It is not necessary to prove the falsity of the phrenological statement.  It is only necessary to show that its truth is not proved, and cannot be, by the common course of argument.  The walls of the head are double, with a great air-chamber between them, over the smallest and most closely crowded “organs.”  Can you tell how much money there is in a safe, which also has thick double walls, by kneading its knobs with your fingers?  So when a man fumbles about my forehead, and talks about the organs of Individuality, Size, etc., I trust him as much as I should if he felt of the outside of my strong-box and told me that there was a five-dollar or a ten-dollar-bill under this or that particular rivet.  Perhaps there is; only he does n’t know anything about at.  But this is a point that I, the Professor, understand, my friends, or ought to, certainly, better than you do.  The next argument you will all appreciate.

I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting mechanism of Phrenology, which is very similar to that of the Pseudo-sciences.  An example will show it most conveniently.

A. is a notorious thief.  Messrs. Bumpus and Crane examine him and find a good-sized organ of Acquisitiveness.  Positive fact for Phrenology.  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 so for? (to the boarders.)

Presently B. turns up, a bigger thief than A. But B. has no bump at 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 own pockets and put its contents in another, if he could find no other way of committing petty larceny.  Unfortunately, C. has a hollow, instead of a bump, over Acquisitiveness.  Ah, but just look and see what a bump of Alimentiveness!  Did not C. buy nuts and gingerbread, when a boy, with the money he stole?  Of course you see why he is a thief, and how his example confirms our noble science.

At last comes along a case which is apparently a settler, for there is a little brain with vast and varied powers,—­a case like that of Byron, for instance.  Then comes out the grand reserve-reason which covers everything and renders it simply impossible ever to corner a Phrenologist.  “It is not the size alone, but the quality of an organ, which determines its degree of power.”

Oh! oh!  I see.—­The argument may be briefly stated thus by the Phrenologist:  “Heads I win, tails you lose.”  Well, that’s convenient.

It must be confessed that Phrenology has a certain resemblance to the Pseudo-sciences.  I did not say it was a Pseudo-science.