The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy; Salmonia, and Consolation in Travel Volume 9 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840 edition. Excerpt: ...when their appetite is satisfied: a hen, in defending her chickens against a powerful dog, shows quite as much of this quality as the most ferocious royal tiger. Courage is the result of strong passions or strong motives; and in man it usually results from the love of glory or the fear of shame; and it appears to me a perfectly absurd idea, that of connecting it with an organ, which is merely intended to assist the predatory habits and the mastication of a carnivorous animal. Hal.--I agree with Physicus in this view of the subject. I once heard a physiologist of some reputation deducing an argument in favour of craniology from the form of the skull of the beaver, which he called a constructive animal, and contended, that there was something of the same character in the skulls of distinguished architects: now, the skull of the beaver is so formed, that he is able to use his jaws for cutting down the trees with which he makes his dam; and if this analogy were correct, the architect ought unquestionably to employ his teeth for the same purpose; and though I have known distinguished men, who have been in the habit of using knives for cutting furniture with a sort of nervous restlessness of hand, I do not recollect to have heard of the teeth being employed in the same way; VOL. IX. K and I think it would be quite as correct to find the architectural or constructive organ in the opposite part of the body, the tail, as the beaver makes a more ingenious use of this part than even of his mouth. Pray, have you ever observed, Poietes, any particular protuberance in the nether parts of any of our distinguished architects? Poiet.--I am not a craniologist; but I would have the doctrine overturned by facts, and not by ridicule; and I have certainly seen some...