Gall reverses the common philosophy, and it is worthy of remark, that the whole of his philosophy, which he thinks so novel,[56] is, to the very letter, nothing more nor less than this very inversion. According to common philosophy, there is one general understanding—a unit; and there are faculties which are but modes of this understanding. Gall asserts that there are as many kinds of peculiar intelligences as there are faculties, and that the understanding in general is nothing more than a mode or attribute of each faculty. He says so expressly. His words are: “The intellectual faculty and all its subdivisions, such as perception, recollection, memory, judgment, and imagination, are not fundamental faculties, but merely their general attributes.”[57] Gall first inverts the common philosophy, and then contends for the existence of all the consequences of that common philosophy. He suppresses the _me_, but insists that there is a soul. He abolishes the freewill, and yet contends that there is such a thing as morals. He makes of the idea of God an idea that is merely relative and conditional, but yet asserts that there may be such a thing as religion. I say he abolishes the _me_; for the _me_ is the soul. The soul is the understanding, general and one; but if there be no understanding as general, there can be no soul. According to Gall, there is nothing real and positive except the _faculties_. And these faculties alone are possessed of organs. “None of my predecessors,” says he, “had any knowledge of those forces which alone are the functions of special cerebral organs.”[58] By the contrary reasoning, neither the will, nor the reason, nor the understanding, are possessed of any organs, for they are nothing but forces; they are nothing but nouns collective—words. “These observations may suffice,” says Gall, “to convince the reader that there cannot exist any special organ of the will, or the freewill.”[59] He adds: “It is equally impossible that there should be any peculiar organ of the reason.”[60] Finally he says: “From all that I have now said it follows, that the idea of an organ of the intellect or understanding is quite as inadmissible as the idea of an organ of the instinct.”[61] Hence there can be nought but the faculties; and, according to Gall, these faculties are so distinct, that he attributes to each particular one a separate organ.[62] He divides the understanding into little understandings.