mountable by
mere measurement. It will become necessary in the depraved classes to
look at the condition of the circulation about the head, and the
facial indications of the organs that have been cultivated. If these
are not sufficient to guide us we must fall back upon psychometry.
The morbid condition of the brain is a conspicuous fact, which we must
not ignore, and it is important to learn how to detect it in the
appearance of the individual, or in his psychometric indications and
Pathognomy, which is itself a profound science and important guide to
character. (Pathognomy is the science of expression, and has an exact
mathematical basis.)
We should bear in mind that it is just as possible to have impaired
and unhealthy conditions in any part of the brain as to have them in
the stomach, liver, lungs, or spinal cord. Physical diseases are
contagious and so are moral. It is generally impossible to preserve
the moral organs and faculties of a youth in healthy condition who is
allowed to associate habitually with the depraved; and it is very
difficult indeed for the mature adult to preserve his brain and mind
in sound condition when compelled to associate with the depraved. To
those who are very impressible, the contagion of vice, bad temper,
profanity, turbulence, lying, obscenity, sullenness, melancholy, etc.,
is as inevitable as the contagion of small pox.
Our criminals are generally exposed to the contagion of crime in
youth, and as they advance they are immersed in this contagion in
prisons, which are the moral pest-houses in which law maintains the
intense contagion of criminal depravity. Napoleon was an admirable
subject for such contamination, and when we learn how he was reared
amid the lawlessness and general scoundrelism of Corsica, we do not
wonder that he became an imperial brigand. The low ethical standard of
mankind, generally, and especially of historians, has heretofore
prevented a just estimate of the character of Napoleon. Royal
criminals have escaped condemnation; but the recent review of
Napoleon's career by Taine gives a just philosophic estimate of the
man, which coincides with the impartial estimation of psychometry.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT.
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