Franz Joseph Gall

“ Gall led a happy and peaceful life without soldiers or police. The only bayonet that governed them was the breviary of the monk; and the only sword was the crosier of the abbot. We must also remember that Gall and his followers, axe in hand, hewed down the forest, or with the spade freed the earth from thorns, thistles, and roots. He must therefore be considered as the founder and originator of the agricultural and social glories of Switzerland; for by the law of nature and of intelligence the glories of the effect must redound to the honor of the cause. ”

“ With Kasper Spurzheim, a talented young man, who had embraced his doctrines while attending the school of medicine in Vienna, Dr. Gall changed his abode to Paris. In that city, with the aid of his pupil, he succeeded in making a considerable impression. He afterward became a citizen of France, and [Pg 9] died in 1828, near Paris, leaving several works valuable to the student of phrenology. In the meantime Dr. Spurzheim visited England. His lectures were listened to with considerable interest and many in that country adopted his views. In 1832 he came to the United States ”

“ It is with great pleasure that I am able to say that the system of Gall and Spurzheim was a wonderful approximation to the truth. Dr. Gall was pre-eminently the scientific pioneer of the nineteenth century. No single individual ever did so much to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge, and to establish the permanent foundations of philosophy. Up to his time, the brain of man was at once the greatest mystery of anatomy and the repository of a greater amount of wisdom and truth than all other realms of science which had previously been explored. ”

“ Convinced by this, that there is a diversity of talent and of disposition, he encountered another obstacle in the conventional terms used to express the actions of the mind. Metaphysicians spoke of judgment, perception, thought, memory and imagination, but Gall wished to express a faculty for music, for painting and for mechanics, he therefore abandoned the theories and opinions of others resolving to learn by direct observation from nature ”

“ Gall, St., an Irish monk who, about 585, accompanied St. Columban to France in his missionary labours, banished from which he went to Switzerland, and founded a monastery on the Lake of Constance, which bore his name; d. about 646.
Galland, Antoine, French Orientalist, born in Picardy, professor of Arabic in the College of France; was the first to translate the “Arabian Nights” into any European tongue (1646-1715) .
Gallas, an Ethiopian race occupying the S. and E. of Abyssinia, energetic, intelligent, and warlike; follow mostly pastoral occupations ”

“ The Saxon Emperors had hard battles to fight against these invaders, and there were few places in Germany where the peaceful pursuits of the monasteries and schools could be carried on without interruption. St. Gall is the one bright star in the approaching gloom of the next centuries. Not only was the Bible read, and translated, and commented upon in German at St. Gall, as formerly at Fulda, but Greek and Roman classics were copied and studied for educational purposes. ”

“ Gall, he followed reverently upon the shining path of Notker and Tutilo and Ratpert and Hartmann, and added his name to theirs in the development of the sequences and antiphons of the Church.
Nor was this all. He became an excellent historian, a distinguished musician, and a renowned philosopher and theologian. In mathematics he was equally skilled and ingenious. He is considered by some to have invented the astrolabe, the first instrument by which the height and distances of stars were calculated. Assuredly he wrote an exhaustive treatise upon its use, whether he originated it or not ”

“ His father was named Georgius and his mother Leocadia, a descendant of Vectius Epagatus who, as the history of Eusebius relates, was a martyr at Lyons. They belonged among the leading senators so that no family could be found in the Gauls better born or nobler. And although Gall’s father wished to ask for a certain senator’s daughter for him, he took a single attendant and went to the monastery at Cournon, six miles from Clermont, and besought the abbot to consent to give him the tonsure. ”

“ He had a goodly girth and weighed full fifteen stone in his uniform; his mild blue eye had inspired confidence in a maiden of Billingsfield parish and Mrs. Gall was now rearing a numerous family of little Galls, all perhaps destined to become mild-eyed and portly village constables in their turn.
The squire, who was not destitute of a sense of humour, never thought of Mr. Gall without a smile, so much out of keeping did the man's occupation seem with his jovial humour. Mr. Gall, he said, was the kind of policeman who would bribe a refractory tramp to move on by the present of a pint of beer. ”

“ Benard Hollander, M.D., F.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., in his late book on "Functions of the Brain," says: "What Gall knew at the close of the eighteenth century is only just dawning upon the scientists of the present day. The history of Gall and his doctrine is given in these pages, and will be quite a revelation to the reader. No subject has ever been so thoroughly misrepresented, even by learned men of acknowledged authority." In his "Scientific Phrenology," Dr. ”

“ He sees the functions of the senses constituting distinct functions, and insists that the faculties of the soul must constitute equally distinct faculties; he sees each particular sense possessing an organ proper to itself, and thinks that each faculty of the soul must have its proper organ; [93] in one word, he looks upon the outer man, and constructs the inner man after the image of the outer man.
According to Gall, every thing between an organ of a sense and an organ of a faculty, between a faculty and sense, is similar. A [77] faculty is a sense. ”

“ Now here is the sum and the substance of Gall’s psycology. For the understanding, essentially a unit faculty, he substitutes a multitude of little understandings or faculties, distinct and isolate. And, as these faculties, which perform just as he wills them to do—which he multiplies according to his pleasure, [32] seem in his eyes to explain certain phenomena which are not well explained by the lights of ordinary philosophy, he triumphs!
He does not perceive that an explanation, which is words merely, adapts itself to any and to every thing. ”

“ Discussion for and against phrenology has been plentiful, and has ended in the abandonment of the inquiry, because the ideas of ordinary philosophy do not supply a sound theory on the subject. It has been found more convenient to ignore the labours of Gall than to endeavour to explain them. The truth is, that Gall has committed some errors of detail, which is always the case with every founder of a new doctrine, who cannot bring an unprecedented work to perfection by himself alone ”

“ As it seemed a very interesting department of natural science, I began by comparing the heads of my acquaintances with the phrenological map, and discovering so many striking coincidences that I was gradually satisfied as to its substantial truth, and I do not believe that any one has ever thus tested the discoveries of Gall and Spurzheim, without perceiving their general correctness, while many, with less critical observation, have accepted them as absolutely true. ”

“ Gall (230) , a NE. canton of Switzerland, on the Austrian frontier; its splendid lake and mountain scenery and mineral springs render many of its towns popular holiday resorts; the embroidery of cottons and other textiles is an important industry. St. Gall (28) , the capital, is situated on the Steinach, 53 m. E. of Zurich; is a town of great antiquity, and celebrated in past ages for its monastic schools; its magnificent mediæval cathedral has been restored; the old Benedictine monastery is used now for government purposes, but still contains its famous collection of MSS. ”

“ Scripture on the authority of Gall, "at the age of six years distinguished himself by a singular faculty for calculating in his head. At eight he entirely lost this faculty, and after that time he could calculate neither better nor faster than any other person. He did not retain the slightest idea of the manner in which he performed his calculations in childhood."
Turning now to the stupid or uneducated prodigies, Dase alone seems to have retained his power through life. ”

“ He suppresses the me, but insists that there is a soul. He abolishes the freewill, and yet contends that there is such a thing as morals. He makes of the idea of God an idea that is merely relative and conditional, but yet asserts that there may be such a thing as religion.
I say he abolishes the me; for the me is the soul. The soul is the understanding, general and one; but if there be no understanding as general, there can be no soul.
According to Gall, there is nothing real and positive except the faculties.
And these faculties alone are possessed of organs. ”

“ Gall still contains a copy of a work ascribed to Anselm of Canterbury written by him in the fulfilment of a vow. He resembled the Venerable Bede in the universality of his knowledge, and, like Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, he is one of the great teachers of his time. Always, during these darkening years, there appears to have been some ministering priest in the temple of education—some self-devoted, God-fearing man, who patiently kept the altar-fire burning, and spent his life, to the utmost verge, in climbing those altar-steps with fresh fuel for the flame. ”

“ Herophilus, who lived in the age of Ptolemy Soter, taught that the brain
was the seat of sensation and intellect, and that there was therein a
certain degree of localization of function. Galen later taught that the
brain is the seat of the soul and intellect. From these facts of history
the system of phrenology, though formulated by Dr. Gall, Dr. Spurzheim,
the Fowler Brothers and others, rests upon deductions derived from the
teachings of the demonstrators of anatomy and students of philosophy. ”

“ Shall Gall endow twenty-seven faculties, and Spurzheim not have the same privilege for seven or eight? [148] Shall Gall have a faculty for space, one for number, &c. and Spurzheim be refused one for time, one for extent, &c.? Is not Spurzheim half right, when he says:
“One does not readily perceive why M. Gall should desire to suggest to his readers that his [110] method of treating the doctrine of the brain is the only admissible one, and that there are no other organs than those he has recognised; that the organs do nothing but what he attributes to them ”

“ It is what puts so many men in the pulpit who could serve their Saviour much better planting the mild- eyed potato or harvesting the useful hoop-pole. It is what causes so many young ladies to rush into literature instead of the laundry—to become poets of passion instead of authors of pie.
Gall is a very common ailment. In fact, a man without a liberal supply of it is likely to be as lonesome in this land as a consistent Christian at a modern camp-meeting, or a gold-bug Democrat in Texas. Nearly everybody has it and is actually proud of it. ”

“ Lith. żalga, f., ‘pole.’ Note the double sense of the MidHG. and OHG. word. Probably some such idea as a ‘long pliable rod’ is the starting-point of the various meanings of the cognates.
Gallapfel, m., ‘gall, gall-nut,’ first occurs in early ModHG., from Lat. galla, whence also, probably, the equiv. AS. galloc; comp. E. oak-gall (galloak) . See Galle (2.) .
Galle (1.) , f., ‘gall, bile,’ from the equiv. MidHG. galle, OHG. galla, f.; common to Teut. in the same sense (only in Goth. is the weak neu. *gallô not recorded) ; comp. OSax. galla, Du. gal, AS. gealla, OIc. ”

“ So far physiognomy becomes less difficult, the data upon which it has to proceed, not having been falsified ab initio; but there arises a question in what state ought they to be examined? Dr. Gall is for shaving the head, and overhauling it as a Turk does a Circassian upon sale, that he may discover upon the outside of the skull the organs of fighting, murder, cunning, and thieving (near neighbours in his mappa cerebri,) of comparing colours, of music, of sexual instinct, of philosophical judgement &c. ”

“ After serving as priest in several Bavarian towns, he made his way in 1799 to Linz in Austria, where he was welcomed by Bishop Gall, and set to work first at Leonding and then at Waldneukirchen, becoming in 1806 pastor at Gallneukirchen. His pietistic movement won considerable way among the Catholic laity, and even attracted some fifty or sixty priests. The death of Gall and other powerful friends, however, exposed him to bitter enmity and persecution from about 1812, and he had to answer endless accusations in the consistorial courts. ”

“ Gall at once a very eminent rank among the learned, for anatomy being a physical science, there never has been any opposition, jealousy, or scepticism against its cultivation among the educated, nor was there anything marvellous in his revelation of cerebral functions, for he studied only the common familiar faculties of men and animals, and never looked into the mysterious and marvellous powers which a more thorough investigation has revealed. ”

“ The origin of the name of Galli is not absolutely certain, but it was doubtless a native Phrygian word: of course it has nothing to do with the Galatae or Gauls, whose first appearance in these countries dates only from B.C. 278. There is no reason to reject the tradition which derives it from a river in Phrygia: there were two small rivers called Gallus, both tributaries of the Sangarius, and the one which flows by Pessinus must be meant, whose water was fabled to cause this particular form of religious madness. ”