Gall’s whole doctrine is one series of errors, which press upon each other cumulatively. He resolves that the part of the brain in which the understanding resides shall be divided into many small organs, distinct from each other; a physiological error. He decries the unity of the understanding, and looks upon the will and the reason as mere results—psycological errors. In the free will he perceives merely a compulsory determination,[42] and consequently a mere result—this is a moral error.
Man’s liberty is a positive faculty, and not the simple passive result of the preponderance of one motive over another motive, of one organ over another organ.[43]
Reason, will, liberty, are therefore, not as in Gall’s doctrine, positive faculties, active powers; or rather, they are the understanding itself. Reason, will, liberty, are in fact the understanding, as conceiving, willing, choosing, or deliberating.[44]
The consciousness which feels itself to be one, feels itself free. And you will remark, that these two great facts given out by the inward sense, the consciousness, to wit, the unity of the understanding and the positive power of the free will, are precisely the two first facts denied by the philosophy of Gall.
And take good care to observe further, that if there be in us any thing that belongs to the consciousness, it is evidently and par excellence the sense of our personal unity; or what is more, the consciousness of our moral liberty.
Man is a moral force, only inasmuch as he is a free force. Any philosophy that attempts the liberty of man, attempts, without knowing it, morals itself. Man then is free, and as he is a moral agent only in proportion as he is free, it would seem that his liberty is the only attribute of his soul from which Providence has designed to remove all the boundaries.
“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.”[45]
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,[46] he substitutes a number of small brains: instead of one general sole understanding, he substitutes several individual understandings.[47] These pretended individual understandings are the faculties.