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alone can it be fairly tried and judged. I may say, also, that
the opposers of phrenology have, for the most part, overlooked
or misapprehended this fact; and that they have, instead of
endeavoring to controvert the alleged results of observation, in
the only way in which such results can be controverted, by
counter observation, resorted to reasoning or to speculation,
based only upon certain gratuitous and assumed premises, or,
as has been more commonly the case, to misrepresentation and
ridicule.
  Leaving this topic, then, I proceed to say, that the true sci-
ence of the human mind ought to issue in human good;-it
ought to be productive of beneficent results. Such has been
the case with all the other sciences ;-such ought, also, to be the
case with this. Astronomy, mathematics, geology, chemistry,
physiology, have all proved themselves not merely subjects of
abstract intellectual interest and curiosity, but matters of great
practical usefulness. They have acted upon man's daily life.
They have aided in improving his spiritual nature, and they
minister to his commonest wants. They enlarge and elevate
his mind; they clothe and nourish and protect his body. They
make the elements his servants to do his bidding. They make
his time-keepers, for seconds, or for ages, the stars on the dial-
plate of the sky. They carry him over the land,-they guide
him across the sea,-his pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by
night. Unfolding to him the mysteries of the visible world,
they bring him nearer to its author, God. If Phrenology, I
repeat, is what it pretends to be, it must also, like its sister
sciences, show itself directly instrumental in promoting the
best interests of the human race. And if it does so show itself,
we have a right to see herein another evidence of its truth. I
shall, therefore, after these preliminary observations, endeavor
to apply this test of the claims of Phrenology, derived from
some few of its leading tendencies and results, both practical
and philosophical-from the natural and inevitable issues of
its principles and laws.
  The first general result of the Phrenological doctrines of