![]() ![]() ![]() It is not more incomprehensible than distinct. No one who trustingly consults his own soul will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question. But in the case of that something which I term Perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment prevails.Īn appeal to one’s own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed. Its principle regards our well-being and thus the desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of Combativeness. The phrenological Combativeness has for its essence the necessity of self-defence. But a glance will show the fallacy of this idea. It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the Combativeness of Phrenology. It is a radical, a primitive impulse - elementary. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong’s sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. I am not more sure that I breathe, than that the conviction of the wrong or impolicy of an action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us, to its prosecution. With certain minds, under certain circumstances, it becomes absolutely irresistible. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable, but in reality there is none so strong. Or if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say that through its promptings we act for the reason that we should not. Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive - a motive not motivirt. Induction à posteriori would have brought Phrenology to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something which, for want of a better term, we may call Perverseness. If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts that call the works into being? If we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of creation? It would have been safer - if classify we must - to classify upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do. And in these arrangements of the principia of human action, the Spurzheimites, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon the whole, have but followed, in principle, the footsteps of their predecessors deducing and establishing every thing from the preconceived destiny of man, and upon the ground of the objects of his Creator. And so with Combativeness, with Ideality, with Causality, with Constructiveness so, in short, with every organ, whether representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure intellect. Again, having settled it to be God’s will that man should continue his species, we discovered an organ of Amativeness forthwith. We then assigned to man an organ of Alimentiveness, and this organ is the scourge by which Deity compels man to his food. In the matter of Phrenology, for example, we first determined, naturally enough, that it was the design of Deity that man should eat. Having thus fathomed to his satisfaction the intentions of Jehovah, out of these intentions he reared his innumerable systems of Mind. ![]() The intellectual or logical man, rather than the understanding or observant man, set himself to imagine designs - to dictate purposes to God. It cannot be denied that all metaphysicianism has been concocted à priori. We could not understand - that is to say, we could not have understood, had the notion of this primum mobile ever obtruded itself - in what manner it might be made to further the objects of humanity, either temporal or eternal. We saw no need for the propensity in question. Its idea has not occurred to us, simply because of its seeming supererogation. ![]() We have suffered its existence to escape our senses solely through want of belief - of faith - whether it be faith in Revelation or faith in the inner teachings of the spirit. In the pure arrogance of the reason we have all overlooked it. In the consideration of the faculties and impulses - of the prima mobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them. ![]()
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