ture; to each of which he assigned an
hypothetical place in the skull, the most conformable that he could to
the few positive facts on the subject which he considered as
established, and to the general presumption that functions which react
strongly on one another must have their organs adjacent: leaving the
localities avowedly to be hereafter verified, by anatomical and
inductive investigation. There is considerable merit in this attempt,
though it is liable to obvious criticisms, of the same nature as his own
upon Gall. But the characteristic thing is, that while presenting all
this as hypothesis waiting for verification, he could not have taken its
truth more completely for granted if the verification had been made. In
all that he afterwards wrote, every detail of his theory of the brain is
as unhesitatingly asserted, and as confidently built upon, as any other
doctrine of science. This is his first great attempt in the "Subjective
Method," which, originally meaning only the subordination of the pursuit
of truth to human uses, had already come to mean drawing truth itself
from the fountain of his own mind. He had become, on the one hand,
almost indifferent to proof, provided he attained theoretic coherency,
and on the other, serenely confident that even the guesses which
originated with himself could not but come out true.

There is one point in his later view of the sciences, which appears to
us a decided improvement on his earlier. He adds to the six fundamental
sciences of his original scale, a seventh under the name of Morals,
forming the highest step of the ladder, immediately after Sociology:
remarking that it might, with still greater propriety, be termed
Anthropology, being the science of individual human nature, a study,
when rightly understood, more special and complicated than even that of
Society. For it is obliged to take into consideration the diversities of
constitution and temperament (la reaction cerebrale des visceres
vegetatifs) the effects of which, still very imperfectly understood, are
highly important in the individual, but in the theory of society may be
neglected, because, differing in different persons, they neutralize one
another on the large scale. This is a remark worthy of M. Comte in his
best days; and the science thus conceived is, as he says, the true
scientific foundation of the art of Morals (and indeed of the art of
human life), which, therefore, may, both philosophically and
didac