Broussais explains every thing by the word irritation, just as Gall explains every thing by the word faculties, and as Malebranche explained them by animal spirits.
After serving Descartes, the animal spirits were in the service of Malebranche; they served all the authors of the seventeenth century.
Malebranche commences one of his chapters with these words: “Every body agrees that the animal spirits....”[197] He had no idea that every body would agree some day, that the animal spirits is mere nonsense.
There were animal spirits of all sorts; as Gall had faculties of all sorts: there were agitated[198] animal spirits, languid animal spirits.[199] There were even libertine animal spirits.
“Wine is so spirituous,” says Malebranche, “that it is animal spirits almost completely formed, but libertine spirits.”[200]
The animal spirits seemed to have become the ultima ratio of the philosophers.
The author of a book, in other respects to be esteemed, thus defined imagination: “Imagination is a perception of the soul’s caused by the internal motion of the animal spirits.”[201]
That author had no doubt that he was saying something.
NOTE V.
Exaggeration of Broussais, even in Phrenology.