LOVE OF LIFE.

shewed a very deep and distinctly-moulded cavity or bed running longitudinally, with high and prominent sides, and presenting altogether an appearance much more striking than in any skull I ever saw. From the situation of this convolution, its development cannot be ascertained during life, and hence its function remains unknown. "Whether it may have any connexion with the Love of Life, is a circumstance which may be determined by future observations ; all that we can say at present is, that the Love of Life seems to be a feeling sui generis, and not proportioned to any faculty or combination of faculties yet known,-that in the subject of this notice it was one of the most permanently active which she possessed,-and that in her the convolution alluded to was of very unusual magnitude ; but how far the coincidence was fortuitous, we leave to time and observation to determine."

Dr Spurzheim was disposed to admit the existence of this faculty, which he calls Vitativeness. " It is highly probable," says he, " that there is a peculiar instinct to live, or Love of Life ; and I look for its organ at the basis of the brain, between the posterior and middle lobes, inwardly of Combativeness.'¹ Dr Vimont¹ admits this feeling to be a primitive instinct, and " considers that he has ascertained the seat of its organ in the lower animals. He names it the organ of self preservation (organe de la conservation). In 1824 and 1825 he observed the actions of twelve rabbits, the offspring of the same mother, and one of them struck him as remarkable above all the others for the habit of flying with astonishing rapidity when he approached towards it. It did not, however, manifest more cunning or more Cautiousness than the others, and when he wished to put it back into its box, he could catch it with the greatest facility. It manifested only a very vivid instinct of fear of danger to itself, or of self preservation. He killed several of the rabbits and examined their brains, and found that, in the one now describ-

1 Traité de Phrenologic, tome ii. p. 160.

LOVE OF LIFE. 293

ed, the convolution marked A A in his Plate No. 87, fig. 1, was nearly double the size of the same part in the brains of the other rabbits which had not manifested this tendency in so high a degree. He then examined the brains of all the animals which he had preserved in spirits of wine, and found that all of them "which have a natural tendency to fly with rapidity at the approach of a person, or from the influence of external circumstances, were precisely those which presented this part of the brain in the highest state of development,'' namely, the ape, the fox, the badger, the cat, the marten, the pole-cat, the marmotte, the hare. It is enormously large in the stag and roebuck. Dr Vimont points out the situation of the organ in birds, and also in man. In the human species the convolution, he says, is situated in the lateral sphenoidal fossa corresponding to the situation before described by Dr Combe.¹

Dr Vimont considers this to be the organ of fear, and that Cautiousness produces only circumspection, and he claims the merit of having first discovered the instinct of self preservation and its organ. He refers to his having mentioned, in a memoir presented by him to the Institute of France in 1827, the fact that circumspection was not the sole faculty which prompted crows to fly on the approach of danger, and that this tendency might be the result of an instinct common to all animals of which the organ was situated at the base of the brain ; that Dr Spurzheim did not discover it, and that the first notice of the existence of the instinct appeared in the 3d edition of the present work published in 1830. I am far from wishing to detract from the great merits of Dr Vimont, but consider it proper, as he has started this question, to remark that Dr A. Combe's report of the dissection of the brain of the lady before mentioned, in whom the organ was very large, bears date the 17th of May 1826, and was published in the Phrenological Journal for June in that year. The situation of the convolution represented

¹ Phrenological Journal, vol. x. p. 490.

294 SECRETIVENESS.

by Dr Vimont, corresponds precisely with that described by Dr Combe. Of course I allow to Dr Vimont the merit of having made the discovery for himself :-I only mean to record what had been done in Scotland, apparently contemporaneously with his investigations, and in ignorance of their existence.

In treating of Cautiousness, I shall consider the question whether the organ now treated of be that of fear, as Dr Vimont supposes, or only that of the love of life, as I continue to believe it to be. Lord Bacon observes that every passion enables man to overcome the fear of death, even timidity itself ; an idea which is inconsistent with the love of life and fear being one identical passion. If they were so, we should cling to life with a degree of intensity proportioned to the danger of our losing it, so that fear should never overcome but always augment the love of existence.

Dr George M'Clellan of Philadelphia mentioned to me that he had seen several cases which led him to infer that, coteris paribus, tenacity of life bears some relation to the development of this organ. Those patients in whom it was large, would continue to live for days after death might have been expected, while others in whom the base of the brain in this region was narrow, would die suddenly, before any adequate cause was suspected to exist.

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Vol. 1: [front matter], Intro, Nervous system, Principles of Phrenology, Anatomy of the brain 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].