Note 69 — AIDS TO REFLECTION IN THE FORMATION OF A MANLY CHARACTER, ON THE SEVERAL GROUNDS OF PRUDENCE, MORALITY, AND RELIGION. (continued 4)

Hacket's Sermons, p. 449.—Ed.

[70] The very marked positive as well as comparative, magnitude and prominence of the bump, entitled Benevolence (see Spurzheim's Map of the Human Skull) on the head of the late Mr. John Thurtel, has woefully unsettled the faith of many ardent Phrenologists, and strengthened the previous doubts of a still greater number into utter disbelief. On my mind this fact (for a fact it is) produced the directly contrary effect; and inclined me to suspect, for the first time, that there may be some truth in the Spurzheimian Scheme. Whether future Craniologists may not see cause to new-name this and one or two other of these convex gnomons, is quite a different question. At present, and according to the present use of words, any such change would be premature; and we must be content to say, that Mr. Thurtel's Benevolence was insufficiently modified by the unprotrusive and unindicated convolutes of the brain, that secrete honesty and common-sense. The organ of Destructiveness was indirectly potentiated by the absence or imperfect development of the glands of Reason and Conscience in this, "unfortunate Gentleman!"