Summary
Tothe Citizensof the United States:
I have visited various European countries, Prussia, Austria, Bavaria, Holland, France, and Switzerland, besides the British Isles, for the purpose of observing the condition of the people living under different forms of civil and ecclesiastical government, and one of the motives which led me to repair to your shores was to obtain the means of judging of the influence of democracy on the physical prosperity and mental condition of your nation. I am deeply sensible of the sources of error to which a stranger is exposed in observing and speculating on the institutions of a foreign country; but you will be able to detect and correct the errors regarding your own country into which I may inadvertently fall, and I may be permitted to hope that amidst these will be found some admixture of truth.
The people of the United States are justly proud of their political independence, won at the expense of many sacrifices; and also of the institutions which the distinguished founders of their government framed and bequeathed to them for their guidance; but if I were to ask different Americans in what the superiority of these institutions consists, I should receive a multifarious variety of answers. Does Phrenology enable us to attain to any precise views on the subject?
In my previous lectures, I have endeavoured to explain to you that happiness consists in the activity of our faculties, and that the greater the number of them called into action, the higher rises our enjoyment.
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- Notes on the United States of North America during a Phrenological Visit in 1838–39–40 , pp. 379 - 436Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1841