Chapter XX: (34) Objectification Of The Will In The Animal Organism (2)

Bichat has, as we have shown above, cast a deep glance into human nature, and in consequence has given an exceedingly admirable exposition, which is one of the most profound works in the whole of French literature. Now, sixty years later, M. Flourens suddenly appears with a polemic against it in his work, “_De la vie et de l’intelligence_,” and makes so bold as to declare without ceremony that all that Bichat has brought to light on this important subject, which was quite his own, is false. And what does he oppose to him in the field? Counter reasons? No, counter assertions(37) and authorities, indeed, which are as inadmissible as they are remarkable—Descartes and Gall! M. Flourens is by conviction a Cartesian, and to him Descartes, in the year 1858, is still “_le philosophe par excellence_.” Now Descartes was certainly a great man, yet only as a forerunner. In the whole of his dogmas, on the other hand, there is not a word of truth; and to appeal to these as authorities at this time of day is simply absurd. For in the nineteenth century a Cartesian in philosophy is just what a follower of Ptolemy would be in astronomy, or a follower of Stahl in chemistry. But for M. Flourens the dogmas of Descartes are articles of faith. Descartes has taught, _les volontés sont des pensées_: therefore this is the case, although every one feels within himself that willing and thinking are as different as white and black. Hence I have been able above, in 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_.