Topics covered include phrenology, mesmerism and hypnotism, Freudian psychoanalysis, IQ testing, cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology.
In phrenology, however, as popularly carried on as an unofficial cult, we may recognize a modified form of divination, co-ordinate with the third stage in the development of beliefs regarding the seat of soul and based on the assumption that this organ is - as were its predecessors - a medium of revelation of otherwise hidden knowledge.
His own philosophical writings already published, especially The Senses and the Intellect (to which was added, in 1861, The Study of Character, including an Estimate of Phrenology), were too large for effective use in the class-room.
The few works which have since appeared, before the rise of the physiological school of Sir Charles Bell and Charles Darwin, are undeserving of notice, the development of phrenology having given to pure physiognomy the coup de grace by taking into itself whatever was likely to live of the older science.
Anthropology treats of the mind in union with the body - of the natural soul - and discusses the relations of the soul with the planets, the races of mankind, the differences of age, dreams, animal magnetism, insanity and phrenology.