Educated at the medical school in Montpellier, he afterwards went to Paris, where he was employed in connection with the Dictionnaire des sciences medicales.
[1] He held that consciousness or internal perception reveals to us the existence of an immaterial, thinking, feeling and willing subject, the self or soul.
The soul and the principle of life are in constant reciprocal action, and the first owes to the second, not the formation of its faculties, but the conditions under which they are evolved.
He showed himself unable to understand the points of view of those whom he criticized, and yet his own theories, midway between vitalism and animism, are entirely destitute of originality.
[1] To the Esprit des doctrines medicales de Montpellier, published posthumously (Paris, 1830), the editor, H. Petiot, prefixed an account of his life and works; see also Damiron, Phil.