with which the Deity compels man, will-I
nill-I, into eating. Secondly, having settled it to be God's will that
man should continue his species, we discovered an organ of amativeness,
forthwith. And so with combativeness, with ideality, with causality,
with constructiveness,--so, in short, with every organ, whether
representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure
intellect. And in these arrangements of the Principia of human action,
the Spurzheimites, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon the whole,
have but followed, in principle, the footsteps of their predecessors:
deducing and establishing every thing from the preconceived destiny of
man, and upon the ground of the objects of his Creator.

It would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if
classify we must) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally
did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of
what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do. If we cannot
comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable
thoughts, that call the works into being? If we cannot understand him in
his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of
creation?

Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an
innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something,
which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term.
In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive
not motivirt. Through its promptings we act without comprehensible
object; or, if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we
may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings
we act, for the reason that we should not. In theory, no reason can be
more unreasonable, but, in fact, there is none more strong. With certain
minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I
am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong
or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels
us, and alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming
tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of analysis, or
resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive
impulse-elementary. It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in
acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a
modification of that whi