| Chapter 2: | Philosophy, Psychology, and Physiology |
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were controversial, he ventured a hypothesis that “the offspring of insane parents are more liable to insanity, than those whose parents never shown any deranged manifestations of mind” (Spurzheim, 1817, p. 105). He further advised sane people to avoid forming marital alliances with families known to contain instances of insanity. Phrenological studies bordered on another vast body of medical literature devoted to the possible degenerative effects of close kin marriages (see Adam, 1865; J. Adams, 1814; N. Allen, 1869; Bell, 1859; Bemiss, 1858; Child, 1862; Crossman, 1861; Steger, 1855; Mitchell, 1865, 1866; Morel, 1857; Newman, 1869; and Ottenheimer 1996, for a recent discussion).
Like L. H. Morgan (see following text), phrenologists believed that the unity of man and beast lied in the commonality of their mental processes. Phrenologists explicitly identified the brain as the ground of kinship across the animal kingdom. Like the aforementioned philosophers of the genius, Gall did not think that human nature can be improved. However, his followers issued a call for the breeding of better humans, by analogy with dogs and horses. Spurzheim (1821, p. 64) wrote: “Man must be perfected like any other creature.” He amplified his laws of hereditary descent to the status of moral laws:
Like the philosophers of genius, phrenologists rejected “sublime and speculative ingenuity” in favor of “curiosity,” observation skills, and the aesthetic judgment of analogical connections in nature (Spurzheim, 1821, pp. 16–17). Although Gall originally rejected Lamarck, phrenologists Spurzheim and Combes, along with others,