Читать книгу Phrenology Examined онлайн

13 страница из 19

But, admitting all these kinds of intellects, all these individual understandings, where are we to seek for the General Intelligence, the understanding, properly so called? It must, as you may please, be either an attribute of each faculty,[30] or the collective expression of all the faculties, or even the mere simple result of their common and simultaneous action;[31] in one word, it cannot be that positive and single faculty which we understand, conceive of, and feel in ourselves, when we pronounce the word soul or understanding.

Now here is the sum and the substance of Gall’s psycology. For the understanding, essentially a unit faculty, he substitutes a multitude of little understandings or faculties, distinct and isolate. And, as these faculties, which perform just as he wills them to do—which he multiplies according to his pleasure,[32] seem in his eyes to explain certain phenomena which are not well explained by the lights of ordinary philosophy, he triumphs!

He does not perceive that an explanation, which is words merely, adapts itself to any and to every thing. In the time of Malebranche, every thing was explained by animal spirits; Barthez explained every thing by his vital principle, &c.