"TINKERS."-Much has been said about "Yankee tinkers," " currency tinkers," and many other sorts of tinkers. Of late a new order of tinkers has risen, which that old-fashioned paper the New York Observer, calls "TINKERS IN MORALS AND PHILOSOPHY;" the prospective reign of which it deplores as inevitable, though it result in "the ruin of many souls." We will not return this "tinkering compliment," but simply submit whether it is not high time that somebody else should try their hand at moral and religious tinkering. Ever since the Puritans leaped on Plymouth rock, that clique which the Observer so faithfully represents has done up the entire moral and religious tinkering for our nation-have first formed and then altered and moulded our institutions from beginning to end. Yet, according to their own showing, society, religion, and morals are growing no better very fast. If their bran new kettle, made with the puritanical tin of their own selection and importation, leaks already, and keeps leaking worse and worse, threatening, as they say, the entire subversion of the whole Westminsterian code and practice—is it not high time this tinkermaster's office passed into other hands? WE go in for IMPROVEMENT; and all we ask is a twentieth part of the chance you, Messrs. Observer, Puritan, Recorder & Co., have enjoyed for more than two centuries-and centuries too in which our national character was Formed. The world can never again witness such another opportunity to try any experiment in morals, as you have had intrusted to your hands. And since, according to your own confession, you have after all utterly failed to make mankind better-have not even HELD YOUR OWN—why, it is high time you resigned—not as now, grudgingly, foreboding all sorts of religious calamities in consequence, but cheerfully, with a "There now, I've tried my best and can't, now try yours."

The Observer is quite right in saying that this new doctrine "WILL be tried AND ADOPTED. Yet not if the Observer & Co. could help it; for it opposes all advance. and clings with might and main to the skirts of antiquity, practically repudiating all progression. But it is shorn and weak like other men, and must stand on its own merits, where Phrenology cheerfully rests its deserts. TRUTH WILL PREVAIL.

PHRENOLOGY IN BUENOS AYRES, S. A.-We are informed by Mr. Walker, recently from Buenos Ayres, that there is a Phrenological Professorship endowed in the College of that city, to which is attached a valuable collection of phrenological specimens.

PHRENOLOGICAL BOOKS.-There is an increasing demand for books on this science, both in Europe and America. Mr. George Combe has already translated most of his writings into the German and French languages; and is now translating them into the Spanish and Italian.

In compliance with numerous requests from our friends in various parts of the eountry, about to establish PHRENOLOGICAL SOCIETIES, we will, in a subsequent number of the Journal, lay before our readers such a constitution and BYLAWS as we think will be most likely to facilitate this important object.

THE sales of the Phrenological Almanac have already reached upwards of 90,000, for 1847, and will probably exceed 150,000 during the year.

ARTICLE VI.

ANALYSIS, LOCATION, ADAPTATION, AND MORAL, OF VITATIVENEES.

DESIRE to exist, love and tenacity of life, and dread of death. Located very near the opening of the ears, or partly between and behind them, and between Combativeness and Destructiveness. As no engraving can well illustrate its position, none is given.

ADAPTATION.-Life is sweet. By a law of things, all that lives clings to it with a tenacity far greater than to all else besides. Happiness being the one end of universal nature, and existence the cord on which all enjoyments are strung, its breach is their destruction, to prevent which nature has wisely and most effectually guarded life by implanting in all that lives a love of it far surpassing all other loves combined. What will not this love prompt us to dare and do for its preservation. Nor do any of the "wonderful works" of nature surpass in beauty or efficacy this desire for prolonging life and its joys.

Death is also constitutionally dreadful. That same rationale which renders life thus sweet, that it may be preserved, has also rendered death proportionally abhorrent, that it may be avoided. How terrified, how frantic, the docile ox is rendered by the sight of blood or apprehension of slaughter. The sluggish swine, in view of death, how resolute, how fierce. The hunted stag, when fleeing for his life, what swiftness, what mighty leaps, what desperate exertions-nor surrenders till all the resources of his nature are completely exhausted. Corner that placid, fireside puss, and attempt to kill before you bind or stun-what yells, how desperate, how terribly fierce, and what tremendous exertions.*

Man, and even timid woman, threatened with death, yet retaining power to fight for life-what well-directed, mighty, and protracted exertions of body and mind, what superhuman sagacity, what terrible ferocity. What but impossibilities are not surmounted! What terrific looks! What agony of despair! Who can stand before his wrath! What fiend more malignant. All produced by that fear of death which is only the love of life, and both the means of its preservation. How great the end! How appropriate and efficacious the means! But for some such ever vigilant sentinel of life, it would be destroyed, daily and hourly, if we had so many lives to live. Some such mental faculty is absolutely indispensable to the preservation of life.

This faculty also contributes essentially to the preservation of life by creating a resistance to disease. Thus two persons, A. and B., exactly alike in constitutions, kind, and degree of sickness, and all other respects,

* Does not this law interdict the slaughter of animals for food?
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VOL. IX. NO II.

except that A. has Vitativeness large, and B. small, are brought near the grave. A. loves life so dearly, and clings to it with such tenacity as to struggle with might and main against the disease, and he lives through it, while B., scarcely caring whether he lives or dies, does not stem the downward current, does not brace himself up against it, but yields to its sway, is borne downward, and swallowed up in death. An illustrative anecdote.

A rich maiden, who had already lived twenty years longer than her impatient heirs desired, finally fell sick, and was evidently breathing her last. But, overhearing one of her bystanding heirs congratulate another that she was now dying, so that they would enjoy her fortune, and feeling indignant, replied, "I won't die. I'll live if it is only to spite you ;" meanwhile putting forth a powerful mental struggle for life. She recovered and lived many years, evidently in consequence of the powerful determination to live thus called forth. The rabbit surrenders life in consequence of a slight blow, which the rat, tenacious of life, scarcely minds. In the latter, Vitativeness is large-in the former, small. It is very large in king-fishers, and all who have shot them know how hard, though wounded, they are to kill. Other things being equal, the larger this organ the more energetically we resist disease, and the longer we live. Hence physicians wisely attempt to keep the expectation of life in their patients, because they know how effectually hope of life promotes

recovery.

This faculty should, then, by all means, be cultivated. So important a means of warding off the fatal termination of disease should be cherished by all; so that, to cling to life with a tenacity however great, is not a sin but a VIRTUE. Indeed, the more we love it the more we fulfil a paramount duty to ourselves and our God. This faculty, like every other, was given us to be EXERCISED. Is not the preservation of life one of our first and highest duties, and its wanton destruction, as in suicide, murder, and even the injury of health, most wicked? We should cling to life with the grasp of desperation, not hold it loosely or surrender it willingly. We should daily and habitually cherish a desire to live, not encourage a willingness, much less a desire to die for such feelings do more to INDUCE the death desired than can well be imagined, and are therefore directly suicidal, and hence most criminal.

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"But shall we not hold ourselves in readiness to 'depart hence,' and be with God whenever he calls us? Is not this a paramount Christian duty?" God will never call" you till you have so far outraged the laws of health as to prevent your enjoying life, or else till your worn-out bodily powers sink gradually down, under the weight of years, into the rest of the grave. Those who die in adolescence and the prime of life, call THEMSELVES, or are called by their fellow-men, into premature graves, and called by violated physical law, not by God. This is a SUICIDAL, not a

divine call, and involves great moral TURPITUDE, not a Christian virtue. True, after life has been spent by disease or old age, such resignation to death is well; yet for those in health to cherish a desire or even wil. lingness to die, is most wicked, because it actually hastens death-and this is virtual suicide. Premature death, or rather those diseases which cause it, are dreadfully painful. Their agonies are the climax of all agony, in order to compel us to avoid them, and so prolong life. Is it then a Christian virtue to "rush upon the thick bosses" of death's grim buck. ler? Is to seek what a primary instinct of our nature, for the wisest of purposes, so abhors, a merit? Does desiring to die, which is virtual suicide, fit us for heaven?

Yet in one sense death is desirable in itself and blessed in its effects. Those pains already described, as rendering death so dreadful, appertain, strictly speaking, not to death itself, but to its CAUSE-to those violations of the physical laws which INDUCE it. After life has been spent, by age, or become so far impaired by disease as to preclude farther enjoyment, nature kindly sends death to deliver us from the consequences of broken law. Death itself, especially a natural death, so far from being painful, is a most benevolent institution. Living as we do under the action of physical and mental laws, every infraction of which occasions pain, without death to deliver us from the painful consequences of laws ignorantly or carelessly broken, we should in the course of a few centuries accumulate upon ourselves a number and aggravation of sufferings absolutely insupportable, from which this institution of death now kindly delivers us. Nor can we resist the conclusion that the very act of dying is pleasurable, not painful. Is every element of man, every arrangement of external and internal nature, promotive of enjoyment, (as our first article of this volume fully showed,) and is death the only exception? The pains and horrors of death appertain only to a violent death, never to that which transpires in accordance with the institutes of nature, and then not to the act of dying, but to that violation of the physical laws which occasions death. VIOLENT death-rather those pains which cause it-alone is dreadful, and unexhausted life alone desirable-the former horrible, and the latter sweet, only because of, and in proportion to, the fund of life remaining. Let the vital powers become gradually and completely exhausted, in harmony with that principle of gradual decay which constitutes nature's terminus of life, and death has lost its horrors-is even a most welcome visitor, in and of itself, to say nothing of those joys into which it is the constitutional usher. Hence, infantile life being always feeble, juvenile death is far less painful than adult, and those of weak constitutions than those in robust health. As the vital powers augment, they proportionally enhance the pleasures and consequent love of life, and dread of death, yet that same inflexible law of things which causes life, after it has attained its maximum, to wane and decline with age, also

proportionally diminishes both the desirableness of life and the pains and fear of death, till, like the close of day, the sun of life sets, the tranquil twilight which introduces night supervenes, and life goes out gradually, and almost unconsciously, just as twilight fades imperceptibly into night. This gradual decay and final termination of life cannot be painful. So far therefrom, its accompanying repose, like the grateful rest of evening after diurnal toil is ended, is far more pleasurable than all the joys of life combined. That very repose, so agreeable to the old man, is the usher of death-is death itself, and as this repose is sweet, so that death, of which it is a constituent part, is still more so. Death is to life exactly what retiring to sleep is to the day. The analogy between them is perfect, only that the repose of the grave is as much more agreeable than evening rest as the day and the twilight of life are longer and more eventful than of the natural day. Nor does death supervene till this grateful decline has consumed every remaining power to enjoy in life, and suffer in death, so that to die a natural death is simply to fall asleep "without a struggle or a groan."

Then why contemplate death with horror? As we do not dread sunset, and as twilight is the most delightful portion of the day, besides inviting that rest which is still more agreeable, shall we not look forward to the close of life with pleasure, not with pain? We should even thank God for its institution.

Yet mark while we should not dread death itself, we should look with perfect horror upon all those violations of the laws of health which hasten it. Obey these laws and you completely disarm death of all its horrors, and even clothe it in garments of loveliness. And this is the fatal error of mankind. They regard death with perfect horror, yet disregard and perpetrate its CAUSE-those violations of law which hasten it. The object of this horror should be reversed. We should love death itself, but words are powerless to portray the repugnance with which we should contemplate every abuse of health, everything which tends to hasten death. Ye who dread this king of terrors, OBEY THE PHYSICAL LAWS, and you disarm him of every terror, and render your worst enemy your best friend. In short, let us all love life with our whole souls, and cherish it as our greatest treasure-as the casket of all our treasures. Let us neither do, nor for a moment tolerate, the least thing directly or indirectly calculated to impair health, and thus shorten and enfeeble life, but do all in our power to promote both. Let us shrink back horror-stricken, as from the poisonous viper, from every species of animal excess and indulgence in the least injurious, and love God as we love life-his most precious gift. A few remarks, in this connection, upon the dead and their burial. That repulsion with which most people look upon the dead, is weak and painful. The ravages and pains of disease generally stamp a most ghastly and repulsive impress upon the corpse, and this is the probable