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Ask the sanguine advocate of the doctrine of man's perfectibility and progressive improvement, where is now the learning of Africa, who once taught wisdom to the rest of the world? Can he show us, among the hordes of barbarians, who now inhabit that continent, the least vestiges of science or of civilization? Are there any traces left among the tribes which now infest the shores of Barbary, of a race which could once oppose the arms of Rome? Alas, plunged in the deepest ignorance, degraded in themselves, and still more so, as the degraded slaves of their pious European brethren, the Africans present to the historian a melancholy spectacle of human degeneracy!

Let us cast our eyes still farther back on the magnificent ruins of the once renowned cities of the East, whose stupendous monuments of past splendor contain fragments of architecture, that remind the historian of science, and of civil policy, which will bear but a humiliating comparison with the corrupt and superstitious race now inhabiting those

countries.

To return from the digression into which I have been led, it is obvious, that as man always acts on the principle of pursuing his happiness, his depravity must be chiefly owing to his ignorance of his true interests; or to his being misguided by feelings, whose gratification is incompatible with the moral and intellectual prosperity of society. As ignorance, therefore, has so repeatedly enveloped the world in error, so on education we must rest our hopes of the amendment of our condition, and the perpetuity of our happiness.

It now remains to be shown, if possible, where education has always been most deficient; and from what source the remedy is to be sought for what it is which has always impeded the progress of wisdom, and which has caused all

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florishing Communities to fall, as if by some general law of fluctuation. I think I shall be able to show that this has been chiefly owing to our ignorance of the causes of individual character, our so frequently attributing to moral causes evils which had a physical origin; and our applying only inefficacious remedies, arising from a want of knowledge of the various relations between the moral and intellectual character of man, and the physical varieties of his organization. It was possibly the very great variety of intellectual character which man exhibits, that has misled enquirers hitherto with regard to the causes of its peculiarities. Philosophers attributed them to moral education, rather than to physical differences; because greater varieties of moral education, and more numerous combinations of external motives, could be shown to exist, than there appeared differences in man's physical structure, according to the then existing state of anatomical knowledge; therefore they reasoned correctly, and on the most philosophical principles; deducing their ideas of causation from an observed or imagined conjunction of phenomena. Helvetius was one who appears to have been deluded by this sort of reasoning.

I was always impressed with the notion that the differences of education, even admitting them to comprehend all the impressions received from without, from our birth upwards, were nevertheless wholly inadequate to explain the countless varieties discernible in the characters of individuals, which begin to manifest themselves from the earliest infancy. Who is there who has not discerned among schoolboys, nay among younger infants, the persevering and inflexible character of some, the versatility of others; the courage, the fearfulness, the sprightliness or dulness, the suavity, ferocity, the pride, the good-nature of different boys, which leads us to a

slight knowledge of their character; and regulates our intercourse with them. Similar varieties Similar varieties very early appear: in the intellectual qualifications; one boy makes verses, another remembers words well, a third has a strong predisposition to mathematics. I will not multiply examples, every one knows the facts. These varieties, which differ not only in degree but in kind of intellect, appear too early; and stick too fast by us through the chequered scenery of maturer life, to be ascribable to accidents of education. They always appeared to me too to have something of a constitutional nature. I must enter here rather more widely into this field.

Man appears composed of three principles, Body, Life, and Mind. To explain myself I must observe, that the organic Fabric seems composed, like the rest of the universe, of common inert matter; which the ancients called Zoua. or Body. But in this assemblage of organs, while alive, is manifested a peculiar moving principle, performing in them all the functions of nourishment, secretion, growth, and motion; functions necessarily connected with those of the lungs, or of respiration. This principle they denominated Yux or Life. As however the living actions of the animal system were insufficient to account for the operations of › thought, and as they often went forward without the con-. currence of the will, or of the rational faculty; it seemed reasonable in the ancients to ascribe consciousness to a third principle which they called Nous.

But the question is: does not Mind, like Life, manifest itself by material conditions; and are not the organs of the mind, like those of the life, liable to variation in different individuals? It really appears to me that the mind, however independent it may be in its own nature, only acts, at present, by means of organs; it would be rational therefore to ascribe its varieties to those of the organization; even were

the peculiar expressions of mind in the countenance less marked than they really are. The phenomena presented by many diseases contribute also to impress my mind with these notions. The influence of the automatic functions on the mind is strikingly exemplified in cases of hypochondriasis; where a slight derangement of the digestive organs, distinguished perhaps by some peculiar circumstances of hepatic irritation, is known to influence the operations of thought to such a degree as to convert the most lively man, into the most morose and dejected; to pervert the judgment, alter the moral sentiments, and, in time, to inflict the patient with erroneous perceptions of the external world, and even of his own person. It is often in such paroxysms that suicide and other acts of insanity are committed by persons who have a predisposition to such violence, or whose moral education does not present sufficiently strong counter motives. Sometimes this state of body is, more or less, characteristic of the habitual temperament of the individual. This was the case with an eminent French writer; strongly marked where the melancholy Rousseau became the voluntary Judge of the unfortunate Jean Jacques. The whole life of this malade imaginaire is a striking instance of a constitution predisposed by organization to ideality and melancholy, unsubdued by moral discipline in his youth.

There are then varieties of our organic fabric, exemplified in the various sizes and figures of the skeleton, from the beauty of the Belvidere Apollo down to the deformity of little Hunchback of Bagdad, in the Arabian Nights. There are varieties of the principle of life manifested in all the morbid actions of our vessels in disease, whether chronic or incidental: as we may trace in the multiform appearances of complaints, various as the infinite combinations of colors, or of sound, while we cast our eyes over the catalogue of human infirmities, and trace the mysterious

laws of their physiology, from the steady and destructive progress of consumption, to the shortlived and whimsical dance of St. Vitus.

And have we not every conceivable disorder of mind also? Whoever doubts of this, let him grope through the gloomy wards of a lunatic hospital, and contemplate the wreck of intellect shattered in a thousand different ways, and he may familiarize himself with beings who exhibit diseases of every primitive and compound faculty of the soul; which, however pure and single in its essential nature, only acts here through a corporeal medium, and which seems chained to an unhealthy and distracted organization. But in individuals at large in the world, we see all degrees of perfection and of defect. The cuique suus error is every where applicable and a variety of form seems to attend variety of mind.

All the disorders of life, sooner or later, affect the mind; the temper is destroyed and perverted, the perceptions obscured, and the evil not being confined to the individual, is offensive to society with which he is connected. While these cases illustrate the connection of mind with body and life, they leave us with hope of ameliorating many of our calamities by cultivating the science of medicine and physiology. But these are varieties ascribable to direct disease. There are more permanent varieties of character, connected with established peculiarities of the vital functions and of organization, which can only be learned by the most minute investigation of our physical differences.

The Observations on the Physiology of the Brain, of Dr. Gall, seem to promise a source from which we may draw some knowledge of these varieties. It comprehends a theory which proposes to point out the intellectual character and moral sentiments of individuals, by references to certain hitherto unperceived prominences and depressions on the

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