How to Become Rich A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony

Excerpt

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—

In presenting the Science of Phrenology to you to-night, I make one request, and hope you will grant it as a personal favor to me, that is, that you will dismiss from your minds everything that you ever heard about Phrenology and listen to my argument with your minds freed from the prejudices, favorable or unfavorable, that may have been created by other lecturers upon the subject, for this reason: There are, I regret to say, in our country, a class of men lecturing upon Phrenology, who have never mastered even the rudiments of the science; who have merely learned the location and nomenclature of the organs of the brain, and who, by flattery and cheap wit, degrade this noble science to the level of mere “bumpology,” until the average good citizen who has never investigated the subject has come to look upon the term Phrenologist as signifying one who goes about over the country feeling the bumps on the heads  of those who consult him, looking for hills and hollows, depressions and ridges of the cranium, and predicating thereon a delineation of character.

It is my happy privilege to-night to disabuse your minds of this conception, and to present Phrenology in its true light, and I bespeak from you the thoughtful consideration which an honest man may demand from honest thinking men and women in the investigation of a practical science.

I am always able to recognize in my audience, three classes of persons. I can tell them by their phrenological appearances whenever they are before me. The first class is composed of those who have already tested phrenology and found it valuable, who have studied the subject and appropriated its truths, and before whom I need not argue its utility. I shall be able to please the members of my audience who belong to this class, and to lead them further in the paths they have already found pleasant and profitable. I shall unfold some new truths and add to their store of valuable knowledge.

The second class is composed of that large number of intelligent persons, in every community, who have not investigated this subject, who are willing to approach it in a spirit of candor and honest inquiry, anxious to accept anything which is reasonable and good, and equally intent upon rejecting that which is fraudulent and evil, and I invite the careful criticism of  this class; and if, in my exposition of this subject, I announce a single proposition which will not bear the closest scrutiny; if I say aught which conflicts with common sense or reason, nay, if you can find one single natural fact to militate against the principles which I announce as fundamental to this science, I will be obliged to the gentleman or lady who will raise the question with me, and I will either prove my position to the satisfaction of this audience or retire from the field forever.

Idiot.

The third class, unfortunately, are always with us, but I do not expect to convince them. They never were known to be convinced of anything. You can easily learn to distinguish an individual of this class by the shape of his head....