loured light on the sense, These opinions may be right or wrong— but the only question now at issue is, whether they are inconsistent with the admission of the fact, that colours are beautiful-and whether the man who holds them must be disbelieved, when he says that he has à To us, on the contrary, it appears keen sense of this kind of beauty? manifest, that no one could theorize intelligibly on the subject, who had not a considerable share of this sensibility;—and at all events, that the perception and admission of this beauty is necessarily involved in the very attempt to account for it.

Where, then, is the pretext for saying, that the testimony of the Reviewer is in any respect at variance with the opinions he is supposed to have formerly delivered? Mr Combe could not possibly have looked into the treatise on Beauty, without knowing that its existence in colours was fully and distinctly admitted throughout-and that, when it was said that colours were absolutely indifferent to the eye, nothing else was, or could be meant, than that their beauty did not arise from the physical effect of the coloured rays on the organ, but from the associations to which that, and all the other undeniable beauty in the universe, was there referred. To have perverted the words to any other sense, and that for the purpose of throwing discredit on a positive assertion, which there was but small temptation to falsify, is, we are compelled to say, but a poor and disingenuous way of disposing of an argument.

The only other passage which seems to call for notice, is that in which Mr C. is pleased to allege that the explanation of an extraordinary. case, which is imputed to the Phrenologists at p. 317 of the Review, is fiction of the Reviewer's own,' and gratuitously put into the a pure mouths of his antagonists, in order to expose them to ridicule. This certainly seems to require some explanation; and, fortunately, admits of

an easy one.

The case alluded to is that of a Welshman, who, in consequence of an injury on the head, was found to have lost all his English, and, at the same time, to have recovered all the Welsh, which he had formerly completely forgotten. Mr Combe says, in his Pamphlet, that he quoted this case from an opponent-but nothing of this kind is hinted in his book, where it is introduced merely as a farther illustration of his doctrine and, after quoting it, he there adds, Such a fact as this is totally inexplicable on any principle, except that of the existence of Organs, by which the faculties are manifested :-for it could not be the mind itself ⚫ that was so affected,' &c. These words are given as a quotation in the Review; and they are admitted to be fairly quoted, with all the context necessary for their clear understanding—while no part of what fol lows in the Review is given, or can possibly be supposed to be given, as a quotation. The Reviewer, however, assuming that Mr Combe had intimated that these strange phenomena were explicable on the Phrenological principle of material organs reacting on the mind, proceeded to expose this Phrenological solution, by analyzing it into the propositions it seemed necessarily to involve. These were, 1. That this marvellous case of the Welshman was explicable on the Phrenological prin

ciple of material organs affecting the mind by their affections. 2. That the organs here affected must have been the organs of language. And, 3. that those material organs must have been so affected that a part, employed in the recollection or suggestion of English words, must have been disabled by the blow, and another part, formerly eployed in the suggestion of Welsh words, restored to activity; and finally, he reminded his readers that, assuming these propositions to be correctly deduced, they must be maintained by the Phrenologists, in their strict literal sense, and not as metaphors used to illustrate an obscure mental phenomenon. It is for imputing this doctrine, or this solution of the Welshman's case to the Phrenologists, that he is now taxed by Mr Combe with having had recourse to a pure fiction, and attempted to fasten on them an absurd invention of his own, for the mere purpose of holding them up to ridicule.

Now, the justice of this attack depends manifestly upon the soundness, or rather the good faith, of the inferences or deductions by which the Reviewer attempts to fasten down these propositions on the Phrenologists. That they are imputed to them as inferences from the passage already quoted from Mr C.'s book, must be apparent to any one who looks at the article; and we think it will hardly be disputed, that it is just as fair to impute to a man what his words necessarily imply, as what they directly express; and that the imputation can never be made matter of reproach, if the words even probably or naturally bear such an implication. Let us see, then, whether Mr Combe can possibly refuse any of the inferences on the strength of which we have imputed to him the solution he now so vehemently rejects.

In the first place, we suppose he will scarcely deny, that when a man says that a particular phenomenon is utterly inexplicable, except on a certain supposition, this is equivalent to saying that it is explicable on that supposition. 2dly, It can scarcely be said to be an inference, for it is directly stated by Mr C., that the supposition on which the Welshman's case is thus held to be explicable, is, that of the existence of organs by which the faculties are manifested-and that this means material organs, by the physical injury of which the mind may be affected. 3dly, Will Mr C. question the fairness of our inference, that the organs affected in this case must have been the material organs of Language?—and it is worth noticing, that this is expressly stated in the Review, not as an assertion of Mr Combe, but as an inference from the words he had employed. The form of expression used being as they have now left us no organ of Memory, the injury in question must have affected some part of the organ of Language. 4th, The only remaining assertion which the Reviewer has held to be implied in the phrenological solution' is, that the blow on the Welshman's head must have disabled that part of his organ of language which suggested English words, and restored the dormant activity of that part which supplied Welsh words. We admit that this is not so obviously or necessarily implied as any of the preceding-but, we confess, we cannot yet imagine how Mr Combe is to escape from it. The organ of language, it will be recollected, is a material organ-a considerable mass of brain, of

a delicate and unknown structure-and by a blow, or injury on it, the effects in question were produced-these effects being, to enable the patient to recollect a language he had previously forgotten, and to make him forget one he had subsequently acquired. How this could be accomplished by a change in the material organ, except on the supposition that one part of it was disordered and unfitted for its functions-and another restored to a more perfect use of them, we are certainly unable to comprehend. The apparent absurdity is plainly chargeable on the idea of accounting for such a mental phenomenon by any change in a material organ-But that is the very essence of the phrenological solution-and it does still appear to us, that the notion of separate parts of that organ being appropriated to separate functions, is necessary to make that solution conceivable. An incapacity to remember English words, proceeding from a blow on the head, can only be explained, we imagine, by supposing that it had broken and deranged the machinery by which they were formerly remembered-and this is at least consistent and conceivable:-But that this same broken and deranged machinery (and here again we say that the Phrenologists must take these words in their direct and literal sense) should, in consequence of the injury it had suffered, become capable of performing functions for which it had been long unfit, we humbly apprehend to be neither the one nor the other. We shall not stickle, however, for this being a necessary inference from Mr Combe's explanation-but are sure we have said far more than enough to show that the reviewer might very naturally and sincerely take it for indisputable-and is chargeable with no wanton or malicious invention in representing it as involved in that explanation. The sense in which he used the words serious and literal,' can require no farther proof or illustration.

And now we bid farewell, for a long time, and probably for ever, to the Phrenologists. We part with them, too, not only in peace, but in amity for though we cannot yet think, either with respect or seriousness of the German Doctors, we have hitherto been indebted to them for nothing but amusement; while we consider Mr Combe as a very sensible and ingenious man, and acknowledge his pamphlet to be written, not only with much acuteness, but, with the two exceptions we have noticed, with great propriety and fairness. We certainly think it entirely sophistical and evasive; and imagine we could easily show, that not one of our substantial objections is at all affected by his answers. But we really care too little about the subject, to enter into farther controversy about it; and, with all possible respect for its Edinburgh champion and his disciples, we must fairly confess, that the whole system appears to us such mere nonsense, that we cannot bring ourselves to go again seriously into its details. How any man can get over the objections, of there being no more than 36 such faculties as are alleged by the Phrenologists

*We speak of them here of course only in their Phrenological capacity. They may be great anatomists, or excellent physicians, for any thing we know to the contrary.

-and of the admitted want of any perceptible organs in the brain— to neither of which Mr Combe has made any thing that deserves the name of a reply, we have never been able to comprehend. If, however, we find, at the end of a few more years, that the science is still known by name among persons of sense, we may think it our duty to look once more into its pretensions, and give ourselves another chance of conversion :-And from this, we can assure Mr Combe, that we shall not be deterred, any more than we have been instigated in our late opposition, by any of that dread of being degraded from our present intellectual station, to which he is pleased to ascribe our heresy and unbelief. We really do not imagine that that station, whatever it may be, has been in any degree acquired, by our opposition to the Phrenologists, and never had any notion that it could be affected by their completest success. This is a fancy of Mr Combe's, akin to that which has led him to describe his Reviewer as extremely provoked at finding that Phrenology will not die ;-and, while he addresses him as an individual, to identify him with two former Reviewers, of whose separate identity he also takes notice, in order to describe this as his third desperate attack on a system which had twice withstood the onset of the same unlucky hand.

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