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Alfred Russel Wallace : Alfred Wallace : A. R. Wallace :
Russel Wallace : Alfred Russell Wallace (sic)

 
 
Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, F.R.S. (S531b: 1896)

 
Editor Charles H. Smith's Note: A letter to the Editor of The British Phrenological Year Book 1896 that was printed on its page 64. To link directly to this page, connect with: http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S531B.htm


     (England's Greatest Living Naturalist.)

     "I am still a firm believer in Phrenology. It is ignored by modern physiologists, chiefly, I think, because it is thought too easy and simple, and was seized upon by popular lecturers, who were often ignorant men. It is, however, a true science, founded in the only true way--step by step the result of observation of the connection between development and function. G. Combe's "System of Phrenology," is a work that has rarely been surpassed.

     The modern method of studying the functions of the brain, by laying it bare and exciting it by galvanic currents, is so unnatural and unscientific as to lead necessarily to false conclusions.

     None are so prejudiced as men of science. For fifty years they denounced mesmerism as imposture; now, under the name of hypnotism, they are at length, in France and elsewhere, finding that all is true.

     So soon as any man of sufficient eminence studies Phrenology in the only way it can be properly studied, that will be found also to be true.

     Huxley once told me that Phrenology could not be true, because the skull varied in thickness irregularly, and the thickness of each part could not be told by external observation. I replied that the variations of thickness in crania were measured by tenths of inches, while the varying dimensions of the skull were measured by whole inches, so the smaller could not hide the greater variation. Besides, the usual variations in thickness of parts of the skull are well known."


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