[173] “Suppose they had called this being person par excellence....”—p. 75.
[174] Let us examine, as to this particular (moi) me, all Broussais’s variorums. In one place the me comes from only one organ—the organ of general comparison: “We owe to the organ of general comparison the distinction of our person expressed by the sign me.”—Cours de Phrén., p. 684. Further on it comes from two—the organ of comparison and the organ of causality: “The organ of causality is as necessary to the distinction of the me, and of the person, as the organ of general comparison.”—Ibid. p. 685. Next there is no organ at all: “To assign to the me a special organ appears to me to be out of the question.”—Ibid. p. 119. And then it comes from every where: “There is no special and central organ, and our perception of ourselves has for its basis the sensitive perceptions.”—Ibid. p. 119.
[175] Cours de Phrénologie, p. 684.
[176] Examen de la Doctrine Médicale, etc. 1816.
[177] Cours de Phrénologie, p. 717.
[178] Cours de Phrénologie, p. 77. He also says, “Their central intra-cranial being, to which they attribute all the faculties of a man, is not cognisable by any of our senses, ... it is therefore a pure hypothesis.”—Ibid. p. 153. Thus there is no mind (pure hypothesis); no faculties but those of the organs (the faculties are the acts of material organs); no understanding, except as a simple phenomenon of the nervous action (understanding and all its manifestations are phenomena of nervous action); consequently, there is no psycology; there is nothing but physiology; and even (for it should be clearly understood) nothing but Broussais’s physiology.
[179] “In order to form for one’s self a just notion of the operations which result in the production of thought, it is necessary to conceive of the brain as a peculiar organ, specially designed for the production thereof, just as the stomach is designed to effect digestion, the liver to form the bile, &c.”—Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du moral de l’homme, IIe mémoire, § vii.
[180] Whence he concludes still more admirably, to the immortality of the soul. “I cannot,” says he, “conceive otherwise of those who die, than that they pass into a more pleasing and tranquil life than ours, even carrying with them the remembrance of the past: for I find there is within us an intellectual memory.... And although religion teaches us many things upon this subject, I must, notwithstanding, confess my infirmity on this point, which it appears to me that I possess in common with most people, which is, that although we might wish to believe, and even might suppose ourselves to be firm believers in the doctrines of religion, we are not so deeply touched with those things that are taught by faith alone, and which our mere reason cannot attain, as by those that are instilled into us by natural and very evident reasons.”—T. viii. p. 684.
[181] De l’Imitation et de la Folie, p. 4.
[182] “The exaggeration of the phenomena of contractility is what constitutes irritation.”—Ibid. p. 77.