Professor Fraser AT THE MASONIC HALL.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1025, 19 January 1882, Page 2

Professor Fraser AT THE MASONIC HALL.

Professor Fraser, the well-known Phrenologist, gave his opening lecture in the Masonic Hall, on Tuesday evening last. The wellearned reputation achieved by Professor Fraser during his lecturing tour throughout the Colony, sufficed to draw a large number of persons. The hall was well filled, the lecture, a most instructive one, was listened to with rapt attention throughout, and thoroughly appreciated by the audience. The subject chosen by Professor Fraser was Howto read men 1 ke open books.” After a few preliminary remarks, the lecturer proceeded to point

out by means of various appropriate illustrations, the fundamental principle that runs throughout Nature. Nature divided her children into two grand classes, and upon each she set her mark. To those who felt an interest in the study, the mark was readily discernible. Animals and things bear out, as a rule, the appearance that belongs to them, and it is from the characteristic traits they display that the nature of animals and things can be ascertained. In the case of animals—the sheep, meek-eyed and docile, the semblance of its inoffensive non-aggressive character is clearly pourtrayed. In the tiger and the wolf, on the other hand, the ferocity of their character is, from their appearance alone, equally clearly delineated. To them the law of instinct reveals with marvellous precision, their friends and foes, their food and poisons. So true is this great principle of determining species from their expressed diameter, that men of science can state at once the class to which belong animals and things newly revealed to the scientific world. After all this is nothing more than wh&t is familiar to us. People were evidently in the habit of reading character by looks. Children, and such animals as the dog and horse, did precisely the same thing. Instinct taught them, but where instinct ended and science and reason began was difficult to determine. Science produced reasons for the instinctive aversions exhibited under certain circumstances by children, and domestic as well as other animals. Unconsciously, the ideal notion presented itself. The underlying stratum in all form was the soul. The "soul formed to fly will create for itself wings, and sd on with other things. Nature supplies the forms of all animals and men, and from those forms the character is determined. “ For soul is form, and doth the body make.” A soul without a body to correspond, would be in great torment. Desires would spring up that could not be gratified. It was well, therefore, that the soul should have form to correspond with its body for it enabled it to manifest its peculiarities, and others to read them. Placing side by side, the fact that no two men think, act, speak, or look alike, there is strong presumptive evidence that Nature has something to teach by this. Instinct tells us this ; reason deducts it, and science draws from ten thousand sources the same conclusion. How many times do persons instinctively on their first seeing a man form this liking or disliking to him. Science accounts for this instinctive feeling by giving a royal harmony of form and shewing what this or that divergence means, and the science of human nature stands first in giving you the true man and showing you that shortcomings may be recognized. This science of human nature is not a new science. Observers in all ages have been at work upon it. It was only of late, however, that the science of human nature has been aided by geometry. The lecturer then went on to explain by aid of diagrams, the relative influence upon the mental organization and moral character of the location of the brain within the area of different facial angles. He entered into details upan the power of reading character by the assistance of phyaignomy, and after describing graphically to his hearers the great value of the science of phrenology in deciphering human character, and in teaching one to know one’s self, the great aid it could be in bringing up children in the path they were by nature best fitted, the lecturer concluding a most interesting address. A phrenological examination then took place of several gentlemen present, whose characters were depicted, as far as is generally known of them, with great fidelity.