To Infidelity and Back Part 4

1. Vitativeness--Love of life.

2. Combativeness--Resistance, defense.

3. Destructiveness--Executiveness, force.

4. Alimentiveness--Appet.i.te, hunger.

5. Acquisitiveness--Acc.u.mulation.

6. Secretiveness--Policy, management.

7. Bibativeness--Fondness for liquids.

III. Selfish Sentiments (Promote Self-interests).

1. Cautiousness--Prudence, provision.

2. Approbativeness--Ambition, display.

3. Self-esteem--Self-respect, dignity.

4. Firmness--Decision, perseverance.

IV. Moral Sentiments (Religion and Morality).

1. Conscientiousness--Justice, equity.

2. Hope--Expectation, enterprise.

3. Spirituality--Intuition, faith, credulity.

4. Veneration--Devotion, respect.

5. Benevolence--Kindness, goodness.

V. Semi-intellectual Sentiments (Self-perfecting Group).

1. Constructiveness--Mechanical ingenuity.

2. Ideality--Refinement, taste, purity.

3. Sublimity--Love of grandeur, infinitude.

4. Imitation--Copying, patterning.

5. Mirthfulness--Jocoseness, wit, fun.

6. Human Nature--Perception of motives.

7. Agreeableness--Pleasantness, suavity.

VI. Intellectual Faculties.

1. Perceptive Faculties (Perceive physical qualities).

(1) Individuality--Observation, desire to see.

(2) Form--Recollection of shape.

(3) Size--Measuring by the eye.

(4) Weight--Balancing, climbing.

(5) Color--Judgment of colors.

(6) Order--Method, system, arrangement.

(7) Calculation--Mental arithmetic.

(8) Locality--Recollection of places.

2. Semi-perceptive or Literary Faculties.

(1) Eventuality--Memory of facts.

(2) Time--Cognizance of duration.

(3) Tune--Sense of harmony and melody.

(4) Language--Expression of ideas.

3. Reasoning or Reflective Faculties.

(1) Causality--Applying causes to effects.

(2) Comparison--Inductive reasoning.

NOTE.--These definitions are taken from "The Self-instructor," Fowler & Wells Co., New York, the leading phrenological publishing-house.

I have received more help for my practical work in the ministry from phrenology than from any other half-dozen studies, except the Bible.

Even if its physical basis could not be substantiated, its a.n.a.lysis of the mental faculties is far better and more helpful than that of any other system of psychology. While it places the intellectual, moral and spiritual faculties at the top as supreme, it is just as vitally interested in the care of the body, education, discipline, self-culture, choice of occupation, matrimonial adaptation, heredity and all the practical affairs of life. How could a person be more healthy, happy and successful than by normally and harmoniously developing all his faculties as phrenology points them out to him?

Phrenology teaches that the mind has certain elementary, selective instincts, or propensities and sentiments, that attract to them the mental food germane to their function just as the various cells of the body select from the blood the elements required. I say that these instincts have selective power, but they are subject to perversion, and dependent upon the guidance of judgment and knowledge, just as conscience does. Take, for example, the appet.i.te for different kinds of food, the faculty of music, judgment of color, beauty, etc.; and you will see at once that they have selective power, but that this power can become perverted, and thus lead to great difference of opinion.

Notice that while these faculties are not infallible guides, and need the earnest help of other faculties to be the most useful to us, no one can deny that they point toward truth on these subjects, and are our proper and only guides along these lines.

Some of the faculties of the mind inspire the specialized affections; as, love for wife, children, home, friends, etc., which are at the very foundation of our Christian civilization. These special affections have their proper claims upon us, and in so far as they are neglected we become unhappy; but when they exert more than their proper influence, they warp our judgment and more or less unbalance our character. How many people are blinded to truth because of selfish love for their children, or their home, or their party, or their church.

There are some things that the feelings cannot do. For example, they cannot give us information about facts outside of the mind. The faculty of love cannot reveal to a young man the existence of a young lady; but when he gets acquainted with her through what he sees and hears, he can feel that he loves her; and after learning that she is willing to become his, he can and will feel happy because of the fact. The world is full of folly, division and fanaticism because people look to their feelings or impressions for things that they cannot furnish. Thus people have claimed immediate knowledge of G.o.d, of pardon, of the will of G.o.d, of their perfection and security, etc., through their feelings.

It is true that G.o.d created all nations "that they should seek G.o.d, if haply they might feel [Professor Green says the Greek word here means 'to feel or grope for or after, as persons in the dark'] after him and find him" (Acts 17:27). When we see the condition of the heathen nations to whom the revelation of the Bible has not come, we must admit that they are indeed "groping or feeling in the dark after G.o.d," as their superst.i.tions and idolatries abundantly testify.

Of course people feel good whenever they follow their conscience, or best conviction of duty; but the feeling of conscience cannot tell them of the gospel of Christ, and of the pardon it makes possible to them.

Just as people who trust their "reason," or their "think so's," as the voice of G.o.d, naturally reject the Bible as a revelation from G.o.d, so those that trust their "feel so's" will naturally have no use for the Bible in conversion, sanctification or as an evidence of pardon. It is easy to become so self-confident about our feelings, or impressions, as to believe them to be axiomatic truths or direct revelations from G.o.d.

This has been one of the most fruitful sources of strife and divisions in religion, and the handicap that for centuries held the world in medieval darkness. The false prophets of the Old Testament were very religious men. That is, they had strong hereditary religious faculties.

But these strong religious feelings, perverted, led them to trusting the imaginations and impressions of their hearts as the will of G.o.d instead of following his will as revealed in the Bible (Jer. 23:16, 17, 28, 30-32).

Conscience is a safe guide; but it is not an infallible guide, and it is our duty to perfect it day by day by seeking more truth and obeying it. Our instincts or feelings are safe guides within certain limitations; but they are not perfect guides, and it is our duty to strengthen, guide and restrain them with the knowledge and help that other faculties can supply.

The Intellect.

Let us now see what light we can get concerning the intellect. What are its functions and limitations? Is it safe as a guide? According to the phrenological cla.s.sification, the intellectual faculties are divided into three cla.s.ses; viz.: the perceptive, literary and reasoning faculties. The perceptive faculties bring us into relationship with the external world, and through them we learn about the color, size, form, weight, etc., of material objects. If the phrenologists are right, then neither those who claim that the mind is like a blank sheet and knows nothing but what it gets from without, nor those who ascribe almost everything to innate, intuitive ideas, are wholly correct. As usual, the truth lies midway between the two extremes. The mind has innate, intuitive powers of perception, selection and discrimination without which material objects, events and thoughts could make no more impression upon us than upon a fence-rail. But these innate powers are subject to improvement by heredity and culture and their dictates must be carefully watched and corrected by other faculties, as they are fallible and most of them subject to perversion and delusion. As the conscience and sentiments although not infallible, are our only guides in their sphere; so our perceptive faculties are good and safe, but not perfect, guides. These perceptive faculties, in a measure, help and correct each other's impressions; and through optical illusions, expectant attention, dreams, etc., we learn that their dictates must be carefully watched and verified. The latest voice of science is that all the sensation produced by physical stimulants can also be produced by the imagination; so that people can feel cold, heat, pain, etc., when there is no physical cause for them. These things should not make us skeptical about our perceptive powers, but rather cautiously critical.

If we turn to the reasoning faculties we find that they have been the cause of most contention and misunderstanding. On the one hand have been the extreme intuitionalists, or deductive theorizers, who for centuries limited philosophical thought almost entirely to fruitless, abstract, deductive reasoning based upon premises that had no real foundation in facts. As John Stuart Mill pointed out, the mind may become so accustomed to conceiving of a thing as true that it seems like an axiomatic truth, although facts discovered later may show that it was an error. Thus the time was before modern discoveries, when people could not conceive of persons living under the earth walking with their heads down, or of objects attracted towards each other without some material object to connect them and thus draw them together.

Other extremists have looked upon the mind as a blank sheet, or have become so skeptical of its intuitive impressions that they mistrust its guidance almost entirely, especially in religious matters; although, strange to say, they inconsistently seem to trust it all the more in material things.

It cannot be denied that our "think so's," "feel so's," impressions, prejudices and inherited or preconceived ideas may seem as infallible to us as any so-called axiomatic or intuitive truths. This delusion of the mind has led to mult.i.tudes of errors and has held people in bondage to ignorance and superst.i.tion in all centuries and in all countries. It has ever been the greatest hindrance to progress. Closely allied to this and reinforcing it is the inertia of the mind, through which it naturally continues to run in the grooves in which it has been running.

After awhile the grooves or ruts become so deep and smooth that it seems next to impossible to turn out of them without breaking something or upsetting the mental team. We see on every hand how hard it is to get away from the ideas we have inherited or in which we have lived a long time. When truth, like a vine-dresser, has attempted to trim off these unnecessary and injurious accretions, it has always raised the hue and cry that the foundations of truth were being destroyed.

When Mansel, in his Bampton lectures of 1858, showed that the finite intellect is inadequate and helpless in trying to grasp the truth where _infinity_ of any kind is involved, the cry was raised that he robbed reason of its glory and authority, tore away the very foundation of religion and of all truth, and opened the way to all kinds of skepticism. But the very purpose of that marvelous piece of reasoning was to lead people to the truth as revealed in the Bible and to keep them from setting it aside or robbing it of its power because it transcends their finite intellects. Good but misled people, in all ages, have set aside or limited G.o.d's Word by their "think so's" or "feel so's," which were mistakingly taken as an infallible test of truth. Just as man by feeling knew not G.o.d (Acts 17:27), so man by wisdom knew not G.o.d; and it pleased G.o.d by the foolishness of a revealed gospel to save such as accept it by faith (I Cor. 1:21).

President Schurman voices the highest conclusion of philosophy when he says that the farthest reason can go is to a.s.sert that _G.o.d is necessary as a working theory_. To this we can add conceptions of G.o.d revealed in our moral nature (Rom. 1:19, 20). But what a lifeless skeleton this is compared to the revelation of G.o.d in Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Bacon, Locke, Mill and others have joined in the battle to destroy a false trust in subjective impressions without subjecting them to a fearless test of observed facts as revealed in experience, observation and testimony. This is not intellectual skepticism that destroys all the authority of reason and leaves us to imbecility. Just as the conscience, sentiments and perceptive faculties are our safe, proper and necessary guides, although not infallible, so our logical reason is our safe and necessary guide to truth, although helpless to grasp and understand infinite truths and likely to deceive us unless we carefully test its impressions or conceptions by experience and facts. Reason is the eye of the intellect as conscience is of the moral nature. But as the eye is helpless as a guide without light, and the conscience without love, so reason is helpless and worthless as a guide without facts. There is no conflict between theory and practise if the theory takes into consideration all the facts. For example, if from the fact that a horse can trot a mile in three minutes on the race-track, one should conclude that he can trot from one city to another five miles away in fifteen minutes, the theory would be false, because it did not take into consideration the condition of the road and the fact that a horse cannot keep up the same speed for a long distance. Whatever impressions or conceptions of the mind may be self-evident or axiomatic truths, it is certain that our highest conception of truth must be taken as our only and necessary guide; but, knowing the variable part of our judgment, and knowing how very likely we are to be mistaken in our "think so's" and "feel so's," we should ever be on the alert to verify or rectify our convictions by the help of experience and facts.

The question as to how much of our intellectual power is intuitive and innate, or how much is acquired and dependent upon truth learned by induction, is not so important after all. For the powers of the mind which enable it to learn truths through induction from facts observed and experienced come from G.o.d just as much as the powers that enable us to see truth intuitively.

If we take the consensus of all the mental faculties, we have the wonderful human intelligence created but little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor (Ps. 8:5). Created in the very image of G.o.d himself (Gen. 1:27), man is an intelligence with the threefold guidance of intellect, conscience and sentiments which give him abundant light for his daily walk in the fear of the Lord. But even our so-called "consciousness," including all these powers, is fallible and subject to deception, perversion and delusion and therefore it needs the help of the truth revealed in the Bible and the help of all the truth we can learn from life and science to enable us to fulfill our highest destiny and to continue to progress G.o.dward and heavenward.

Let us remember that love is the arch that unites and supports all the mental faculties and all the operations of the mind. On it hang all the law and prophets, and the gospel as well. Let us rejoice and glory in our wonderful heritage of intelligence, but, knowing the limitations of our finite minds, let us walk humbly before G.o.d and our fellow-men.