CHAPTER V PSYCHOLOGY

 Psychology has no place in the classification of the fundamental sciences. In it Sociology immediately succeeds Biology. Use has been made of this fact in order to reproach Comte with having neglected an order of most important phenomena. A grave objection has been raised against his doctrine in general. What are we to think of a philosophy which, deliberately, omits a part, and, according to many philosophers, the chief part of reality, the world of consciousness, the spiritual nature of man?   Presented in this way, the objection rests upon many confused notions about words and ideas. What do we understand by psychology? If the word means: “the science of the soul reached through the introspective method,” we must own that Comte does not admit the possibility of such a science. But the same objection will also hold good against the majority of the psychologists of our time. For they do not admit this possibility any more than Comte, and they have endeavoured to constitute the science of psychical facts by a different method than that of introspection, pure and simple. Is psychology defined as “the science which investigates the laws of feeling, of the intellect and of moral phenomena in man and in animals?” Then it is inaccurate to say that there is no psychology for Comte. On the contrary, he thinks that positive psychology has just been founded by contemporary science of whose methods he approves. If he did not use the189 word “psychology,” he did so in order to avoid confusion. At that moment the word was, so to speak, the property of the eclectic school. By the “psychological” method, everyone then understood that of Jouffroy. “Psychology” was the science founded by Cousin on the analysis of the ego. Comte who opposes these philosophers, did not wish his theory of psychical phenomena, which differs from theirs, to be called by the same name. It is this very precaution which has come to be no longer understood, now that “psychology” does not designate the eclectic doctrine alone, but any theory whatsoever concerning mental facts. I.   Comte finds the field occupied by three psychological schools, and he combats all three, for reasons of method and also of doctrine. He looks to them to refute each other mutually, and he will only attack what is common to them all.180   The representatives of these three schools are the Ideologists, with Condillac, from whom they proceed, then the Eclectics, and finally the philosophers of the Scottish school. Comte sometimes calls the eclectics the German school, in opposition to the ideologists, who are the French school, and to the Scottish school, the first of the three in point of time. But he always speaks sympathetically of the Scottish school, remembering that, in part, he owes to it his philosophical education. He also esteems the sincerity and logical vigour of the ideologist Destutt de Tracy. But, after all, we have here metaphysicians, as are also the eclectics upon whom he passes a more severe judgment. By “metaphysicians,” he understands all those who study phenomena, (in this case psychical phenomena), by means of a method which is no longer theological, but which has not yet become positive. In this sense, Locke is a metaphysician, as190 well as Condillac and his other successors in the XVIII. century, Hume alone excepted.   Comte showers derision upon the method of internal observation which is practised by the “psychologists.” The sharpness of his language is at least partially explained by the indignation with which Cousin’s “charlatanisme” inspired him. This “famous sophist,” in whom he recognises some of the gifts of an orator, and in particular that of a mimic, according to him, exercises most unfavourable influence over the minds of men.181 He turns them aside from the positive path, which they are about to enter, to bring them back to metaphysical dialectics, or to hollow and sonorous rhetoric. And, to crown all, this “psychology” claims to follow a scientific method! the very method which has succeeded so well in the natural sciences! It conceives the idea of practising internal observation, as physics makes use of external observation. But what is this internal observation? How can the function of the same organ be to think, and at the same time to observe that it thinks? We conceive that man should be able to observe himself if it is a question of the passions which animate him. No anatomical reason is opposed to this since the organs which are the seat of the passions, are distinct from those which are used for the observing functions. But as to observing the intellectual phenomena in the same way, it is manifestly impossible. In this case, the organ which is observed being one with the observing organ, how could the observation take place?   This objection does not only hold against the eclectics, but also against the Scottish school and the ideologists. We already find it set forth in a letter from Comte to Valat on the 24th, of September, 1819, when he was perhaps not yet acquainted with Cousin. “With what should we observe191 the mind itself, its operations, its activity? We cannot divide our mind, that is to say, our brain, into two parts, of which one acts while the other looks on, to see how it goes to work. The so-called observations made on the human mind, considered in itself and a priori, are pure illusions. All that we call logic, metaphysics, ideology, is an idle fancy and a dream, when it is not an absurdity.”182   This text, to which we could add many similar ones, allows us to rectify an erroneous, although a frequent interpretation of Comte’s thought. He does not deny that we are informed by consciousness of the existence of psychical phenomena. On the contrary, he expressly recognises the fact. What he regards as impossible is to study the activity of thought by means of reflection, that is to discover the “intellectual laws” by a method of internal observation. In a word, it is such works as those of Condillac, of the ideologists, of Reid, etc., which he condemns in their principle. In these works the subject matter is the theory of knowledge, and not that which is called to-day psychology proper.   If, instead of seeking specially for the intellectual laws, we wish to study psychical phenomena in general, internal observation will become possible in a certain number of cases. But it will not lead to the end which we wish to reach. It excludes the use of the comparative method, so fertile and so indispensable in the whole domain of biology. It only studies man, and even adult and healthy man. What will it tell us of the child, of the mentally deranged, of the animal?183 Will it, like Descartes, go so far as to deny the existence of a psychical life in animals? Still this life cannot be studied by internal observation. We must then have recourse to another method.   Strictly speaking, there are only two methods which are suitable for the science of those phenomena. Either we192 determine with all possible precision the various organic conditions on which they depend: this is the object of what Comte calls phrenological psychology. Or else we observe directly the products of the intellectual and moral activity, and this study then belongs to sociology. But, if by this supposed psychological, method we set aside the consideration of the agent, that is to say of the organ, and that of the action, that is to say of the productions of the human faculties, what can remain “unless an unintelligible logomachy,” or verbal entities which are substituted to real phenomena? Here then is the study of the most difficult and most complex functions suspended, as it were, in the air, without any point at which it touches the simpler and more perfect sciences, “over which, on the contrary, it is claimed that it should reign majestically.”   Nothing is more opposed to the general order of nature, in which we always see the more complex and higher phenomena subordinated, so far as the conditions of their existence are concerned, to the more simple and commoner ones. As the biological depend upon the inorganic phenomena, just as, within biology, the phenomena of animal life are subordinated to those of organic life, so the intellectual and moral phenomena depend upon the other biological functions. Beyond their own particular laws, the laws of all the subjacent orders of phenomena also govern them. Can we study them as if all these laws did not exist? Let the metaphysician be free to do so. The scientific man who follows the positive method will proceed on other lines.   A defective method could lead but to false results. Notwithstanding the differences in their doctrines, ideologists and psychologists have agreed to place the intellectual functions in the front rank, and to thrust the affective functions further back. The mind has become the almost exclusive subject of their speculations. Look at the titles of193 their great works since Locke’s “Essay on the Human Understanding—Principles of Human Knowledge—On the origin of our Ideas—On Sensations—Ideology, etc.” The various affective faculties have been left comparatively in the shade. Now, it is the contrary which should have been done. Experience shows that the affections, the passions, the inclinations, play by far the most important part in the life of animals and even of man. Far from being the result of intelligence their “spontaneous and independent” impulse is indispensable for the first awakening, and afterwards for the development, of the various intellectual faculties. “Against all evidence man has been represented as essentially reasoning, as being continually performing unaware a multitude of imperceptible calculations with scarcely any spontaneity, even from tenderest childhood.”184   Had the study of the psychical functions been made upon animals at the same time as upon man, this error would not have lasted long. But philosophers were maintained in it, on the contrary, by metaphysical and even theological preoccupations. The science of mental functions had to establish a difference, not only of degree but of kind between man and animals. It was further required, by reason of another necessity closely allied to the former, that the soul should be considered as being immortal. And it was consequently necessary that the “ego” should present metaphysical characteristics of unity, of simplicity and of identity. Now, it is by thought that man is most distinguished from animals. It is therefore from thought that the characteristics attributed to the soul or to the “ego” have been borrowed.   But in fact the “ego” is not the absolute unity which the eclectic psychologists say that it is. It represents the feeling which the superior living being has, at every moment of the “sympathies” and the “synergies” which take place194 within the organism. It is the conscious expression of what the French call to-day “cénesthésie.” Far from being directly perceived as Cousin asserts, it is the indirect product of a quantity of sensations and sentiments, of which the majority are not perceived in the normal state.185 It is especially by pathological facts, (diseases of the personality, double consciousness, lunacy, etc.), that the attention of the scientific man is drawn to this very complex phenomenon. It is, moreover, impossible to regard the sentiment of the “ego” as belonging exclusively to man. Everything leads us to believe that it also exists in the other higher animals. In any case there is no metaphysical doctrine to be founded upon this exceedingly complex and very unstable sentiment. Comte is here speaking as the successor of Hume and of Cabanis. In the clearest manner he defines his opposition to Cousin’s doctrine. The latter draws the whole of philosophy from the analysis of the “ego,” Comte draws nothing from it.   He does not, however, stop to show the superiority of the positive method over theological or metaphysical method in this matter. Of what use would it be? The progress of science, in the end, gets the better of methods which have become antiquated and barren. Metaphysicians have already passed from the state of “domination” to that of “protestation.”186 And when the positive method gets a footing in an order of phenomena, there is no instance in which, sooner or later, it has not asserted its mastery over it. II.   The psychology of Comte is connected with that of Cabanis and of Gall, without, however, any actual confusion with them. He praises Cabanis for having been one of the first to form a195 positive conception of intellectual and moral phenomena.187 Cabanis set himself to show that the phenomena so numerous and so varied which take place in the being who lives and feels, constantly act and react upon each other. The psychical phenomena do not escape this law. At every moment, through the medium of the nervous system, they are subject to the influence of the state of the whole body, and they make the body feel their own influence. Cabanis gives a great number of proofs of this, borrowed from the action of sex, of age, of temperament, of illness, etc. Moreover, the relation of psychical phenomena to the brain is identical with that which exists between any function whatever and its organ, for instance, between digestion and the stomach. According to Cabanis we are not necessarily materialists because we refuse to explain the functions of feeling, and the intellectual functions by means of a special principle. First causes always escape us. Here, as elsewhere, the scientific man confines himself to the observation of phenomena and to the search after their laws. On the other hand, if psychology claimed to start from the analysis of the “ego,” it would leave aside many phenomena with which our consciousness does not acquaint us, and which are psychical nevertheless. This is a fruitful remark, which will be taken up again by Maine de Biran, and which psychologists in our own time have turned to great account.   Cabanis conceived psychical facts in a positive manner, but he did not attempt to construct their science. In Comte’s opinion it is Gall who is the real founder of positive psychology. Whatever may be the value of his localisations—Comte does not think it an enduring one,—to Gall at least belongs the merit of having set the problem as it should be set, and of presenting a precise solution of it. Moreover Gall did not confine himself to localising the different faculties in196 different parts of the brain. His doctrine proper is preceded by an excellent criticism directed against the psychology usually received in the XVIII. century.   In order to combat Condillac, Helvetius and the ideologists, Gall takes his stand upon experience, that is to say upon mental physiology and pathology, and also upon the observation of animals. As a fact, each individual comes into the world with tendencies, with predispositions, with innate faculties. The supposed natural equality of all men is an ill-founded abstraction, since their propensities and their qualities often differ very greatly. The paradox of Helvetius who attributes the moral and intellectual inequality of men to the all powerful influence of education and of circumstances, cannot be upheld. We cannot, as we will, make just minds and upright souls. Variety of organs entails diversity of functions; the difference between men and animals, as that of men among themselves, is therefore due to anatomical and and physiological differences. Condillac’s absolute sensualism is thus refuted by facts. Moreover, if the science of psychology does not advance it is because distinctions between the faculties of the soul, (memory, imagination, judgment, etc.) have been arbitrarily established, from a metaphysical and logical point of view, which does not correspond to the real speciality of the functions.   Gall lays down the following principle as the ultimate conclusion of experience, and the fundamental basis of his doctrine of the functions of the brain:188 The dispositions of the individual soul and mind are innate and their manifestation depends upon the organisation. We must not see in this a return to the a priori method. Gall guards against reverting to the innateness of Descartes and Leibnitz. He means to speak simply of dispositions, or tendencies, or “faculties,” for197 instance, the faculty of love, the feeling of the just and of the unjust, ambition, the faculty of learning languages, that of comparing several judgments or ideas, of deducing consequences from them, etc. “We confine ourselves,” says Gall, “to observation.” We only consider the faculties of the soul in so far as they become phenomena for us by means of the material organs. We deny and affirm nothing except that which can be brought under judgment by experience.   Comte assents to all this. With Gall he condemns the “childish dreams” of Condillac and of his successors about transformed sensations189; with him he admits the speciality of the psychical functions, corresponding to the speciality of the cerebral organs. But he only borrows Gall’s principle. He has the strongest objections even to Gall’s psychology. Undoubtedly at the time when Gall lived, no one could have done better, and his effort deserves to be admired. But his errors, although they were inevitable, are errors none the less.   In the first place Gall was wrong in isolating the nervous system too much from the brain, which is in fact a prolongation of this system, as is proved by comparative anatomy.190 Gall considered the systems of automatic life, of voluntary motion, and of the senses, as entirely distinct from one another. He only included in the brain those nervous organs, which, at any rate in the most perfect animals, are the special organs of consciousness, of the instinctive aptitudes, of the inclinations, and of the faculties of the mind and soul. To this thesis Comte opposes the facts assembled by Cabanis, and the solidarity of all the elements in the living being. The brain can neither be isolated from the rest of the nervous system, nor the nervous system from the rest of the organism.   Again, Gall multiplies the faculties in an arbitrary manner. He had established 27 of them. Spurzheim carried this198 number to 35, and others have further increased it. Every phrenologist will soon create a function, and its organ, whenever it may seem opportune to him, with as much facility as ideologists and psychologists construct entities.191 These creations are nearly always extremely clumsy. Thus an innate “mathematical aptitude” has been established. Why not also a chemical, an anatomical aptitude, etc.? And this mathematical aptitude is manifested by the facility for executing calculations. But the mathematical mind, far from being an isolated and special aptitude, presents all the varieties which the human mind can offer by the different combinations of really elementary faculties. For instance, some great geometers have especially excelled by the sagacity of their inventions, others by the extent of their combinations, others again by the genius of language and the institution of signs and so on. From this point of view, well drawn up monographies of great scientific men and great artists would be extremely precious for the progress of psychology.   In conclusion, “fundamental phrenological analysis” must be reconstructed. From Gall, Comte only preserves “the impulsion.” The greater part of the localisations which Gall thought right to establish must be abandoned. But he was right in searching for them, for thus he showed science the path to be followed. Even an erroneous hypothesis on positive lines is always a service rendered in the beginnings of a science. But of Gall’s doctrine only two principles henceforth indisputable subsist. 1st, the innateness of the various fundamental dispositions, be they affective or intellectual; 2nd, the plurality of faculties distinct and independent of one another, “although effective actions usually demand their more or less complex co-operation.” These two principles are moreover the two correlative and interdependent aspects of the same conception, which is in accordance with what199 “common sense” has always thought of human nature. It corresponds to the division of the brain, from the anatomical point of view into a certain number of partial organs, at once independent and depending upon one another. To establish and to demonstrate the detail of this correspondence is the object of “phrenological physiology.” III.   Comte took up the attempt where Gall had failed. But his doctrine passed through two successive forms. He himself calls attention to the importance and to the causes of this change.   In 1837, when he was writing the third volume of the Cours de philosophie positive, he still closely followed not only Gall’s general conception, but also his anatomical and physiological hypotheses. He then thought that “the doctrine deduced by Gall from the method represents the true moral and intellectual nature of man and animals with admirable fidelity.” He approved of the division of the faculties into the affective and the intellectual, the organs of the former occupying the whole of the posterior and middle regions of the brain, and the organs of the others occupying only the anterior region of the brain, that is to say, a quarter or a sixth of the cephalic mass, “which at once re-establishes the pre-eminence of the affective faculties upon a scientific basis.” He even accepted the sub-division of these faculties into inclinations and feelings, and that of the intellectual faculties into perceptive faculties and reflective faculties.   At this moment, his objections were especially directed against the excessive multiplication of the faculties, and upon the insufficiency of the anatomy of the brain which accompanied the distinction of so many faculties. He thought the anatomists were right in protesting against200 this method of the phrenologists who, from the supposed existence of an irreducible faculty, assume the existence of a corresponding organ in the brain. But anatomy cannot thus be treated a priori. As the aim of every biological theory is to establish an exact harmony between anatomical analysis and physiological analysis, this evidently supposes that they are not exactly modelled upon one another, and that each one of them has been worked out in a distinct manner. We must then take up the analysis of the cerebral apparatus again, provisionally setting aside all idea of function, or at least only making use of it as an auxiliary in anatomical research.192   In 1851, in the first volume of the Politique positive, Comte’s attitude is quite different. In Gall’s psychology he no longer recognises anything but what is of historical interest. His own conception of psychology is completely altered. This great change has been determined by the foundation of sociology.   Undoubtedly Gall’s merit remains very great, for he rendered a service of the first order in daring to construct a positive theory of the intellectual and moral functions. Without this theory, which at first he considered to be exact in its general lines, Comte could not have undertaken to apply the positive method to social facts, nor consequently to found his philosophy. So his gratitude to Gall is almost as great as to Condorcet, “his spiritual father.” But once sociology is founded, in looking back, Comte understands that Gall’s “cerebral theory” cannot be maintained. It resembles a provisional bridge by means of which positive philosophy passed over the interval which separates biology proper from sociology. Hardly has it reached the other side when the bridge collapses. It matters little: it suffices that, thanks to the bridge, Comte should have set foot upon the sociological ground. He can now return in all security to201 the study of the mental functions. “When I had founded sociology,” he says, “I understood at last that Gall’s genius had been unable to construct a real physiology of the brain, owing to the lack of a knowledge of the laws of collective evolution, which alone must furnish at once its principle and its end. From that time I felt that this task, which before I expected biologists to accomplish, belonged to the second part of my own philosophical career.”193   The psychology, which, in the Cours de philosophie positive, was essentially biological, and ended simply in sociology, becomes, in the Politique positive essentially sociological, and is only secondarily biological. From 1846 Comte became conscious of this new orientation of his thought, and, during the five years which follow, he never ceases working at his “cerebral table.”   At first, he no longer demands an anatomical study parallel to the analysis of the mental functions, and independent of it. He intends, henceforth, to determine these functions outside all anatomical research. “The logical principle of this construction consists, for me, in its subjective institution.” He systematically subordinates anatomy to physiology, and he henceforth conceives the determination of the cerebral organs as the complement, and even as the result, of the positive study of the intellectual and moral functions. At bottom, “this subject has never allowed of any other method but the subjective, well or ill employed.” It has been equally used by the disciples of Gall and by his adversaries. What psychology has lacked up to the present is, not exact localisations but a sufficiently deep analysis of intellectual and moral phenomena. And as a matter of fact it was impossible to treat this problem well, so long as we ignored the laws of sociology, “which alone is capable of dealing with these noble functions.”194   202   Thus, in order to determine the elementary faculties, those which are irreducible, and which by their co-operation produce the complex phenomena which are apprehended by consciousness, the method must be at once subjective and sociological. For the subject which we must analyse is not the individual consciousness, of which the study is too inaccessible, and whose life is too short: it is the universal subject, humanity, “the case of the species being alone sufficiently developed to characterise the various functions.” To this analysis, as a system of control, will be joined the observation of animals. Indeed, all our innate dispositions belong also to the other superior animals. If then the study of man should seem to establish elementary, moral, or even intellectual functions, of which we see no trace in these animals, by this alone we should consider that the analysis has been imperfect, and that complex results have been considered as irreducible. “Sociological inspiration controlled by zoological appreciation: such is the general principle of the positive theory of the soul.”195   By this method Comte obtains 18 irreducible faculties, of which 10 are representative of the heart, 5 of the mind, and 3 of the character. To each of these he assigns a special organ. He places the organ of the heart in the posterior portion of the brain and in the cerebellum, the organs of the mind in the anterior portion of the brain, and those of character in the intermediary region. Anatomists are free to verify a posteriori the separation of the 18 elements which Comte distinguished a priori in the cerebral apparatus. The existence of these organs, in any case, appears to him to be sufficiently demonstrated, and anatomical determination is not very important. We might confine ourselves to the specification of the number and the situation of the organs, which we have deduced from the number and relations of203 the elementary functions. It would not be necessary for us to know their shape or their size. The utility of cerebral localisations resembles that which geometers draw from curves for the better consideration of equations.196 The organ is simply the static equivalent of the function of the soul. It suffices for us to know its existence and its position so as to situate in it all the relations of the function itself, so to speak. It plays the part of a schematic drawing.   So, the theory of the brain and of the soul is no longer “simultaneous.” In fact, the theory of the soul is first constructed by a subjective and independent method and without any consideration of the disposition of the cerebral apparatus. This disposition is deduced, afterwards, from the theory of the soul, once it is established.   Returning then to Gall’s psychology, Comte can explain its defects to himself. Gall had “oscillated between subjective inspiration and objective tendencies,” without adopting a systematic plan. There has not been any very great disadvantage in this empirical fluctuation in what concerns the theory of the affective functions. Without a doubt, Gall had established an ill-founded distinction between the inclinations and the feelings. But he could not be mistaken concerning the fundamental inclinations of human nature. In default of the true method, he was supported on this point by common wisdom, and by the observation of animals. It is on the subject of the intellectual functions that he is entirely wrong, because here this twofold help failed him, and nothing, in this case, filled the place of the true method which was then unknown. In order to discover the static and dynamic laws of the intellect, it was necessary to abandon the biological point of view. To Gall’s theory Comte then substitutes a new classification of the intellectual functions. He distinguishes between the faculties of conception and the faculties of ex204pression. He indicates the relations of the intellectual functions proper with the affective functions and the functions of motion. He makes us apprehend the very intimate relations which connect desire and will. Finally, to determine the fundamental intellectual functions, he takes into account the historical evolution of the human species.   It does not enter into the purpose of this work to set forth Comte’s theory in detail, and to examine the eighteen irreducible faculties of the cerebral table one by one. But the systematic character of the doctrine does not prevent us from taking up a certain number of interesting and deep psychological views in it. To limit ourselves to a few examples, Comte drew imitation near to habit, and he brought habit itself back “to the great cosmological law of persistence,” which, in the vital order is modified by the intermittance of phenomena.197 He remarked that attention is never produced without an affective phenomenon upon which it depends.198 He also indicated the distinction between strong states and weak states, and the “reduction” of images by actual perceptions. “If our images could offer as much intensity, he says, as our external sensations, our mental state would not allow of any consistency. The appreciation of what is without would be troubled by this conflict with what is within....” Hence a theory of hallucination and insanity.199   The theory of perception which Comte opposes to the abstract sensualism of the ideologists is allied to his general conception of the relations between the subject and the object. Our internal operations are never anything but the direct or indirect prolongation of our external impressions. But “reciprocally, the latter are always complicated by the others, even in the most elementary cases.” The sensation, which appears simple, is already the result of a very complex205 combination.200 For no sensations are really perceived except after reiterated impressions. If the mind is ever passive, it can only be the first time. For the second, it is already prepared by the preceding one, combined with the whole of previous acquisitions. And Comte insists upon “the habitual participation of reasoning in the operations which are attributed to sensation alone.” The activity belonging to the mind enters into all its actions, even the smallest of them.   Mental pathology scarcely exists, owing to the lack of the scientific spirit among specialists for the diseases of the mind. Still if Broussais’ principle be true, that is to say, if morbid phenomena are produced according to the same laws which govern normal phenomena, what advantage might not scientific men derive from the observation of mental diseases? They are privileged cases which nature supplies for them, real experiments, where that which is inseparable in the normal state appears disassociated. What light might be thrown by this means upon many physiological and even anatomical questions, in particular in what concerns the sentiment of the ego (diseases of personality, aboulia, etc.), and the faculties of expression, isolated from the faculties of conception (diseases of speech).   Animal psychology would not be less instructive. All the affective and intellectual faculties are common to men and higher animals, save perhaps the highest intellectual aptitudes. Even this exception is a doubtful one, if without prejudice we compare the actions of the highest animals with those of the least developed savages. We should study the habits and the mind of wild animals. We should observe the changes which are produced in them by domestication. Here again almost everything has to be done afresh.201   206 IV.   In spite of whatever may have been said, Comte then has a psychology. And, what is more, this psychology is in a sense not far removed from that of the Scottish school and of the Eclectics although he so much fought against their methods. The points of contact are numerous and important. In both doctrines the psychical phenomena are referred to faculties and these are represented as “dispositions,” innate “properties.” In both, the essential psychological problem appears to be the determination of the number and the relations of these faculties, whose action variously combined produces psychical phenomena: before everything, it is a question of not considering as an elementary faculty that which as a matter of fact results from the combination of several faculties, or inversely. Finally in both, it is claimed to establish this doctrine of the innate faculties upon the observation of human nature.   Comte himself had seen that, at any rate in the case of Condillac’s criticism, he was in accordance with the eclectics. On this point he only refused to grant them originality. According to him they merely popularised, in obscure and emphatic declamations, what physiologists like Charles Bonnet, Cabanis, and chiefly Gall and Spurzheim had long before stated on this subject in a far clearer and especially in a far more exact manner. For his part Garnier, the author of the Traité des Facultés de l’ame had clearly seen the relations of eclecticism to Gall’s doctrine, and had studied them in a work entitled De la Phrénologie et de la Psychologie comparées which appeared in 1839.   Why then does Comte attack the eclectics with such persistence and such violence, if, indeed, the results of his psychology are not very far removed from what they say?—It is because in reality, beneath the apparent resemblance of207 doctrine, a difference of method as serious as can be conceived is concealed. For Cousin, and especially for the Cousin we know before 1830, psychology is not an end in itself. It is a means which he uses to rise to the study of being in itself and of the Absolute. The “ego” which he analyses is independent of the organism. This is what Comte condemns as a retrogression. “Some men, not recognizing the present and irrevocable direction of the human mind, have endeavoured for ten years to transplant German metaphysics into our midst, and to constitute, under the name of psychology, a so-called science entirely independent of physiology, superior to it, and to which should exclusively belong the study of moral phenomena.”202 And this attempt at reaction takes place at the very moment when the works of Cabanis and of Gall have brought this study upon the positive path!   It is needless to say that, in Comte’s system, psychical phenomena are subordinated, as far as their conditions of existence are concerned, to all the orders of more general natural phenomena. Comte should then have followed Cabanis and Gall, as a matter of course. But he thought that to establish the science of the “transcendent functions,” the biological point of view was insufficient. In this case anatomical considerations are only a kind of reduplication and transcription of physiological considerations. As Maine de Biran said, in terms curiously like Comte’s, “a distinction of places assigned to the exercise of each faculty must necessarily be itself referred to another pre-established division of the faculties.... Hypothesis thus grafted upon hypothesis of a different order would not much contribute to throw light upon the analysis of our intellectual functions.”203 Only, instead of appealing, like Maine de Biran, to reflection, Comte rises from the biological to the sociological point of view208 He recognises that the subjective method alone is suitable for the science of psychical phenomena, but, in place of the metaphysical subjective method, by means of which the “ego” is deluded into the belief that it analyses its operations, and grasps its own activity, he will make use of the positive subjective method. The subject which he will analyse will be the human mind, or better, the human soul considered in its continuous evolution, that is to say in its religions, in its sciences, in its philosophy, in its language and in its art. Here is matter for a psychology which will no longer be chimerical, but real, which will be positive, in a word, like the biology upon which it depends and of which it is the fulfilment.   If we leave aside the conception of the “faculties” which Comte accepted rather hastily at the hands of the Scottish school and of Gall, and the “cerebral table” which he believed to be once for all constructed, his psychology contained more than one important and fertile seed. To the eclectic psychology, which is not positive, Comte substituted two sciences which are such. In the first place, an experimental science of the psychical phenomena studied in their relation to their organic conditions: it is the physiological psychology of which no one to-day questions the legitimacy. Then, by the introduction of the sociological point of view, Comte opened the way to a whole series of studies which begin to be developed, (social psychology, ethnical psychology, psychology of the masses, etc). It is often said that sociological laws have their foundation in psychological laws. But the reverse is no less true. The psychological laws, at least the mental and moral laws, are, at the same time, sociological laws, since they are only revealed in the study of the intellectual history of the human species. “We must not explain humanity by man, but man by humanity.” To the “Τγν?θι σεαυτ?ν” of ancient psychology, the positive method substitutes this precept: “To know yourself, know history.” Man only209 becomes conscious of himself, when he becomes aware of his place in the evolution of Humanity.