The psychology, which, in the _Cours de philosophie positive_, was essentially biological, and ended simply in sociology, becomes, in the _Politique positive_ essentially sociological, and is only secondarily biological. From 1846 Comte became conscious of this new orientation of his thought, and, during the five years which follow, he never ceases working at his “cerebral table.” At first, he no longer demands an anatomical study parallel to the analysis of the mental functions, and independent of it. He intends, henceforth, to determine these functions outside all anatomical research. “The logical principle of this construction consists, for me, in its subjective institution.” He systematically subordinates anatomy to physiology, and he henceforth conceives the determination of the cerebral organs as the complement, and even as the result, of the positive study of the intellectual and moral functions. At bottom, “this subject has never allowed of any other method but the subjective, well or ill employed.” It has been equally used by the disciples of Gall and by his adversaries. What psychology has lacked up to the present is, not exact localisations but a sufficiently deep analysis of intellectual and moral phenomena. And as a matter of fact it was impossible to treat this problem well, so long as we ignored the laws of sociology, “which alone is capable of dealing with these noble functions.”[194] Thus, in order to determine the elementary faculties, those which are irreducible, and which by their co-operation produce the complex phenomena which are apprehended by consciousness, the method must be at once subjective and sociological. For the subject which we must analyse is not the individual consciousness, of which the study is too inaccessible, and whose life is too short: it is the universal subject, _humanity_, “the case of the species being alone sufficiently developed to characterise the various functions.” To this analysis, as a system of control, will be joined the observation of animals. Indeed, all our innate dispositions belong also to the other superior animals. If then the study of man should seem to establish elementary, moral, or even intellectual functions, of which we see no trace in these animals, by this alone we should consider that the analysis has been imperfect, and that complex results have been considered as irreducible. “_Sociological inspiration controlled by zoological appreciation_: such is the general principle of the positive theory of the soul.”[195]