The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

therefore the passions have their seat (stige) 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 (siigent) 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 sitige, of singer 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) : u 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 volonUs sont des pense'es.

Accordingly he says, p. 144: " Le premier service que Gall a rendu a la physiologie (?) a 4t6 de rammener le moral a I'intellectuel, et de faire voir que les faculty morales et les faculte's intellectuelles sont du mime 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: US% fen dais a classer les services que nous a rendu Gall, je dirais que le premier a e'te'de rammener les qualite's morales au cerveau j" — p. 153 : " Le cerveau seal est Vorgane de I'dme, et de I'dme dans toute la plenitude de sesfonctions " (we see the simple soul of Descartes still always lurks in the background, as the kernel of the matter) ; " il est le stige de toutes les faculte's intellectuelles. . . .

Gall a rammeni le moral a l'intellectuel, il a rammene les qualite's morales au mSme sihge, au mime organe, que les faculte's 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 chocking, than to see the true and profound rejected and the false 2and 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 magna est vis veritatis et prcevalebit. 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 selfsufficiency, 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 01 igin in the nature of the Academy and its fauteui/s.

Throned upon these, and saluting each other mutually as illustre confrere, 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 fauteuH) and to its illustres confreres, 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.