Groups and Individual Brain Centers, Part 6
SIZE. - This faculty was localized by Dr. Spurzheim. It lies between individuality and weight, giving perception of magnitude, bulk, proportion, dimension and distance. This is also an important factor in all mechanical and artistic effort. It enters largely into our estimation of the practical life ; the objects about us, and into our reliability as witnesses where memory of dimension or distance is concerned.
Cultivate by estimating sizes, proportions, etc., then verify or disprove your judgment.
WEIGHT. - This faculty was localized by Dr. Spurzheim. It lies between form and color. It gives conception of laws of weight, gravity, motion and balance, etc.
Recent discovery of the delicate structures in the inner ear, which physiologists claim act as spirit levels and assist in the balancing process-as one writer lately remarked-does not "relieve man of the necessity of having brain tissues adapted to the comprehension of what the spirit levels show."
Excess of this faculty results in a passion for climbing, walking in dangerous and narrow places and performing acrobatic feats.
Cultivate by gymnastic exercises, balancing, and by practice in judging of weights, density, etc.
COLOR. - This faculty, localized by Dr. Gall, lies between weight and order. It gives memory and perception of colors, tints, shades, and combinations of hues.
Persons in whom this faculty is strong have a passion for colors and great sensitiveness to their harmonies. Clashing colors may actually make them ill. Artists, designers, painters and decorators who excel in blending and arranging colors, always possess this quality in superlative degree.
Deficiency, in this respect, can be cultivated by observation and study of color combinations and blendings. If the faculty is lacking to the point of color blindness, the only reasonable thing to do is to follow the designs and the advice of others in dress, interior decorations, etc., and above all, never inflict your selection of colors or color combinations on friends.
Dr. Hollander, page 267 of his work, "The Mental Functions of the Brain," writes:
The folly of the blind opposition to everything that emanated from Gall or from phrenologists, is made evident here, for it took nearly a century to rediscover the simple fact that the appreciation of colors has its seat in the brain and .not in the eye. *** Dr. Dalton, the most famous example of color-blindness, had a deficient development of one of the supra-orbital convolutions in the region where Gall placed the sense of color. Mr. Ransome, the medical attendant of Dr. Dalton, declared that the eyes, on dissection, showed no unusual appearance. *** The Manchester Courier of August 17, 1844, contained the following announcement: "Mr. Bally of King street has just completed an exquisite little bust of the lamented philosopher, reduced from a cast taken after death, and being a facsimile of the one taken after death, is one of the best likenesses we have yet seen. *** It is well known that Dalton was unable to distinguish colors, and we find on both sides of the frontal sinus, the phrenological organ answering to the faculty, is singularly defective, there being a high ridge and corresponding indent in the brain, precisely where the organ is placed by phrenologists."