Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Study of the Brain-Weights of Men Notable in the Professions, Arts and Sciences
That the very slow accumulation of brain-weights of distinguished men, or of successful members of the liberal professions, has contributed to the exist ing diversities Of Opinion concerning the significance of the weight of the. Brain in its relations to the in telligence is clear to anyone familiar with recent essays on the subject. Particularly disconcerting to some writers has been the not infrequent occur rence of unusually heavy brains in idiotic persons, While' certain lo-w brain weights Of men ranking high in intelligence have prompted not a few anatomists and anthropologists - not content to defer judgment until a sufficient number of data had been collected - to make the ?at assertion that the weight of the brain is absolutely unrelated to the psychical facul ties.
It were indeed strange if we had thus to over throw the' general principles governing the func tions Of the brain as an apparatus Of thought. Aside, from the well-established proofs of the interdepend ence of. Brain-size and intelligence in the animal series, there exist the very convincing craniological studies Of Ranke, Manouvrier, Virchow and manyothers, pointing in no uncertain way to a decided relation between the cranial capacities of men and their psychical powers. If, as Broca has shown, the skulls of modern Pari-sians are larger than those Of the seventh century, if the cranial capacity of townspeople is, as a rule, greater than that of the peasants of the environs and if the heads of university. Students have been found to be on the average greatest and growing for the longest time in the group of most successful men (venn), it would certainly seem that the size of the brain assumes relatively speaking, that signi fincance due this organof mind quite as much as for example, the large size of the vestibular nerve in the cetacea and phocid'ae relates to their remarka blv skilful 'equilibri-stic movements.
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