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 a 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 in different parts of the brain. His doctrine proper is preceded by an excellent criticism directed against the psychology usually received in the XVIII. century.