Now here is the sum and the substance of Gall’s psycology. For the understanding, essentially a unit faculty, he substitutes a multitude of little understandings or faculties, distinct and isolate. And, as these faculties, which perform just as he wills them to do—which he multiplies according to his pleasure,[32] seem in his eyes to explain certain phenomena which are not well explained by the lights of ordinary philosophy, he triumphs! He does not perceive that an explanation, which is words merely, adapts itself to any and to every thing. In the time of Malebranche, every thing was explained by _animal spirits_; Barthez explained every thing by his _vital principle_, &c. “This,” says Gall, “explains how the same man may possess a judgment that is ready and sure as to certain objects, while it is imbecile as to certain others; how he may have the liveliest and most fruitful imagination upon some subjects, while it is cold and sterile upon others.”[33] “Grant,” says he, further, “to the animals certain fundamental faculties, and you have the dog that follows the chase with _passion_; the weasel that strangles the poultry with _rage_; the nightingale that sings with _fervour_ beside his mate,”[34] &c. No doubt of it. But what sort of philosophy is that, that thinks to explain a fact by a word? You observe such or such a penchant in an animal, such or such a taste or talent in a man; _presto_, a particular faculty is produced for each one of these peculiarities, and you suppose the whole matter to be settled. You deceive yourself; your _faculty_ is only a _word_,—it is the name of the fact,—and all the difficulty remains just where it was before. Besides, you speak only of the facts that you suppose yourself able to explain; you say nothing of those that you render by your system wholly inexplicable. You say not one word as to the unity of the understanding, the unity of the _me_, or you deny it. But the unity of the understanding, the unity of the _me_, is a fact of the conscious sense, and the conscious sense is more powerful than all the philosophies together. Gall is always talking about observation, and he was indeed, as an observer, full of ingenuity. But, in order to follow out an observation, it must be traced to the very end, and we must accept all that it yields to our research; and observation every where gives, and shows every where, and above all things else, the unity of the understanding, the unity of the _me_. Gall’s philosophy consists only in transmuting into a particular understanding each separate _mode_[35] of the understanding, properly so called. Descartes had already said, “There are in us as many faculties as there are truths to be known.... But I do not think that any useful application can be made of this way of thinking; and it seems to me rather more likely to be mischievous, by giving to the ignorant occasion for imagining an equal number of little entities in the soul.”[36]