NOTE ON WHAT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT BICHAT.
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[1] 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 reside 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;
- ↑ "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.
