chapter 19

, to prove and explain this fully and thoroughly, and always under the guidance of experience. But above all, according to Descartes, the oracle of M. Flourens, there are two fundamentally different substances, body and soul. Consequently M. Flourens, as an orthodox Cartesian, says: “_Le premier point est de séparer, même par les mots, ce qui est du corps de ce qui est de l’âme_” (i. 72). He informs us further that this “_âme réside uniquement et exclusivement dans le cerveau_” (ii. 137); from whence, according to a passage of Descartes, it sends the _spiritus animales_ as couriers to the muscles, yet can only itself be affected by the brain; therefore the passions have their seat (_siège_) in the heart, which is altered by them, yet their place (_place_) in the brain. Thus, really thus, speaks the oracle of M. Flourens, who is so much edified by it, that he even utters it twice after him (i. 33 and ii. 135), for the unfailing conquest of the ignorant Bichat, who knows neither soul nor body, but merely an animal and an organic life, and whom he then here condescendingly informs that we must thoroughly distinguish the parts where the passions have their _seat_ (_siègent_) from those which they _affect_. According to this, then, the passions _act_ in one place while they _are_ in another. Corporeal things are wont to act only where they are, but with an immaterial soul the case may be different. But what in general may he and his oracle really have thought in this distinction of _place_ and _siège_, of _sièger_ and _affecter_? The fundamental error of M. Flourens and Descartes springs really from the fact that they confound the motives or occasions of the passions, which, as ideas, certainly lie in the intellect, _i.e._, in the brain, with the passions themselves, which, as movements of the will, lie in the whole body, which (as we know) is the perceived will itself. M. Flourens’ second authority is, as we have said, Gall. I certainly have said, at the beginning of this twentieth chapter (and already in the earlier edition): “The greatest error in Gall’s phrenology is, that he makes the brain the organ of moral qualities also.” But what I censure and reject is precisely what M. Flourens praises and admires, for he bears in his heart the doctrine of Descartes: “_Les volontés sont des pensées._” Accordingly he says, p. 144: “_Le premier service que Gall a rendu à la physiologie (?) a éte de rammener le moral à l’intellectuel, et de faire voir que les facultés morales et les facultés intellectuelles sont du même ordre, et de les placer toutes, autant les unes que les autres, uniquement et exclusivement dans le cerveau._” To a certain extent my whole philosophy, but especially the nineteenth chapter of this volume, consists of the refutation of this fundamental error. M. Flourens, on the contrary, is never tired of extolling this as a great truth and Gall as its discoverer; for example, p. 147: “_Si j’en étais à classer les services que nous a rendu Gall, je dirais que le premier a été de rammener les qualités morales au cerveau_;”—p. 153: “_Le cerveau seul est l’organe de l’âme, et de l’âme dans toute la plénitude de ses fonctions_” (we see the simple soul of Descartes still always lurks in the background, as the kernel of the matter); “_il est le siège de toutes les facultés intellectuelles.... Gall a rammené_ LE MORAL A L’INTELLECTUEL, _il a rammené les qualités morales au même siège, au même organe, que les facultés intellectuelles_.” Oh how must Bichat and I be ashamed of ourselves in the presence of such wisdom! But, to speak seriously, what can be more disheartening, or rather more shocking, than to see the true and profound rejected and the false and perverse extolled; to live to find that important truths, deeply hidden, and extracted late and with difficulty, are to be torn down, and the old, stale, and late conquered errors set up in their place; nay, to be compelled to fear that through such procedure the advances of human knowledge, so hardly achieved, will be broken off! But let us quiet our fears; for _magma est vis veritatis et prævalebit_. M. Flourens is unquestionably a man of much merit, but he has chiefly acquired it upon the experimental path. Just those truths, however, which are of the greatest importance cannot be brought out by experiments, but only by reflection and penetration. Now Bichat by his reflection and penetration has here brought a truth to light which is of the number of those which are unattainable by the experimental efforts of M. Flourens, even if, as a true and consistent Cartesian, he tortures a hundred more animals to death. But he ought betimes to have observed and thought something of this: “Take care, friend, for it burns.” The presumption and self-sufficiency, however, such as is only imparted by superficiality combined with a false obscurity, with which M. Flourens undertakes to refute a thinker like Bichat by counter assertions, old wives’ beliefs, and futile authorities, indeed to reprove and instruct him, and even almost to mock at him, has its origin in the nature of the Academy and its _fauteuils_. Throned upon these, and saluting each other mutually as _illustre confrère_, gentlemen cannot avoid making themselves equal with the best who have ever lived, regarding themselves as oracles, and therefore fit to decree what shall be false and what true. This impels and entitles me to say out plainly for once, that the really superior and privileged minds, who now and then are born for the enlightenment of the rest, and to whom certainly Bichat belongs, are so “by the grace of God,” and accordingly stand to the Academy (in which they have generally occupied only the forty-first _fauteuil_) and to its _illustres confrères_, as born princes to the numerous representatives of the people, chosen from the crowd. Therefore a secret awe should warn these gentlemen of the Academy (who always exist by the score) before they attack such a man,—unless they have most cogent reasons to present, and not mere contradictions and appeals to _placita_ of Descartes, which at the present day is quite absurd.

FOOTNOTES

1 Bruno and Spinoza are here entirely to be excepted. They stand each for himself and alone, and belong neither to their age nor their quarter of the globe, which rewarded the one with death and the other with persecution and insult. Their miserable existence and death in this Western world is like that of a tropical plant in Europe. The banks of the sacred Ganges were their true spiritual home; there they would have led a peaceful and honoured life among men of like mind. In the following lines, with which Bruno begins his book _Della Causa Principio et Uno_, for which he was brought to the stake, he expresses clearly and beautifully how lonely he felt himself in his age, and he also shows a presentiment of his fate which led him to delay the publication of his views, till that inclination to communicate what one knows to be true, which is so strong in noble minds, prevailed:

“_Ad partum properare tuum, mens ægra, quid obstat;_ _ Seclo hæc indigno sint tribuenda licet?_ _ Umbrarum fluctu terras mergente, cacumen_ _ Adtolle in clarum, noster Olympe, Jovem._”

Whoever has read this his principal work, and also his other Italian writings, which were formerly so rare, but are now accessible to all through a German edition, will find, as I have done, that he alone of all philosophers in some degree approaches to Plato, in respect of the strong blending of poetical power and tendency along with the philosophical, and this he also shows especially in a dramatic form. Imagine the tender, spiritual, thoughtful being, as he shows himself to us in this work of his, in the hands of coarse, furious priests as his judges and executioners, and thank Time which brought a brighter and a gentler age, so that the after-world whose curse was to fall on those fiendish fanatics is the world we now live in.

2 Bayard Taylor’s translation of “Faust,” vol. i. p. 14.—TRS.

3 “Faust,” scene vi., Bayard Taylor’s translation, vol. i. p. 134.—TRS.

4 Observe here that I always quote the “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” according to the paging of the first edition, for in Rosenkranz’s edition of Kant’s collected works this paging is always given in addition. Besides this, I add the paging of the fifth edition, preceded by a V.; all the other editions, from the second onwards, are the same as the fifth, and so also is their paging.

5 Cf. Christian Wolf’s “_Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, Welt und Seele_,” § 577-579. It is strange that he only explains as contingent what is necessary according to the principle of sufficient reason of becoming, _i.e._, what takes place from causes, and on the contrary recognises as necessary that which is so according to the other forms of the principle of sufficient reason; for example, what follows from the _essentia_ (definition), thus analytical judgments, and further also mathematical truths. The reason he assigns for this is, that only the law of causality gives infinite series, while the other kinds of grounds give only finite series. Yet this is by no means the case with the forms of the principle of sufficient reason in pure space and time, but only holds good of the logical ground of knowledge; but he held mathematical necessity to be such also. Compare the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 50.

6 With my refutation of the Kantian proof may be compared the earlier attacks upon it by Feder, _Ueber Zeit, Raum und Kausalität_, § 28; and by G. E. Schulze, _Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie_, Bd. ii. S. 422-442.

7 See _Sext. Empir. Pyrrhon. hypotyp._, lib. i. c. 13, νοουμενα φαινομενοις αντετιθη Αναξαγορας (intelligibilia apparentibus opposuit Anaxagoras).

8 That the assumption of a limit of the world in time is certainly not a necessary thought of the reason may be also proved historically, for the Hindus teach nothing of the kind, even in the religion of the people, much less in the Vedas, but try to express mythologically by means of monstrous chronology the infinity of this phenomenal world, this fleeting and baseless web of Mâyâ, for they at once bring out very ingeniously the relativity of all periods of time in the following mythus (Polier, _Mythologie des Indous_, vol. ii. p. 585). The four ages, in the last of which we live, embrace together 4,320,000 years. Each day of the creating Brahma has 1000 such periods of four ages, and his nights have also 1000. His year has 365 days and as many nights. He lives 100 of his years, always creating; and if he dies, at once a new Brahma is born, and so on from eternity to eternity. The same relativity of time is also expressed in the special myth which is quoted in Polier’s work, vol. ii. p. 594, from the Puranas. In it a Rajah, after a visit of a few seconds to Vishnu in his heaven, finds on his return to earth that several millions of years have elapsed, and a new age has begun; for every day of Vishnu is 100 recurrences of the four ages.

9 Kant said, “It is very absurd to expect enlightenment from reason, and yet to prescribe to her beforehand which side she must necessarily take” (“Critique of Pure Reason,” p. 747; V. 775). On the other hand, the following is the naive assertion of a professor of philosophy in our own time: “If a philosophy denies the reality of the fundamental ideas of Christianity, it is either false, or, _even if true, it is yet useless_.” That is to say, for professors of philosophy. It was the late Professor Bachmann who, in the Jena _Litteraturzeitung_ for July 1840, No. 126, so indiscreetly blurted out the maxim of all his colleagues. However, it is worth noticing, as regards the characteristics of the University philosophy, how here the truth, if it will not suit and adapt itself, is shown the door without ceremony, with, “Be off, truth! we cannot make _use_ of you. Do we owe you anything? Do you pay us? Then be off!”

10 By the way, Machiavelli’s problem was the solution of the question how the prince, _as a prince_, was to keep himself on the throne in spite of internal and external enemies. His problem was thus by no means the ethical problem whether a prince, as a man, ought to will such things, but purely the political one how, if he so wills, he can carry it out. And the solution of this problem he gives just as one writes directions for playing chess, with which it would be folly to mix up the answer to the question whether from an ethical point of view it is advisable to play chess at all. To reproach Machiavelli with the immorality of his writing is just the same as to reproach a fencing-master because he does not begin his instructions with a moral lecture against murder and slaughter.

11 Although the conception of legal right is properly negative in opposition to that of wrong, which is the positive starting-point, yet the explanation of these conceptions must not on this account be entirely negative.

12 I specially recommend here the passage in Lichtenberg’s “Miscellaneous Writings” (Göthingen, 1801, vol. ii. p. 12): “Euler says, in his letters upon various subjects in connection with natural science (vol. ii. p. 228), that it would thunder and lighten just as well if there were no man present whom the lightning might strike. It is a very common expression, but I must confess that it has never been easy for me completely to comprehend it. It always seems to me as if the conception _being_ were something derived from our thought, and thus, if there are no longer any sentient and thinking creatures, then there is nothing more whatever.”

13 Lichtenberg says in his “_Nachrichten und Bemerkungen von und über sich selbst_” (_Vermischte Schriften, Göttingen_, 1800, vol. i. p. 43): “I am extremely sensitive to all noise, but it entirely loses its disagreeable character as soon as it is associated with a rational purpose.”

14 That the three-toed sloth has nine must be regarded as a mistake; yet Owen still states this, “_Ostéologie Comp._,” p. 405.

15 This, however, does not excuse a professor of philosophy who, sitting in Kant’s chair, expresses himself thus: “That mathematics as such contains arithmetic and geometry is correct. It is incorrect, however, to conceive arithmetic as the science of time, really for no other reason than to give a pendant (_sic_) to geometry as the science of space” (Rosenkranz in the “_Deutschen Museum_,” 1857, May 14, No. 20). This is the fruit of Hegelism. If the mind is once thoroughly debauched with its senseless jargon, serious Kantian philosophy will no longer enter it. The audacity to talk at random about what one does not understand has been inherited from the master, and one comes in the end to condemn without ceremony the fundamental teaching of a great genius in a tone of peremptory decision, just as if it were Hegelian foolery. We must not, however, fail to notice that these little people struggle to escape from the track of great thinkers. They would therefore have done better not to attack Kant, but to content themselves with giving their public full details about God, the soul, the actual freedom of the will, and whatever belongs to that sort of thing, and then to have indulged in a private luxury in their dark back-shop, the philosophical journal; there they may do whatever they like without constraint, for no one sees it.

16 This chapter, along with the one which follows it, is connected with § 8 and 9 of the first book.

17 Illgen’s “_Zeitschrift für Historische Theologie_,” 1839, part i, p. 182.

_ 18 Gall et Spurzheim_, “_Des Dispositions Innées_,” 1811, p. 253.

19 This chapter is connected with § 12 of the first volume.

20 This chapter is connected with § 13 of the first volume.

21 This chapter and the one which follows it are connected with § 9 of the first volume.

22 This chapter is connected with the conclusion of § 9 of the first volume.

23 This chapter is connected with § 14 of the first volume.

24 A principal use of the study of the ancients is that it preserves us from _verbosity_; for the ancients always take pains to write concisely and pregnantly, and the error of almost all moderns is verbosity, which the most recent try to make up for by suppressing syllables and letters. Therefore we ought to pursue the study of the ancients all our life, although reducing the time devoted to it. The ancients knew that we ought not to write as we speak. The moderns, on the other hand, are not even ashamed to print lectures they have delivered.

25 This chapter is connected with § 15 of the first volume.

26 This chapter is connected with § 16 of the first volume.

27 This chapter is connected with § 15 of the first volume.

28 [Bayard Taylor’s translation of Faust, vol. i. 180. Trs.]

29 This chapter is connected with § 18 of the first volume.

30 This chapter is connected with § 19 of the first volume.

31 It is remarkable that Augustine already knew this. In the fourteenth book, “_De Civ. Dei_,” c. 6, he speaks of the _affectionibus animi_, which in the preceding book he had brought under four categories, _cupiditas_, _timor_, _lætitia_, _tristitia_, and says: “_Voluntas est quippe in omnibus, imo omnes nihil aliud, quam voluntates sunt: nam quid est cupiditas et lætitia, nisi voluntas in eorum consensionem, quæ volumus? et quid est metus atque tristitia, nisi voluntas in dissensionem ab his, quæ nolumus? cet._”

32 By those who place mind and learning above all other human qualities this man will be reckoned the greatest of his century. But by those who let virtue take precedence of everything else his memory can never be execrated enough. He was the cruelest of the citizens in persecuting, putting to death, and banishing.

33 The _Times_ of 18th October 1845; from the _Athenæum_.

34 This chapter is connected with § 20 of the first volume.

_ 35 Spallanzani, Risultati di esperienze sopra la riproduzione della testa nelle lumache terrestri_: in the _Memorie di matematica e fisica della Società Italiana_, Tom. i. p. 581. _Voltaire, Les colimaçons du révérend père l’escarbotier_.

36 Cf. Ch. 22.

_ 37 « __Tout ce qui est relatif à l’entendement appartient à la vie animale,__ »__ dit Bichat, et jusque-là point de doute; __« __tout ce qui est relatif aux passions appartient à la vie organique,__ »__—et ceci est absolument faux._ Indeed!—_decrevit Florentius magnus_.