BUCHANAN’S
JOURNAL OF MAN,
Published from 1849 to 1856 at Cincinnati, is to be re-established at Boston in
February, 1887. When published formerly it was in its character and merits entirely
unique, and, notwithstanding the progress of thirty-five years, its position
is still unique, and in its essential characteristics different from all nineteenth
century literature, and not in competition with any other publication. It was
needed in 1849, and it is still more needed now. It represents an entirely new
school of thought, based upon the establishment of the new science of Anthropology,
which is a revelation of the anatomical, physiological, and psychic union
of soul, brain, and body, and a complete portrait of man and the laws of his life,
from which arise many forms of psychological, ethical, physiological, pathological,
and therapeutic science, all of which are eminently practical and philanthropic
in their results.
One of these applications has been given in the volume entitled, “The New
Education,” of which Edward Howland says, “Its results cannot fail of being
of even more influence upon the culture and the virtue of society than the introduction
of steam into industrial methods has had in the distribution of the
products of skilled labor.”*
*Rev. B. F. BARRETT, one of the most eminent writers of his church, says:
“We are perfectly charmed with your book. I regard it by far as the most valuable work on
education ever published. You have herein formulated the very wisdom of heaven on the highest
and most momentous of all themes. Your work is destined, in my judgment, to inaugurate a new
era in popular education. It contains more and higher wisdom on the subject of which it treats
than all the other books ever written on education.”
To watch and to assist the progress of humanity has been the pleasure of the
editor for half a century, and it will be the task of the “Journal of Man,” as
far as practicable, to present a periscope of progress in all that interests the
philanthropist. Almost innumerable questions are arising concerning human
rights, opinions, and interests, such as, the new education, the new theology,
theosophy, occultism, spiritualism, materialism, agnosticism, evolution,
paleontology, ethnology, ancient religions, systems of ethics, sociology, political
economy, labor and wages, co-operation, socialism, woman’s progress and
rights, intemperance and social evils of every grade, modern literature, the
philosophy of art and oratory, revolutions in medicine, sanitary and hygienic
science, democracy, public men and women, prison reform, the land question,
and questions of war or peace, and national policy; upon all of which the
“Journal of Man” must necessarily occupy an independent position, and
present peculiar views, in the light of the new sciences of which it is the
exponent,—views not derived from the past, not in harmony with the orthodox
literature of the day, nor tinged by any credulous fanaticism, but resulting
from a half century of earnest and scientific search for truth.
Another important function for a philanthropic and progressive journal is
to assist in the diffusion of liberal literature, and to keep an eye upon the prolific
press of to-day, for the benefit of its readers, calling their attention to the
meritorious works, which are often neglected, and warning against pretentious
folly and sciolism. But it is not supposed that the programme of the Journal can
be fully carried out until the completion of certain works now in hand will
permit its enlargement.
The existence and diffusion of such a science as psychometry—“the dawn
of a new civilization,” as it is considered by its adepts and its friends,—is alone
an imperative demand for a journal to assist the diffusion and illustration of a
science, which no honorable and logical thinker, after accepting its well-established
facts, can regard as anything less than the beginning of an intellectual
revolution, the magnitude of which is astounding to a conservative mind; for
the revolutionary science of the last forty years has been concealed from the
conservative majority, by its exclusion from the press and from the college. But
the “Journal of Man” has a still wider field, a task in which it may well claim the
co-operation of all truly enlightened and philanthropic minds.
It was the singular good fortune of the editor, over forty-five years ago, to
crown his long investigations of the constitution of man by the discovery and
demonstration that all the powers of the soul were exercised by the brain in a
multiform subdivision of its structure, every convolution and every group of
fibres and cells having a function appreciably distinct from the functions of all
neighboring parts, the vast multiformity and intricacy of its structure corresponding
to the vast multiformity and intricacy of our psychic nature, which
has never yet been thoroughly portrayed by either philosopher or poet.
The functions thus discovered are at once both psychic and physiological,
for the brain is purely a psychic organ, when its influence is not transmitted to
the body; but becomes a physiological organ, and in fact the controlling head
and centre of physiological action, when its influence is transmitted, not merely
in voluntary motion, but in the unconscious influence which sustains, modifies,
or depresses every vital process.
These discoveries were not entirely new, for it was the fundamental doctrine
of Gall, the founder of the true cerebral anatomy, that the brain consisted
of different organs of psychic functions; but in announcing the discovery (published
from 1809 to 1819) of twenty-seven distinct organs, he fell far short of the
ultimate truth, as a necessary consequence of his imperfect and difficult method
of discovery by comparative development. The word phrenology has become
so identified with his incomplete discoveries, that it may be laid aside in the
present stage of our progress. There is no monotonous repetition of function
in nervous structures, and the possibility of subdivision of structure and
function is limited only by our own intellectual capacities.
Moreover, Dr. Gall did not ascertain the functions of the basilar and internal
regions of the brain, which were beyond the reach of his methods, and
entirely overlooked the fact that the brain is the commanding centre of physiology,
the seat of the external and internal senses, and of organs that control the
circulation, the viscera, the secretions, and all their physiological and pathological
phenomena, as demonstrated in my experiments, which reveal the entire
physiological and the entire psychological life, with the anatomical apparatus
of their intimate union.
The experiments on intelligent persons, by which these discoveries were
made and demonstrated, have been repeated many thousand times. They have
been officially presented during many years in medical colleges, and sanctioned
by scientific faculties as well as by committees of investigation, none of which
have ever made an unfavorable report. They have been tested and demonstrated
so often that further repetition appeared needless, since the unquestioned
demonstrations produced no result beyond a passive assent; for men’s minds
are generally so firmly held in the bondage of habit, fashion, and inherited
opinion, as to be incapable of entering freely upon a new realm of intellectual
life without pecuniary motive; and investigating committees accomplished little
or nothing important, the reason having been, as assigned by a distinguished and
learned secretary of a medical committee in Boston, that the subject was too
profound, too difficult, and too far beyond the knowledge of the medical profession.
In the presence of such unmanly apathy my demonstrations were
discontinued, as I found that only a few high-toned and fearless seekers of
scientific truth, such as the venerable Prof. Caldwell, President Wylie, Rev.
John Pierpont, Robert Dale Owen, Prof. Gatchell, Dr. Forry, and a score or two
of similarly independent men and women, have spoken to the public with proper
emphasis of the immortality of the discovery and the greatness of the total
revolution that it makes in science and philosophy,—a revolution so vast as to
require many pages to give its mere outline, and several volumes to give its
concise presentation. The subjects of these volumes would necessarily be
Cerebral Psychology, Cerebral Physiology, Psychological Ethics or Religion,
Pneumatology, Psychic Pathology, Sarcognomy, Psychometry, Education, and
Pathognomy. A very concise epitome of the whole subject in 400 pages was
published in 1854, as a “System of Anthropology.” “The New Education” was
published in 1882. “Therapeutic Sarcognomy”—the application of sarcognomy
to medical practice—was published in 1884, and the “Manual of Psychometry”
in 1885.
The discoveries constituting the new anthropology stand unimpeached
to-day, sustained by every complete investigation, and not refuted or contradicted
by the innumerable experiments of medical scientists. The labors of Ferrier,
Fritsch, Hitzig and Charcot, become a part of the new system, as they lend
corroboration; and the annals of pathology furnish numerous corroborative
facts. These are not barren, abstract sciences, but bear upon all departments
of human life—upon education, medical practice, hygiene, the study of
character, the selection of public officers, of partners, friends, and conjugal
companions,—upon religion and morals, the administration of justice and government,
penal and reformatory law, the exploration of antiquity, the
philosophy of art and eloquence, and the cultivation of all sciences except the
mathematical. Anthropology must, therefore, become the guide and guardian of
humanity, and, as such, will be illustrated by the “Journal of Man.” It will
indulge in no rash ultraism or antagonism, but will kindly appreciate truth
even when mingled with error. There is, to-day, a vast amount of established
science to be respected and preserved, as well as a vast amount of rubbish in
metaphysical, theological, sociological, and educational opinions, that requires
to be buried in the grave of the obsolete. The greatness of our themes forbids
their illustration in a prospectus, which can but promise an unfailing supply of
the novel and wonderful, the philanthropic and important, the interesting and
useful, presented in that spirit of love and hope which sees that earth may be
changed into the likeness of heaven, and that such progress is a part of our
world’s remote but inevitable destiny.
Let it be remembered that science, philosophy, and religion are false and
worthless when they do not contribute to the happiness and elevation of mankind,
and that the chief factor in human elevation is that wise adaptation of
measures to human nature which is utterly impossible without a thorough
understanding of man,—in other words, without the science of anthropology,
for the lack of which all national and individual life has been filled with a
succession of blunders and calamities. It is especially in the most brilliant
portion of anthropology, the science of psychometry, that we shall find access
to the reconstructive wisdom which leads to a nobler life in accordance with
the laws of heaven, as well as the prosperity and success which come from the
fulness of practical science and the perfection of social order. For the truth of
these unusual claims the reader is referred to “The Manual of Psychometry,”
“The New Education,” “Intelligent Public Opinion” and future publications.
The “Journal of Man” will be published at $1.00 per annum, in advance, in
monthly numbers of thirty-two pages, beginning in February, 1887. Subscriptions
should be sent, not in money, but by postal order, to the editor, Dr. J. R.
Buchanan, 6 James Street, Boston. Advertisements inserted at the usual rates.
Agents wanted.
Those who wish to receive the “Journal of Man” should enter their names
below as subscribers, and forward to the editor, without delay.
Subscribers’ names. No. copies. Post Office Address.
INTELLIGENT PUBLIC OPINION. “The consensus of the competent.”
Buchanan’s “Journal of Man.” “Perhaps no journal published in the world is so far in
advance of the age.”—Plain Dealer, Cleveland.
“His method is strictly scientific; he proceeds on the sure ground of observation and experiment;
he admits no phenomena as reality which he has not thoroughly tested, and is evidently
more desirous to arrive at a correct understanding of nature than to establish a system….
We rejoice that they are in the hands of one who is so well qualified as the editor of the Journal
to do them justice, both by his indomitable spirit of research, his cautious analysis of facts, and
his power of exact and vigorous expression.”—New York Tribune.
“This sterling publication is always welcome to our table. Many of its articles evince marked
ability and striking originality.”—National Era, Washington City.
“It is truly refreshing to take up this monthly…. When we drop anchor and sit down to
commune with philosophy as taught by Buchanan, the fogs and mists of the day clear up.”—Capital
City Fact.
“This work is a pioneer in the progress of science.”—Louisville Democrat.
“After a thorough perusal of its pages, we unhesitatingly pronounce it one of the ablest
publications in America.”—Brandon Post.
“To hear these subjects discussed by ordinary men, and then to read Buchanan, there is as
much difference as in listening to a novice performing on a piano, and then to a Chevalier Gluck
or a Thalberg.”—Democrat Transcript.
Buchanan’s “System of Anthropology.” “We have no hesitation in asserting the great
superiority of the form in which it is presented by Dr. Buchanan, whether we regard its practical
accuracy or its philosophical excellence.”—American Magazine of Homœopathy.
“The author has long been known as a distinguished Professor of Physiology, whose name
is identified with one of the most remarkable discoveries of the age, the impressibility of the
brain…. We are confident Buchanan’s ‘Anthropology’ will soon supersede the fragmentary
systems of Gall and Spurzheim, the metaphysicians and phrenologists.”—Daily Times, Cincinnati.
“Beyond all doubt it is a most extraordinary work, exhibiting the working of a mind of no
common stamp. Close students and hard thinkers will find in it a rich treat, a deep and rich
mine of thought.”—Gospel Herald, Cincinnati.
“They have had sufficient evidence to satisfy them that Dr. Buchanan’s views have a rational,
experimental foundation, and that the subject opens a field of investigation second to no other in
immediate interest, and in the promise of important future results to science and humanity.”—Report
of New York Committee (Wm. Cullen Bryant, Chairman).
“If he has made a single discovery in physiology, he has made more than any previous explorer
of that science, in furnishing us this key to the whole of its principles, by his cerebral and corporeal
experiments.”—Report of the Faculty of Indiana University.
“No person of common discernment who has read Dr. Buchanan’s writings or conversed with
him in relation to the topics which they treat, can have failed to recognize in him one of the very
foremost thinkers of the day. He is certainly one of the most charming and instructive men to
whom anybody with a thirst for high speculation ever listened.”—Louisville Journal (edited by
Prentice and Shipman).
“To Dr. Buchanan is due the distinguished honor of being the first individual to excite the
organs of the brain by agencies applied externally directly over them, before which the discoveries
of Gall, Spurzheim, or Sir Charles Bell—men who have been justly regarded as benefactors of
their race—dwindle into comparative insignificance. This important discovery has given us a key
to man’s nature, moral, intellectual, and physical.”—Democratic Review, New York.
“Therapeutic Sarcognomy.” “In this work we have the rich results of half a century of
original thought, investigation, and discovery. Upon the psychic functions of the brain, Professor
Buchanan is the highest living authority, being the only investigator of nature who has
done anything important for that neglected realm of science, to which the world was introduced
by the genius of Gall and Spurzheim. This work is really a complete exposition of the great mystery,
the united operation and structural plan of soul, brain, and body.”—Medical Advocate, New
York.
“Of the very highest importance in the healing art, is a work just issued by the venerable
Professor Buchanan. We have read the book from cover to cover with unabated attention;
and it is replete with ideas, suggestions, and practical hints, and conclusions of eminent value to
every practitioner who is himself enough of a natural physician to appreciate and apply them….
Having been cognizant of the very valuable and original work accomplished by Professor
Buchanan in physiology, and having seen him demonstrate many times, on persons of all grades
of intellectual and physical health, the truths he here affirms, the subject has lost the sense of
novelty to us, and is accepted as undoubtedly proven.”—American Homœopathist, New York.
“Manual of Psychometry: The Dawn of a New Civilization.” (2d edition.) “The like of
this work is not to be found in the whole literature of the past…. His name stands honorably
among those who have extended the real boundaries of knowledge.”—Home Journal, New York.
“As an experimental science it is likely to make its way to universal recognition. But the
recognition of psychometry involves a tremendous change in the opinions of the world, the teachings
of colleges, and the prevalent doctrines of science and philosophy.”—Health Monthly, New
York.
“The friends of Professor Buchanan have been waiting now thirty years for him to make a
proper public presentation of his greatest discovery,—psychometry, a discovery which the future
historian must place among the noblest and greatest of this great epoch of human thought….
Every branch of the Theosophical Society should have a copy, and study the book carefully.”—Theosophist,
Madras, India.
The above works may be obtained from the author, 6 James Street, Boston. The price should
be remitted by postal order—for the “Manual of Psychometry,” $2.16; for the “New Education,”
$1.50; for “Therapeutic Sarcognomy,” (2d edition to be published, 1887,) “Journal
of Man,” $1 per annum. “Anthropology” was exhausted thirty years ago. Its place will be
occupied by “Cerebral Psychology,” not before the winter of 1887-88.
CONTENTS OF JOURNAL OF MAN.
Vol. I. February 1887 to February, 1888.
- FEBRUARY.
- Introduction to the Journal of Man—see cover of each number.
- Salutatory
- The Phrenological Doctrines of Gall their past and present status
- The Great Land Question
- The Sinaloa Colony
- Health and Longevity
- Remarkable Fasting
- Cerebral Psychology
- Music
- Insanity
- Miscellany—Our narrow limits and future tasks; Palmistry; Suicide; Theosophist Reviews; Apparitions of the Dead; Human Responsibility in Hypnotism; Human Tails; Men who live in trees; Protyle the Basis of Matter; The Keeley Motor; Mahphoon and the Great Winkelmeier
- Business Department and College of Therapeutics
- MARCH.
- Archtypal Literature for the future.
- Chapter 1. General Plan of Brain, Synopsis of Cerebral Science
- Superficial Criticisms, a reply to Miss Phelps
- Spiritual Phenomenon, Abram James, Eglinton, Spirit writing
- Mind reading Amusement and Temperance
- Miscellaneous Intelligence—Pigmies in Africa; A Human Phenomenon; Surviving Superstition; Spiritual test of Death; A Jewish Theological Seminary; National Death Rates; Religious Mediævalism in America;Buddhism in America; Craniology and Crime; Morphiomania in France; Montana Bachelors; Relief for Children; The Land and the People; Christianity in Japan; The Hell Fire Business; Sam Jones and Boston Theology; Psychometry; The American Psychical Society; Progress of Spiritualism; The Folly of Competition; Insanities of War; The Sinaloa Colony; Medical Despotism; Mind in Nature
- Physiological Discoveries in the College of Therapeutics
- Business Department, College of Therapeutics
- APRIL.
- Psychometry: The Divine Science.
- A Modern Miracle-Worker
- Human Longevity
- Justice to the Indians
- Miscellaneous Intelligence—Anatomy of the Brain; Mesmeric Cures; Medical Despotism; The Dangerous Classes; Arbitration; Criticism on the Church; Earthquakes and Predictions
- Chapter II. Of Outlines of Anthropology; Structure of the Brain
- Business Department, College of Therapeutics
- MAY.
- The Prophetic Faculty: War and Peace
- Clearing away the Fog
- The Danger of living among Christians: A Question of peace or war
- Legislative Quackery, Ignorance, and Blindness to the Future
- Evils that need Attention
- What is Intellectual Greatness
- Spiritual Wonders—Slater’s Tests; Spirit Pictures; Telegraphy; Music; Slate Writing; Fire Test
- Miscellaneous Intelligence—Erratum;
Co-operation;
Emancipation;
Inventors;
Important Discovery;
Saccharine;
Sugar;
Artificial Ivory;
Paper Pianos;
Social Degeneracy;
Prevention of Cruelty;
Value of Birds;
House Plants;
Largest Tunnel;
Westward Empire - Structure of the Brain
- Chapter III. Genesis of the Brain
- To the Readers of the Journal—College of Therapeutics
- Journal of Man—Language of Press and Readers
- JUNE.
- The Most Marvellous Triumph of Educational Science
- The Grand Symposium of the Wise Men
- The Burning Question in Education
- Miscellaneous Intelligence—Bigotry and Liberality;
Religious News;
Abolishing Slavery;
Old Fogy Biography;
Legal Responsibility in Hypnotism;
Pasteur’s Cure for Hydrophobia;
Lulu Hurst;
Land Monopoly;
Marriage in Mexico;
The Grand Symposium;
A New Mussulman Empire;
Psychometric Imposture;
Our Tobacco Bill;
Extinct Animals;
Education - Genesis of the Brain (concluded)
- Business Department
- JULY.
- Magnetic Education and Therapeutics
- The So-Called Scientific Immortality
- Review of the New Education
- Victoria’s Half Century
- Outlook of Diogenes
- A Bill to Destroy the Indians
- Miscellaneous Intelligence—The Seybert Commission;
The Evils that need Attention;
Condensed Items—Mesmerism in
Paris—Medical
Freedom—Victoria’s
Jubilee—Delightful Homes - Outlines of Anthropology Continued—Cranioscopy—Illustrated
- Business Department
- AUGUST.
- Creation’s Mysteries
- A True Poet—The Poetry of Peace and the Practice of War
- The Volapük Language
- Progress of the Marvellous
- Glances Round the World
- Miscellaneous Intelligence—Photography Perfected;
The Cannon King;
Land Monopoly;
The Grand Canals;
The Survival of Barbarism;
Concord Philosophy;
The Andover War;
The Catholic Rebellion;
Stupidity of Colleges;
Cremation;
Col. Henry S. Olcott;
Jesse Shepard;
Prohibition;
Longevity;
Increase of insanity;
Extraordinary Fasting;
Spiritual Papers - Cranioscopy (Continued)
- Practical Utility of Anthropology in its Psychic Department
- SEPTEMBER.
- Concord Symposium
- Rectification of Cerebral Science
- Human Longevity
- Miscellaneous Intelligence—An important Discovery;
Jennie Collins;
Greek Philosophy;
Symposiums;
Literature of the Past;
The Concord School;
New Books;
Solar Biology;
Dr. Franz Hartmann;
Progress of Chemistry;
Astronomy;
Geology Illustrated;
A Mathematical Prodigy;
Astrology in England;
Primogeniture Abolished;
Medical Intolerance and Cunning;
Negro Turning White;
The Cure of Hydrophobia;
John Swinton’s Paper;
Women’s Rights and Progress;
Co-Education;
Spirit writing;
Progress of the Marvellous - Chapter VII.—Practical Utility of Anthropology (Concluded)
- Chapter VIII.—The Origin and Foundation of the New Anthropology
- OCTOBER.
- The Oriental View of Anthropology
- Miscellaneous Intelligence—Religion and Science;
Good Psychology;
The Far-away Battle;
How not to do it;
Robbery of Public Lands;
Land Reform in England;
Life in Europe;
Education in France;
Canada and the Union;
Woman in the Moon;
Emancipation from Petticoats;
Women’s Rights on the Streets;
A Woman’s Triumph in Paris;
A Woman’s Bible;
Work for Women;
Mrs. Stanton on the Jubilee;
Electricity;
Progress of the Telegraph;
The Mystery of the Ages;
Progress of the Marvellous;
A Grand Aerolite;
The Boy Pianist;
Centenarians;
Educated Monkeys;
Causes of Idiocy;
A Powerful Temperance Argument;
Slow Progress;
Community Doctors;
The Selfish System of Society;
Educated Beetles;
Rustless Iron;
Weighing the Earth;
Head and Heart;
The Rectification of Cerebral Science - Chapter IX.—Rectification of Cerebral Science, Correcting the Organology of Gall and Spurzheim
- NOVEMBER.
- The Slow Triumph of Truth
- Old Industrial Education
- An Incomparable “Medical Outlaw”
- Educational.—Educational Reform in England; Dead Languages Vanishing; Higher Education of Women; Bad Sunday-School Books; Our Barbarous Orthography
- Critical.—European Barbarism; Boston Civilization; Monopoly; Woman’s Drudgery; Christian Civilization; Walt Whitman; Temperance
- Scientific.—Extension of Astronomy; A New Basis for Chemistry; Chloroform in Hydrophobia; The Water Question; Progress of Homœopathy; Round the World Quickly
- Glances Round the World (concluded from August)
- Rectification of Cerebral Science (illustrated)
- DECEMBER.
- The World’s Neglected or Forgotten Leaders and Pioneers
- Social Conditions—Expenses at Harvard; European Wages; India as a Wheat Producer; Increase of Insanity; Temperance; Flamboyant Animalism
- Transcendental Hash
- Just Criticism
- Progress of discovery and Improvement—Autotelegraphy; Edison’s Phonograph; Type-setting Eclipsed; Printing in Colors; Steam Wagon; Fruit Preserving; Napoleon’s Manuscript; Peace; Capital Punishment; Antarctic Explorations; The Desert shall Blossom as the Rose
- Life and Death—Marvellous Examples
- Outlines of Anthropology (continued) Chapter X.—The Law of Location in Organology
- JANUARY.
- The Pursuit of Truth
- Occultism Defined
- Psychic Phenomena
- The Ancient Iberians
- The Star Dust of the Universe
- Miscellaneous—Bright Literature;
The Two Worlds;
Foote’s Health Monthly;
Psychic Theories;
Twentieth Century Science, Dawning at the end of the Nineteenth;
Comparative Speed of Light and Electricity;
Wonderful Photography;
Wooden Cloth;
The Phylloxera;
Falling Rents;
Boston Civilization;
Psychic Blundering;
Beecher’s Mediumship;
A Scientific Cataract;
Obstreperous and Pragmatic Vulgarity;
Hygiene;
Quinine;
Life and Death;
Dorothea L. Dix;
The Drift of Catholicism;
Juggernaut - The Principal Methods of Studying the Brain
- Responses of Readers—Medical Orthodoxy
Salutatory.
Kind reader! Let me presume that you are in search of truth,
and that you have an intuition sufficient to tell you that this
unending search is the inspiring energy of the Journal of Man
Let us realize the vastness of truth, the vastness of those realms of
knowledge heretofore unexplored by man, in which the Journal is
to perform its work, and in realizing that, it will be very obvious that
no single number of the Journal can be an adequate specimen to
give a just conception of what it is to be, how many hundred themes
it will have to consider, how many errors to analyze, how many new
suggestions to introduce, how many criticisms of the old, how many
expositions of the new. The present number of the Journal is
little more than a promissory note for its future.
Even as a commentary on periodical literature, there will be a
countless number of the superficial theories of ignorance and haste
for it to examine, while there will be the more pleasing task of
noting the introduction of sound philosophy, the progress of careful
investigation, the uprising of common sense against hereditary falsehood,
and the gradual enlightenment of the clerical, medical, and
educational professions by the slow progress of new ideas, and the
unembarrassed progress of the physical sciences and inventions which
encounter no collegiate hindrance, excepting this, that the average
liberal education, as it is called, gives so little knowledge of physical
science, that the educated classes often fail to distinguish between
the real inventor and the deluded, or delusive, impostor.
The inventor is the emancipator of mankind from the oppressive
burden of toil, and hence the philanthropist should ever look with
interest to the progress of invention, should ever be ready to cooperate
with inventive genius. The Journal should be the
inventor’s friend, and it hopes to see the time when the national
institution that I have proposed shall be established, to bring blind,
but all powerful, capital into co-operation with the wise, but often
powerless, inventor.
Invention is the physical, as philosophy is the intellectual power,
to complete the emancipation of mankind from slavery and suffering.
“No,” would the theologian say, “your false philosophy ends in
nothing. The world has been full of philosophies from Democritus
to Hegel, and they have never lifted a single straw’s weight from
the burden that oppresses all humanity. The real burden is sin, and
religion alone can remove that, and bring in the kingdom of heaven
on earth.”
Most true, Oh theologian, it is, that the false philosophies, from
Democritus to Hegel, have done nothing for mankind but to becloud,
bewilder, and enfeeble their intelligence, for the philosophies were
born of empty vanity, which essayed to conquer the universe by
cogitation without science, and not from any loving impulse to
make life wiser and better. But your theologies have been almost
as false as the philosophies. You have inverted the simple and
pure religion of Jesus. You have taught the world that its governing
power was not an infinite love, but an infinite hate, and that the
chief purpose of creation was to furnish an unlimited amount of
human agony, in eternal progress, to gratify the infinite tyrant, and,
at the same time, please a few humble vassals whom terror alone had
driven into his service. You have taught mankind, all too successfully,
to imitate this superhuman monster, by the banishment, imprisonment,
murder, or torture, of all who did not accept your
insane and heartless teachings; and the bloody drama, which has
been in full progress for at least fifteen centuries without one interval
of pity or remorse, is coming to its end now, Oh theologians, simply
because your power has waned, and mankind have partially outgrown
their superstitious ignorance. Tennyson in his last poem has
expressed the truth:
“‘Love your enemy, bless your haters,’ said the Greatest of the great,
Christian love among the churches looked the twin of heathen hate.
From the golden alms of blessing, man had coined himself a curse;
Rome of Cæsar, Rome of Peter,—which was crueler, which was worse?”
You are beginning, Oh theologians, to be ashamed of the history
of your tribe, and to doubt in your own hearts the horrid creeds
you are still teaching; and a few have even thrown them off entirely
and joined in the movement of emancipation,—even Andover is
uneasy beneath its old yoke. But the chief problem of progress is
still to get rid of your creeds, and return to that simple, universal
religion, of which Jesus was the most powerful teacher,—a religion
that had no church, no creed, no intolerance, and which dealt only
in that universal love to which all human souls respond when they
receive it.
Yet never has this simple religion of Jesus appeared, nor any
effort towards its imperfect realization, without provoking orthodox
hostility; and never has science taken one bold step in advance to
understand the Bible of creation, or the Divine wisdom embodied
in the constitution of man, without finding all orthodox power
arrayed against each step of progress, and your orthodox anathemas
ready for each fearless seeker of the truth.
Never had astronomy, never had geology, never had phrenology,
never had anthropology, one smile from the organized theological
guardians of the ancient falsehood called orthodoxy. Neither had
political liberty any better treatment than mental liberty. Neither
the white man, the red man, nor the black man found friendship or
protection until very recently in any orthodox church, for the church
was invariably the ally of the despot. Witness all European history,
witness the history of Mexico and South America,—witness the
history of the United States,—witness the present condition of
Europe, groaning under the mountain load of taxation to pay war
debts, to sustain the cannon foundries, forts, ships, barracks, and, in
a word, the armament of hell, for it is but a grand, prearranged plan
for further homicide and devastation; and all—all, alas! established
and sustained by a government inspired by the church, which falsely
claims to represent the principles of Christ in its terribly apostate
career!
With a loathing and horror that words cannot express I turn from
this scene—in which, though latent at this moment, there lie all the
horrors of the Roman amphitheatre, and wars of the legions of
Scipio, Marius, Tiberius, Cæsar, Nero, Severus, Decius, Valerianus,
of Alaric, Attila, and Genghis Khan—to the dawn of liberty, peace,
and enlightenment on the American continent, where, though old
forms and institutions may survive, their interior nature or life is
changed,—where the apostate church is slowly relinquishing its
apostacy and growing into harmony with modern liberty and
progress.
The time is coming, I trust, when Christian churches in the
United States shall return to follow the sublime examples of the
founders of Christianity; shall practise and diffuse that spirit of
love in which is all freedom, all toleration and co-operation; shall
welcome science and philosophy, and become the centre of all cooperative
efforts for human amelioration.
The ameliorations of the last hundred years are so great that we
may well anticipate still greater changes in the coming century; for,
as Whittier says:
“Still the new transcends the old,
In signs and tokens manifold.”
It is reasonable to anticipate this change, because the old battle
between religion and science, which placed each in a false position,
must come to an end. The battle is still in progress,—there is still
an antagonism; and scientists will object to the Journal of Man
because its science is associated with religion; while theologians
will object to its religion because based on science; but the contest
now proceeds with diminishing rancor, and there have been minor
reconciliations or truces between scientists and theologians. But
finally the grand reconciliation must come from this, that when
science advances into the psychic realm,—when it demonstrates
the existence of the soul, and demonstrates that heaven is not a
morbid dream but a splendid reality,—the religious sentiment will
recognize such science as its friend; and when science goes farther,
and interprets the Divine laws as written by omnipotent wisdom in
the constitution of man, more plainly and far more fully than they
have ever been expressed in religious writings, then will religion
perceive that such science is the Divine messenger before whom it
should bow in reverence, and whose every utterance should be held
sacred.
It is thus the mission of anthropology to enlighten religion, to
interpret the Divine law, and to reign in the kingdom of heaven,
to which it is to lead us; and it is the mission of the Journal of
Man to present and keep before the enlightened few the guiding
wisdom of anthropology.
The Phrenological Doctrines of Dr. Gall.
THEIR PAST AND PRESENT STATUS.
Science ought to emancipate mankind from the control of the
animal instincts, and in the purely physical and mathematical
sciences it does. In mathematics, dynamics, optics, acoustics,
astronomy, electricity, engineering, and mechanics, the dictates of
pure intellect are seldom interfered with by any blind impulse,
attraction, or prejudice. But it is very different in the realm of
opinion—in matters in which reason should be supreme, with
as absolute authority as number and form have in mathematics.
A thousand can measure and calculate, and can obey implicitly in
thought the mathematical laws, for one that can reason and obey
implicitly the dictates of pure reason. If an error is made in the
construction of a bridge, erection of a house, or financial report of a
bank, thousands may at once detect the error, and by clear exposition
compel its recognition. But in matters of opinion controlled
by reason, there is no such ready detection and recognition of error,
even by the best educated classes. The realm of opinion is ever
in chaos. Contradictory opinions are ever clashing; no supreme
arbiter is known; no law of reason, like the laws of mathematics,
comes in to dissipate error and delusion.
Why is this? Anthropology replies that reason is as positive,
clear, and imperative as mathematical principles, but that men have
not been educated to exercise and to obey the faculty of reason, as they
have been to measure and to count. In matters of opinion, feeling
and impulse are allowed to dominate over reason, and to hug the
delusions which reason would dispel. We have no educational system,
no college, in which the art of reasoning is properly taught, although
the shallow pedantry of Aristotelian logic has assumed to teach the
art of reasoning. The faculties themselves of our colleges do not
understand or practice the true art of reasoning, for if they did, they
would harmonize in opinion as mathematicians harmonize in calculations,
and would lead the onward march of mind continually,
making or accepting discoveries of the highest importance, instead
of standing, as they do, impregnable castles of ancient error in
matters of opinion, though moderately progressive in physical
science.
It is for these reasons that popular opinions and opinions of universities
are of little value. Everything else but reason dominates
them. The gift of a founder, the decree of a king, parliament, or
pope, the decision of some ancient conclave of the superstitious and
ignorant, or the imperious will of some interested body of lords,
plutocrats, monks, or political usurpers, establishes the mould in
which opinions are cast; and the soft brains of inexperienced and
unreflective youth are easily compressed into the form of the
established mould, and from that deformed condition they seldom
or never entirely recover true symmetry. Never taught to reason
deeply or accurately, they yield to the sympathetic mesmeric control
of social opinions and impulses, without looking to their origin,
Hence the lamentable fact that in matters of opinion or philosophy,
as in social amusements and fashions, the animal instinct of gregariousness
rules, and men move in masses like herds of sheep or buffaloes.
These considerations prepare us to appreciate justly the value of
former and contemporary opinions in reference to the science of the
brain.
The mystery that surrounded its anatomy was dispelled by Dr.
Gall, and modern scientists have been building upon the foundation
laid by him. It is not necessary now to dwell upon his protracted
and careful study of the comparative development of the brain in
men and animals. Suffice it to say no naturalist was ever more
diligent, fearless, and successful, in the study of nature; and the
conclusive evidence of his success is the fact that no student of
nature who travelled after his footsteps has failed to see what he
saw, and recognize Gall as a grand, original teacher.
Why is it, then, that the reputation of Gall and his discoveries of
mental organs in the brain has been so fluctuating? Why have the
discoveries that came forward with so imposing a prestige at the
beginning of this century so entirely lost that prestige in the colleges
in sixty years, that the writings of Gall and his disciples are generally
neglected? Vague, unscientific speculations have taken their
place; the colleges and literati are groping in darkness, and, like
plants in a cellar which reach out to the dim windows, they look
anxiously for the information that may come from laboratories and
anatomical halls, where animals by thousands are tortured to find
the sources of physical functions, forgetful of the fact that the human
brain is a psychic organ, and that a whole century of such investigations
would leave the grand problems of conscious life and character
in primeval darkness!
Have they no respect for the labors and honorable observations of
clear-headed scientists fifty to eighty years ago? Were the anatomists
Reil and Loder deceived when they testified to Gall’s wonderful
discoveries in anatomy? Were Andral, Broussais, Corvsart, and
others, who stood at the head of the medical profession in France,
deceived when they were followers of Gall? Was Dr. Vimont
deceived when the study of the animal kingdom converted him from
an opponent to a supporter of Gall? Were Elliotson and Solly of
London, the Combes of Scotland, Macartney of Ireland, and a
full score of others in the highest ranks of medical science deceived
in giving their testimony that the anatomy of the brain, its development
in the healthy, its amply recorded pathology, revealed in
hospitals, and its phenomena in the insane asylums and prisons,
supported the doctrines of Gall?
They were not deceived, and they were not blind. They were
observers. Their successors, sinking into the agnosticism of pseudoscience,
have thus sunk because they have abandoned the methods
of science to adopt the methods of ignorant partisanship. They
have not studied the comparative development of the brain in
connection with character, and therefore they know little or nothing
of it. They are not competent as observers of development, because
they have never attempted to become acquainted with it. Even so
eminent a writer as the late Prof. W. B. Carpenter shows by his
writings, which are a monument of laborious erudition, that he did
not understand so simple a matter as the external form of the
cranium belonging to the development of the cerebellum.
Cranioscopy, the study of the brain and its proportional development
through the cranium, which is the method by which Gall made
his discoveries, is a lost art in the medical profession, and I doubt if
there is a single professor in any American or European medical college
to-day, who has a competent knowledge of it. The art of cranioscopy
requires as its basis a correct knowledge of the anatomy of the brain
and skull, a correct knowledge of the localities of all the cerebral
organs, and a practical skill in determining their development with
accuracy. A variation of one eighth of an inch in development will
change the destiny of the individual, and incorrect conceptions of
the growth of the brain and the natural irregularities of the cranium
would vitiate the conclusions of the observers. A somewhat famous
but unscientific practitioner of phrenology gave a good illustration
of this by mistaking a rugged development of the lambdoid suture
for an enormous organ of combativeness, and ascribing to the gentleman
a terrific, pugnacious energy which was the very opposite of
his true character.
The sciolism of popular phrenology, scantily supplied with
anatomical knowledge, and but little better supplied with clear
psychic conceptions, is incapable of commending the science to the
esteem of critical observers, and of course incapable of sustaining
its reputation against the overwhelming opposition of medical
colleges. Thus rejected or at least neglected in the universities,
which supply its place with worthless metaphysics, and unsustained
before the public,—for the tone of literature is controlled by the
universities,—it is not strange that the grand discoveries of Gall
are neglected as they are to-day.
The objections to Gall’s discoveries which have been considered
sufficient, have generally been the offspring of ignorance and superficial
thinking. Thousands of physicians have been misled by professors
of anatomy thoroughly ignorant of the subject, who have
shown to their own ignorant satisfaction how impossible it was to
judge of the development of the brain through the skull. The
attacks upon phrenology have been generally remarkable for their
logical feebleness. Any one well acquainted with the science and
the phenomena in nature, could have made a much more effective
attack,—an attack which would have appeared entirely unanswerable;
but no such attack has been made.
There has been, however, one valid objection to the discoveries of
Gall, which has done much to discredit the whole system. He
ascribed to the entire cerebellum the sexual function alone, in doing
which he disregarded the facts developed by vivisection. Ample
observation has shown his error. The cerebellum is the physiological
as the cerebrum is the psychic brain, and a defined central
portion of the cerebellum at the median line does exercise, in
connection with the summit of the spinal cord, the sexual functions.
This has been fully established by pathology, as well as by my own
experiments. In this matter Gall is certainly entitled to the credit
of approximating the truth, the function being located within the
territory assigned it.
The fundamental doctrine, however, which Gall has the immortal
honor of establishing, is that the cerebrum is not a homogeneous
unitary organ, but a mass of distinct organs, as distinct as the sensitive
and motor columns of the spinal cord, and exercising different
mental functions. Whatever errors of detail he may have fallen into
cannot obscure the glory of the pioneer in the anatomy and psychology
of the brain. His anatomical doctrines have stood the test
of time; they are established; and his psychic doctrines are as near
an approach to absolute truth as ever was made by a pioneer in
a wilderness of mystery. Gall himself, with the just self-respect
which belongs to a sincere and fearless seeker of scientific truth,
expressed his attitude as follows, at the close of the sixth volume of
his works:—
“These views of the qualities and faculties of man are not the
fruit of subtile reasonings. They bear not the impress of the age
in which they originate, and will not wear out with it. They are
the result of numberless observations, and will be immutable and
eternal like the facts that have been observed, and the fundamental
powers which those facts force us to admit. They are not only
founded on principles deduced from individual facts, but are confirmed
by each individual fact in particular, and will forever come
off triumphant from every test to which they may be submitted,
whether of analysis or synthesis. If the reasonings of metaphysicians
are ever discarded, this philosophy of the human qualities and faculties
will be the foundation of all philosophy in time to come.”
These are the words of a grand-souled philosopher, who knew that
he was speaking the truth, and forcing, as if at the point of the
bayonet, a great, new truth upon the stolidity of the colleges. The
simple truth of fibrous structure in the brain, now known to every
tyro in anatomy, was contested in the days of Gall and Spurzheim,
and had to be enforced by public dissection in an Edinburgh amphitheatre.
With the same unreasoning stolidity the doctrine of the
multiplicity of organs in the brain was shunned, evaded, or denied,
though it would seem idiotic for any physiologist to assume such a
position (by suppressing his own common sense) when the aim of
all modern investigations of the brain is to discover different functions
in different parts.
The great doctrine of the multiplicity of cerebral organs, introduced
by Gall, could not be suppressed or ignored among those who
investigate the brain in any manner. All modern investigators
tacitly recognize it, for none could so stultify themselves as to
assume the brain to be a homogeneous unit in either structure or
functions, while seeking to discover the peculiar functions of each
part. Thus his fundamental ideas are adopted by his opponents, and
step by step they will be compelled to admit his general correctness,
and his grand services as the pioneer in the highest department of
science, the most prolific in important results to mankind. “Every
honest and erudite anatomist,” says Sir Samuel Solly in his standard
work on the anatomy of the brain, “must acknowledge that we are
indebted mainly to Gall and Spurzheim for the improvements which
have been made in our mode of studying the brain. For my own
part, I most cheerfully acknowledge that the interest which I
derived from the lectures of Dr. Spurzheim at St. Thomas’ Hospital
about the years 1822 and 1823, has been the inciting cause of all
the labor which for above twenty years I have at intervals devoted
to this subject.”
The organ of language, his first discovery, located at the junction
of the front and middle lobes, has been the first to receive the
general recognition of the medical profession, because it is easy to
recognize its failures in disease, and the morbid condition of its
organ.
Its general recognition by physiologists now is not usually accompanied
by any reference to Gall as its discoverer. They are probably
not aware that he located it correctly, because he referred so much
to its external sign in the prominence of the eyes. This prominence
of the eyes indicates development of the brain at the back of their
sockets. The external marking of organs is to indicate where they
lie and in what direction their development produces exterior projection.
The junction of the front and middle lobes, including the so-called
“island of Reil” (who was a pupil of Gall, and spoke of him
as the most wonderful of anatomists), has its most direct external
indication at the outer angle of the eye. That is the location which
has been given the organ by my experiments, which were made
without reference to anatomy, without even a thought of it, for I
consider such experiments the supreme authority in physiology,
and do not stop to inquire whether any previous knowledge supports
them or not.
Dr. Gall had the true idea, for although he spoke of the general
prominence of the eye as the indication, he also recognized the
development as extending in the direction in which I have located
it. He regarded the organ of language as a convolution lying on
the super-orbital plate, behind the position of the eyeball. This
convolution is comparatively defective in animals generally, but
more developed in birds of superior vocal powers. In addition to
this, he observed the growth extending into the temples, where the
front and middle lobes unite. “A great diameter in this direction,”
he says, “is always a favorable augury for the memory of words. I
have seen persons who with an ordinary conformation of the eyes
yet learned by heart with great facility. But in these cases the
diameter from one temple to the other is ordinarily very considerable,
and sometimes even the inferior part of the temples is projecting,
which attests a great development of the adjacent cerebral
parts.”
Thus it is evident that he recognized the structure behind the
external angle of the eye as an important part of the organ of
language.
The interior portion of the convolution is the more intellectual
portion of the organ, while the exterior portion is that which holds
the closest relation to the fibres of the corpora striata in the middle
lobe, and may therefore most properly be called the organ of
language or of speech, the impairment of which produces aphasia, or
loss of speech. This is the form which has chiefly attracted the
attention of the medical profession, as it very often accompanies
paralytic affections from disease of the corpora striata.
Evidently Gall arrived at the correct location, and he illustrates
the discovery by referring to a great number of authors and
scientists whose development he observed. His most decisive fact
is the case of a patient who lost the memory of names entirely, but
not the power of speech, by a thrust from a foil, which penetrated
through the face, the posterior inner part of the front lobe, at its
junction with the middle lobe, thus wounding the internal part of
the organ of language, but not reaching the outer posterior part, at
the island of Reil, to which pathologists have given their chief attention.
Evidently Gall had the correct idea, and should have been duly
credited by the pathologists who have verified his discovery.
In verifying this discovery by excitement of the organs, I find
the centre of language behind the external angle of the eye, on each
side of which, toward the nose and toward the temples, are analogous
functions which might, if we did not analyze closely, be included
with it, as portions of the organ of language.
The discoveries of Gall, though no longer sustained by colleges
or phrenological societies, have never lost their hold upon the
students who follow his teachings and study nature. A few phrenological
writers and lecturers maintain the interest among those
they reach, but our standard literature generally ignores the
doctrines, and forgets the name of Gall. Yet the eclipse is not total.
It will pass away as this century ends, and the fame of the great
pioneer in science will be immortal, for it rests not on any wave of
eighteenth century opinion, but is based on that which is “immutable
and eternal.”
Yet so thoroughly has the present generation of physicians been
misled by the colleges into ignorance of the labors of Gall, that
although they know the location of the faculty of language is now
beyond doubt, they do not think of the discoverer or understand his
discoveries, but vaguely suppose that Ferrier, Jackson, Fritsch,
Hitzig, and others have entirely superseded Gall by their inferences
from experiments on the brains of animals. In this how greatly are
they deceived! All that modern vivisectors have done has utterly
failed to disturb the cerebral science derived from cranial observation
by Gall and myself, and from direct experiment by myself. On
the contrary, the immense labor of their researches serves only to
add new illustrations and facts corroborating and co-operating with
what was previously ascertained, as will be fully shown when
“Cerebral Psychology” shall be published.
It was once supposed that the intellectual functions of the front
lobe were entirely refuted by discoveries which proved the front
lobe the source of muscular impulses. More thorough experimenting
dissipated this illusion. Ferrier reported that after a partial
ablation of the front lobes in intelligent monkeys, “instead of, as
before, being actively interested in their surroundings and curiously
prying into all that came within the field of their observation, they
remained apathetic or dull, or dozed off to sleep, responding only to
the sensations or impressions of the moment, or varying their
listlessness with restless and purposeless wanderings to and fro.
They had lost to all appearance the faculty of attentive and intelligent
observation.” This is precisely what the true cerebral psychology
indicates. The imaginary muscular powers were not at all
detected, for the section of the front lobe had no influence on the
muscular system.
The science of Gall was a science of facts relevant to great principles.
The science of his opponents was a science of irrelevant
facts, revealing no philosophy. Students of nature adhered to Gall;
students of books and adherents of authority neglected him. Of
this there is no better illustration than the great collection of
De Ville in London, of which the following account is given in the
admirable treatise on phrenology (of 637 pages) by Dr. James P.
Browne of Edinburgh.
“How wide and various are the channels through which the phrenologist
derives his facts. In society, whichever way he turns, they
are constantly being presented for his contemplation. Besides there
is not a city or town of any note that does not contain a collection
of authentic casts of well-known persons; and up to the year 1853, the
gallery of Mr. De Ville, in London, contained the largest and most
valuable phrenological collection in the world of casts and skulls of
men and women remarkable for the greatness of their talents, or the
peculiarities of their dispositions; including above three hundred
busts, both antique and modern, of the most renowned men the world
has ever seen. The whole number amounted at least to three thousand.
About two thousand skulls of animals of every denomination
were also to be found there. There could be seen the form of head
which accompanied the poetical instincts and high moral aspirations of
the poor peasant boy, John Clare; and how strikingly dissimilar it was
in its most marked characteristics to the head of George Stevenson,
one of the most original of mechanical geniuses. Both were self-taught,
but one was intensely active, the other cogitative. The mind
of Clare was constantly engaged in poetical musings upon the moral
affections, their pains and their pleasures; that of Stevenson was
drawn by an inherent impulse to physical objects, and perseveringly
devoted to the discovery of such mechanical combinations of them
as might be of lasting benefit to society. There might be pointed
out the cause of the difference of style which characterized the
oratory of Mansfield and Erskine, of Canning and of Brougham:
and that which constituted the elements of mind and their combinations,
which raised Edmund Burke, as a prescient statesman, to a
height such as neither Pitt, nor Fox, nor even Chatham was capable
of reaching. There might be seen in Banks’s fine bust of him, the
cause why Warren Hastings, though he was endowed with many
good qualities which endeared him to his friends, was, nevertheless,
covetous, self-willed, domineering, unjust, and, in some instances,
pitiless, as Governor-General of India. What a contrast to this did
the bust of the Marquis of Wellesley, by Nollekens, present. Not
only did it indicate that the disposition of that distinguished statesman
was unimbued with the slightest tincture of hypocrisy, avarice,
or the love of self-willed domination, but, on the contrary, it was
phrenologically symbolic of an instinctive carelessness in regard to
his own pecuniary interests, a disposition which in his case, perhaps,
amounted to a fault, and which his intellect, capacious of great
things, and comparatively heedless of whatever is little, was ill-calculated
to redress. There might be seen in Behnes Burlowe’s
bust of Macintosh indications of the vastness of his intellect, and
the unobtrusive gentleness of his disposition; whilst Chantrey’s
exquisite bust of Lord Castlereagh afforded marked indications of
his having been endowed with courage the most heroic, unalloyed
by the slightest tinge of complexional fear, and with an intellect well
balanced, devising, and industrious, but certainly narrow in its range as
compared with that of Sir. J. Macintosh. There, too, might be seen
the true physical indications of the imperturbable coolness of Castlereagh,
and of the sensitiveness and warm susceptibility of Canning.
“Amongst the skulls of birds how readily could the practised
observer distinguish the skull of the tuneful, melodious canary from
that of the chirping, inharmonious sparrow. Nor could he fail to
mark the constant difference between the form of the head of a song
thrush and that of the jackdaw; or to discern how the cuckoo’s
head is hollow where the organ of the love of offspring is located,
whilst the same part presents a striking protuberance in the partridge.
In the dolphin, the porpoise, the seal, and many other animals,
the male could there be distinguished from the female by the
form of the back part of the skull, where the same organ lies. Nor
could any one fail to mark the form of head that is the invariable,
and evidently indispensable, concomitant of the ferocious and sanguinary
temper of the tiger, as well as the strong contrast which it
presents to the skull of the wild but gentle gazelle. How superior also
the elevated brain of the poodle dog, when compared with that of the
indocile, snarling cur! Thus in animals of the same species the
most marked disparity of form is easily discernible, on comparing
the skulls of such as are docile and gentle, with those of the dull and
intractable. The elevation of the one and the depression of the other
are obvious.
“In an ethnological point of view that collection was very valuable.
What a striking contrast was presented there by the rounded form
of the skull of the fierce, indomitable American Indian, who is so
averse to intercourse with strangers, and the rather narrow, elongated
head of the indolent negro, who is devoted to social enjoyments.
How wide was the difference between the head of the Sandwich
Islander or of the Tahitian and that of the Australian or the Tasmanian.
How much superior to either of them were the heads of
the civilized Incas of Peru, which had not been submitted to the
distorting process of artificial compression. Neither could the wide
disparity between the Maori and the Gentoo escape the notice of
the most careless observer. And how immeasurably inferior in
form were they all to the noble head which is the issue of the mingling
of the Celtic, Saxon, and Norman races (imbued with an infusion
of old Roman, blood), such as it is found to be in these islands,
and in the United States.
“Perhaps it may not be considered out of place if I relate a circumstance
of considerable interest to those who make it a point to make
strict inquiry as to the amount of knowledge which certain races are
capable of imbibing.
“Some twenty years ago and more, when the great anatomist, Tiedemann,
was in London, he paid a visit to De Ville’s Phrenological
Museum. I saw him as he entered the place. He was erect and
tall, with an air somewhat stately, yet perfectly unassuming. His
head was not so remarkable for great size as for its fine symmetry,
and the organs of the moral and intellectual portions of it were in a
rare degree harmoniously blended. It was the characteristic head
of a curious, indefatigable, conscientious inquirer into the arcana of
physical things—one who was not given to indulge in unprofitable,
visionary speculations. His visit to De Ville being strictly private,
there was no opportunity afforded me of hearing his remarks.
But, afterwards, it was told me by De Ville himself, that Tiedemann
supposed (and in this he resembled all other opponents of phrenology)
that because he had tested the capacity of a great many negro
and European skulls, by filling them with millet seed, and found
that, on an an average, those of the Africans were scarcely inferior
in size to the skulls of Europeans—that from that fact he thought
it probable that the negro, if placed in advantageous circumstances,
ought to be capable of exhibiting powers of mind equal to the
European.
“But when the humble, self-educated follower of Gall demonstrated
to this celebrated physiologist and anatomist that the forehead of the
negro is usually much smaller than that of the European, and that,
moreover, its form, with few exceptions, is irregular and ill-balanced;
and when he showed that the size of the negro skull in the basilar
portion, where the organs of the affections (which we possess in
common with the lower animals) lie, was, in proportion to the upper
and anterior parts, which are the seats of the moral and intellectual
faculties, larger in the negro than in the European—when De
Ville showed, by many instances, that this is always and infallibly
the case (with the exception of the heads of criminals), Tiedemann
raised his hands and said, ‘The labor of years is now, I clearly see,
of no use to me; and I must destroy many valuable things bearing
upon this theme.’ Thus, by following the true mode of investigating
this department of natural history, was an uneducated man, of
good talents, enabled to correct a mistake in anatomy and physiology
committed by one of the ablest anatomists that Europe has
given birth to.
“For the long term of twenty-two years the writer of this treatise
took every opportunity, afforded him by the kindness of its generous
owner, to study the contents of this rare collection; and, after having
studied it with assiduous care, he is bound to say that out of the
hundred thousand facts which it contained, not one could be pointed
out that did not testify to the never-failing agreement of particular
parts or organs of the brain, with certain independent, elementary
faculties, according to the laws discovered by Gall.
“It is with the view of demonstrating the stability and unchangeableness
of those laws that the composition of this treatise has been
undertaken; in order to excite in its regard such a degree of attention
as will tend to awaken it from the state of inauspicious somnolency
in which it has for some years lain prostrate. But, strongly
impressed with a conviction of the importance of the subject, and
fully alive to the difficulty of treating it, the writer cannot help
being crossed by fears for the success of this attempt. Relying,
however, upon the solidity of the foundation upon which his subject
rests, and surveying the vast store of accumulated materials which
have, for more than thirty years, been constantly passing through
his hands, and the facts which are now strewn before him in whatever
society he may be placed, he would fain hope that even his
humble abilities will enable him to make such a selection of incontrovertible
facts as will place beyond a doubt the possibility of determining
the innate talents and dispositions of any one by making a
skilful survey of the head; and, should he succeed in merely raising
a more general spirit of active inquiry in regard to the nature of
the evidence adduced, and the deductions drawn from it by phrenologists,
than at present exists, he will have reaped a fair reward for
his efforts, for he has long been thoroughly convinced that a strict
and faithful examination of the facts which bear upon the case is
alone requisite for converting the incredulous scoffer into the zealous
advocate.”
Having thus vindicated the claims of the great pioneer in philosophy,
our next issue will show the limitations of his discoveries, and
give an outline of the new and all-comprehensive Anthropology.
Therapeutic Sarcognomy.—The publication of this work has
been laid aside to introduce the Journal of Man. It will appear
during the present year, but not in a cheap abridged form as first
proposed. It will be an improved edition.
The Great Land Question.
AGITATED BY HENRY GEORGE, MICHAEL DAVITT, PROF. WALLACE, DR. EADON
AND REFORMATORY SOCIETIES IN GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY.
They who in the fearless pursuit of truth attain ideas for which
the age is not prepared are recognized as Utopians. The dullards
who have not the desire, and therefore have not the capacity to seek
new truth, languidly regard as dreamers the men who talk of things
so foreign to their own habits. The more dogmatic class, inspired
by the dogmatism of the colleges, array themselves in scorn to repel
new thought. But, fortunately, as men die they fail to transmit
all of their bigotry to posterity, and new men come in with new
ideas.
In that new world of thought to which anthropology belongs, the
basis of social order is understood, and I felt it my duty in 1847 to
present the law of justice in relation to “The Land and the People,”
with very little hope that the doctrine presented would ever become
in my own lifetime a basis of political action, since other ideas
equally true and equally demonstrable have to bide their time.
But the toilers who suffer from the lack of employment have furnished
an eager audience to the land reformers, and the great land
question is destined to agitate the nations for a century to come.
The Boston Globe recently called attention to the original presentation
of this subject at Cincinnati, in the following editorial:—
“There seems to be a notion prevalent that the ideas advocated
by Mr. George are novel. But they are not. They once more
illustrate the familiar fact that there is nothing new under the sun.
Much the same doctrines were urged here in America at least forty
years ago, and were the subject of comment in the papers of the day.
“Dr. J. R. Buchanan, now of Boston, presented the case at Cincinnati
in 1847 much as it is now put by Mr. George and Mr. Davitt.
The Memphis Appeal of September 23 of that year, gave an elaborate
review of Dr. Buchanan’s essay, in which it said:
“‘The Land and the People’ is the title of a well-written pamphlet from
the pen of Dr. J. R. Buchanan of Cincinnati, formerly known to our citizens
as an able and accomplished lecturer on the science of neurology. It
is quite plain from the production in question that the doctor has not confined
himself to the study of the physiological system, of which we believe
he is the author, but has evidently thought deeply upon other subjects
vitally concerning the well being and progress of society. Whatever may
be thought of the positions of this pamphlet, we cannot deny to it the merit
of great beauty of style and force of logic. The whole argument is based
upon the proposition that the earth is the original gift of God to man, and
as such belongs of right to the human race in general, and not to the individuals
of the race separately. The author insists that the land is not the
product of man’s labor any more than air, sunshine, or water, and that originally
this gift of God ought to have been left as free as those lighter, but
indispensable elements must ever be, from their very nature. The artificial
and unnatural laws which have sprung up and become fastened upon society
have thrown immense obstacles in the way of the bare perception of this
great truth, as the doctor deems it, besides at the same time interposing
barriers almost insurmountable to its reception and adoption into the framework
of government. It is insisted, however, that these obstacles may be
overcome, and the rights of the people restored to them, without any injustice
to the present proprietors of land, and without any convulsions in the
great elements of society.
“Dr. Buchanan explained in his essay, as Mr. George does in his
works now, that he did not mean to annul the existing titles to land.
‘Far from it,’ Dr. Buchanan said. ‘Such a scheme would be a miserable
climax of folly and injustice, fit only to render the great principle
equally odious and ridiculous.’ The doctor insisted that he
proposed to ‘maintain in legislation the broad principle that the
nation owns the soil, and that this ownership is paramount to all
individual claims,’ and from this fundamental proposition as a corner-stone
the superstructure was to be built up. The present proprietors
of the soil were not to be disturbed in their possession, and the
government was not to interfere in the details of agriculture, renting
and leasing estates, determining possession, etc. But the owners were
to be considered as the tenants of the nation, paying rent to it
for the benefit of the people at large. This rent was to be extremely
small at first, estimated upon the value of the soil alone, without the
improvements, that being the original gift of nature, free to all. It
was to be increased, however, in the course of two generations, until
a rent of about 5 per cent should have been exacted from all the
tenants of the nation—that is, from all who occupied any portion
of the soil. The rent thus raised—a vast revenue—was to be
applied to the establishment of free colleges, free schools, free libraries,
and other institutions calculated to improve and benefit the citizen.
“This is the doctrine, substantially, as put forth at the present
time by Mr. George, and by so many persons supposed to be entirely
new. Again we remark that ‘there is nothing new under the sun.’”
This subject will be taken up hereafter in the Journal of Man.
Its progress as a policy will be noted, its writers reviewed, and the
dictates of dispassionate science presented. It is too late to intercept
the folly and crime that have surrendered the rights of the people
in the American continent, but not too late to begin reclamation
of our lost sovereignty.
We shall have ample discussions of this subject. Mr. George has
given us “Progress and Poverty” (cloth, $1.00; paper, 20 cents);
“Social Problems,” at the same price; “The Land Question” (paper,
10 cents); “Property in Land” (paper, 15 cents); “Protection
or Free Trade” (cloth, $1.50). At Baltimore a volume has been
issued as one of the Johns Hopkins University studies in political
and historical science, written by Shosuke Sato, Ph. D., Special
Commissioner of the Colonial Department of Japan. N. Murray is
the publishing agent, and the price in paper is $1.00. This work is
a “History of the Land Question in the United States,” and
describes the formation of the public domain by purchase and cession,
and the entire administration of the land system of the United
States. The land laws of early times and of other countries are
stated in the introduction. Another very instructive work recently
issued is entitled, “Labor, Land, and Law; a Search for the Missing
Wealth of the Working Poor,” by William A. Phillips; published
by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. Mr. Phillips has
been a member of Congress from Kansas, and his work is an extensive
view of the land question in other countries as well as the
United States.
In the near future this must be the burning question of politics
and statesmanship, as it is at present in Great Britain. The agitations
in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have long been on the verge
of bloody conflict, and a Land League has been formed in Germany
at Berlin, of which Dr. A. Theodor Stamm is president, having for
its object the transfer of land ownership from individuals to the
State. A newspaper at Berlin is devoted to its objects.
A few facts show how inevitable the conflict that is coming, while
the agricultural classes of all Europe are being driven by American
competition deeper and deeper into poverty and inability to pay
rent, which can never be again what it has been. The New York
Evening Post very justly says: “The truth is, we are witnessing in
Ireland the gradual disappearance of rent. The land is no longer
able to support anybody but the actual cultivator. To make this
process peaceful, and as far as possible harmless to all parties, ought
to be the chief concern of the Government.” Landlordism in Great
Britain has small claims upon our sympathy, for the great body of
the land is held by titles which have no other basis than the robbery
of old by military power. According to John Bright, in
England and Wales one hundred persons own 4,000,000 acres; in
Scotland twelve persons own 4,346,000 acres, and seventy persons
own the half of Scotland; nine tenths of all the land in Scotland
belongs to 1,700 persons, the rest of the population having only one
tenth. In Ireland less than 800 persons own half of all the land,
and 330 persons own two thirds of all the land in Scotland; 402
members of the House of Lords hold 14,240,912 acres, with a rental
of $56,865,637.
It is no wonder that the tenants of the Duke of Argyle have
risen against the police that enforce the landlord’s claims, and that
the Welsh resistance against tithes has impoverished the Welsh
clergy.
The Irish agitation has a just basis, which was well stated by the
Boston Herald as follows:—
“The assertion has been frequently made that rents have increased
more in England than in Ireland; but one of the ablest
English statisticians, a man who can hardly be accused of partiality
toward Ireland, has recently pointed out that while in the forty
years from 1842 to 1882 the rents in England increased on an
average 15 percent, the rents in Ireland in the same period increased
on an average 20 per cent, and this, too, in a country where farming
has been carried on on a low scale of culture, where the landlord
has done practically nothing for his tenant, and where the results of
the harvest are more uncertain than in England. It is the constant
desire that the Irish landlords have shown in the past to get the
last pound of flesh and the last drop of blood out of their tenants
that is the cause of the present detestation in which they are held by
the latter.”
In the United States the public domain has been criminally surrendered
to monopoly. Commissioner Sparks speaks in his reports
of the “widespread, persistent land robbery.” The fences of land
robbers have been removed from 2,700,000 acres, and over 5,000,000
will probably be redeemed. In fifteen years, 179,000,000 of acres
have been given by Congress to various railroad corporations, a
larger territory than the empire of Germany. Before these wrongs
were consummated, nearly forty years ago, I called a public meeting
in the Cincinnati court house, which protested against this surrender
of the people’s domain. The present agitation will probably bring it
to an end. In the Congressional debates last June Mr. Eustis said
“the railroad men had made fortunes as mushrooms grow in the
night; a coterie of such men had enriched themselves at the
expense of the people of the United States. They did not observe
equity, honesty, or good faith, and only came here to assert their
legal rights and to defy the authority and power of Congress and the
people of the United States to deal with them. The great question
to-day was whether the government was superior to the corporations,
or the corporations superior to the government. The corporations
had exhibited shameless and unpardonable oppression and
extortion, as well as effrontery in their dealing with the people and
the Government of the United States.” “Our people and our country,”
said the speaker, “were only able to stand the drafts thus
made on their liberties because they were yet young and strong and
vigorous.” Mr. Eustis advocated the forfeiture of every acre of
land that had not been earned according to the strict limitations
and conditions imposed in the grant.
In the house of Representatives, December 11, 1886, Mr. Payson
of Illinois, on behalf of the Committee on Public Lands, called up
the bill declaring a forfeiture of the Ontonagon and Brule River
land grant. In detailing the circumstances of the grant Mr. Payson
declared that from the organization of the Ontonagon and Brule
River Company no step had ever been taken by it which did not
indicate that that organization had been purely speculative and
effected for the purpose of getting land from the General Government.
It had been an attempt at bare-faced robbery from its inception
down to the present time. Referring to the statement made
by persons interested in the road, that it had been accepted by commissioners
and reported upon as having been built in first-class
style, he asserted that miles of the road had no other ballast than
ice and snow, which, melting in spring, left the rails held in suspension
eight inches above the ground. In support of his assertion,
he produced photographs of various sections of the road and
commented upon them, much to the amusement of the House. A
bridge, as depicted by the photograph, he declared to be humped
like a camel and backed like a whale. A section of a mile in length
showed but one railroad tie; while a 250-foot cut was shown as
being filled with logs and brush. The bill was passed without division.
It forfeits 384,600 acres.
The march of monopoly must be arrested in the United States
and Mexico. A New England company has obtained from Mexico
eighteen millions of acres in lower California. All over the world
the curse of land monopoly flourishes undisturbed. The natural
result of landlordism everywhere is already foreshadowed in this
country by the example of William Scully in Illinois. The Chicago
Tribune one year ago devoted four columns to the career of Scully,
a resident of London, who owns large tracts of American land, and
has introduced the Irish landlord system in managing his American
property. The Tribune said:—
“Scully is one of the chief figures among the alien proprietors of
American soil, and has introduced the meanest features of the worst
forms of Irish landlordism on his estates in this country. He has
acquired in the neighborhood of 90,000 acres of land in Illinois
alone, at a merely nominal figure—50 cents to $1 per acre, as a
rule. His career as an Irish landlord was a history of oppression
and extortion, that was appropriately finished by a bloody encounter
with his tenants. He was tried and acquitted on the charge of
double murder, but became so unpopular that in 1850 he sold most
of his Irish property, and has since devoted himself to building up a
landlord system in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and other States. He
made entries of the public domain through the medium of the land
warrants issued to Mexican war soldiers, which he purchased at the
rate of 50 cents per acre. In Logan County, Ill., alone, he has
40,000 to 45,000 acres. It is the almost universal testimony that
Scully’s rule in that county has reduced 250 tenants and their
families to a condition approaching serfdom. Furthermore, Scully
pays no taxes, the tenants signing ironclad agreements to assume
the same, but they are required to pay to Scully’s agents the tax
money at the same time as the rentals—the 1st of January of each
year; whereas, the agent need not turn over the taxes to the county
treasurer until about June 10 following. It is suggested that
Scully probably makes a handsome percentage on the tax money
remaining in his hands for five months. It is also shown that a
great deal of this alien’s land entirely escapes taxation, thus increasing
the burden on other property holders; that he takes the most
extraordinary precautions to secure his rent, executing a cast iron
lease, with provisions that mortgage the tenant’s all, scarcely allowing
his soul to escape, and making it compulsory for small grain to
be sold immediately after harvest, no matter what may be the condition
of the market; that grain dealers are notified not to buy of
the tenants until Scully’s rent is paid; in short, that Scully has
founded a land system so exacting that it is only paralleled in
Ireland, and rules his tenantry so despotically that few can be
induced to tell the story of their wrongs, justly feeling that it would
involve ruin to them.”
Much sympathy has been excited by the reports of cruel evictions
in Ireland, to gratify the merciless avarice of landlords, and for the
justice of these reports we need not depend on Irish testimony alone.
American travellers have told enough, and the London Standard of
Jan. 18 says: “Some of this winter’s evictions have been inhuman
spectacles, fit only for a barbarous country and a barbarous age.”
There is nothing intrinsically wrong in the relation of landlord and
tenant, which should excite a prejudice against the landlord; on the
contrary, many landlords have been a blessing to the communities
in which they lived; but our land system is a conspicuous part of a
grandly false social system based on pure selfishness, which makes all
men jealous competitors, and destroys the spirit of fraternity.
Our social system tends ever to make the rich richer and the poor
poorer, and the struggle in Ireland is but the forerunner of a
movement that will extend around the globe. Is there no remedy
for the evils? Indeed there is! Sixty years of thought have made
me familiar with the evils and the remedies. Some of the remedies
are coming to the front at present. All will in time be presented in
the Journal of Man.
Land reform is but one of the great measures that progress demands.
The first and greatest is a PERFECT EDUCATION for all,
moral and industrial. The second is SPIRITUAL RELIGION. The
third is JUSTICE TO WOMAN. The fourth, which is JUSTICE IN LEGISLATION,
includes land reform, financial reform, and many other
reforms. The fifth is INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION. The sixth is
TEMPERANCE.
The first reform includes all the others. The second would ultimately
bring all things right, and so would the third in a longer
lapse of time.
Anthropology is the intellectual guidance into all reforms, and
therefore should precede all. Hence it is the leading theme of this
Journal.
The Sinaloa Colony.
Mankind would be one family or group of families, if the principles
of Jesus could be imparted to the human race. But the robber
races that occupy this globe at present are intensely hostile in feeling
to that life of Christian love which is commanded in the books
which they honor with their lips.
The so-called civilized races of to-day are as intensely barbarian
at heart, notwithstanding the superficial varnish of literary civilization,
as the hordes of Attila and Genghis Khan. Witness the attitude
of Germany and France (the great exemplars of literary civilization),
each eagerly preparing for a deadly conflict.
Yet in all ages there have been those whom nature has qualified
for a better life, who wish to live in harmony, and turn with weariness
and disgust from the present forms of avaricious strife, rivalry,
and fraud. If the best of these could be gathered in one community,
a better state of society could be organized.
Horace Greeley sympathized with such movements, and about
forty years ago gave much space in the Tribune to the illustration
of this subject. Although the co-operative principles of Fourier,
then widely discussed, have not resulted in any great success in
community life in the United States, it can also be said that experiments
have not shown the doctrines of Fourier to be impracticable.
The best thinkers have not lost their faith, and the example of M.
Godin at Guise in France, with a population of 1,800 in the Social
Palace enjoying the very Utopia of happy and prosperous co-operative
life, is a splendid demonstration of what is possible, and a
standing rebuke to the churches of civilized nations which have not
even noticed this grand demonstration of the possibilities of
humanity.
The grandest and most hopeful co-operative scheme yet proposed
is that of Mr. Albert K. Owen, entitled the “Credit Foncier of Sinaloa,”
which has been established at the harbor of Topolobampo,
in the state of Sinaloa, on the western coast of Mexico, where a
large and liberal grant has been obtained from the Mexican government
for the Credit Foncier Company, chartered by the state of
Colorado, Mr. Owen being chairman of the Board of Directors. Its
headquarters were at rooms 7 and 8, 32 Nassau Street, New York,
and the members of the community are already gathered in considerable
numbers at Topolobampo. The Credit Foncier of Jan.
11 reports over 4,800 persons enlisted for the colony, and over
sixteen thousand shares of stock sold.
This is not a unitary community, in which the individuality of
the members is lost, but a co-operative corporation, owning its lands as
a society, and abolishing at once the primary evils of land monopoly
and a false financial system. As stated by Mr. E. Howland, “the
community is responsible for the health, usefulness, individuality,
and security of each member, and at the same time each will feel
secure in his social and individual rights in the existence of the collective
ownership and management for public utilities and conveniences,
instead of the disorganized chaos in which to-day we
live.”
A system of distribution will be adopted, doing away with the
immense cost of trade as at present conducted. The laborer will be
protected against misfortune by a system of insurance and a pension
in old age. Employment and opportunity will be provided for all,
and education provided for all children. It is upon this education
that the ultimate success of the society must depend, for it is impossible
to organize a perfect society of those whose characters have
been moulded by the present antagonistic condition of society. All
grand ideals must look to the future for their realization. That
such realization may occur in the Sinaloa colony is indicated by the
following quotation from the exposition of the Credit Foncier by
Mr. Howland.
“As we shall have to, at least during this generation depend upon
the colonization of persons who have been subject to the influences
of society as it is, we would only say, that the new truths concerning
moral education contained in ‘The New Education’ by Mr. J. R.
Buchanan, have been carefully examined by the writer of this, and
its most important lessons shall be applied in the organization of our
schools; for the power of love can be unquestionably applied,
not only as a cure for the evils produced inevitably by the
system of competition, but also as a miraculous agent in aiding
the progress of society to an inconceivably higher plane of human
life.”
The newspaper in exposition of the society entitled, “The Credit
Foncier of Sinaloa,” published at $1 a year, at Hammonton, New
Jersey, will be issued hereafter at Topolobampo, Mexico. A
report descriptive of the site of the colony and the surrounding
country (price six cents) and a map of the colony’s site (price ten
cents) may be obtained by addressing the editor, E. Howland, at
Topolobampo, Mexico.
While the Journal is going through the press, the colonists are
gathering in large numbers, and by our next issue we may have
some account of the commencement of this noble enterprise.
Its founder, Mr. A. K. Owen, is a gentleman of great energy and
enterprise, guided by noble principles, a skilful surveyor and engineer.
About fourteen years ago he made extensive exploration in
Mexico, especially on its Pacific Coast, discovered and reported
Topolobampo Bay, and introduced the scheme of the Norfolk &
Topolobampo Railroad, which he urged upon the attention of Congress,
winning the approbation of committees, but finally defeated
by the great railroad corporations. He took an active part in
Mexican affairs, forming gigantic plans for the public welfare, by a
syndicate at the head of which was Gen. Torbert, which were defeated
by a shipwreck in which Gen. Torbert was lost, and himself
narrowly escaped death. He then organized with the co-operation of
Gen. Grant, Gen. Butler, and other distinguished men, the “Texas,
Topolobampo & Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Company,” and
obtained a concession of 2,000 miles of railroad and a subsidy of
$16,000,000. Hon. Wm. Windom was president, and Mr. Owen
chief engineer. In 1873 he located a hundred miles of the road
from Topolobampo eastwardly, and two years ago the construction
commenced. Thus in the midst of a life of great activity and experience
in engineering, finance, politics, reform, and travel, Mr.
Owen, as a practical and skilful manager of great undertakings,
inspired by a strong democratic philanthropy, has laid the plan of
a co-operative colony on the basis of liberal concessions from the
Mexican government, and opened a field in which his democratic
ideas of human rights, of land, labor, finance, hygiene, freedom, and
general reform, can have full scope.
Mr. Owen’s ideas and plans are stated in a book of two hundred
pages, published by Jno. W. Lovell, 14 Vesey Street, New York, and
sent by mail for thirty cents. It is not a systematic treatise, but a
miscellaneous collection of documents which give a good deal of
information.
The Topolobampo scheme is one requiring great skill and executive
ability in the directors, as well as a harmonious and energetic
spirit in the colonists. The climate, soil, and opportunities are no
doubt the best that have ever been accorded to a scheme of co-operation,
and when its success has been realized, it may be accounted
the most important social event of the century, for it will be the
dawn of peace to a warring world, the promise of harmony between
all the restless and convulsive elements of civilized society.
Health and Longevity.
Upon these subjects the Journal of Man has a new physiological
doctrine to present, which may be stated in the initial
number, and will be illustrated hereafter.
In the volume of “Therapeutic Sarcognomy,” which was so
speedily and entirely sold upon its publication, it was clearly demonstrated
that the doctrine of vitality taught at this time in all
medical colleges is essentially erroneous, and that human life is
not a mere aggregate of the properties of the tissues of the human
body, as a house is an aggregate of the physical properties of bricks
and wood, but is an influx, of which the body is but the channel
and recipient.
That demonstration need not be repeated just now, as my object
is merely to state the position of the Journal. Life is an influx
from the world of invisible power, aided by various forms of influx
from the material world, without which it would promptly cease.
If this naked statement should seem fanciful or erroneous to any
reader, he may be just to himself by suspending his opinions until
he shall have received the demonstration. We have all been
educated into false opinions on this subject, and it is almost as difficult
for the American scholar to release himself from the influence
of education and habit in such matters, as for the Arab to release
his mind from the influence of the Koran.
It has been only within the last ten years, and as the sequel of investigations
of the seat of life beginning in 1835, that I succeeded
in ascertaining the absolute falsity of the doctrines on this subject
maintained by all scientific biologists at the present time, and demonstrating
that the human body is only a tenement, of which life is
the builder, and which drops into decay when life deserts it to meet
its more congenial home in a nobler realm.
It is not therefore in the physical but in the spiritual constitution
that the real basis of his character, his health, and longevity is
to be found, for the primitive germ or protoplasm of man cannot
be distinguished from that of a quadruped or bird. It is the invisible
and incalculable life element that contains the potentiality or
possibility of existence as a quadruped or a man, as a virtuous or
vicious, and as a long lived or short lived, being. The life element of
the germ limits the destiny of the being. That life element is invisible.
This truth, however, does not contradict the truth of development
and the capacity of science to estimate the probable health or
longevity of an individual from his organization, for the life force
organizes a body in accordance with its own character; and the
development of the entire person shows the character of the vital
force as modified by the environment of food, air, motives, and education.
The brain, no less than the body,—indeed, more fully than
the body,—shows the elements of the life and the tendency to
health and longevity, or the reverse, upon which an expert cranioscopist
can give an opinion.
In accordance with the doctrine of influx and in accordance with
the functions of the brain we are compelled to recognize health and
longevity as more closely associated with the higher than the lower
faculties,—the moral rather than the animal nature. This is the
reason that woman, with a feebler body but a stronger moral nature,
ranks higher in health and longevity than man; and although from
four to sixteen per cent more males are born, women are generally
in predominance, often from two to six per cent. The researches of
the Bureau of Statistics of Vienna show that about one third more
women than men reach an advanced age. De Verga asserts that of
sudden deaths there are about 100 women to 780 men. The inevitable
inference is that the cultivation of virtue or religion is the
surest road to longevity, and the indulgence in vice and crime the
most certain ruin to the body and soul.
There is a curious illustration of these principles in the evidence
of life insurance companies in reference to spirit drinking and
abstinence. The oldest two life insurance companies of England,
the General Provident and the United Kingdom, have made records
for forty-five years which distinguish the total abstainers and the
moderate drinkers. Drunkards they do not insure at all. The care
with which lives are selected for insurance results in a smaller rate
of mortality among the insured than in the entire population. This
gain was but slight among those classed as moderate drinkers, for
their mortality was only three per cent less than the average mortality;
but among the total abstainers it was thirty-one per cent less.
Thus the proportion of deaths among moderate drinkers compared
to that of total abstainers is as 97 to 69.
The temperance advocate would assume that this was owing entirely
to the deleterious effects of alcohol, and that is partially true;
but there is a deeper reason in the difference of the two classes of
men. The man in whom the appetites are well controlled by the
higher energies of his nature, and who has therefore no inclination
to gluttony or drunkenness, has a better organization for health and
longevity than he in whom the appetites have greater relative power,
and who seeks the stimulus of alcohol to relieve his nervous depression.
The inability or unwillingness to live without stimulation is
a mark of weakness, which is an impairment of health; and this
weakness predisposes to excessive and irregular indulgence, though
it may not go so far as intoxication.
The effects of marriage furnish a parallel illustration. It is well-known
that bachelors are more short lived than married men, but
this is not owing entirely to the hygienic influence of marriage. It
is partly owing to the inferiority of bachelors as a class. The men
who remain celibate are either too inferior personally to win the
regard of women, or are generally deficient in the strong affections
which seek a conjugal life, and the energies which make them fearless
of its responsibilities and burdens. Evidently they have not as
a class the robust energies of the marrying men, and the urgent
motives to compel them to regular industry and prudence. Everything
which stimulates men to exercise the nobler qualities of their
nature is promotive of health and longevity; and the true religion
which anthropology commends will increase human longevity in
proportion as it prevails.
In future numbers the true basis and indications of longevity in
man will be fully illustrated.
The attainable limits of human longevity are generally underrated
by the medical profession and by popular opinion. Instead of
the Scriptural limit of threescore and ten I would estimate twice
that amount, or 140 years, as the ideal age of healthy longevity,
when mankind shall have been bred and trained with the same wise
energy that has been expended on horses and cattle. Of the
present scrub race, a very large number ought never to have been
born, and ought not to be allowed to transmit their physical and
moral deficiencies to posterity.
The estimate of 140 years as a practicable longevity for a nobler
generation is sustained by the number of that age (fourteen, if I
recollect rightly) found in Italy by a census under one of the later
Roman emperors. But for the race now on the globe a more applicable
estimate is that of the European scientist, that the normal
longevity of an animal is five times its period of growth,—a rule
which gives the camel forty years, the horse twenty-five, the lion
twenty, the dog ten, the rabbit five. By this calculation man’s
twenty years of growth indicate 100. But growth is not limited to
twenty, and if we extend the period of maturing to twenty-eight,
the same rule would give us 140 as an age for the best specimens of
humanity, which has been attained in rare cases, its general possibility
in improved conditions being thus demonstrated.
There are many fine examples of longevity at this time. The
famous French chemist Chevreul has just completed his hundredth
year at Paris, in the full vigor of his intellect.
The Novosti, a Russian journal, recently mentions the death in the
almshouse of St. Petersburg of a man aged 122 years, whose mental
faculties were preserved up to his death, and who had excellent
health to the age of 118.
We have similar examples in the United States. Mrs. Celia Monroe,
a colored woman, who died a few weeks ago at Kansas City was believed
to be 125. She was going about a few days before her death.
Farmer O’Leary of Elkton, Minnesota, is over 112. Noah Raby
of Plainfield, New Jersey, is in his 115th year. He supports himself
by his work in the summer, and looks like a man of 80.
Of very recent deaths we have: Amos Hunt of Barnesville,
Georgia, who died at 105, leaving twenty-three of his twenty-eight
children. Mrs. Raymond of Wilton, Connecticut, was still living
recently in her 106th year. Ben Evans, part Indian, part negro, a
great hunter of Wilkes County, Georgia, died at 107; baptized after
he was 100. Mrs. Betsy L. Moody died on the 4th of July in Cape
Elizabeth, Maine, aged 104. Wm. Henry Williams of Cincinnati,
died a few months ago at 102. James Fitzgerald of Prince
Edwards Island, over a hundred years old, is still able to work.
Mrs. Lydia Van Ranst lately died on East 16th Street, New York,
aged 100 years and ten months; and Mrs. Johanna O’Sullivan in
Boston in her 103d year. Mrs. Betsy Perkins of Rome, N. Y.,
was apparently in excellent health when she died suddenly at the
breakfast table in her 101st year. Rev. Hugh Call died in Wayne
County, Indiana, at 104. After his hundredth year he once fancied
death was near, and sent for his family to see him die; but when
they arrived in midwinter, they found the old man busy cutting
wood to make a fire for his visitors.
Many of these examples show that the faculties of both soul and
body ought to be maintained in good condition to the last, as fruit
falls from the trees ripe and perfect. When we leave our earthly
tenement, we ought to leave it in a respectable condition, and not
carry any infirmities from it to the better world.
Remarkable Fasting.
“Signor Merlatti, a young Italian, completed in December his
fifty days’ fast, at the Grand Hotel, Paris, in time to enjoy the festivities
of the holidays. Unlike his rival, Succi, he partook of no
mysterious elixir, but existed on water alone. At the conclusion of
his feat, he was so nearly dead that the surgeons were anticipating
by way of dissection more light on the effects of privation from food.
He was barely able to move about without help. His stomach was
unable to hold any solids, and at the big banquet over which he
presided he could not have had a very convivial time, as he was
unable to take a mouthful of food. He has since gradually recovered.
Succi, meanwhile, is engaged in another fast. He fences and
takes any amount of exercise, to show that his mysterious liquid is
what does it.”
This is a little over the record of Dr. Tanner, but the result is
very different. Dr. Tanner came out in good condition, with a
splendid and healthy appetite. In the first twenty-four hours he
ate something every hour or two, indulging largely in watermelons,
milk, apples, beefsteak, potatoes, English ale, and Hungarian wine.
He gained eight and a half pounds weight in thirty hours. Everybody
was astonished, and the doctors were confounded; the crowd
cheered, and the music resounded as the fast was finished and the
feasting began in Clarendon Hall, the doctor being in as good
health and spirits as when he began, except as to physical strength.
Now it is proper to mention what I believe has not before been
published, having been carefully concealed by Dr. Tanner. As he
was encountering the whole force of a brutal prejudice in the medical
profession, and trickery and falsehood were used to defeat him
by Dr. Hammond and Dr. Landon C. Gray, (a shabby story indeed,
if the whole truth is ever told,) Dr. Tanner did not think it safe to
elicit any additional hostility by confessing his mediumship.
The whole performance was a triumph of spiritual power! Dr.
Tanner came to me in New York to aid him in giving a demonstration
of his fasting power, which had been denied in an insolent and
scurrilous manner by Dr. Hammond and others. Dr. Hammond,
with a great deal of duplicity and unfairness, evaded the test, and it
was carried out with the aid of other parties in a very satisfactory
manner.
The organization of Dr. Tanner was not such as I would have
selected for a fasting performance, and he did not undertake it on
his own resources alone. He was thoroughly a medium, and, when
in my parlor, Indian spirits would take control of him, and carry him
through a lively performance, speaking through his lips, and promising
to sustain him through the fast; and they did. I have no doubt
that with a suitable organization, such as is more frequently found
in India than in America, a fast could be sustained by spirit power
for six or twelve months. Indeed, there are records of such fasts in
the old medical authors, which are omitted in all recent works. The
spirit of dogmatic scepticism had carried the medical profession
generally into such a depth of ignorance on these subjects that Dr.
Landon C. Gray declared that a forty days’ fast had never occurred,
and that if Dr. Tanner attempted it, it must be assumed “that he
will cheat at every turn.”
The kind of sentiment cultivated by colleges in the medical profession
was shown by the deportment of the medical visitors. The
report of the fast says:—
“The most curious episodes, probably, on the whole, were afforded
by the appearance of sceptics, and members of the medical profession
from the country. Many of the latter came long distances to
satisfy their respective curiosity, or vent their scepticism, as the case
might be. As a rule they were long-visaged, not a few were unkempt,
and many were downright seedy in wearing apparel. Almost
invariably they insisted upon boring the doctor with numberless
questions, many of which were idle. The majority displayed ignorance,
and it might truthfully be said, they were rude almost without
exception. One man insisted upon feeling Dr. Tanner’s arms
and legs; another wanted to feel his pulse; a third demanded a view
of his tongue; a fourth declared food must be given to him surreptitiously,
else he would be dead; a fifth wanted to search his
pockets; the sixth asserted his professional reputation (sic) that
there was fraud about the whole business; the seventh had some
patent surgical, or other appliance, which he wished to test upon
the patient; and yet another wanted to analyze even the water he
used, before the faster drank it.
“The effect of these boors in their constant inroads upon a fasting
man, whose surroundings and conditions were not of the best, to say
the least, may be easily imagined. When these fanatics were prevented
by the watchers from extracting what little of life was left in
the object of their devotions, their indignation took various forms of
expression. As a rule they denounced the whole thing as a humbug,
and every one participating as frauds. Now and then it became
positively necessary, in common decency and self-respect, to show
these charlatans the way to the door, notwithstanding their protests
that they had paid twenty-five cents for the purpose of ventilating
their empty heads. As a general thing, by Dr. Tanner’s direction,
the admission fee was returned to these people. Even on the thirty-ninth
day, when the doctor desired all the quiet he could obtain, one
of these gentry, who said he was a physician from Long Island,
talked so loudly that he had to be called to order, and then nothing
daunted, he asked the faster to go in his enfeebled condition to the
south gallery, where his writing materials were, to prepare an
autograph for the applicant. The Herald reporter on watch at the
time, through whom the request was made for the autograph, gave
the fellow a settler by remarking, that he, as a layman, thought the
first rudiments taught in the medical profession, were those of feelings
of humanity.
“Then the wits had their time of it. They showered in caricatures
and doggerel by the barrel. None enjoyed these more than the
doctor himself. By his direction the funniest of the cartoons were
pasted against the wall of the gallery in which the doctor slept and
the watchers sat. Above the whole was the legend in German text,
‘Tanner Art Gallery,’ and during the closing days and hours of the
fast it was a source of much attraction and a great deal of merriment
to the thousands of visitors who sought the place.”
Before the fasting began I witnessed an amusing specimen of the
medical scepticism. One of the medical visitors inspected the hall
closely, and finding in the back part that a piece of nearly worn out
carpet remained on the floor, proceeded to rip it up and tear it away,
as if he suspected there might be a trap door concealed.
Medical education has been miserably cramped and benighted by
the total ignoring of the nobler element of the human constitution.
Cerebral Psychology.
The comprehensive system of science developed by experiment
on the brain, perfected by psychometric exploration, demonstrated
by pathognomy, corroborated by personal experiences and the sensations
of the head, enforced and illustrated by the study of comparative
development throughout the animal kingdom, based upon anatomy,
illustrated by pathology, and proven by every examination of
a living head, as well as every scientific experiment upon the brain
in sensitive and intelligent persons, has now been for forty years in
the hot crucible of experimental physiological investigation by vivisection,
ablation, autopsy, and electricity, and still remains as the
solid gold of eternal science.
The labors of Ferrier, Fritsch, Hitzig, Schiff, Bastian, Charcot,
and others, have added many valuable facts; but no new fact can contradict
a fact previously well observed, and nothing has occurred to
dethrone the founder of cerebral science, Dr. Gall, who ranks immeasurably
beyond all his contemporaries, and who prepared the way for
the full development of Cerebral Psychology, resulting from the discovery
of the impressibility of the brain, which has opened the entire
realm of cerebral psychology, and through that has given us access to
every realm of wisdom.
The long expected and long promised work upon this subject cannot
be published now, for it requires an amount of elaborate research
and criticism to bring the new discoveries en rapport with the investigations
of more than a hundred physiologists and anatomists,
whose labors should not be overlooked in a complete or systematic
work uniting anatomy to psychology.
Under these circumstances it is necessary and practicable, since
my “System of Anthropology” has been entirely out of the market
for thirty years, to present a concise exposition of cerebral psychology
and physiology, to satisfy those who perceive the inadequacy of the
Gallian system, and who are aware that my discoveries have thoroughly
revolutionized as well as enlarged cerebral science, rendering
the old term phrenology inadequate to express its present status.
I propose therefore to publish in the successive numbers of this
Journal a concise “Synopsis of Cerebral Science,” giving as concisely
as possible the outlines of that vast theme, in so clear and
practical a manner that each reader can test its truth in nature by
examining character, correcting the errors of phrenology, demonstrating
the science by his own experiments, and applying its principles
in the treatment of disease, in experimental investigation, in
education, self-culture, and elocution. This may satisfy the urgent
present demand, until time shall permit a satisfactory work, containing
the illustrations and proofs, the important modern discoveries in
cerebral anatomy and vivisecting experiments, as well as the vast
and interesting philosophy into which we are led by cerebral
science. The March number will contain the first instalment, and
its publication will be continued through the volume.
Music.
The claims of music were never so thoroughly presented as in the
“New Education,” in which it was shown that music was the most
effective of all agents for the cultivation of man’s higher nature, and
the elevation of the world from its purgatory of selfishness, poverty,
and crime. This idea was most fully realized by Mrs. Elizabeth
Thompson, who has spent a considerable amount in promoting the
currency and use of music, especially of a religious character.
The idea that music should exercise a world redeeming power, and
promote all social advancement, must appear strange, when first
mentioned to those who are familiar only with fashionable operatic performances
and the heartless style of vocal and instrumental music
in vogue at the centres of musical education, which is robbed as
thoroughly as possible of all ethical life, all soul inspiring power.
There is music, however, which sways our noblest emotions,
which can bring smiles to the face or tears to the eyes, hope to the
dejected or courage to the timid,—which can rouse the strongest
impulses of love and duty. The musical reformer who shall change
the tide of popular music from its present low channels to that
higher sphere of sweet and noble sentiments, will be far more than
a Wagner,—aye, more than a Luther.
Dr. Talcott, Superintendent of the Middleton, N. Y., State
Asylum of the Insane, has introduced music into all of the wards of
his institution with excellent results, judging from his last annual
report, from which the following is extracted. “It is said, that
before Moses dwelt upon the banks of the Nile, the Egyptians
erected temples and altars for the treatment of the insane; and,
among the most notable measures for the accomplishment of the
cure of lunatics, music took an exalted rank. There can be no
doubt that music exercises a potent influence in producing calm and
restfulness in minds which are disturbed by cerebral diseases.
Musical instruments have been provided in nearly every ward, and
the results have been most favorable. Even turbulent patients will
subside when the pleasures of music are afforded to them. One of
the most effective attendants we ever had upon our disturbed wards
was a good musician. After his work was done, he would sit down
among his patients, and play upon the violin. Immediately the
most excited persons in the ward would group themselves about him,
and listen with profound attention so long as he continued to play
for them. Where good music can be provided for the turbulent
insane, there exists but little necessity for restraint of a physical
nature.”
Insanity.
The tendency of modern civilization is toward insanity. It is
increasing throughout Christendom, and far more where the boasted
influences of modern education and the so-called progress are most
fully realized. The whole fabric of education and society is unsound,
and this is proved by the results.
A true civilization advancing in wisdom must develop the ability
to correct its own evils, but the civilization that we have is drifting
on, downward and helpless.
The philosophy of insanity and the philosophy of its remedial
treatment can be found only in the profound study of the brain, and
its relations to the soul and body. But there is not a glimmer of
the psychic science of the brain to-day in our colleges. In due time,
this theme shall be discussed in the Journal.
A proper understanding of this subject will show what method of
life and thought tends toward insanity, and by what methods we
escape it. It will show also the relation of disease to insanity, and
the proper methods of moral and physical treatment.
Miscellany.
Our Narrow Limits and Future Tasks.—As the Journal
goes to press I realize vividly how utterly inadequate a dollar
monthly is for the expression of the new philosophy, even in the
most condensed form, and for the periscope of progress that it
should contain. A large amount of desirable matter is necessarily
excluded. Nevertheless a modest beginning is prudent; for the vitality
of a young journal, whether daily, weekly, or monthly, is as
delicate as that of an infant. It is to be hoped that the friends of
progress will secure patronage enough to the Journal this year to
justify its enlargement in 1888. Meantime the minister whose circuit
embraces many stations cannot visit them all each week. In
like manner the Journal of Man has too large a circuit to
approach each of its themes every month. The science of man
being the highest and most comprehensive of themes, occupies the
chief position in the first number. Hereafter we must consider in
succession such themes as
- Psychometry and its revelations; Spiritual science and philosophy.
- Medical progress and reform; Hygiene and temperance.
- Educational principles and progress; Progress in science and invention.
- The truth in Religion; the prevention of War.
- Land and Labor questions; the extinction of Monopolies.
- Woman’s rights and progress; the condition of the World.
And a score of other important themes. It may be two years before
they can all be reached. Those who preserve their Journals will in
time have a small library, embodying the knowledge that progressive
minds would cherish.
Palmistry.—Mr. E. Heron-Allen, a very intelligent gentleman
from England, with a fashionable prestige, has been interesting the
fashionables of New York and Boston in palmistry, or, as he calls it,
cheirosophy, with considerable profit to himself. The human constitution
is so unitary in itself that every portion reveals much of
the whole. Physicians learn a great deal from the globules of the
blood, others draw many inferences from the excretions. The
amount of study given to the hand renders it probable that palmistry
may have considerable value as a physiognomic science. As
it comes now in a fashionable style it may flourish, but of course it
was only a vulgar imposture when practiced by gypsies. Circumstances
alter cases.
Suicide.—Eight months of the present year show 150 suicides
in the German army. Suicides will be greatly diminished when
nations disband their armies.
Theosophist Reviews.—The Theosophist, published at Madras,
India, may be considered the leading organ of Oriental Theosophy;
the Path, published at New York, bids fair as the American representative
of the Theosophic School; and Lady Caithness, Duchesse
de Pomar, has started at Paris a review devoted to theosophy and
occult science.
Apparitions of the Dead.—Prof. Barrett of the English
Psychical Research Society, states that: “It has been demonstrated
almost as certainly as has been the law of gravitation, that scores of
cases have occurred where some persons in one town, have, at a certain
hour or minute, seen the figure of a friend flit across the room,
and have afterwards discovered that at that very hour and minute
the friend breathed his last in a distant town, or, may be, in a
foreign country. Now these cases are inexplicable by any formula
of science, yet that they have happened is scientifically proved.”
Notwithstanding the good intentions of some of the members of
that society, its general conduct has been so unfair in its investigations
that Stainton Moses, the vice-president, has felt it to be his
duty to resign and withdraw. The truth is, the pioneers in philosophy
can expect no cordial co-operation and no real justice from their
oldtime opponents. The American Psychic Research Society is far
behind the English.
Human Responsibility.—A girl was taken before the Paris
tribunal charged with stealing a blanket. She pleaded that she was
under the influence of another person and could not help herself.
In prison it was found that she was in a hypnotized condition, and
acted readily under the commands of others, doing anything that was
told her. She was examined by a commission of Chacrot, Brouardel,
and Mollett, who reported that this condition came from the use of
morphia, suffering, and hunger; that these suggestions from others,
acting on an unstable nervous organism, greatly deranged by
morphia and other causes, rendered her irresponsible for her acts.
She was acquitted.
Human Tails.—M. Eliseff presented to the French Anthropological
Society a woman with a caudal appendage covered with hair.
This anomaly was present in several of the maternal ancestors of
the woman.
Men who Live in Trees.—Dr. Louis Wolf, who made the sensational
discovery a while ago that the Sankuru River afforded a
more direct and more easily navigated route to Central Africa than
the Congo, made another discovery in the course of the same
journey which was quite as remarkable if not so important. On the
banks of the Lomami River, far toward the centre of the continent,
he says he found whole villages that were built in the trees. The
natives, partly to protect themselves from the river when in flood,
and partly to make it more difficult for their enemies to surprise
them, build their huts on the limbs of the trees where the thick
foliage almost completely hides the structures from view. The inmates
possess almost the agility of monkeys, and they climb up or
descend from their little houses with astonishing ease. It is believed
they are the only Africans yet known who live in trees.
In Borneo some of the natives are said to live in trees, and Mr.
Chalmers, in his book on New Guinea, tells of a number of tree
houses that he visited on that island. These huts, which are built
near the tops of very high trees, are used for look-out purposes, or
as a place of refuge for women and children in case of attack.
They are perfect little huts with sloping roofs and platforms in front,
to which extends the long ladder, by means of which the natives
reach the huts. Mr. Gill describes one of these houses which was
used as a residence. He says it was well built, but that it rocked
uncomfortably in the wind.
Protyle. The address of Professor William Crookes before the
British Association, upon the “Genesis of the Elements,” is one of
the most important contributions to chemical philosophy that has
been published for a long time. Reasoning from the recently discovered
law of periodicity among the elements, he discusses the
possibility of their being formed from the cooling of one primitive
form of matter, which he calls protyle. While he admits that we
have no direct evidence that the elements are different manifestations
of the same form of matter, yet he thinks that the observed phenomena
of chemistry and physics point very strongly to such a conclusion,
and agrees with Faraday, that, “to decompose the metals,
then to reform them, to change them from one to another, and to
realize the once absurd notion of transmutation, are the problems
now given to the chemist for solution.” We consider Professor
Crookes to be one of the most eminent scientists now living, and
any views he may advance are entitled to serious consideration.—Popular
Science News.
The Keeley Motor, at Philadelphia, which has long been regarded
as a visionary or deceptive enterprise, is coming out now
with the endorsement of engineers who have witnessed its operation
and say that it develops a new power which cannot be accounted
for by any of the known laws of dynamics. It may, however, be a
long time before the proper machinery can be invented and constructed
for bringing this power into use.
Human Anomalies, Moung Phoset, Mahphoon, and the
Giant Winkelmeier.

Every departure from the stereotyped plan of humanity is an
interesting proof of the vast capacities of nature, and therefore a
prophecy of possible variation and grander development for the
coming generations; hence the hairy family—Moung Phoset, his
mother, Mahphoon, and the giant Winkelmeier—are deeply interesting
to the anthropologist.
Winkelmeier, according to the London Standard, is now in
London at the Pavilion, standing eight feet, nine inches high, a foot
higher than Chang, the Chinese giant, and evidently the tallest man
living. He was born in 1865, in Upper Austria. Neither his four
brothers, parents, nor grandparents, are unusually tall. He is
healthy, strong, and intelligent, and is expected to continue
growing.
Moung Phoset, and his old mother, Mahphoon, whose pictures
are here given, are now in London on exhibition. They were the
hairy family of King Theebaw of Burmah, and when Theebaw was
captured by the British army, they escaped to the jungle, where
they were robbed by Dacoits, but were recovered by Captain Piperno,
and brought to England. Moung Phoset, like his mother, has
his face and entire body covered by long, fine hair, from five to
twelve inches long, which even fills the ears, and on the forehead is
so long that it has to be drawn back over the ears to uncover the
eyes. He is an intelligent and well-behaved man, and has a fair
Burmese education. His wife, however, is a common Burmese
woman. Moung Phoset, having no children, is the last of a hairy
species, which it is said, originated in his great grandfather, who was
caught wild in the forest between Upper Burmah and Siam.
Hairy irregularities, according to Darwin, are associated with
irregularities of the teeth. In Moung Phoset the molar teeth are
deficient.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT.
The Business Department of the Journal
deserves the attention of all its readers, as it will be
devoted to matters of general interest and real
value. The treatment of the opium habit by Dr.
Hoffman is original and successful. Dr. Hoffman
is one of the most gifted members of the medical
profession. The electric apparatus of D. H. Fitch
is that which I have found the most useful and satisfactory
in my own practice. Bovinine I regard as
occupying the first rank among the food remedies
which are now so extensively used. The old drug
house of B. O. & G. C. Wilson needs no commendation;
it is the house upon which I chiefly rely for
good medicines, and does a very large business with
skill and fidelity. The American Spectator, edited
by Dr. B. O. Flower, is conducted with ability and
good taste, making an interesting family paper,
containing valuable hygienic and medical instruction,
at a remarkably low price. It is destined
to have a very extensive circulation. I have
written several essays in commendation of the
treatment of disease by oxygen gas, and its
three compounds, nitrous oxide, per-oxide and
ozone. What is needed for its general introduction
is a convenient portable apparatus. This is now
furnished by Dr. B. M. Lawrence, at Hartford,
Connecticut. A line addressed to him will procure
the necessary information in his pamphlet on that
subject. He can be consulted free of charge.
The spiritual newspapers, The Banner, The Religio-Philosophical
Journal, Light for Thinkers,
Golden Gate, Carrier Dove, and World’s Advance
Thought, embody a large amount of the leading
truths of the age. He who does not read one of
them robs himself of instruction and pleasure.
Facts is just what its name indicates, a concise
collection of interesting spiritual facts. Hall’s
Journal of Health has an established reputation,
and of late is better conducted than ever.
College of Therapeutics.
The large amount of scientific and therapeutic
knowledge developed by recent discoveries, but not
yet admitted into the slow-moving medical colleges,
renders it important to all young men of
liberal minds—to all who aim at the highest rank
in their profession—to all who are strictly conscientious
and faithful in the discharge of their
duties to patients under their care, to have an
institution in which their education can be completed
by a preliminary or a post-graduate course
of instruction.
The amount of practically useful knowledge of
the healing art which is absolutely excluded from
the curriculum of old style medical colleges is
greater than all they teach—not greater than the
adjunct sciences and learning of a medical course
which burden the mind to the exclusion of much
useful therapeutic knowledge, but greater than
all the curative resources embodied in their instruction.
The most important of these therapeutic resources
which have sometimes been partially
applied by untrained persons are now presented
in the College of Therapeutics, in which is taught
not the knowledge which is now represented by
the degree of M. D., but a more profound knowledge
which gives its pupils immense advantages
over the common graduate in medicine.
Therapeutic Sarcognomy, a science often demonstrated
and endorsed by able physicians, gives the
anatomy not of the physical structure, but of the
vital forces of the body and soul as located in every
portion of the constitution—a science vastly more
important than physical anatomy, as the anatomy
of life is more important than the anatomy of
death. Sarcognomy is the true basis of medical
practice, while anatomy is the basis only of operative
surgery and obstetrics.
Indeed, every magnetic or electric practitioner
ought to attend such a course of instruction to
become entirely skilful in the correct treatment of
disease.
In addition to the above instruction, special
attention will be given to the science and art of
Psychometry—the most important addition in
modern times to the practice of medicine, as it
gives the physician the most perfect diagnosis of
disease that is attainable, and the power of extending
his practice successfully to patients at any
distance. The methods of treatment used by
spiritual mediums and “mind cure” practitioners
will also be philosophically explained.
The course of instruction will begin on Monday,
the 2d of May, and continue six weeks. The fee
for attendance on the course will be $25. To
students who have attended heretofore the fee will
be $15. For further information address the
president,
JOSEPH RODES BUCHANAN, M. D.
6 James St., Boston.
The sentiments of those who have attended these
courses of instruction during the last eight years
were concisely expressed in the following statement,
which was unanimously signed and presented
to Dr. Buchanan by those attending his last
course in Boston.
“The undersigned, attendant, upon the seventh
session of the College of Therapeutics, have been
delighted with the profound and wonderful instructions
received, and as it is the duty of all who
become acquainted with new truths of great
importance to the world, to assist in their diffusion,
we offer our free and grateful testimony in the
following resolutions:
“Resolved, That the lectures and experiments of
Prof. Buchanan have not only clearly taught,
but absolutely demonstrated, the science of Sarcognomy,
by experiments in which we were personally
engaged, and in which we cannot possibly
have been mistaken.
“Resolved, That we regard Sarcognomy as the
most important addition ever made to physiological
science by any individual, and as the basis
of the only possible scientific system of Electro-Therapeutics,
the system which we have seen
demonstrated in all its details by Prof. Buchanan,
producing results which we could not have believed
without witnessing the demonstration.
“Resolved, That Therapeutic Sarcognomy is a
system of science of the highest importance, alike
to the magnetic healer, to the electro-therapeutist,
and to the medical practitioner,—giving great
advantages to those who thoroughly understand it,
and destined to carry the fame of its discoverer to
the remotest future ages.”
The “Chlorine” Galvanic and Faradic Batteries.
APPARATUS AND MATERIALS.
Description, Prices, and Testimonials Mailed Free, on Application.
6 James St., Boston, Mass., February 8, 1886.
D. H. Fitch, Cazenovia, N. Y.:
Dear Sir: Your last letter has a valuable suggestion. Your
Carbon Electrodes ARE the very best now in use, and Metallic
Electrodes are objectionable from the metallic influence they impart,
even if no metal can be chemically traced into the patient.
J. R. BUCHANAN, M. D.
Aurora, Ill., Dec. 24, 1886.
D. H. Fitch, Cazenovia, N. Y.:
I am very glad to inform you that the battery which I purchased from
you seven months ago is better than you represented it, and works as
well to-day as it did on the first day.
The cells have not been looked at since they were first placed in the
cabinet. The battery is always ready and has never disappointed me.
Resp’y yours,
H. G. GABEL, M. D.
Worcester, Mass., Aug. 10, 1886.
D. H. Fitch, Cazenovia, N. Y.:
Dear Sir: Over a year ago, as you will remember, I bought of
you one of your “Chlorine Batteries” of twenty-five cells. This I
placed in the cellar and connected with my office table for use there.
It has been in almost daily use since without ever having to do the
first thing to it, not even refilling, and now, after a year’s
service, I cannot see but that it runs just as well as it did the
first day I used it, and the battery is just as clean as when put in,
nor the least particle of corroding. This is a better record than any
other battery can furnish with which I am acquainted. I can only say I
am more than pleased with it, as every man must be who knows anything
about electricity and has occasion to use a battery for medicinal
purposes.
J. K. WARREN, M. D.
Whitestown, N. Y., April 15, 1886.
D. H. Fitch, Esq.:
Dear Sir: The “Chlorine Battery” is simply admirable,
complete, just the thing.
SMITH BAKER, M. D.
President Oneida Co. Med. Society.
Tyler, Tex., Feb. 11, 1886.
D. H. Fitch, Esq., Cazenovia, N. Y.:
I am so well pleased with your “Chlorine Faradic Machine” that I now
use it in preference to any other. The current is so smooth and
regular that patients like it and seem to derive more benefit from it
than from the same strength of current from any other battery that I
have used. I would not be without it for many times its cost.
S. F. STARLEY, M. D.
D. H. FITCH,
P.O. Box 75. Cazenovia, N. Y.
Religio-Philosophical Journal.
ESTABLISHED 1865.
PUBLISHED WEEKLY AT
92 La Salle Street, Chicago,
By JOHN C. BUNDY,
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION IN ADVANCE:
One copy, one year $2.50
Single copies, 5 cents. Specimen copy free.
All letters and communications should be addressed,
and all remittances made payable to
JOHN C. BUNDY, Chicago, Ill.
A Paper for all who Sincerely and Intelligently
Seek Truth without regard to Sect or Party.
Press, Pulpit, and People Proclaim its Merits.
Concurrent Commendations from Widely Opposite Sources.
Is the ablest Spiritualist paper in America….
Mr. Bundy has earned the respect of all lovers of the
truth, by his sincerity and courage.—Boston Evening
Transcript.
I have a most thorough respect for the Journal,
and believe its editor and proprietor is disposed to
treat the whole subject of spiritualism fairly.—Rev.
M. J. Savage (Unitarian) Boston.
I wish you the fullest success in your courageous
course.—R. Heber Newton, D. D.
Your course has made spiritualism respected by the
secular press as it never has been before, and compelled
an honorable recognition.—Hudson Tuttle,
Author and Lecturer.
I read your paper every week with great interest.—H.
W. Thomas, D. D., Chicago.
I congratulate you on the management of the
paper…. I indorse your position as to the investigation
of the phenomena.—Samuel Watson, D. D.,
Memphis, Tenn.
THE
WORLD’S ADVANCE THOUGHT,
A SPIRITED MONTHLY NEWSPAPER,
(28 × 42 inches,)
DEVOTED TO
Advanced Spiritual Ideas,
Is published at Salem, Oregon, at One
Dollar a year.
Remit by mail through a post-office order, or a
draft on a bank or banking house in Salem. Send
bank notes in registered letters only. Address
Progressive Publishing Company,
SALEM, OREGON.
LIGHT FOR THINKERS.
THE PIONEER SPIRITUAL JOURNAL OF THE SOUTH.
Issued Weekly at Chattanooga, Tenn.
A. C. LADD | Publisher. |
G. W. KATES | Editor. |
Assisted by a large corps of able writers.
Terms of Subscription:
One copy, one year | $1.50 |
One copy, six months | .75 |
One copy, three months | .40 |
Five copies, one year, one address | 6.00 |
Ten or more, one year, to one address, each | 1.00 |
Single copy, 5 cents. Specimen copy free.
FACTS,
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE,
DEVOTED TO
Mental and Spiritual Phenomena,
INCLUDING
Dreams, Mesmerism, Psychometry, Clairvoyance,
Clairaudience, Inspiration, Trance, and Physical
Mediumship; Prayer, Mind, and Magnetic
Healing; and all classes of Psychical
Effects.
Single Copies, 10 Cents; $1.00 per year.
PUBLISHED BY
Facts Publishing Company,
(Drawer 5323,) BOSTON, MASS.
L. L. WHITLOCK, Editor.
For Sale by COLBY & RICH, 9 Bosworth Street.
HALL’S JOURNAL OF HEALTH,
ESTABLISHED 1854.
Published Monthly, 206 Broadway, N. Y.
At $1.00 Per Annum.
The next issue of this publication will complete
its 33d volume. It is the CHEAPEST Family
Health Periodical ever published, and well merits
the liberal patronage it enjoys. To every present
subscriber who will send us an additional one for
the next volume we will remit a handsome premium.
CAUTION.
A paper called “Hall’s Health Journal” is endeavoring
to ride into popularity on the strength of
our good name. Let not our patrons be deceived
by it.
HALL’S JOURNAL OF HEALTH,
206 Broadway, New York City.
THE CARRIER DOVE,
An Illustrated Monthly Magazine, devoted to
Spritualism and Reform.
Mrs. J. SCHLESINGER Editor.
Terms, $2.50 Per Year, Single Copies, 25 Cents.
Each number will contain the portraits and biographical
sketches of prominent mediums and spiritual
workers of the Pacific coast, and elsewhere,
and spirit pictures by our artist mediums; also
lectures, essays, poems, spirit messages, editorial,
and miscellaneous items.
Address all communications to
THE CARRIER DOVE
854½ Oakland St., California.
BANNER OF LIGHT,
THE OLDEST JOURNAL IN THE WORLD
DEVOTED TO THE
SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY.
ISSUED WEEKLY
At 9 Bosworth Street (formerly Montgomery Place),
corner Province Street, Boston, Mass.
COLBY & RICH,
Publishers and Proprietors.
Isaac B. Rich | Business Manager. |
Luther Colby | Editor. |
John W. Day | Assistant Editor. |
Aided by a large corps of able writers.
THE BANNER is a first-class Family Newspaper of
EIGHT PAGES—containing FORTY COLUMNS OF INTERESTING
AND INSTRUCTIVE READING—embracing
- A LITERARY DEPARTMENT.
- REPORTS OF SPIRITUAL LECTURES.
- ORIGINAL ESSAYS—Upon Spiritual, Philosophical and Scientific Subjects.
- EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
- SPIRIT-MESSAGE DEPARTMENT, and
- CONTRIBUTIONS by the most talented writers in the world, etc., etc.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION, IN ADVANCE:
Per Year | $3.00 |
Six Months | 1.50 |
Three Months | .75 |
Postage Free.
In remitting by mail, a post-office money order on
Boston, or a draft on a bank or banking house in
Boston or New York City, payable to the order of
Colby & Rich, is preferable to bank notes. Our
patrons can remit us the fractional part of a dollar in
postage stamps—ones and twos preferred.
Advertisements published at twenty cents per
line for the first, and fifteen cents per line for each
subsequent insertion.
Subscriptions discontinued at the expiration of the
time paid for.
☞ Specimen copies sent free.
COLBY & RICH
Publish and keep for sale at Wholesale and Retail a
complete assortment of
Spiritual, Progressive, Reformatory,
and Miscellaneous Books.
Any book published in England or America, not out of print, will be
sent by mail or express.
☞ Catalogues of books published and for sale by
Colby & Rich, sent free.
OPIUM
and MORPHINE HABITS
EASILY CURED BY A NEW METHOD.
DR. J. C. HOFFMAN,
JEFFERSON … WISCONSIN.
OXYGEN TREATMENT.
LOCAL AGENTS WANTED.
For terms, address
DR. B. M. LAWRENCE, Hartford, Conn.