96. It may be considered as a part of this syncretism, as we may call it, of the material and immaterial hypothesis, that Descartes fixed the seat of the soul in the conarion, or pineal gland, which he selected as the only part of the brain which is not double. By some mutual communication which he did not profess to explain, though later metaphysicians have attempted to do so, the unextended intelligence, thus confined to a certain spot, receives the sensations which are immediately produced through impressions on the substance of the brain. If he did not solve the problem, be it remembered that the problem has never since been solved. It was objected by a nameless correspondent, who signs himself Hyperaspistes, that the soul being incorporeal could not leave by its operations a trace on the brain, which his theory seemed to imply. Descartes answered, in rather a remarkable passage, that as to things purely intellectual, we do not, properly speaking, remember them at all, as they are equally original thoughts every time they present themselves to the mind, except that they are habitually joined as it were, and associated with certain names, which being bodily, make us remember them.[240] [240] This passage I must give in French, finding it very obscure, and having translated more according to what I guess than literally. Mais pour ce qui est des choses purement intellectuelles, à proprement parler on n’en aucun ressouvenir; et la première fois qu’elles se présentent à l’esprit, on les pense aussi bien que la seconde, si ce n’est peut-être qu’elles ont coûtume d’être jointes et comme attachées a certains noms qui, étant corporels, font que nous nous ressouvenons aussi d’elles. Vol. viii., p. 271. |Gassendi’s attacks on the Meditations.| 97. If the orthodox of the age were not yet prepared for a doctrine which seemed so favourable at least to natural religion as the immateriality of the soul, it may be readily supposed, that Gassendi, like Hobbes, had imbibed too much of the Epicurean theory to acquiesce in the spiritualising principles of his adversary. In a sportive style, he addresses him, _O anima!_ and Descartes, replying more angrily, retorts upon him the name _O caro!_ which he frequently repeats. Though we may lament such unhappy efforts at wit in these great men, the names do not ill represent the spiritual and carnal philosophies; the school that produced Leibnitz, Kant, and Stewart, contrasted with that of Hobbes, Condillac, and Cabanis. |Superiority of Descartes.|