Cabanis, Pierre-Jean-Georges

CABANIS, PIERRE-JEAN-GEORGES. - Physician and philosopher, b. at Cosnac (Corrèze) on June 5, 1757, d. at Rueil on May 5, 1808. He began his studies at the college of Drives and completed them in Paris. He met the philosophers and scientists of the time in Madame Helvétius's salon, and adopted the principles of the Revolution. He was the physician of Mirabeau, whose illness and death he described.

In 1802 he published the work Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme (2 vols.), in which he studies the influence exerted on individual character by the physiological conditions of the organism. The work, rich in accurate and perspicacious observations, nevertheless does not seem to rise above materialism, inasmuch as the brain is there described as the veritable organ of thought. It is possible, however, that in this work C. did not intend to propose an adequate and definitive solution: in fact, in the last years of his life, in a celebrated letter to Fauriel, he declares himself, at least probably, in favor of the existence of a transcendent God and a spiritual soul.