pride of science, that he has by his own skill and application
purchased for himself the discernment which places him in so painful a
preeminence. The great triumph of man is in the power of education, to
improve his intellect, to sharpen his perceptions, and to regulate
and modify his moral qualities. But craniology reduces this to almost
nothing, and exhibits us for the most part as the helpless victims of a
blind and remorseless destiny.

In the mean time it is happy for us, that, as this system is perhaps the
most rigorous and degrading that was ever devised, so it is in
almost all instances founded upon arbitrary assumptions and confident
assertion, totally in opposition to the true spirit of patient and
laborious investigation and sound philosophy.

It is in reality very little that we know of the genuine characters
of men. Every human creature is a mystery to his fellow. Every
human character is made up of incongruities. Of nearly all the great
personages in history it is difficult to say what was decidedly the
motive in which their actions and system of conduct originated. We study
what they did, and what they said; but in vain. We never arrive at a
full and demonstrative conclusion. In reality no man can be certainly
said to know himself. "The heart of man is deceitful above all things."

But these dogmatists overlook all those difficulties, which would
persuade a wise man to suspend his judgment, and induce a jury
of philosophers to hesitate for ever as to the verdict they would
pronounce. They look only at the external character of the act by which
a man honours or disgraces himself. They decide presumptuously and in a
lump, This man is a murderer, a hero, a coward, the slave of avarice, or
the votary of philanthropy; and then, surveying the outside of his head,
undertake to find in him the configuration that should indicate these
dispositions, and must be found in all persons of a similar character,
or rather whose acts bear the same outward form, and seem analogous to
his.

Till we have discovered the clue that should enable us to unravel the
labyrinth of the human mind, it is with small hopes of success that we
should expect to settle the external indications, and decide that this
sort of form and appearance, and that class of character, will always be
found together.

But it is not to be wondered at, that these disorderly fragments of a
shapeless science should become the special favourites of the i