FROM THE PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL: COMPRISING FORTY ARTICLES IN THE FIRST FIVE VOLUMES, CHIEFLY BY GEORGE COMBE, JAMES SIMPSON, AND EDITED BY ROBERT COX. EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN & STEWART, AND JOHN ANDERSON JUN.; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO., LONDON; JOHN MACLEOD, GLASGOW; BOSTON, UNITED STATES. MDCCCXXXVI. PREFACE. THE first Number of the Phrenological Journal was published in December 1823; and the work, of which about fifty quarterly parts have been issued, is at present in its tenth volume. Some of the earlier numbers having now become scarce, or gone altogether out of print, it has been thought advisable to republish, in a cheap and convenient form, the more interesting and instructive papers contained in the first five volumes. The contents of the Phrenological Journal, like those of most scientific periodicals, are of a mixed description; some of the papers relating to matters of comparatively ephemeral importance, or which have been more fully elucidated in subsequent volumes; while others-forming the more numerous class of treatises are devoted to the exposure of errors yet widely prevalent, or to the discussion and illustration of those abiding phenomena of human nature which can never lose their interest in the eyes of inquiring men. It is almost exclusively from the latter class that the papers now reprinted have been taken. All |