An Aphorism and a Lecture; A short story by Oliver Wendell Holmes

An Aphorism and a Lecture
One of the boys mentioned, the other evening, in the course of a verypleasant poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons table-boarders, which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heardof. Young fellows being always hungry----Allow me to stop dead short,in order to utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one ofthe blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in thecavity of a geode.
Aphorism by the Professor
In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it foodof different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anythingat any hour of the day or night. If old, it observes stated periods,and you might as well attempt to regulate the time of high-water tosuit a fishing-party as to change these periods.
The crucial experiment is this. Offer a bulky and boggy bun to thesuspected individual just ten minutes before dinner. If this iseagerly accepted and devoured, the fact of youth is established. Ifthe subject of the question starts back and expresses surprise andincredulity, as if you could not possibly be in earnest, the fact ofmaturity is no less clear.
--Excuse me--I return to my story of the Commons table. Young fellowsbeing always hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meager fare ofthe evening meal, it was a trick of some of the boys to impale aslice of meat upon a fork at dinner time and stick the fork holdingit beneath the table, so that they could get it at tea time. Thedragons that guarded this table of the Hesperides found out the trickat last and kept a sharp lookout for missing forks--they knew whereto find one if it was not in its place. Now the odd thing was that,after waiting so many years to hear of this college trick, I shouldhear it mentioned a _second time_ within the same twenty-fourhours by a college youth of the present generation. Strange, buttrue. And so it has happened to me and to every person, often andoften, to be hit in rapid succession by these twinned facts orthoughts, as if they were linked like chain-shot.
I was going to leave the simple reader to wonder over this, taking itas an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrowof subsoil in it. The explanation is, of course, that in a great manythoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrestour attention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of theenormous number of impressions which pass through our consciousness,until in some future life we see the photographic record of ourthoughts and the stereoscopic picture of our actions. There go morepieces to make up a conscious life or a living body than you thinkfor. Why, some of you were surprised when a friend of mine told youthere were fifty-eight separate pieces in a fiddle. How many"swimming glands"--solid, organized, regularly formed, rounded disks,taking an active part in all your vital processes, part and parcel,each one of them, of your corporal being--do you suppose are whirledalong like pebbles in a stream with the blood which warms your frameand colors your cheeks? A noted German physiologist spread out aminute drop of blood under the microscope, in narrow streaks, andcounted the globules, and then made a calculation. The counting bythe micrometer took him a _week_. You have, my full-grown friend, ofthese little couriers in crimson or scarlet livery, running on yourvital errands day and night as long as you live, sixty-five billionsfive hundred and seventy thousand millions, errors excepted. Did Ihear some gentleman say "Doubted"? I am the Professor; I sit in mychair with a petard under it that will blow me through the skylight ofmy lecture-room if I do not know what I am talking about and whom I amquoting.
Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands to your foreheadsand saying to yourselves that you feel a little confused, as if youhad been waltzing until things began to whirl slightly round you, isit possible that you do not clearly apprehend the exact connection ofall that I have been saying and its bearing on what is now to come?Listen, then. The number of these living elements in our bodyillustrates the incalculable multitude of our thoughts; the number ofour thoughts accounts for those frequent coincidences spoken of;these coincidences in the world of thought illustrate those which weconstantly observe in the world of outward events, of which thepresence of the young girl now at our table, and proving to be thedaughter of an old acquaintance some of us may remember, is thespecial example which led me through this labyrinth of reflections,and finally lands me at the commencement of this young girl's story,which, as I said, I have found the time and felt the interest tolearn something of, and which I think I can tell without wronging theunconscious subject of my brief delineation.
A Short Lecture on Phrenology
_Read to the Boarders at Our Breakfast Table _
I shall begin, my friends, with the definition of a _pseudoscience_. Apseudoscience consists of a _nomenclature_, with a self-adjustingarrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors itsdoctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tellsagainst it, is excluded. It is invariably connected with somelucrative practical application. Its professors and practitioners areusually shrewd people; they are very serious with the public, but winkand laugh a good deal among themselves. The believing multitudeconsists of women of both sexes, feeble-minded inquirers, poeticaloptimists, people who always get cheated in buying horses,philanthropists who insist on hurrying up the millennium, and othersof this class, with here and there a clergyman, less frequently alawyer, very rarely a physician, and almost never a horse-jockey or amember of the detective police. I did not say that Phrenology was oneof the pseudosciences.
A pseudoscience does not necessarily consist wholly of lies. It maycontain many truths, and even valuable ones. The rottenest bankstarts with a little specie. It puts out a thousand promises to payon the strength of a single dollar, but the dollar is very commonly agood one. The practitioners of the pseudosciences know that commonminds after they have been baited with a real fact or two, will jumpat the merest rag of a lie, or even at the bare hook. When we haveone fact found us, we are very apt to supply the next out of our ownimagination. (How many persons can read Judges XV. 16 correctly thefirst time?) The pseudosciences take advantage of this. I did not saythat it was so with Phrenology.
I have rarely met a sensible man who would not allow that there was_something_ in Phrenology. A broad, high forehead, it is commonlyagreed, promises intellect; one that is "villainous low," and has ahuge hind-head back of it, is wont to mark an animal nature. I have asrarely met an unbiased and sensible man who really believed in thebumps. It is observed, however, that persons with what thephrenologists call "good heads" are more prone than otherstoward plenary belief in the doctrine.
It is so hard to prove a negative that, if a man should assert thatthe moon was in truth a green cheese, formed by the coagulablesubstance of the Milky Way, and challenge me to prove the contrary, Imight be puzzled. But if he offer to sell me a ton of this lunarcheese, I call on him to prove the truth of the caseous nature of oursatellite before I purchase.
It is not necessary to prove the falsity of the phrenologicalstatement. It is only necessary to show that its truth is not proved,and cannot be, by the common course of argument. The walls of thehead are double, with a great air-chamber between them, over thesmallest and most closely crowded "organs." Can you tell how muchmoney there is in a safe, which also has thick double walls, bykneading its knobs with your fingers? So when a man fumbles about myforehead, and talks about the organs of _Individuality_, _Size_, etc.,I trust him as much as I should if he felt of the outside of mystrongbox and told me that there was a five-dollar or a ten-dollarbill under this or that particular rivet. Perhaps there is; _only hedoesn't know anything about it_. But this is a point that I, theProfessor, understand, my friends, or ought to, certainly, better thanyou do. The next argument you will all appreciate.
I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting mechanism ofPhrenology, which is _very similar_ to that of the pseudosciences. Anexample will show it most conveniently.
A-- is a notorious thief. Messrs. Bumpus and Crane examine him andfind a good-sized organ of Acquisitiveness. Positive fact forPhrenology. Casts and drawings of A-- are multiplied, and the bump_does not lose_ in the act of copying--I did not say it gained.--What do you look for so? (to the boarders).
Presently B-- turns up, a bigger thief than A--. But B-- has no bumpat all over Acquisitiveness. Negative fact; goes against Phrenology.Not a bit of it. Don't you see how small Conscientiousness is?_That's_ the reason B-- stole.
And then comes C--, ten times as much a thief as either A-- or B--;used to steal before he was weaned, and would pick one of his ownpockets and put its contents in another, if he could find no otherway of committing petty larceny. Unfortunately C-- has a _hollow_,instead of a bump, over Acquisitiveness. Ah! but just look and seewhat a bump of Alimentiveness! Did not O-- buy nuts and gingerbread,when a boy, with the money he stole? Of course you see why he is athief, and how his example confirms our noble science.
At last comes along a case which is apparently a _settler_, forthere is a little brain with vast and varied powers--a case like thatof Byron, for instance. Then comes out the grand reserve--reasonwhich covers everything and renders it simply impossible ever tocorner a phrenologist. "It is not the size alone, but the _quality_ ofan organ, which determines its degree of power."
Oh! oh! I see. The argument may be briefly stated thus by thephrenologist: "Heads I win, tails you lose." Well, that's convenient.It must be confessed that Phrenology has a certain resemblance to thepseudosciences. I did not say it was a pseudoscience.
I have often met persons who have been altogether struck up andamazed at the accuracy with which some wandering Professor ofPhrenology had read their characters written upon their skulls. Ofcourse, the Professor acquires his information solely through hiscranial inspections and manipulations. What are you laughing at? (tothe boarders). But let us just _suppose_, for a moment, that atolerably cunning fellow, who did not know or care anything aboutPhrenology, should open a shop and undertake to read off people'scharacters at fifty cents or a dollar apiece. Let us see how well hecould get along without the "organs."
I will suppose myself to set up such a shop. I would invest onehundred dollars, more or less, in casts of brains, skulls, charts,and other matters that would make the most show for the money. Thatwould do to begin with. I would then advertise myself as thecelebrated Professor Brainey, or whatever name I might choose, andwait for my first customer--a middle-aged man. I look at him, ask hima question or two, so as to hear him talk. When I have got the hangof him, I ask him to sit down, and proceed to fumble his skull,dictating as follows:
SCALE FROM 1 TO 10
LIST OF FACULTIES FOR CUSTOMER--PRIVATE NOTES FOR MY PUPIL:_Each to be accompanied with a wink._
Amativeness, 7________Most men love the conflicting sex, and all menlove to be told they do.
Alimentiveness, 8_____Don't you see that he has burst off his lowest waistcoat button with feeding--hey?
Acquisitiveness, 8____Of course. A middle-aged Yankee.
Approbativeness, 7+__ Hat well brushed. Hair ditto. Mark the effect of that plus sign.
Self-esteem, 6________His face shows that.
Benevolence, 9________That'll please him.
Conscientiousness, 8 1/2_That fraction looks first rate.
Mirthfulness, 7_______Has laughed twice since he came in. That sounds well.
Ideality, 9
Form, Size, Weight,Color, Locality,Eventuality, etc., Average everything that can't be guessed.etc. (4 to 6)And so of other faculties
Of course, you know, that isn't the way the phrenologists do. They goonly by the bumps. What do you keep laughing so for (to theboarders)? I only said that is the way I should practise "Phrenology"for a living.