ly an indication yet appears of the higher faculties of man. For some time, the child's expressions are by gestures only. About the end of the first year the child begins to stand, and next to walk, which task in a few months is mastered. The first efforts to speak are contemporaneous with this. Sounds, at first inarticulate, but by imitation, begin to form words. When, by frequent efforts, power is acquired, its exercise is a great source of pleasure. The reasoning of infants is instinctive, like that of animals. Infancy, properly so called, lasts till the completion of the first dentition, about the third year. Then begins childhood, lasting till the completion of the second dentition; and this period, too, is marked by incessant activity, affording great gratification, and developing at once the body and mind. Reason advances slowly. To gain an acquaintance with objects and their relations, is the business of education at this period, and not to load the memory. The moral, as well as intellectual faculties, are to be cultivated. So great is the activity, at this time of life, that, as Mr Wilderspin remarks, inactivity in a child under six years old is incompatible with health. The mere action of the mental and bodily faculties is the highest gratification to childhood. Its movements are the spontaneous joyous outbreak of conscious powers. The exercise of the faculties is a gratification independent of ulterior objects. In the third or fourth year, the different tastes of the different sexes become apparent. At seven or eight, the distinctive genius of the child begins to appear. Next is to be marked the transition from childhood to puerility, lasting till the period of puberty. In this period, individuality of character, and the divarication of the sexes, become daily more apparent. This, like childhood, is a joyous period. The feelings at this time are strong impulses; and here is another proof of the powerful influence of organization. The characteristics of this period are the same in every sphere of life. The boy devoted to education in the dead languages, his memory loaded with abstractions, confined in an impure atmosphere, and subjected to the discipline of cramming, may well "creep, like a snail, unwillingly to school." Yet the moment the school portals open, the natural impulses of the boy resume their sway. The same result is seen in those who, from their earliest years, have to work for scanty food and ragged clothing. All these manifestations naturally arise from the daily expansion of the organs with an energy irrepressible. The inward impulses rise superior to all outward impediments. The lower feelings are strong, but somewhat held in check by the desire of knowing. The destruc

tive and opposive impulses are not yet strong, nor has the desire of acquisition acquired its full power. Youth succeeds, extending from puberty to manhood and womanhood, which arrives in the female at the twentieth, and the male at the twenty-fourth year. At this period the organic development exercises a new and unwonted power. One great master passion rules, and makes a greater revolution than any before, except the change of birth. Feeling and thought now exercise activity unknown before. The imaginative and inventive genius awakes. Love and poetry walk hand in hand. There are dreams by day as well as by night. At the commencement of manhood, the muscular system acquires its greatest power, and there is a great advance in the moral and intellectual qualities. Bold and dangerous enterprise, generous sentiment, and the high spirit of independence, are the natural results of this change. At the twenty-fourth year, the frame, under ordinary circumstances, attains its highest power, and this is the period when conscious power puts forth its greatest energies for good or evil. At this period, whatever the object of life, there is a spirit of fervour and enthusiasm which no other period knows. This is the period of heroism, of the richest poetry, of scientific discovery. At this period, too, the tendency to crime exists in its highest energy. The greatest amount of crime is committed between twenty and thirty years of age. Before twenty years of age, crimes against property are in the greatest proportion; afterwards, crimes against the person predominate, and, as age advances, bold murder gives place to cunning and secret assassination. The statistics of insanity, as well as of crime, correspond with the laws of organic development. More men become insane from thirty to fifty than at any other period; and this is just the time when the mind, having acquired its full power, is subjected to the highest efforts. The same thing is true of suicide.

Having thus traced man to maturity, you have seen how the mind and the body advance together. The mind is unchangeable, but its organs are constantly undergoing change, and the manifestations of the mind are governed by specific laws, determinate and uniform as those which govern the world of matter. If this were not so, the foundations of society would be uprooted; all would become disorder, and social relations would be impossible.-The latter part of the subject, the inental manifestations in the later years of life, I shall reserve for another lecture.

III. Reply to Mr W. R. Lowe's "Remarks on Mr Prideaux's Theory of Volition, as the cause of Phreno-Mesmeric Manifestations." By Mr T. S. PRIDEAUX.*

In making a few observations on Mr Lowe's article, headed "Remarks on Mr Prideaux's Theory of Volition, as the cause of Phreno-Mesmeric Manifestations" (vol. xvii., p. 276), I must commence by remarking, that it appears to me calculated to produce a most erroneous idea of the nature, scope, and object of the paper to which it purports to reply. In fact, its perusal would induce the supposition that it was written in answer to an article headed" Volition adequate to explain all the phenomena of Mesmerism," rather than as a response to one in which this question was only introduced incidentally, and discussed quite as a subordinate to the main question at issue. The title of my communication was "The Fallacy of Phreno-Magnetism;" my motive in writing it was to make an effort to check the headlong career of hasty and unfounded assumption, in which it appeared to me many phrenologists were embarking; and my direct object, to demonstrate that we were in possession of no evidence sufficient to prove that the phenomena exhibited were proofs of the localities of the organs-not to establish what their cause really was.

Now, I have no more objection to discuss the extent to which mesmeric phenomena are dependent upon volition, than any other subject; but I cannot allow the question of the reality of Phreno-Mesmerism to be made contingent upon, or to be even by implication identified with, the question of the sufficiency or insufficiency of volition as an explanation of the phenomena. No one will venture to assert, volition being proved insufficient, ergo Phreno-Mesmerism is a truth; the two questions are essentially distinct, and blending them together is the surest means to introduce confusion into our ideas on the subject.

Though I believe volition to play a most important rôle in Mesmerism, I have never entertained on this subject the opinions attributed to me by Mr Lowe, viz., "that volition is sufficient to unravel the tangled web of Mesmerism," "is the sole agent at work," &c. In fact, in the very article to which Mr Lowe's is a reply, I have on every occasion, when specu

*We have slightly abridged some portions of this article, without, it is hoped, materially injuring its substance.-ED.

lating on the probable cause of phreno-magnetic phenomena, referred to sympathy and volition_conjointly.*

I am fully aware that a vast deal of most plausible evidence can be brought forward in support of Phreno-Mesmerism; but yet, may not the opposing facts be so decisive as to turn the balance of probability against it, and to force us to disbelieve it, irrespectively of the question whether we can give an explanation of the seeming evidence in its favour? Undoubtedly yes; and such is, in my opinion, the case at present with Phreno-Mesmerism. I consider that the facts developed on the subject, regarded as a whole, are much more irreconcileable with the supposition of its truth, than with that of its falsity. That by touching lightly on the opposing facts, and enlarging on those of a contrary tendency, a very respectable case may be made out in its favour, I have never for a moment doubted; and such, it appears to me, with all due deference to this gentleman, has been the plan pursued by Mr Lowe.

It is not a little curious, that whilst Mr Lowe appears to consider it incumbent upon those who oppose the truth of Phreno-Mesmerism to reconcile all the seeming evidence in its favour with their belief, he seems altogether to overlook the prior incumbency which devolves upon those who maintain its truth, to reconcile with such an assumption the numerous body of facts in existence of an opposite tendency; which if they fail in doing, the question must be regarded as one remaining in abeyance, and perhaps also as one in which the opposing facts so much preponderate, as to render the affirmative highly improbable.

Even in Mr Lowe's own experience, certain facts have occurred, of which (now that he seems disposed to abandon the conclusions he once drew from them) it might have been expected that he would have offered a few words in explanation. In the Journal preceding the one in which my paper on "The Fallacy of Phreno-Mesmerism" was contained, there appeared an article from his pen on the "New Organs of Mr Spencer Hall," in which he says, " This class of investigators (to which, after much examination and thought, though once, perhaps, something more than a sceptic, I must now confess my adherence) deem mesmeric excitation, if not the only, at least the best, means of discovering and actually demonstrating the functions of the various portions of the mind's central apparatus-the grand tribunal before which the claims of every candidate for admission into the list of the primitive faculties can best be examined-the experimen

"All the phenomena testify to the influence of sympathy or volition." Page 164, line 17.

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tum crucis which will decide more satisfactorily than the most elaborate reasonings the number and nature of those various simple organs which, in the complicated machinery of the brain, forge and evolve our various thoughts, feelings, and emotions." And a little farther on he observes, "The object of this article is, however, not to speak of belief, but to detail (and that not in a dogmatical spirit) some few experiments which I have witnessed, and which certainly prove one of two things; viz., either that Mesmerism does not confirm Phrenology at all, or that, if it does, it establishes, in addition, the subdivision of most of our present organs.' Mr Lowe next proceeds to detail cases shewing that Phreno-Mesmerism establishes certain subdivisions in the organs of Colour, Alimentiveness, Philoprogenitiveness, and Ideality. The next number of the Journal, however, contained an account of some Phreno-Mesmeric experiments by Mr Brindley, the results of which were directly opposite to those of Mr Lowe.

These results, being, as they are, strictly in accordance with what I have before stated to be my experience of phreno-magnetic phenomena, viz. that they were so contradictory as to neutralize each other,-do not, of course, surprise me. I merely see in them a confirmation of my opinion, that they have no more stable foundation than the imagination of the patient sympathizing with the fancies floating in the minds of the operator and spectators; but from Mr Lowe, who appears to regard as doubtful the conclusion he once drew from them, yet does not embrace his own alternative, viz. that Mesmerism either established these conclusions, or did not confirm Phrenology at all, some explanation might have been looked for. He, however, dismisses the subject without attempting to offer any-quietly observing, "The paper of Mr Brindley requires no very extended notice. His experiments, if they were carefully conducted, appear to militate against those mentioned by myself as suggesting the subdivision of many of our ascertained organs. Let such experiments be multiplied and carefully recorded by various operators, and we may then, perhaps, ere long be able satisfactorily to adjust the subject." I cannot, however, allow them to be dismissed so quickly from the scene. I must remind Mr Lowe that one fact can never destroy another, whatever may be the fate of the erroneous conclusions we are apt to draw from them. The phenomena elicited and recorded by Mr Lowe and Mr Brindley, are facts which have occurred,―must have had a cause, and establish conclusions which cannot be avoided. Since the set of results obtained by one of these gentlemen is directly anVOL. XVIII.-N. S. NO. XXIX.-JAN. 1845.

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