ABSTRACT
There was a more mundane side to the spread of phrenology. One anonymous ticket-holder, signing his name 'Candidus', derived so much satisfaction that his basic doubts about phrenology did not matter. There was Hewett Watson's answer. As a professional scientist he ought to have realised that phrenology offered greater advantage to the beginner rather than to the master of studies. According to Henry Turner, only phrenology, a 'systematic arrangement of the facts', helped man to obey the injunction 'know thyself'. Mental discipline implied the 'positive exercise' of each faculty of mind. The fact is that phrenology inspired many of the rank and file of the temperance movement in Britain. The optimism of phrenology, in other words, far outweighed its fatalism. In saying this, phrenologists incurred the clerical wrath, particularly in Scotland where in 1849 they decided to wage battle over the question of passenger services on Sunday trains.
