Abstract
The Constitution of Man by George Combe (1828) was probably the most influential phrenological work of the nineteenth century. It not only offered an exposition of the phrenological theory of the mind, but also presented Combe's vision of universal human progress through the inheritance of acquired mental attributes. In the decades before the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, the Constitution was probably the single most important vehicle for the dissemination of naturalistic progressivism in the English-speaking world. Although there is a significant literature on the social and cultural context of phrenology, the role of heredity in Combe's thought has been less thoroughly explored, although both John van Wyhe and Victor L. Hilts have linked Combe's views on heredity with the transformist theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In this paper I examine the origin, nature and significance of his ideas and argue that Combe's hereditarianism was not directly related to Lamarckian transformism but formed part of a wider discourse on heredity in the early nineteenth century.
Highlights
George Combe (1788–1858) was Britain’s leading phrenologist in the first half of the nineteenth century. His writings have been described by Steven Shapin as ‘the most important vehicle for the diffusion of naturalistic and materialistic views in early to mid-nineteenthcentury Britain’
In a paper on phrenological views of heredity published in 1982, Hilts suggested that the hereditarian ideas of Combe made him a precursor of the social Darwinists and eugenicists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
In the Elements of Phrenology Combe summarized the essentials of his doctrine as follows: ‘the brain is the material instrument by means of which the mind acts, and is acted upon; and it is a congeries of organs’.12. These organs could be divided into those common to humans and the animals, such as ‘amativeness’, ‘destructiveness’ and ‘secretiveness’, and those proper to humanity alone, such as ‘veneration’, ‘hope’ and ‘ideality’. These views were at extreme variance with the dominant image of the mind in the early nineteenth century, and especially with those of the influential Scottish Common Sense school of philosophy, as explored in a recent paper by Sean Dyde.[13]
Summary
George Combe (1788–1858) was Britain’s leading phrenologist in the first half of the nineteenth century. In a paper on phrenological views of heredity published in 1982, Hilts suggested that the hereditarian ideas of Combe made him a precursor of the social Darwinists and eugenicists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He noted that Combe’s ideas differed from theirs in several crucial respects. My conclusion is that these beliefs, so much associated with evolutionary discourses in the minds of modern readers, may have represented a common-sense view of inheritance in the context of the period
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
