ABSTRACT
Most scientists assumed that their investigations were a part of 'natural philosophy' in which Providence had a definite role. Priestley was not the only scientist who thought himself more a theologian. It was only towards the middle of the nineteenth century that gentlemen realised the divergence of the two professions; until then the men of science and religion in Britain enjoyed a notably happy partnership. Religious broadmindedness came rather easily to phrenologists. They were born and bred in a variety of religious backgrounds and they did not all spring, as their enemies imagined, from the left-wing of the Christian spectrum. The phrenologists knew that religious practices must differ from one country to another and even within a society because religious observance was a personal matter, determined largely by the cerebral state of men. Phrenologists thought that religious bigotry was the 'great moral disgrace of the age' and they advocated the widest possible toleration.
