CABANIS, PIERRE-JEAN-GEORGES. — Physician and philosopher, b. at Cosnac (Corrèze) on 5 June 1757, d. at Rueil on 5 May 1808. He began his studies at the college of Brives and completed them in Paris. In the salon of Madame Helvétius he met the philosophers and scientists of the day 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, does not, however, seem to transcend materialism, inasmuch as the brain is described there as the true organ of thought. It is possible, though, that in this work Cabanis did not intend to propose an adequate and definitive solution; indeed, in the last years of his life, in a famous letter to Faure, he appears, at least with probability, to affirm the existence of a transcendent God and of a spiritual soul.