“The small arteries of the cortical part of the brain,” says Haller, “transmit a spirituous liquor into the medullary and nervous tubes.”[92]
It is evident that the organs of Gall have no more real existence than the pipes of Pourfour du Petit, or the tubes of Haller. They are two structures that have been imagined, as suitable for two hypotheses.
In searching for the primary idea, the secret notion that led Gall to his doctrine of the plurality of the intelligences, I detect it in the analogy that he supposed to exist between the functions of the senses and the faculties of the soul.
He sees the functions of the senses constituting distinct functions, and insists that the faculties of the soul must constitute equally distinct faculties; he sees each particular sense possessing an organ proper to itself, and thinks that each faculty of the soul must have its proper organ;[93] in one word, he looks upon the outer man, and constructs the inner man after the image of the outer man.
According to Gall, every thing between an organ of a sense and an organ of a faculty, between a faculty and sense, is similar. A faculty is a sense. His words are: the memory or the sense of things, the memory or the sense of persons, the memory or the sense of numbers. He talks of the sense of language, the sense of mechanics, the sense of the relations of colours, &c. &c.
“As we must admit,” says he, “five different external senses, since their functions are essentially different, ... so we must agree, after all, to acknowledge the different faculties and the different inclinations as being essentially different moral and intellectual forces, and likewise connected with organic apparatuses, which are special to each and independent of each other.”[94]
“Who,” says he, “can dare to say that sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, are simple modifications of faculties? Who could dare to derive them from a single and same source, from a single and same organ? In the same way, the twenty-seven qualities and faculties which I recognise as fundamental or primary forces, ... cannot be regarded as the simple modifications of any one faculty.”[95]
On the one hand, Gall gives to the faculties all the independence of the senses; and on the other, he gives the senses all the attributes of the faculties.
“Here,” says he, “are new reasons why I have always maintained in my public discourses, though these assertions are in opposition to the ideas that prevail among philosophers, that each organ of a sense possesses absolutely its own functions; that each of these organs has its peculiar faculty of receiving and even of perceiving impressions, its own conscience, its own faculty of reminiscence,”[96] &c.