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 which ordinarily springs from the combativeness of phrenology.  But a glance will show the fallacy of this idea.  The phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity of self-defence.  It is our safeguard against injury.  Its principle regards our well-being; and thus the desire to be well is excited simultaneously with its development.  It follows, that the desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.

An appeal to one’s own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed.  No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question.  It is not more incomprehensible than distinctive.  There lives no man who at some period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution.  The speaker is aware that he displeases; he has every intention to please, he is usually curt, precise, and clear, the most laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance