General Description[]
The image is a drawing dividing the brain into many different portions from the ear area and upwards. Each of these subdivisions has an image of a person or some people with a description of a trait. This represents the location of that trait on a person's head.
Most of the subdivisions are generally the same size. The ones around the eye tend to be smaller, maybe to fit more visual components in the same small area. There are no colors in this visualization. The lack of colors represent the author's unbiased opinion on the importance of each element; the author didn't want any particular part of the illustration to stick out and draw attention to it - every part is seen as equal. Another reason why there are no colors is because the author wanted the viewers to have an objective opinion about who is depicted; he wanted it to be applicable to all humans. The ambiguity of the image regarding sex represents the authors opinion that sex does not play a role in the characteristics in the brain.
How the visual elements work together[]
It's hard to have attention drawn to one particular spot. There are many of these subdivisions. The first one my eyes are drawn to are the Acquisitiveness subdivision. This is probably because it is in the center and it somewhat marks a divide in where the sections go from being more circular to a section nearer to the top of the head that are all rectangular.
Contextualizing the elements[]
The main audience is definitely not intended for those who speak the modern era of English. A lot of the words used are definitely not used in the present. By adding the images, like mentioned before, one can get a slight clue on what it means, but it’s definitely tough to get the true meaning behind it and why it is located on that part of the skull. This is already a difficult image to comprehend, without images the audience would have deemed this overall image inexplicable. In other phrenology charts, the location of the temple area is marked by a trait rather than a star like in this image.
Source[]
