Illustration & Explanation of "Inhabitiveness"

Orson and Lorenzo Fowler were phrenology's pre-eminent spokesmen, operating a publishing house, mail-order business, and museum of human and animal skulls. They zealously promoted phrenology as a practical tool for self-improvement. This excerpt from their book New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology illustrates their accessible, if simplistic, approach to understanding and altering character traits

Inhabitiveness

INHABITIVENESS

The home feeling; love of HOUSE, the PLACE where one was born or has lived, and of home associations. Adapted to man's need of an abiding place, in which to exercise the family feeling; patriotism. Perversion -- homesickness when away from home, and needless pining after home.

VERY LARGE -- Are liable to homesickness when away from home, especailly for the first time, and the more so if Parental Live and Adhesiveness are large; will suffer almost any inconvenience, and forego bright prospects rather than leave home; and remain in an inferior house or place of business rather than change. For combinations, see Inhabitiveness large.

LARGE -- have a strong desire to locate young, to have a home or room exclusively; leave home with great reluctance, and return with extreme delight; soon become attached to house, sleeping-room, garden, fields, furniture, etc. and highly prize domestic associations; are not satisfied without a place on which to expend this home instinct; with Parental Love, Adhesiveness, Individuality, and Locality large, will love to travel, yet be too fond of home to stay away long at a time; may be a cosmopolite in early life, and see much of the world, but will afterward settle down; with Approbativeness and Combativeness large, will defend national honor, praise own country, government, etc., and defend both country and fireside with great spirit' with Ideality large, will beautify home; with Friendship large, will delight to see friends at home rather than elsewhere etc.

AVERAGE -- Love home tolerably well, yet with no great fervor, and change the place of abode as the other faculties dictate; take some, but no great interest in house or place, as such, or pleasure in their improvement, and are satisfied with ordinary home comforts; with Acquisitiveness large, spend reluctantly for its improvement; with Constructiveness moderate, take little pleasure in building additions to home; with Individuality and Locality large, love traveling more than staying in one place, and are satisfied with inferior home accommodations.

MODERATE OR SMALL -- Care little for home; leave it without much regret; contemplate it with little delight; take little pains with it; and with Acquisitiveness large, spend reluctantly for its improvement.

VERY SMALL -- Feel little, and show less love of domicile as such

TO CULTIVATE -- Stay more at home, and cultivate a love of home, and its associations and joys, and the love of country

TO RESTRAIN -- Go from home, and banish that feeling of homesickness experienced away from home.

Source: New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology with over One Hundred Engravings by O.S. and L. N. Fowler, 1859.