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.[52]
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.[53]
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.[54]
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.”[55]
Gall reverses the common philosophy, and it is worthy of remark, that the whole of his philosophy, which he thinks so novel,[56] 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.”[57]
Gall first inverts the common philosophy, and then contends for the existence of all the consequences of that common philosophy.