"Should the result of our general inquiries, or attention to the subjects proposed to us by Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, induce us to believe that the peculiarities of our feelings and faculties were the effects of variety of excitement, transmitted through a diversity of organization, they would tend to produce mutual forbearance and toleration. We should perceive how nearly impossible it must be that any persons should think and feel exactly alike upon any subject. We should not arrogantly pride ourselves on our own virtue and knowledge, nor condemn the errors and weakness of others, since they may depend upon causes which we can neither produce nor readily counteract. The path of virtue is plain and direct, and its object distinctly before us; so that no one can miss either, who has resolution enough never to lose sight of them, by adverting to advantages and allurements with which he may be presented on the one hand, or the menacings with which he may be assailed on the other. Yet no one, judging from his own feelings and powers, can be aware of the kind and degree of temptation or terror, or the seeming incapacity to resist them, which may have induced others to deviate. Now, though from the foregoing considerations I am pleased with the speculations of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, I am quite incompetent to give any opinion as to the probability of what they have suggested; because I see no mode by which we can with propriety admit or reject their assertions, except by pursuing the same course of investigations which they themselves have followed; a task of great labour and difficulty, and one which, for various reasons, I should feel great repugnance to undertake[56]."
Abernethy used to like very well to talk with Spurzheim, who resided for some time in this country. One day, Abernethy, half-seriously, half-humorously said to Spurzheim: "Well, Doctor, where do you place the organ of common sense?" Spurzheim's reply certainly sustained the coincidence of phrenological deductions with those of experience. "There is no organ," said he, "for common sense, but it depends on the equilibrium of the other organs."
THEOLOGICAL APPLICATION OF ANATOMICAL FACTS.
"Therefore, from this least interesting part of anatomy, we derive the strongest conviction of there being design and contrivance in the construction of animals. Equal evidences of design and contrivance and of adaptation of means to ends may be observed in the construction of the framework, as I may call it, of other animals, as in that of man, which subject seems to me very happily displayed in Professor Cuvier's Lectures[57].