Part 4

Spurzheim is right, as we have sufficiently seen;[138] perception is not in the organ of the sense.

But the error that Spurzheim combats is not the whole of Gall’s error; it is only a particular and secondary error:[139] the error that he does not perceive, the error that he follows, is a general and capital one. From the independence of the external senses, Gall concludes the independence of the faculties of the soul: he reasons upon an apparent analogy, which conceals a profound dissimilitude; and Spurzheim reasons just as Gall does.

“In the nervous system,” says he, “we find the five external senses separate and independent of each other.”[140] “The faculties of the external senses are attached to different organs; they may exist separately. The same holds true of the internal senses.”[141] “We assert that there is a particular organ for each species of sentiment or thought, as there is for each species of exterior sensation.”[142]

Like Gall, Spurzheim denominates the faculties of the soul _internal senses_; in the same spirit he says: “The _sense of colour_, the _sense of number_, _sense of language_, _sense of comparison_, _sense of causality_,”[143] &c. &c.

Both authors begin by calling the faculties of the soul _internal senses_; and then, misled by the word, they conclude from the _independence of the external senses_, to the _independence_ of their _internal senses_; that is to say, the independence of the faculties of the soul.

2. _Names of the faculties._ Spurzheim accuses Gall of having given denominations only to actions, and not to the principles of those actions.

“Finding,” says he, “a relation betwixt the development of a cerebral part and a sort of action, M. Gall denominated the cerebral part from the action; thus, he spoke of the organs of music, poetry, &c.”[144] “The nomenclature,” says he further, “ought to be conformed to the faculties, without regard to any action whatever.... When we attribute to an organ cunning, management, hypocrisy, intrigue, &c. we do not make known the primary faculty which contributes to all these modified actions.”[145]

Gall replies: “M. Spurzheim cannot have forgotten how often we reasoned without end, with a view to determine the primitive destination of an organ.... I confess, that there are several organs, with whose primary faculties I am not yet acquainted; and I continue to denominate them from the degree of activity that led me to the discovery of them. M. Spurzheim thinks himself more fortunate: his metaphysical temperament has led him to the discovery of the fundamental or primitive faculty of every one of the organs. Let us put it to the proof.”[146]

Indeed, Spurzheim’s expedient for rendering himself master of the primary faculties is very simple. He creates a word: he calls the instinct of propagation _amativity_, the propensity to steal, _convoitivity_; courage is _combativity_, &c. &c.

Gall and Spurzheim talk a great deal about nomenclature; but they do not perceive, that as to nomenclature, the first difficulty, and indeed the only one, is to get at simple facts. Whoever has come to simple facts, is very nigh to a good nomenclature.

Descartes says: “Had some one clearly explained the simple ideas that exist in the imagination of men, and which constitute all that they think, I should venture to hope for a language that it would be very easy to learn, ... and, which is the principal matter, that would assist the judgment, representing to it things so distinctly that it would be almost impossible for it to be deceived; whereas, on the contrary, the words we now have possess, so to speak, only confused significations, to which the human mind has been so long accustomed, that it therefore understands scarcely any thing perfectly well.”[147]

3. _Number of the faculties._ Spurzheim adds eight faculties to those established by Gall, and Gall is vexed by it. One does not see why.

What! Shall Gall endow twenty-seven faculties, and Spurzheim not have the same privilege for seven or eight?[148] Shall Gall have a faculty for _space_, one for _number_, &c. and Spurzheim be refused one for _time_, one for _extent_, &c.? Is not Spurzheim half right, when he says:

“One does not readily perceive why M. Gall should desire to suggest to his readers that his method of treating the doctrine of the brain is the only admissible one, and that there are no other organs than those he has recognised; that the organs do nothing but what he attributes to them; ... that all he says and all he does (and that only) bears the stamp of perfection; and that his decision constitutes the supreme law.”[149]

4. _Classification and attributes of the faculties._ Gall, by giving the same attributes to all the faculties, and to each faculty all the attributes of the understanding, in fact forms out of the faculties only two groups: the group of faculties that he supposes common to man and the animals, and the group of faculties that he supposes to be proper to man alone. Spurzheim divides and subdivides them.

None of the formulas required for the classification agreed upon are omitted.[150]

In the first place, there are two _orders_ of faculties: the _affective_ and the _intellectual faculties_; then each of these _orders_ is divided into _genera_. The first _order_ has two _genera_: the affective faculties common to man and animals,[151] and the affective faculties peculiar to man alone.[152] The second has three genera: the faculties or _internal senses_ which make external objects known;[153] the faculties or internal senses which make known the relations of objects in general;[154] and the faculties or internal senses that _reflect_.[155]

What an apparatus for saying very simple things; for saying that there are _propensities_,[156] _sentiments_,[157] and _intellectual faculties_! What singular personification of all these faculties: faculties that know; faculties that reflect![158] Spurzheim elsewhere speaks of _happy faculties_.[159] Indeed, what arbitrariness in the distribution of facts! And Gall, too, is he not half right?

“By what right,” says he, “does M. Spurzheim exclude from the intellectual faculties imitation, wit, ideality or poetry, circumspection, secretivity, constructivity? How are perseverance, circumspection, imitation; how are they sentiments? What reason have we for counting among the propensities constructivity rather than melody, benevolence, or imitation?”[160]

Gall, by endowing each faculty with all the attributes of an understanding, makes as many understandings as faculties. Spurzheim makes several kinds of understandings: understandings that know, understandings that reflect, &c. He restores the _sensitive_ and _rational souls_.

In fine, Gall and Spurzheim rarely agree as to their faculties. In _hope_ Gall sees nothing more than an attribute; Spurzheim beholds it as a primary faculty. In _conscience_ Gall sees nothing but an effect of _benevolence_; Spurzheim looks upon it as a peculiar faculty. Gall resolves that there is only one organ of _religion_, and Spurzheim insists upon three—the organ of causality, that of supernaturality, and that of veneration, &c. &c.

We should never end, were we to follow them throughout their debates. I have said enough to show the case, and I now pass on to Broussais.

V.

OF BROUSSAIS.

Broussais appears to have been born solely for the purpose of imagining or propagating systems.

Guided by facts which he seized upon with a rare sagacity, Broussais begins by bringing back certain affections to their real seats;[161] but soon, by an immoderate generalization of this fine result, he perceives all affections in the same affection, all diseases in the same malady; he imagines one _abstract affection_, by means of which he explains all other affections: _fevers_ are nothing but irritations of the digestive apparatus; _insanity_ is nothing but an _irritation_ of the brain;[162] and he who is so intolerant of the _personifications_ proposed by others, makes one _personification_ more; in fine, his exclusive and headstrong genius carries him beyond himself, and, as if merely to amuse him after the fatigue of forming his systems, plunges him into the question of _phrenology_, where he enjoys himself so much the more, because he finds in it his own accustomed method, his own ideas, and his own language: there are plenty of faculties to bring back to their organs, plenty of localizations to establish.

Broussais ought not to be judged of by his “Cours de Phrénologie.”[163] The five or six first _lessons_, or, as he calls them, _generalities_,[164] are merely a confused mixture of ideas: the notions of Condillac rejected by Cabanis, and the ideas of the phrenologists.

He says that sensibility is the _common origin_ of the faculties;[165] he calls _perception_ a _primary faculty_,[166] &c. &c.; and Condillac would not speak differently.

But, on the other hand, he says that there are as many _memories_ as there are organs;[167] that the instincts and the sentiments possess a memory, as the _external perceptions_[168] have theirs; that the mind is the _sum of the faculties_,[169] &c.; and Gall could not say it more clearly.

Broussais is particularly opposed to the _moi_ of Descartes. “Seduced,” says he, “by the _moi_ of Descartes, philosophers have been led to reason according to the testimony of their consciousness....”[170] And according to what testimony does Broussais think they ought to reason?

He thinks it very funny to call the _moi_ an _intra-cranial entity_,[171] _intra-cranial central being_,[172] _person_ par excellence, &c.[173]

He laughs at the _moi_ of Descartes; he forgets that the _moi_ of Gall is either nothing else than the sum (_ensemble_) of the intellectual faculties, or nothing else than a word; and he makes for himself a _peculiar moi_,[174] which he locates in the organ of _comparison_. “We owe,” says he, “to the organ of general comparison the distinction of one person expressed by the sign _me_.”[175]

Broussais was never designed for compliance with the ideas of others; a yoke oppresses him; he is never truly Broussais, except in the midst of conflict. In 1816 he publishes a volume,[176] and the medical doctrines are shook for half a century: we ought to read that volume over again, and forget the “Cours de Phrénologie.”

VI.

BROUSSAIS’S PSYCOLOGY.

The fact is, Broussais is busier with his own opinions than with what Gall thought; and here is a specimen of his way of thinking: “The understanding and its different manifestations are,” says he, “the phenomena of the nervous actions.”[177] “The faculties,” says he further, “are the actions of the material organs,”[178] &c.

Broussais’s whole psycology is contained in these words. The organ, and the phenomenon produced by the organ. To speak more clearly, the organ and the action of the organ. To speak like Cabanis, the organ and the _secretion_ of the organ, or _thought_.[179] That’s all!

The understanding, therefore, is merely a _phenomenon_, a product, an act. But if this be the case, how can there be a _continuity of the moi_? Now, the consciousness which gives me the _unity_ of the _moi_, gives me not less assuredly the _continuity_ of the _moi_. Descartes’ admirable words are: “I find that there is in us an _intellectual memory_.”[180]

The consciousness tells me that I am _one_, and Gall insists that I am _multiple_; the consciousness tells me I am _free_, and Gall avers that there is no _moral liberty_; the consciousness endows me with the continuity of my understanding, but Cabanis and Broussais tell me that my understanding is nothing but an _act_.

Philosophers will talk.

VII.

BROUSSAIS’S PHYSIOLOGY.

The whole of Broussais’s physiology is founded upon _irritation_. He says, “Irritation constitutes the basis of the physiological doctrine.”[181] But what is irritation? Broussais replies: “It is the exaggeration of contractility.”[182] But then, what is _contractility_?

In Haller, the term _irritability_ (for that is his term for _contractility_) possesses a precise meaning and import. _Irritability_ is a property of muscular fibre, by which it shortens or contracts itself when touched.

Haller demonstrated, and it is his glory, that the muscle alone _moves_ when it is touched. What is that to Broussais? He goes back again to the vague irritability of Glisson and de Gorter: like those authors, he assigns it to every tissue, and, like them, he explains every thing by means of it.

Broussais’s _irritation_ is merely Haller’s _irritability_ exaggerated and deformed.

The genius of Broussais was too impatient to allow him to proceed step by step up to the idea—too impassioned to hinder him from being satisfied with the name—and for that very reason he appears to have been by nature fitted for success in a school where the name is every thing.

But here is the great difference. Gall and Broussais laboured for the School: Descartes toiled for the human mind.

VIII.

I return to Gall.

Those who wish to learn Gall’s doctrine, will always go up to Gall himself. Spurzheim already alters the spirit of that doctrine, and Gall complains of it. “M. Spurzheim,” says he, “knows my discoveries better than any body else, but he tries to introduce among them a spirit quite foreign to that in which they were begun, continued and perfected.”[183]

Gall, moreover, was a great anatomist. His idea of tracing the fibres of the brain is, as to the anatomy of that organ, the fundamental idea. The idea is not his own: two French anatomists, Vieussens and Pourfour du Petit, had admirably understood it long before his time; but at the period of his appearance it had been long forgotten. The brain was not then dissected by any one: it was cut in slices.

It was a great merit in Gall to have recalled the true method of dissecting the brain; and there was still greater address on his part, in connecting with his labours in positive anatomy, his doctrine of independent faculties and multiple brain.

This strange doctrine has had a fortune still more strange. Gall and Spurzheim forgot to place _curiosity_ among their primary faculties. They were wrong. But for the credulous curiosity of mankind, how could they have explained the success of their doctrine?

Fortunately, a system never lives otherwise than as a system lives. That of the moment is abandoned for the sake of another: and almost always for a perfectly opposite one. Systems multiply and pass away; and we are indebted to the systems themselves for an escape from the mischiefs of systems.

NOTES.

NOTE I.

ANATOMICAL RELATIONS SUPPOSED BY GALL TO EXIST BETWEEN THE ORGANS OF THE EXTERNAL SENSES, AND THE ORGANS OF THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES.

Page 82. _According to Gall, the origin, the development, the structure and mode of termination, as to the organs of the faculties of the soul and the organs of the external senses, every thing is similar, every thing is in common._

It is known that two substances compose the nervous system—the gray matter, and the white or fibrous matter. Well, according to Gall, one of these substances produces the other. The _gray matter_ produces the _white matter_.

Wherever, therefore, there happens to be any _gray matter_, white matter must appear; that is to say, _nervous fibres_,[184] _nervous filaments_, nerves. All the nerves in the body must arise in this way. The spinal nerves arise from the gray matter which is in the interior of the spinal marrow; the cerebral nerves from the gray matter that is in the interior of the medulla oblongata.

Hence, the nerves of the body are _organs of the senses_.

On the other hand, the brain and the cerebellum,[185] which are _the organs of the faculties of the soul_, must arise like the nerves: the brain from the gray matter of the _pyramidal eminences_; the cerebellum from the gray matter that surrounds the _restiform bodies_.

In the second place, whenever a nerve traverses a mass of gray matter, it receives from it, according to Gall, certain new nervous filaments; and in this way it grows and developes itself. The cerebrum and cerebellum will not fail therefore to grow and be developed likewise. The primitive bundles of the cerebellum, (_the restiform bodies_,) will grow by means of the filaments which will be imparted to them by the gray matter of the _ciliary body_: the primitive bundles of the cerebrum, (the _pyramidal eminences_,) by the filaments imparted to them by, first, the gray matter of the _pons varolii_; secondly, by that of the _optic strata_; and then by that of the olivary bodies, _corpora striata_, &c. &c.

Finally, in the same manner as a nerve of sense expands at its termination, and by means of such expansion forms the organ of the sense, so the primitive bundles of fibres of the brain and of the cerebellum terminate in expansions, and constitute the _organs of the internal senses_; that is to say, the lobes of the cerebellum and the hemispheres of the brain.[186]

NOTE II.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INSTINCT AND UNDERSTANDING.

Page 64 (Note). _And he does not see that as to the instincts and the understanding all is contrast._

Here is what I have elsewhere said upon this question, so long debated, of the _instinct and understanding of animals_.

“There is a most complete difference between _instinct_ and _understanding_.

“In _instinct_ all is blind, necessary, and invariable. In _understanding_ every thing is elective, conditional, and modifiable.

“The beaver which builds its house, and the bird that constructs its nest, act only by instinct.

“The dog and the horse, that learn even the meaning of several of our words, and who pay obedience to us, do so by understanding.

“In _instinct_ all is innate. The beaver builds without having learned to build: all that he does is from fatality. The beaver builds under the impulsion of a constant and irresistible force.

“In _understanding_, every thing results from experience and _instruction_. The dog obeys only because he has learned to obey: he is perfectly free in this respect; for he obeys only because he will obey.

“Finally, in regard to _instinct_ every thing is particular. That admirable industry that the beaver exhibits in the construction of his hut, can be employed in no other occupation than the building of his hut. Now, in _understanding_ every thing is general; for the dog could apply the same flexibility of attention, and of conception, which he uses in obeying, to do any other thing.

“In animals there are, therefore, two distinct and primary forces—_instinct_ and _understanding_. As long as our conceptions of these forces were confused, all our views and opinions in regard to the actions of animals remained obscure and contradictory. Among these actions, some exhibited man every where superior to the brute; while others appeared to accord to the brute creation the superiority over man—a contradiction almost as deplorable as absurd! By the distinction that separates blind and necessary actions from elective and conditional ones—or, in a word, instinct from intelligence—all contradiction disappears, and order succeeds to confusion. Whatever in animals is _understanding_, does not in any degree approach the excellence of the human understanding; and whatsoever, under the appearance of _understanding_, seemed superior to the human understanding, is in fact a mere result of a mechanical and blind force.”[187]

Here is what I say as to the boundaries between the intelligence of man and of animals.

“Animals receive, through their senses, impressions similar to those that we receive through the medium of our senses; like ourselves, they retain the traces of these impressions: these impressions, when preserved, form for them, as well as for us, numerous and various associations: they combine them, they draw from them inferences, and deduce judgments from them: therefore they possess understanding.

“But the whole of their understanding stops at that point. The understanding they possess is not one that can consider itself: it cannot see itself, does not know itself. They do not possess _reflection_, that supreme faculty with which the mind of man is endowed, and which enables him to turn his intellectual power inwards, so as to study and know the nature of his own understanding.

“Reflection, thus defined, is then the boundary that separates human intelligence from that of the brute creation: and in fact it cannot be denied that this furnishes a strong line of demarcation between them. Thought, which contemplates itself; understanding, which sees itself and studies itself; knowledge, which knows itself; these evidently constitute an order of determinate phenomena of a decided character, and to which no brute animal can ever attain. This is, if one might so speak, a purely intellectual domain; and it appertains to man alone. In one word, animals feel, know, think; but man is the only one of all created beings to whom has been given the power of feeling that he feels, of knowing that he knows, and of thinking that he thinks.”[188]

I will quote, also, the following passage from my work sur _l’instinct et l’intelligence des animaux_, p. 178, et seq.

“ ... There are three facts: _instinct_, _understanding of brutes_, and _human understanding_; and each of these facts has its definite limits.

“Instinct acts without knowing; understanding knows in order to act; the human understanding alone knows, and knows itself.

“Reflection, closely defined, is the _knowledge of thought by thought_. And this power of thought over thought gives us a whole order of new relations. As soon as the mind perceives itself it judges itself; as soon as it can act upon itself it is free; as soon as it becomes free it becomes moral.

“Man is only moral because he is free.

“The brute animal follows its body; in the midst of this body, which shrouds it completely in matter, the human mind is free, and so free that it can, whenever it prefers to do so, immolate its very body.

“‘The great power of the will over the body,’ says Bossuet, ‘consists in this prodigious effect, that man is so completely master of his frame, that he can even sacrifice it for the sake of some greater good in view. To rush into the midst of blows, and plunge into a flight of arrows from a blind impetuosity, as happens among brute creatures, shows nothing superior to the body itself; but to resolve to die with understanding, and for reasons, notwithstanding the whole disposition of the body to the contrary, evinces a principle superior to the body; and among all the tribes of animals, man is the only one in whom this principle exists.’”

NOTE III.

GALL, AS AN OBSERVER.

Page 93. _He studied them (mankind) in his own way, but he studied them very closely._

Gall was a practical observer. He observed and studied always, and with so much the greater success because “people never suspected that they had to do (these are his own words) with a man who knew perfectly well that the basis of human character continues to be always the same, and that merely the objects that interest us change with the progress of years.”[189]

He examined “families, schools, hospitals, &c.”[190] And he never was satisfied with appearances only. “The occupations that we pursue as our business, generally prove nothing either as to our faculties or our propensities: but those which we engage in as recreation are almost always in conformity with our tastes and our talents.”[191]

His observations on men were more serviceable to him in judging of and describing their characters, than the _bumps on the skull_.

“I often said to my friends, show me the fundamental forces of the soul, and I will find the organ and the seat for each one of them.[192] ... When I had become convinced that a distinguished talent, and one fully so recognised, was especially the work of nature, I examined the head of the individual, ... &c.”[193]