II.
The psychology of Comte is connected with that of Cabanis and of Gall, without, however, any actual confusion with them. He praises Cabanis for having been one of the first to form a positive conception of intellectual and moral phenomena.[187] Cabanis set himself to show that the phenomena so numerous and so varied which take place in the being who lives and feels, constantly act and react upon each other. The psychical phenomena do not escape this law. At every moment, through the medium of the nervous system, they are subject to the influence of the state of the whole body, and they make the body feel their own influence. Cabanis gives a great number of proofs of this, borrowed from the action of sex, of age, of temperament, of illness, etc. Moreover, the relation of psychical phenomena to the brain is identical with that which exists between any function whatever and its organ, for instance, between digestion and the stomach. According to Cabanis we are not necessarily materialists because we refuse to explain the functions of feeling, and the intellectual functions by means of a special principle. First causes always escape us. Here, as elsewhere, the scientific man confines himself to the observation of phenomena and to the search after their laws. On the other hand, if psychology claimed to start from the analysis of the “ego,” it would leave aside many phenomena with which our consciousness does not acquaint us, and which are psychical nevertheless. This is a fruitful remark, which will be taken up again by Maine de Biran, and which psychologists in our own time have turned to great account.
Cabanis conceived psychical facts in a positive manner, but he did not attempt to construct their science. In Comte’s opinion it is Gall who is the real founder of positive psychology. Whatever may be the value of his localisations—Comte does not think it an enduring one,—to Gall at least belongs the merit of having set the problem as it should be set, and of presenting a precise solution of it. Moreover Gall did not confine himself to localising the different faculties in different parts of the brain. His doctrine proper is preceded by an excellent criticism directed against the psychology usually received in the XVIII. century.
In order to combat Condillac, Helvetius and the ideologists, Gall takes his stand upon experience, that is to say upon mental physiology and pathology, and also upon the observation of animals. As a fact, each individual comes into the world with tendencies, with predispositions, with innate faculties. The supposed natural equality of all men is an ill-founded abstraction, since their propensities and their qualities often differ very greatly. The paradox of Helvetius who attributes the moral and intellectual inequality of men to the all powerful influence of education and of circumstances, cannot be upheld. We cannot, as we will, make just minds and upright souls. Variety of organs entails diversity of functions; the difference between men and animals, as that of men among themselves, is therefore due to anatomical and and physiological differences. Condillac’s absolute sensualism is thus refuted by facts. Moreover, if the science of psychology does not advance it is because distinctions between the faculties of the soul, (memory, imagination, judgment, etc.) have been arbitrarily established, from a metaphysical and logical point of view, which does not correspond to the real speciality of the functions.
Gall lays down the following principle as the ultimate conclusion of experience, and the fundamental basis of his doctrine of the functions of the brain:[188] The dispositions of the individual soul and mind are innate and their manifestation depends upon the organisation. We must not see in this a return to the a priori method. Gall guards against reverting to the innateness of Descartes and Leibnitz. He means to speak simply of dispositions, or tendencies, or “faculties,” for instance, the faculty of love, the feeling of the just and of the unjust, ambition, the faculty of learning languages, that of comparing several judgments or ideas, of deducing consequences from them, etc. “We confine ourselves,” says Gall, “to observation.” We only consider the faculties of the soul in so far as they become phenomena for us by means of the material organs. We deny and affirm nothing except that which can be brought under judgment by experience.
Comte assents to all this. With Gall he condemns the “childish dreams” of Condillac and of his successors about transformed sensations[189]; with him he admits the speciality of the psychical functions, corresponding to the speciality of the cerebral organs. But he only borrows Gall’s principle. He has the strongest objections even to Gall’s psychology. Undoubtedly at the time when Gall lived, no one could have done better, and his effort deserves to be admired. But his errors, although they were inevitable, are errors none the less.
In the first place Gall was wrong in isolating the nervous system too much from the brain, which is in fact a prolongation of this system, as is proved by comparative anatomy.[190] Gall considered the systems of automatic life, of voluntary motion, and of the senses, as entirely distinct from one another. He only included in the brain those nervous organs, which, at any rate in the most perfect animals, are the special organs of consciousness, of the instinctive aptitudes, of the inclinations, and of the faculties of the mind and soul. To this thesis Comte opposes the facts assembled by Cabanis, and the solidarity of all the elements in the living being. The brain can neither be isolated from the rest of the nervous system, nor the nervous system from the rest of the organism.
Again, Gall multiplies the faculties in an arbitrary manner. He had established 27 of them. Spurzheim carried this number to 35, and others have further increased it. Every phrenologist will soon create a function, and its organ, whenever it may seem opportune to him, with as much facility as ideologists and psychologists construct entities.[191] These creations are nearly always extremely clumsy. Thus an innate “mathematical aptitude” has been established. Why not also a chemical, an anatomical aptitude, etc.? And this mathematical aptitude is manifested by the facility for executing calculations. But the mathematical mind, far from being an isolated and special aptitude, presents all the varieties which the human mind can offer by the different combinations of really elementary faculties. For instance, some great geometers have especially excelled by the sagacity of their inventions, others by the extent of their combinations, others again by the genius of language and the institution of signs and so on. From this point of view, well drawn up monographies of great scientific men and great artists would be extremely precious for the progress of psychology.
In conclusion, “fundamental phrenological analysis” must be reconstructed. From Gall, Comte only preserves “the impulsion.” The greater part of the localisations which Gall thought right to establish must be abandoned. But he was right in searching for them, for thus he showed science the path to be followed. Even an erroneous hypothesis on positive lines is always a service rendered in the beginnings of a science. But of Gall’s doctrine only two principles henceforth indisputable subsist. 1st, the innateness of the various fundamental dispositions, be they affective or intellectual; 2nd, the plurality of faculties distinct and independent of one another, “although effective actions usually demand their more or less complex co-operation.” These two principles are moreover the two correlative and interdependent aspects of the same conception, which is in accordance with what “common sense” has always thought of human nature. It corresponds to the division of the brain, from the anatomical point of view into a certain number of partial organs, at once independent and depending upon one another. To establish and to demonstrate the detail of this correspondence is the object of “phrenological physiology.”