In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable, but in reality there is none so Or if this shall be understood as aĬontradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say that through its promptings we act for the Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive - a motive not Primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something which, for want of a better term, we may call Induction à posteriori would have brought Phrenology to admit, as an innate and Substantive moods and phases of creation? Thoughts that call the works into being? If we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable

Usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for It would have been safer - if classify we must - to classify upon the basis of what man Man, and upon the ground of the objects of his Creator. Principle, the footsteps of their predecessors deducing and establishing every thing from the preconceived destiny of Right or wrong, in part, or upon the whole, have but followed, in And in these arrangements of the principia of human action, the Spurzheimites, whether And so with Combativeness, with Ideality, with Causality, withĬonstructiveness so, in short, with every organ, whether representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty Again, having settled it to be God's will that man should continue his species, weĭiscovered an organ of Amativeness forthwith. We then assigned to man an organ of Alimentiveness, and this organ is the scourge by whichĭeity compels man to his food. In the matter of Phrenology, for example, we first determined, naturally enough, that it was the design ofĭeity that man should eat. Thus fathomed to his satisfaction the intentions of Jehovah, out of these intentions he reared his innumerable systems Than the understanding or observant man, set himself to imagine designs - to dictate purposes to God. It cannot beĭenied that all metaphysicianism has been concocted à priori. in what manner it might be made to further the objects of humanity, either temporal or eternal. that is to say, we could not have understood, had the notion of this primum mobile ever obtruded itself We saw no need for the propensity in question. Its idea has not occurred to us, simply because of its seeming supererogation. To escape our senses solely through want of belief - of faith - whether it be faith in Revelation or faith In the pure arrogance of the reason we have all overlooked it. Obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists

Prima mobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although

I N the consideration of the faculties and impulses - of the

Edgar allan poe imp of the perverse