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Now, if it be the soul only that feels, à fortiori, it is the soul only that remembers, that judges, that imagines, &c. Memory, judgment, imagination, &c., in a word, all our faculties, are therefore of the soul, and therefore come from the soul, and not from the senses.

There is no philosopher who has exaggerated more than Helvetius the influence of the senses upon the intelligence. But Helvetius says, “In whatsoever manner we interrogate experience, she always answers that any greater or lesser superiority of mind is independent of any greater or lesser perfection of the senses.”[17]

But I leave Helvetius and Condillac, and I return to Descartes, to Willis, to Lapeyronie, to Haller, Sœmmerring, Cuvier, &c. They all perceived and all asserted that the brain is the seat of the soul, and that it is so to the exclusion of the senses. Therefore, the proposition that the brain is the exclusive seat of the soul is not a new proposition, and hence does not originate with Gall. It belonged to science before it appeared in his Doctrine. The merit of Gall, and it is by no means a slender merit, consists in his having understood better than any of his predecessors the whole of its importance, and in having devoted himself to its demonstration. It existed in science before Gall appeared—it may be said to reign there ever since his appearance. Taking each particular sense, he excluded them all, one after another, from all immediate participation in the functions of the understanding.[18] Far from being developed in the direct ratio of the intellection, most of them are developed in an inverse ratio. Taste and smell are more developed in the quadruped than in man. Sight and hearing are more so in the bird than in the quadruped. The brain alone is in all classes developed in the ratio of the understanding. The loss of a sense does not lead to the loss of the intelligence. The understanding survives the loss of sight and hearing. It might survive the loss of all the senses. To interrupt the communication between the sense and the brain, is enough to insure the loss of the sense. The mere compression of the brain, which abolishes the intellection, abolishes all the senses. Far, therefore, from being organs of the intelligence, the organs of the senses are not even organs of the senses, they do not even exercise their functions as organs of the senses, except through the medium of the intelligence, and this intelligence resides only in the brain.