ol2 Phenomenology of Mind he turns from the act to what is in his " mind," that he is something else in his " inner mind " than what he is in the act. Individuahty which commits itself to the objective element, when it sets out to do something, no doubt puts itself at the mercy of that element, to be altered and perverted as the latter decides. But what settles the character of the act is just this, — whether the deed is a real thing that holds together, or whether it is merely a pretended or "supposed" performance, which is in itself null and void and passes away. Objectification does not alter the act itseK, it merely shows what the deed is, i.e. whether it is or whether it is nothing.
The breaking up of this being into intentions, and subtleties of that sort, by which the real man, i.e. his deed, is to be reduced again to, and explained in terms of, his "conjectured" being, as even the individual himself may produce particular intentions to explain his own reahty, — all this must be left to idle " fancying " and " presuming " to furnish at its leisure. If this idle thinking will set its ineffective wisdom to work, and will deny the agent the character of reason, and use him so badly as to want to declare his figure and his Hneaments to be his real being instead of his act, then it may expect to get the retort above spoken of, a retort which shows that figure is not the inherent being, but is at any rate an object that can be pretty roughly handled.
If we look now at the range of relations as a whole in which self-conscious individuahty can be observed standing towards its outer aspect, there will be one left which has still to come before observation as an object. In psychology it is the external reahty of Phrenology 313 things wtiich in the life of mind is to have its counterpart conscious of itself and make the mind inteihgible. In physiognomy, on the other hand, mind or spirit is to be known in its own proper outer (physical) aspect, a form of being which may be called the language or utterance of mind — the visible invisibihty of its inner nature. There is still left the further character of the aspect of reahty, — that individuahty expresses its nature in its immediate actuahty, an actuahty that is definitely fixed and purely existent.
This last relation [of mind to its reahty] is distinguished from the physiognomic by the fact that this is the speaking presence of the individual, who in his practical active outer expression brings to hght and manifests at the same time the expression wherein he reflects himself into himself and contemplates himself, an expression which is itself a movement, passive lineaments which are themselves essentially a mediated form of existence. In the feature still to be considered, however, the outer phase is in the end an entirely inactive objectivity, which is not in itself a speaking sign, but presents itself on its own account, separate from the self-conscious process, and has the form of a bare thing.
In the first place in regard to the relation of the inner to this its outer, it is clear that that relation seems boimd to be understood in the sense of a causal connection, since the relation of one immanent and inherent entity to another, qua a necessary relation, is causal connection.
Now, for spiritual individuahty to have an elfect on the body, it must qua cause be itself corporeal. The corporeal aspect, however, wherein it acts as a 314 Phenomenology of Mind cause, is the organ, not the organ of action on external reahty, but of the action of the self-conscious being within itself, operating outward only on its own body. It is at the same time not easy to see what these organs can be. If we merely think of organs in general, the organ for work and toil would at once occur to us, so, too, the organ of sex, and so on. But organs of that sort are to be considered as instruments or parts which mind qua one extreme possesses as a means for dealing with the other extreme, which is an outer object. In the present case, however, an organ is to be rmderstood to be one wherein the self-conscious individual, as an extreme, maintains himself on his own account and for himself against his own proper actuahty which is opposed to him, the individual not being at the same time turned upon the outer world, but reflected in his own action, and where, further, his aspect of existence is not an existence objective for some other individual. In the case of physiognomy, too, the organ is no doubt considered as an existence reflected into seK and criticising the action. But in this case the existence is objective in character, and the outcome of the physiognomical treatment is that self-consciousness treats its own reahty as something to which it can be indifierent. This indifference disappears in the fact that this very state of being reflected into self is directly active: thereby that existence occupies and maintains a necessary relation to it. But to operate effectually on that existence it must itself have a being, though not properly speaking an objective being, and it must be shown to be an organ in this sense.
In ordinary hfe, anger, e.g. as an internal action of that sort, is located in the hver. Plato * even * Timaus, 71, 72.
Phrenology 315 assigns the liver something still higher, something which to many is even the highest function of all, viz. prophecying, or the gift of uttering in an irrational manner things sacred and eternal. But the process which goes on in the individual's hver, heart, and so on, cannot be regarded as one wholly internal to the individual, wholly reflected into his self; rather it is there in such a form that his Body is from the first smitten with it, and the process assumes a physical existence, becomes an animal force, reacting on and directed towards external reahty.
The nervous system, on the other hand, is the immediate stability of the organism in its process of movement. The nerves themselves, no doubt, are again organs of that consciousness which from the fu'st is immersed in its outward impulses. Brain and spinal cord, however, may be looked at as the immediate presence of self-consciousness, a presence self-contained, not an object and also not transient. In so far as the moment of being, which this organ has, is a being for another, is an objective existence, it is a being that is dead, and is no longer the presence of self-consciousness. This self-contained existence, however, is by its very nature a fluent stream, wherein the circles that are made in it immediately break up and dissolve, and where no distinction is expressed as permanent, or real. Meanwhile, as mind itself is not an abstractly simple entity, but a system of processes, wherein it distinguishes itself into moments, but in the very act of distinguishing remains free and detached; and as mind articulates its body as a whole into a variety of functions, and designates one particular part of the body for only one function: — so too one can 316 Phenomenology of Mind represent to oneself the fluent state of its internal existence [its existence within itself] as something that is articulated into parts. Moreover, it seems bound to be thought of in this way, because the self-reflected being of mind in the brain itself is again merely a middle term between its pure essential nature and its bodily articulation, an intermediate link, which thereby forms the nature of both, and thus from the side of the latter, must also again have in it the actual articulation.
The psycho-organic being has at the same time the necessary aspect of a stable subsistent existence. The former must retire, qua extreme of self-existence, and have this latter as the other extreme over against it, an extreme which is then the object on which the former acts as a cause. If now brain and spinal cord are that bodily self-existence of miad, the' skull and vertebral column form the other extreme separated of!, viz. the sohd fixed stable thing.
When, however, any one thinks of the proper place where mind exists, it is not the back that occurs to him, but merely the head. Since this is so, we can, in examining a form of knowledge hke what we are at present deahng with, content ourselves with this reason, — not a very bad one in the present case, — in order to confine the existence of mind to the skuU. Should it strike any one to take the vertebral column for the seat of mind, in so far as by it too knowledge and action doubtless are sometimes partly induced and partly educed, this would prove nothing in defence of the view that the spinal cord must be taken as well for the indwelling seat of mind, and the vertebral column for the existential counterpart, because this proves too much. For we may bear in mind that there are Phrenology 317 also other approved external ways for succouring tlie activity of mind in order to stimulate or inhibit its activity.
The vertebral column, then, drops — "rightly," if we hke — out of account; and our "construing" that the skull alone does not in fact contain the "organs" of mind is just as good as many other doctrines " construed " by "philosophy of nature." For this was previously excluded from the notion of this relation, and on that account the skull was adopted as the aspect of existence; or, if we may not recall what the state of the case essentially and in principle involves, even experience teaches us clearly that, as we do not see with the eye qua organ, so it is not with the skull that we commit murder, steal, write poetry, etc.
We must on that account refrain too from using the expression " organ " when speaking of that significance of the skull which we have still to mention. For although it is a common thing to hear people say, that to reasonable men it is not words but facts that really matter, yet that does not give us permission to describe a thing in terms not appropriate to it. For this is at once stupidity and deceit, pretending merely not to have the right "word," and hiding from itself that in reahty it has not got hold of the fact itself, the notion. If the latter were there, it would soon find the right word.
What has been here determined is, in the first instance, merely that just as the brain is the cafut vivum, the skull is the cafut mortuum.
It is in this ens mortuum, then, that the mental processes and specific functions of the brain would have to find their external reality manifested and 318 Phenomenology of Mind set forth, a reality which is none the less in the individual himself. For the relation of those processes and functions to what, being an ens mortuum, does not contam mind indwelling within it, there is offered, m the first instance, the external and mechanical factor, the fixed solid element above mentioned, so that the organs proper— and these are in the brain— here press the skull out round, there make it broad, or force it flat, or in whatever way we care to state the effect thus exerted. Being itself a part of the organism, it must be supposed to have in it too, as is the case in every bone, an active, Uving, formative influence, so that, from this point of view, it really, from its side, presses the bram, and fixes its external boundary, — which it is the better able to do being the harder. In that shape, however, the relation of the activity of the one to the other would always maintain the same character; for whether the skull is the determining factor or the factor determined, this would effect no alteration in the general causal connection, only that the skull would then be made the immediate organ of self-consciousness, because its aspect of existence-for-self would find expression in its causal function. But, since self-existence in the sense of organic living activity belongs to both in the same manner, the causal connection between them in point of fact drops altogether.
This development of the two, however, would be inwardly connected, and would be an organic preestabhshed harmony, which leaves the two interrelated aspects free as regards one another, each with its own proper form and shape, without this shape needing to correspond to that of the other; and still more so as regards the relation of the shape and the quality — Phrenology 319 just as the form of the grape and the taste of wine are mutually independent of one another.
Since, however, the character of self-existence turns on the brain, while that of existence turns on the feature of skull, there is also a causal connection to be set up between them inside the organic unity — a necessary relation between them as external for one another, i.e. a relation itself external, whereby their form and shape is determined the one through the other.
As regards the characteristic, however, in virtue of which the organ of self-consciousness would operate causally on the opposite aspect, all sorts of statements can be made. For the question concerns the pecuharity of a cause which is considered in regard to what for it is indifferent, its formal shape and quantity, a cause whose inner nature and self-existence are to be precisely what leave quite imaffected the immediately existing aspect. The organic self-formation of the skull is, to begin with, indifferent to the mechanical influence exerted, and the relationship in which these two processes stand, since the former consists in relating itself to itself, is just this very indeterm in ateness and boundlessness. Furthermore, even though the brain accepted the distinctions of mind, and took them into itself as existential distinctions, and were a plurahty of inner organs occupying each a different space, it would be left undecided whether a mental element would, according as it was originally stronger or weaker, either be bound to possess in the first case a more expanded brain-organ, or in the latter case a more contracted brain - organ, or just the other way about, But it is contradictory to nature for the 320 Phenomenology of Mind brain to be such a plurality of internal organs; for nature gives the moments of the notion an existence of their own, and hence puts the fluent simphcity of organic hfe clear on one side, and its articulation and division with its distinctions on the other, so that, in the way they have to be taken here, they assume the form of particular anatomical facts.
The same holds good in regard to the question whether the improvement of the brain would enlarge or diminish the organ, whether it would make it coarser and thicker or finer. By the fact that it remains imdetermined how the cause is constituted, it is left in the same way undecided how the effect exerted on the skull comes about, whether it is a widening or a narrowing and shrinking of it. Suppose this effect is named in perhaps more distinguished phrase a " solicitation," we cannot say whether this takes place by swelling, hke the action of a cantharides-plaster, or by shrivelling hke the action of vinegar.
In defence of all views of that kind plausible reasons can be adduced; for the organic relation, which quite as much exerts its influence, finds one fit as well as another, and is indifferent to all this wit of mere understanding.
It is, however, not the interest of observation to seek to determine this relation. For it is in any case not the brain in the sense of a physical part which takes its stand on one side, but brain in the sense of the existential form of self-conscious individuahty. This individuahty qua abiding character, and selfmoving conscious activity exists for itself and within itself. Opposed to this existence within itself and on its own account, stand its reality and its existence for Phrenology 321 another. Its own peculiar existence is the essential nature, and is subject, having a being in the brain; this being is subsumed under it, and gets its value and worth merely through its inherent and indwelling significance. The other aspect of self-conscious individuahty, however, that of its existence, is being qua independent and subject, or qua a thing, viz. a bone: the real existence of man is his skull-bone. This is the relationship and the sense which the two aspects of this relation have when the mind adopts the attitude of observation.
Observation has now to deal with the more specific and determinate relation of these aspects. The skullbone doubtless in general has the significance of being the immediate reahty of mind. But the many-sidedness of mind gives its existence a corresponding variety of meanings. What we have to find out is the specific meaning of the particular regions into which this existence is divided; and we have to see how the reference to mind is denoted in them.
The skull-bone is not an organ of activity, nor even a process of utterance. We neither commit theft, murder, etc., with the skull-bone, nor does it ia the least contort the face to suit the deed in such cases, so that the skull should express the meaning in the language of gesture. Nor does this existential form possess the value even of a sign and symbol. Look and gesture, tone, even a pillar or a post, stuck up on a desert island, proclaim at once that they stand for something else than what they merely are at first sight. They forthwith profess to be signs, since they have in them a characteristic which points to something else by the fact that it does not belong pecuharly to them. Doubtless, too, in the case of a skull there is many an VOL. I.— Y 322 Phenomenology of Mind idea that may occur to us, like those of Hamlet over Yorick's sJoill; but the skull-bone by itself is such an indifferent object, such a harmless thing, that there is nothing else to be seen in it or to be thought about it directly as it is, except simply the fact of its being a skull. It no doubt reminds us of the brain and its specific nature, and skulls with other formations, but it does not recall a conscious process, since there is impressed on it neither a look or gesture, nor anything which would show traces of derivation from a conscious activity. For it is that form of reahty which in the case of individuahty is intended to set forth and make manifest another aspect of a kind that would no longer be an existence reflecting itself into itself, but bare immediate existence.
While, further, the skull does not itself feel, there seems still a possibihty of providing it with a more determinate significance in the fact that specific feelings or sensations might enable us, through their being contiguous or in proximity to it, to find out what the skull may mean to convey; and since a conscious mode of mind has its feehng in a specific region of the skull, it may be thought perhaps that this localisation on the shape of the skull may indicate what that mode is and what its pecuhar nature. Just as, e.g., many people complain of feeling a paiuful tension somewhere in the head when thinking intensely, or even when thinking at all, so it might be that steahng, committing murder, writing poetry, and so on, could each be accompanied with its own proper feehng, which would over and above be bound to have its pecuhar localisation. This locahty of the brain, which WQuld in this manner be more disturbed and exercised, Phrenology 323 would also most likely modify further the contiguous locality of the bone of the skull; or again this latter locality would, from sympathy or conformity, not be inert, but would enlarge or diminish or in some other way assume a corresponding form.
What, however, makes such a hypothesis improbable is this: feehng in general is something indeterminate, and that feehng in the head as the centre might well be the general feehng that accompanies all suffering; so that mixed up with the thief's, murderer's, poet's tickling or pain in the head there would be other feelings too, and they would permit of being distinguished from one another, or from those we may call bodily feelings, as httle as an illness can be determined from the symptom of headache, if we restrict its meaning merely to the bodily element.
In point of fact, from whatever side we look at the matter, all necessary reciprocal relation between them ceases to be of any account; and so too any intimation the one might give of the other, in virtue of such a relation. If the relation is still to hold, what is left to form a sort of necessary relation is a pre-estabhshed harmony of the corresponding features of,the two sides, a harmony which leaves the factors in question quite detached and rests on no inherent principle; for one of the aspects has to be a non-mental reahty, a bare thing.
Thus then, on one side we have a number of passive regions of the skull, on the other a number of mental properties, the variety and character of which will depend on the condition of psychological investigation. The poorer the idea we have of mind, the easier the matter becomes in this respect; for, in part, the fewer 324 Phenomenology of Mind become tke mental properties, and, in part, the more detaciied, fixed, and ossified, and consequently more akin to features of the bone and more comparable with them. But, while much is doubtless made easier by this miserable representation of the mind, there still remains a very great deal to be found on both sides: there remains for observation to deal with the entire contingency of their relation. When every faculty of the soul, every passion and (for this, too, must be considered here) the various shades of characters, which hyper-subtle psychology and '' knowledge of mankind " are accustomed to talk about, are each and aU assigned their place on the sl^l, and their contour on the skull-bone, the arbitrariness and artificiality of this procedure are just as glaring as if the children of Israel, who had been likened to " the sand by the seashore for multitude,'' had each assigned and taken to himself his own symbohc grain of sand!
The skull of a murderer has — not this organ or sign — but this " bump. " But this murderer has in addition a lot of other properties, and other bumps too, and along with the bumps hollows as well. Bumps and hollows, there is room for selection! And again his murderous propensity can be referred to some bump or hollow or another, and this in turn to some mental quahty or another; for the murderer is neither this abstract of a murderer, nor does he have merely one protuberance and one depression. The observations offered on this point must therefore sound just about as sensible as those of the dealer about the rain at the annual fair, and of the housewife at her washing time. Dealer and housewife might as well make the observation that it always rains when some neighbour passes by, or when Phrenology 325 they liave roast pork. From the point of view of observation a given determinate characteristic of mind is just as indifferent to and independent of a given specific formation of the skull as the rain in regard to circumstances hke these. For of the two objects thus under observation, the one is an arid entity esisting on its own account, an ossified quahty of mind, as the other is an arid entity inherently existing in itself. Such an ossified entity, as they both are, is completely indifferent to everything else. It is just as much a matter of indifference to a high bump whether a murderer is in close proximity, as to the murderer whether flatness is near him.
There is, of course, no getting over the 'possibility that still remains, that a bump at a certain place is connected with a certain property, passion, etc. We can think of the murderer with a high bump here at this place on the skull, the thief with one there. From this point of view phrenology is capable of much greater extension than it has yet had. For in the first instance it seems to be restricted merely to the connection of a bump with a property in one and the same individual, in the sense that this individual possesses both. But phrenology fer naturam — for there must be such a subject as well as a physiognomy fer naturam — goes a long way beyond this restriction. It does not merely affirm that a cunning fellow has a bump like a fist lying behind the ear, but also puts forward the view that not the unfaithful wife herself, but the other party to this conjugal transaction has a bump on the brow.
In the same way one may too " imagine " and " conjecture " the man hving under the same roof with the murderer, or even one's own neighbour, or, going still 326 Phenomenology of Mind further afield, " conjecture " one's fellow-citizens, etc., with high bumps on some part of the skull, just as well as one may picture to oneself the flying cow, that was caressed by the crab riding on a donkey, and afterwards, etc. etc. But if possibihty is taken not in the sense of a possibility of " imagining " and " conjecturing " and " picturing," but in the sense of inner possibihty or possibility of conceiving, then the object is a reahty of the kind which is a mere thing and is, and should be, deprived of the significance of reahty, and can thus only have the sense of it for imaginative or figurative thinking.
The observer may, in spite of the indifference of the two sides to one another, set to work to determine correlations, supported partly by the general rational principle that the outer is the expression of the inner, and partly by the analogy of the skulls of animals — which may doubtless have a simpler character than men, but of which at the same time it becomes just so much the more difficult to say what character they do have, in that it cannot be so easy for any man's imagination to think himself really into the nature of an animal. Should the observer do so, he will find, in giving out for certain the laws he maintains he has discovered, a first-rate means of assistance in a distinction which we too must necessarily take note of at this point.
The being of mind cannot be taken at any rate to be something completely rigid and innnovable. Man is free. It will be admitted that the mind's original primordial being consists merely in dispositions, which mind has to a large extent under its control, or which require favourable circumstances to draw them out; Phrenology 327 Phrenology 327 i.e. an original being of mind can be equally well spoken of as a being which does not as such exist at all. Were observations to conflict with what strikes any one as a law, which he is sure of and can give out for certain— should it happen to be fine weather at the annual fair or on the housewife's washing day — then dealer and housewife might say that it, properly speaking, should rain, and the conditions are really all that way. So too in the case of observing the skull, it might be said when those contradictory observations occur, that the given individual ought properly to be what according to the law his skuU proclaims him to be, and that he has an original disposition which, however, has not been brought o'lt and fulfilled: this quality is not reaUy present, but it should be there. The " law " and the " ought-to-be " rest on observation of actual showers of rain, and observation of the actual sense and meaning in the case of the given specific character of the skull; but if the reality is not present, the empty possibihty is of just as much significance.
This mere possibihty, i.e. the non-actuahty, of the law proposed, and hence the observations conflicting with the law, are bound to come out just for the reason that the freedom of the individual and the circumstances gradually evolved are indifferent towards what merely is, both in the sense of the original umer as well as the external ossiform structure, and also because the individual can be something else than he is in his original internal natiire, and still more than what he is as a skuU-bone.
We get, tlen, the possibihty that a given bump or hollow on the skull may denote both something actual as well as a mere disposition, one indeed so httle deter- 328 Phenmnenology of Mind mined in any given direction as to denote something that is not actual at alL We find the excuse made, which comes off badly, as a prevarication always does, that it is itself there for use against what it ought to assist. We see the thinking that merelj^ "means" and "conjectures" brought by the very force of facts to say in unintelhgent fashion the very opposite of what it holds to — to say that there is something indicated and signified by such and such a bone, but also just as truly not indicated at all.
What hovers before this way of "conjecturing " when it makes this shift is the true thought, — a thought, however, which abohshes that way of " conjecturing," — that being as such is not at all the truth of spirit. As the disposition is an original primordial being, having no share in tlie activity of mind, just such a being is the skull-bone on its side. What merely is, without participating in spiritual activity, is for consciousness a thing, and so little is it the essence of mind that it is rather the very opposite of it, and consciousness is only actual and concrete by the negation and abolition of such a being.
From this point of view it must be regarded as a thorough denial and flaunting of reason to give out a skull-bone as the actual existence of conscious hfe, and that is what it is given out to be when it is regarded as the outer form of spirit; for the external shape is just the existent reahty. It is no use to say we merely draw an inference from the outer as to the inner, which is something different, or to say that the outer is not the inner itself but merely its expression. For in the relation of the two to one another the character of self-reflecting and self -reflected reahty falls just on Phrenology 329 tlie side of the inner, while the outer has the character of existent reahty.
When, therefore, a man is told, " You (your inner being) are so and so, because your skull-bone is so constituted," this means nothiag else than that we regard a bone as the man's reality. To retort upon such a statement with a box in the ear — in the way mentioned above when dealing with physiognomy — brings out primarily the " soft " parts of his head from their apparent state and position, and proves merely that these are no true inherent nature, are not the reahty of mind; the retort here had better go the length of breaking the skull of the person who makes a statement like that, in order to demonstrate to him quite as palpably as his own wisdom that a bone is nothing of an inherent nature at all for a man, still less his true reahty.
The untutored instinct of self-conscious reason will reject without examination a phrenology — this other instinct of self-conscious reason, its instinct for observation, which, having got scarcely within sight of knowledge, has grasped the subject in the soulless form that the outer is an expression of the inner. But the worse the thought, the less sometimes does it strike us where its badness definitely hes, and the more difi&cult is it to put one's finger on it. For a thought is said to be the worse, the barer and emptier the abstraction which thought takes to be the essential truth. But in the antithesis here in question the component parts are individuality conscious of itself, and the abstraction of a bare thing, to which externahty has been reduced — the inner being of mind taken in the sense of a fixed soulless existence and in opposition to that abstract being.
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