Lawgivers of the Mind

In the entranceway to our house, my significant other, a long-time wearer of the smart hat, keeps her hat stand. It’s a mock Victorian bust: on the surface of the ceramic head lies a phrenology map, created by one L. N. Fowler, Ludgate Circus, London, and “entered at Stationers Hall” sometime around 1850. Natives of upstate New York, Lorenzo Niles Fowler and his brother, Orson, were an astonishing pair. Theirs was an international industry of touring, lecturing, and reading, all the while churning out vast numbers of journals, periodicals, and pamphlets and operating a phrenology museum.

L. N. Fowler & Co. mapped out what are now generally accepted as completely spurious competences for various volumes of the human brain. The “perfecting group,” for example, occupies a quadrant roughly corresponding to the right temple. I’ve no idea what the perfecting group represents, but that’s a serious chunk of cranial real estate. The “literary faculties” live just above...