Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/885

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

C


CAB
833
CAB

CABADES. See Cobad.

CABAKDJI or KABAKDJI-OGLOU, a celebrated Turkish rebel, died in 1808. He was an officer in the corps of the Yamaks, and in 1807 was chosen by them as their commander. This body, being dissatisfied with certain military innovations introduced by the sultan Selim, marched, to the number of six hundred, with Cabakdji at their head, to Constantinople, where they massacred many of the high officers of the state, and other persons of distinction. They then accused the sultan of being the enemy of the janizaries; and having contrived to render him unpopular with his soldiers, succeeded in deposing him, and proclaimed as his successor the sultan Mustapha, son of Abdoul-Hamid. Cabakdji was surprised at Fanaraki, on the Bosphorus, and put to death.—G. M.

* CABALLERO, Fermin Agosto, a Spanish statesman, journalist, and geographer, was born in 1800. He first came into notice by a series of pamphlets which he published against Minano's Geographical Dictionary of the Peninsula. In 1843 he obtained a seat in the cabinet under Lopez, was expelled by Espartero, but resumed office for a short time after the fall of that minister. Of his works, which are chiefly geographical, we mention, "Manual Geografico administrativo de España," and a pamphlet on the geographical learning of Cervantes.—J. B.

CABALLERO, Joseph Antony, Marquis, a Spanish statesman, born in 1760. On the accession of Ferdinand VII. in 1808, he was made president of the council of finance; but having joined Murat's party, and become a firm adherent of Joseph Bonaparte, he was, on the downfall of Napoleon, compelled to retire to Bourdeaux. In 1818 he was sentenced by Ferdinand to perpetual banishment, but was recalled in 1820 by the constitutionalists. He died at Salamanca in 1821.—J. B.

CABANE, Filippina, born in Catania, whence she is called Catanea, early in the sixteenth century. She was the wife of a fisherman; but being chosen nurse to Robert, afterwards king of Naples, she rose to a high place at court, married the high-steward to the king, and at length became governess to Giovanna, afterwards queen of Naples. When Andrew, Giovanna's husband, was murdered, the adventurer and her son were both arrested on suspicion, put to the torture, and died in 1545.—J. B.

CABANIS, Jean-Baptiste de Salagnac, a French lawyer and agriculturist, was born at Yssoudun in 1723, and died in 1786. He was at first educated for the law, and afterwards devoted himself to agriculture. He published a work on the art of grafting.—J. H. B.

CABANIS, Pierre-Jean-Georges, physician and philosopher, was born at Conac in 1757. He manifested an early taste for study; but an irritable temper was not well managed by the masters of the college of Brives, which he entered at the age of ten. Even under the discipline of the family he was rather intractable; and his father having carried him to Paris, left him very much to himself. His taste for study revived. He read Locke, and attended the course of Brisson. Having spent two or three years in filling up what was defective in his education, he took a journey to Poland in 1773. He returned to Paris at the age of eighteen, and sought the society of men of letters. His father having urged him to make choice of a profession, he decided in favour of medicine. He never became what is called a practitioner—for which the weakness of his health unfitted him—and his acquaintance with the last representatives of the philosophy of the eighteenth century gave a turn to his thoughts more in accordance with the theories and speculations of medical science than with its laborious duties. Having completed his professional studies, he retired from Paris to Auteuil, where he was admitted to the society of Madame Helvetius, and some of the most distinguished men of the day. There he met with Turgot, Diderot, d'Alembert, Condillac, &c. He had also seen Jefferson and Franklin; and when Voltaire came to Paris to have the tragedy of Irene represented, Cabanis submitted to him some portions of the Iliad which he had translated into verse—which were favourably received by the veteran litterateur. When the Revolution approached, Cabanis was intimately associated with Mirabeau, whose opinions he shared, and whose labours he assisted. He was also intimate with Condorcet, to whom, on the night of his arrest, he gave, at his own desire, the poison which was to save him from the scaffold. He collected the writings of Condorcet, and subsequently married his sister-in-law, Charlotte Grouchy, sister to the marshal of that name. During the horrors of the Revolution, Cabanis, seeking seclusion and safety, attached himself as medical officer to one of the hospitals, and in that capacity had the opportunity of saving many of those who had been proscribed. In 1795 he was named professor in the central school of health; in the following year he was elected member of the National Institute; and in 1798 he was chosen a representative of the people in the council of Five Hundred. But his health, which was precarious, gradually gave way; and about the beginning of 1807 he had an attack of apoplexy, which interrupted his intellectual labours. He left Auteuil to spend the summer at the residence of his father-in-law near Meulan; and during the winter he established himself in a house near the village of Rueil. But the greatest care and skill were unavailing, and he sank under a second attack of apoplexy on the 5th of May, 1808, in the fifty-second year of his age.

The writings of Cabanis, which are numerous, are either purely literary, as "Melanges de Litterature Allemande," 8vo, 1797; or medical, as "Observations sur les Hospitaux," 8vo, 1789; or philosophical, as "Traité du Physique et du Moral de l'homme." It is by this last work that he is now chiefly known. It was first published in 8vo, Paris, 1802. It next appeared in 1803, with an analytical table by M. Destutt de Tracy, and an alphabetical table by M. Sue. In 1815 it was published under the title of "Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme;" again in 1824, with a table and notes by M. Pariset, and in the same year in three volumes, 12mo, with a table and notice of the author by M. Boisseau. The starting-point of Cabanis is the philosophy of Condillac, which reduces all our faculties to sensibility, or the capacity of experiencing sensations. The nerves are the seat of this sensibility. The impressions made on them from without are passively received, being carried from the circumference to the centre; a reaction proceeds from the brain, sensation follows, and ideas are formed. Such was the theory common among the ideologists of his day. But Cabanis goes beyond them in noticing not only external but internal sensations; and by the latter he explains instinctive movements, as the consequence of some internal change in the nervous system. Still, all is sensation. Man is intelligent, active, and moral, because he possesses sensibility, and sensibility is the result of a nervous system; so that thought is a function of the brain, just as digestion is a function of the stomach; impressions reach the brain as food reaches the stomach; the brain digests these impressions, and organically secretes thought. As the food which enters the stomach is transfused throughout the body in new and different forms, so impressions which reach the brain isolated and incoherent are manufactured into new and consistent ideas. But while Cabanis thus materialized the mind, he spiritualized the principle of life. Among the physiologists of his day, some thought that the phenomena of the living frame may be explained by physical laws; others that they imply the existence of peculiar properties; and, a third class, that to