Part 5

“What is here very remarkable,” says Descartes, “is that, of all within me, there is not one thing so perfect or so great, but that I know it might be greater and more perfect. Thus, for example, if I consider my faculty of conceiving, I find it of very small extent, and very limited. If, in the same manner, I examine the memory, the imagination, or any other one of my faculties, I find not one that is not very limited and very small. Within me there is only my will or my liberty of free will, which I feel to be so great that I conceive not the idea of another more full and of greater extent.”

II.

OF GALL.

OF THE FACULTIES.

Gall’s philosophy consists wholly in the substitution of multiplicity for unity. In place of one general and single brain, he substitutes a number of small brains: instead of one general sole understanding, he substitutes several individual understandings. These pretended individual understandings are the faculties.

Now, Gall admits the existence of twenty-seven of these faculties, each one of them (since each one is a peculiar understanding) endowed with its perceptive faculty, its memory, its judgment, its imagination; &c.

Hence, there are twenty-seven perceptive faculties, twenty-seven memories, twenty-seven judgments, twenty-seven imaginations, &c.

For, if we are to follow Gall, each attribute is not less distinct than each faculty. The memory, the judgment, imagination, &c. of one faculty are not the memory, judgment, or imagination of another faculty.

“The sense of numbers,” says he, “possesses a judgment for the relations of numbers; the sense of the arts, a judgment for works of art; but where the fundamental faculty is wanting, the judgment relative to objects of that faculty must necessarily be wanting likewise.”

He says further: “It is impossible for an individual to possess imagination and judgment for any object with the fundamental faculty for which he has not been gifted by nature.”

Thus, beyond all doubt: there are twenty-seven faculties; and as there are twenty-seven faculties, there must be twenty-seven memories, judgments, imaginations, &c.

In one word, there is no such thing as a general understanding; but there are twenty-seven special understandings, with three or four times twenty-seven distinct attributes of each. Such is the entire psycology of Gall.

To proceed. Gall’s twenty-seven faculties are: the instinct of propagation, love of offspring, self-defence, the carnivorous instinct, the sense of property, friendship, cunning, pride, vanity, circumspection, memory for things, memory for words, sense of locality, sense of persons, sense of language, of relations of colours, relations of sounds, relations of numbers, of mechanics, of comparative sagacity, the metaphysical genius, sarcasm, poetic talent, benevolence, imitation, religion, firmness.

Gall says that these faculties are innate, and this assertion certainly will not be contested.

Locke, who so vigorously opposed the doctrine of innate ideas, never decried the innateness of our faculties. He always regarded them as natural, that is to say, innate.

Condillac himself, who charges Locke with having considered the faculties of the soul as innate, in making these charges confounds the faculties of the soul with the operations of the soul.

Now, that which is perfectly true as to the operations of the soul, is by no means so as regards her faculties. All the faculties of the soul are innate and contemporary, for they are nothing more than modes of the soul; indeed, they are the soul itself, viewed under different aspects. But the operations of the soul succeed each other, and beget each other. There can be no memory without previous perception; there can be no judgment without recollection. In order that there may be a will, there must have been a judgment, &c.

After saying that the faculties are innate, Gall says also that they are independent.

And if, by the word independent, he means distinct, there is nothing less contestible. But if, by this word independent, he understood (as indeed he does understand) that each faculty is a real understanding, the question is altered and the difficulty begins.

For, if each individual faculty is a proper understanding, it follows that there are as many understandings as there are faculties, and the understanding ceases to be one, and the me is no longer one. I am well aware that this is exactly what Gall means; he says it, and reiterates it throughout his work. He says it, but does not prove it. And how should he prove it? Can we prove any thing against our consciousness?

“I remark here, in the first place,” says Descartes, “that there is a great difference between the mind and the body, in that the body is, by its nature, always divisible, and the mind wholly indivisible. For, in fact, when I contemplate it—that is, when I contemplate my own self—and consider myself as a thing that thinks, I cannot discover in myself any parts, but I clearly know and conceive that I am a thing absolutely one and complete.”

Gall reverses the common philosophy, and it is worthy of remark, that the whole of his philosophy, which he thinks so novel, is, to the very letter, nothing more nor less than this very inversion. According to common philosophy, there is one general understanding—a unit; and there are faculties which are but modes of this understanding. Gall asserts that there are as many kinds of peculiar intelligences as there are faculties, and that the understanding in general is nothing more than a mode or attribute of each faculty. He says so expressly.

His words are: “The intellectual faculty and all its subdivisions, such as perception, recollection, memory, judgment, and imagination, are not fundamental faculties, but merely their general attributes.”

Gall first inverts the common philosophy, and then contends for the existence of all the consequences of that common philosophy.

He suppresses the me, but insists that there is a soul. He abolishes the freewill, and yet contends that there is such a thing as morals. He makes of the idea of God an idea that is merely relative and conditional, but yet asserts that there may be such a thing as religion.

I say he abolishes the me; for the me is the soul. The soul is the understanding, general and one; but if there be no understanding as general, there can be no soul.

According to Gall, there is nothing real and positive except the faculties.

And these faculties alone are possessed of organs. “None of my predecessors,” says he, “had any knowledge of those forces which alone are the functions of special cerebral organs.”