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had been a scientific and medical discipline in Europe quickly became a popular
100 The Universalist Movement in America, 1770 1880
obsession in America, much to the consternation of those in both places who were
interested in the serious study of phrenology. Instead of a controlled and precise
study of the brain, phrenology became simply character reading or, more crudely,
bump tracing ; it could thus appeal to all orders of society. The enterprising Fowler
brothers, Orson and Lorenzo, helped turn phrenology into a mass phenomenon
through their New York museum, the Phrenological Cabinet, which displayed
thousands of casts and skeletons. For a moderate fee, the Fowlers read and inter-
preted skulls; one could go to their offices in person or send a daguerreotype. To
feed the demand for phrenological knowledge that they had helped to create, the
Fowlers also trained lecturers.6 Thus, it was mostly as a commercial venture and
popular science that phrenology gained widespread attention in America.
Essentially, phrenologists attempted to identify the controlling traits or the most
powerful characteristics of individuals. Not surprisingly in view of the religious fer-
ment of the age, a leading concern was to establish how these traits were reflected
in differing religious orientations. In an 1840 address before the New York Phren-
ological Society, the Reverend T. J. Sawyer, a prominent Universalist minister and
writer, discussed the influence of cerebral organization on religious opinions and
beliefs. Clearly viewing phrenology as a fortuitous complement to recent advances
in liberal religion, Sawyer outlined the contributions of the science to spiritual
progress. Many people had long believed humans to be religious by nature, Sawyer
observed, but it was left to phrenology to prove it. Man worshiped a higher authority
not on account of revelation but because the Creator endowed him with the fac-
ulties necessary to constitute him a religious and social being. The chief organ of
religious sentiment veneration existed in all people and was primarily respon-
sible for their spiritual inclinations. But veneration worked in conjunction with
other faculties, including causality (the seat of rationality), marvellousness
( which brings within our grasp all that is supernatural ), and conscientiousness
(which tends to invest the recipients of our homage with equity and justice ).7
Most phrenologists did not presume to understand completely the genesis of
religious sentiment. Yet phrenological writers and practitioners characteristically
portrayed their science as a comprehensive method of both physiological and spir-
itual healing; indeed, their science was a peculiar combination of supposed medical
knowledge and spiritual concern. They tended to conflate religious and medical
terms and described clergymen as physicians. Despite the medical profession s
disdain for it, popular phrenology addressed its audience from a position of assumed
medical expertise. Phrenologists also adopted many of the methods of evangelism,
including missionaries and tract distribution; they invested their teachings with a
clearly religious significance.8
Likening ministers to physicians, one advocate of the science asserted that, if
clergymen did not understand the necessary treatment for the mental and physical
organs, they would be incompetent to prescribe moral remedies adapted to the
diseases of the soul. The practice of phrenology adjusted the disproportions in the
mental and physical constitutions; the new science identified and thus allowed
treatment of defective outlooks as well as organs. Using traditional Christian lan-
guage, the writer maintained that the science served to prepare degenerate man
for the renovating and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit. 9 A major reason
Universalism and Spiritual Science 101
for the limited acceptance of Christianity was that people did not know how to
apply Christianity to moral disease. One needed to know what his own constitution
required: phrenology offers to give us this knowledge. 10 For many who accepted
the science, the idea of phrenological balance, a natural harmony among the mental
organs, was virtually equivalent to spiritual health.
Not surprisingly, such new theories were not equally attractive to all religious [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]