Fowler's New illustrated self-instructor in phrenology and physiology : with over one hundred engravings, together with the chart and character of ... as marked by ... / by Lorenzo N. Fowler.

  • Fowler, L. N. (Lorenzo Niles), 1811-1896.
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Fowler's New illustrated self-instructor in phrenology and physiology : with over one hundred engravings, together with the chart and character of ... as marked by ... / by Lorenzo N. Fowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Governs, reader, you and I. And in all our functions. How can weak muscles put forth strength, or a sluggish brain manifest mental activity ? Hence, to become great, one must first become strong—and iD the special organs in whose functions he would excel. Would yoq become great mentally, then first become strong cerebrally. Or, would you render that darling boy a great man, first make him a powerful animal. Not that all powerful animals are great men, but that all great men are, and must needs be. powerful animals. Our animal nature is the basis of all mental and moral function. It so is in the very constitution of things, that mind can be put forth only in and by Its material organism, and is strong or weak, quick or sluggish, as its organism is either. If, in the plenitude of Divine Wisdom, man had been created a purely mental being, he would have needed no body, and could not have used one; whereas, instead, he has been created a compound being, composed of both body and mind. Nor are those seemingly opposite entities strangers to each other. Instead, they are inter-related by ties of the most perfect reciprocity—so perfect that every conceivable condition of either reciprocally affects the other. HEREDITARY ORGANISM AS AFFECTING MENTALITY. Hereditary organic quality is the first, basilar, and all-potent condition of all power of function, all happiness, all everything. This is con¬ genital—is imparted by the parentage along with life itself, of which it is the paramount condition and instrumentality. It depends mainly on the original nature of the parents, yet partly also on their existing states of body, mind, and health, their mutual love or want of it, and on other like primal life-conditioDs and causes. It lies behind and below, and is infinitely more potential than, education, and all asso¬ ciations and surrounding circumstances—is, in short, what renders tli» grain cereal, the oak oaken, fish fishy, fox foxy, swine swinish, tigei tigerish, and man human. Each creature much resembles a galvanic battery, and its life-force depends mainly on how that battery is “got up,’’ and this on those congenital conditions which establish the life-conditions—a subject infi¬ nitely important, and generally overlooked, but treated elsewhere.0 This condition can not well be described, hardly engraved, but is easily perceived by a practiced eye. It is quite analogous to Temperament, on which little has yet been written, but lies behind and below all temperaments—is, indeed, their determining cause. Some of it» signs are coarseness and fineness of hair, skin, color, form, motion, general tone of action and mental operation, etc. A comparison of Bee “Love ami Parentage,” “ Hereditary Descent,” etc.