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EVENTUALITY. - Dr. Gall included this center with individuality. Dr. Spurzheim divided the area into two parts, as his researches had convinced him that two distinct faculties functioned through this portion of the brain. This center lies in the middle of the forehead, above individuality. It gives memory of events, occurrences, stories and of historical and scientific facts.
Persons possessing a strong development of this faculty are extremely accurate as to past incidents and events. They devour knowledge avidly and are often found pursuing college courses, or home studies in middle or old age.
Deficiency. - To cultivate, keep a diary; spend a few minutes every day in calling to mind and reviewing occurrences of the previous day. In addition, impress the new fact upon the mind by comparing its name and nature with some name or fact with which you are thoroughly familiar. For instance, "This merchant's name is Wolfe. I will associate it in my mind with the lad of the fable who cried 'wolf! wolf!' or with the poem on the death of General Wolfe."
Following will be found some interesting data from the works of the masters: George Combe says, "Eventuality prompts to investigation by experiment." J. P. Browne, M. D., in his book on "Education, Insanity and Prison Discipline," writes on page 453:
TUNE. - This faculty was localized by Dr. Gall. It lies between time and constructiveness. It gives sense of harmony, love of music and modulation of voice in speaking and singing.
Persons in whom this faculty is strong have exquisite sense of harmonies and with high organic quality, esthetic qualities and constructiveness, excel in composition.
Cultivate by listening to good music and by a general cultivation of the esthetic nature.
Dr. Gall describes his discovery of this center as follows:
A girl five years old was shown me that repeated all she had every heard sung, or played on the piano and retained whole concerts she had heard but twice, but learned nothing- else. This turned my attention to memory, when I found many who had an excellent memory for certain objects, with a feeble one for others, and I admitted a memory of tones. I found those who excelled in remembering tones were usually good singers, and I concluded that this talent extends much beyond this kind of memory, and comprehends whatever relates to tones. 1 observed the heads of several celebrated musicians, several of whom had superior lateral part of the forehead narrow, but the temporal part broad, their foreheads thus forming a segment of a truncated cone, which I thought the external sign of a musical genius. But I soon found that Beethoven, Mozart, Kreibig, etc. had the superior art of the forehead large, which made me renounce the truncated-cone form. I moulded the heads of several musicians of the highest merit and finally discerned its location, along with the counter proofs of its deficiency. After this, I taught it boldly.
Eventuality is not content to rest satisfied with a knowledge of things external. As the special appreciation of phenomena, it embraces the workings of the reflective causality and comparison. And as the most affecting and emotional of phenomena consist of the moral and religious sentiments and animal propensities, eventuality must become conscious of their presence also. Hence it should be looked upon as a central repertory of knowledge. To this end it is, to use an expression of Burke's, "omnivorous," but it is not capable of selecting its food except through the intervention of the auxiliaries which, according to the measure of their power to discern, might contribute what was wholesome or unprofitable, or may be, erroneous. *** Eventuality is flat in new born children. But the rapid increase of development in this part of the forehead is observable at a very early period. This increase is due to the active exercise which devolves upon this organ through the incessant curiosity of infants whose attention is awakened by everything that comes before them.
As the desire of gaining knowledge, in the general acceptation of the term and also of communicating it, is certainly an attribute of this faculty, it follows that its own attention is directed to the exciting of the attention of the other intellectual powers. In this, of course, it would be successful in proportion to the native power of each primitive faculty, and no farther.
To it is to be referred the conception of the existence of pleasure and pain, whether these be of the mind or of the body. And here, consequently, is to be found the true cerebral seat of Consciousness. Here alone is entertained a conception of the existence of the entity, Self. It is the place where all the varied attributes and characteristics of Self meet in concentrated unity.
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