test of intellectual vigour; whereas it is probable that in the amount
of acquired knowledge and acuteness of reasoning many savage races
surpass the majority of the illiterate peasantry in the most civilised
countries of Europe. Mr. Wallace, in viewing the subject in one special
light, remarks: “The brain of the lowest savages, and, as far as we yet
know, of the prehistoric races, is little inferior in size to that of
the higher types of man, and is immensely superior to that of the higher
animals; while it is universally admitted that quantity of brain is one
of the most important, and probably the most essential of the elements
which determine mental power. Yet the mental requirements of savages,
and the faculties actually exercised by them, are very little above
those of animals. The higher feelings of pure morality and refined
emotion, and the power of abstract reasoning and ideal conception, are
useless to them; are rarely, if ever, manifested; and have no important
relations to their habits, wants, desires, and well-being. They possess
a mental organ beyond their needs.”[162]
Here, however, it may be well to guard against the confusion of two very
distinct elements. The higher feelings of pure morality and refined
emotion are not manifestations of intellectual vigour in the same sense
as is the power of abstract reasoning and ideal conception. It is not
rare to find an English or Scottish peasant with little intellectual
culture or capacity for abstract reasoning, but with an acutely
instinctive moral sense. On the other hand, among the criminal class, it
is by no means rare to find examples of wonderfully vigorous
intellectual power applied to the planning and accomplishing of schemes
which involve as much foresight and skill as many a triumph of
diplomacy; but which at the same time seem to be nearly incompatible
with any moral sense. Moreover, it is needless to say that intellectual
vigour and high moral principle are by no means invariable concomitants
in any class of society; nor can they be traced to a common source. Mr.
Wallace recognises that “a superior intelligence has guided the
development of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose”;
and such guidance involves much more than the mere evolution of a higher
animal organisation. But, appreciating as he does the difficulties
involved in any acceptance of a theory of evolution which assumes man to
be the mere latest outgrowth of a development from lower forms of animal
life, Mr. Wallace points out that “natural selection could only have
endowed savage man with a brain a little superior to that of an ape,
whereas he actually possesses one very little inferior to that of a
philosopher.”
Yet neither Mr. Wallace, nor Professor Huxley when controverting this
argument, withholds a due recognition of the activity of the intellect
of the savage. No one indeed can have much intercourse with savage races
wholly dependent on their own resources without recognising that, within
a certain range, their faculties are kept in constant activity. The
savage hunter has not merely an intimate familiarity with all the
capabilities and resources of many regions traversed by him in pursuit
of his game; his geographical information includes much useful knowledge
of the topography of ranges of country which he has never visited. I
found, on one occasion, when exploring the Nepigon River, on Lake
Superior, that my Chippeway guides, though fully 500 miles from their
own country, and visiting the region for the first time, were
nevertheless on the lookout for a metamorphic rock underlying the
syenite which abounds there; and they made their way by well-recognised
land-marks to this favourite “pipestone rock.” While moreover the
Indian, like other savages, is devoid of much of what we style “useful
knowledge,” but which would be very useless to him, he is fully informed
on many subjects embraced within the range of the natural sciences; and
has a very practical knowledge of meteorology, zoology, botany, and much
else which constitutes useful knowledge to him. He is familiar with the
habits of animals, and the medicinal virtues of many plants; will find
his way through the forest by noting the special side of the trunks on
which certain lichens grow; and follow the tracks of his game, or
discover the nests of birds, by indications which would escape the most
observant naturalist. The Australian savage, stimulated apparently to an
unwonted ingenuity by the privations of an arid climate, is the inventor
of two wonderfully ingenious implements, the _wommera_ or throwing
stick, and the _bomerang_, which, when employed by the native expert,
accomplish feats entirely beyond any efforts of European skill.
Moreover, as Professor Huxley remarks, he “can make excellent baskets
and nets, and neatly fitted and beautifully balanced spears; he learns
to use these so as to be able to transfix a quartern loaf at sixty
yards; and very often, as in the case of the American Indians, the
language of a savage exhibits complexities which a well-trained European
finds it difficult to master.” Again he goes on to say: “Consider that
every time a savage tracks his game he employs a minuteness of
observation, and an accuracy of inductive and deductive reasoning which,
applied to other matters, would assure some reputation to a man of
science, and I think we need ask no further why he possesses such a fair
supply of brains. In complexity and difficulty, I should say that the
intellectual labour of a good hunter or warrior considerably exceeds
that of an ordinary Englishman.” Hence Professor Huxley is not prepared
to admit that the American or Australian savage possesses in his brain a
mental organ which he fails to turn to full account. But without
entering on the questions of evolution and natural selection in all
their comprehensive bearings, it is still apparent that the brain of the
savage is an instrument of great capacity, employed within narrow
limits.
In estimating the comparative size of the brain, it is seen to be
necessary to discriminate between individuals or races of small stature
and cases of true microcephaly. On the other hand, it is not to be
overlooked that examples of idiocy are not rare where the head is of a
fair average size, and where the mental imbecility is regarded as
congenital. But in this as in other researches of the physiologist, he
is limited in his observations mainly to the chance opportunities which
offer for study; and not unfrequently the prejudices of affection arrest
the hand of the student, and prevent a _post-mortem_ examination in
cases where science has much to hope for from freedom of investigation.
Hence the data thus far accumulated in evidence of the actual structure,
size, and weight, of the human brain fall far short of what is requisite
for a solution of many questions in reference to the relations between
cerebration and mental activity. From time to time men of science have
sought by example, as well as by precept, to lessen such impediments to
scientific research. Dr. Dalton left instructions for a _post-mortem_
examination in order to test the peculiarity of his vision, which he had
assumed to be due to a colouring of the vitreous humour; Jeremy Bentham
bequeathed his body to his friend Dr. Southwood Smith, for the purposes
of anatomical science; and the will of Harriet Martineau contained this
provision: “It is my desire, from an interest in the progress of
scientific investigation, that my skull should be given to Henry George
Atkinson, of Upper Gloucester Place, London, and also my brain, if my
death should take place within such distance of his then present abode
as to enable him to have it for purposes of scientific investigation.”
The will is dated March 10, 1864; but by a codicil, dated October 5,
1871, this direction is revoked, with the explanation which follows in
these words: “I wish to leave it on record that this alteration in my
testamentary directions is not caused by any change of opinion as to the
importance of scientific observation on such subjects, but is made in
consequence merely of a change of circumstances in my individual case.”
The natural repugnance of surviving relatives to any mutilation of the
body must always tend to throw impediments in the way of such
researches; though it may be anticipated that, with the increasing
diffusion of knowledge, such obstacles to its pursuit will be
diminished. Thus far, however, notwithstanding the persevering labours
of Welcker, Bergmann, Parchappe, Broca, Boyd, Skae, Owen, Thurnam, and
other physiologists, their observations have been necessarily limited
almost exclusively to certain exceptional sources of evidence, embracing
to a large extent only the pauper and the insane classes; and in the
case of the latter especially, the functional disorder or chronic
disease of the organ under consideration renders it peculiarly desirable
that such results should be brought, as far as possible, into comparison
with a corresponding number of observations on healthy brains of a class
fairly representing the social and intellectual status of a civilised
community.
The average brain-weight of the human adult, as determined by a numerous
series of observations, ranges for man from 40 oz. to 52½ oz., and for
woman from 35 oz. to 47½ oz. But some indications among ancient crania
tend to suggest a doubt as to whether this difference in cerebral
capacity was a uniformly marked sexual distinction among early races;
due allowance being made for difference in stature. Dr. Thurnam made the
race of the British Long Barrows a special subject of study; and Dr.
Rolleston followed up his researches with valuable results. Amongst
other points, he noted that the males appear to have averaged 5 ft. 6
in., and the females 4 ft. 10 in. in height. But while the difference of
stature between the male and the female exceeds what is observable in
most modern races, the variation in the size and internal capacity of
their skulls appears to be less than among civilised races. The like
characteristics are noticeable in the larger race of Europe’s
Palæolithic era. Nothing is more striking in the discovery of those
ancient remains of European man than the remarkable development of the
skulls and the good brain capacity of the race of the palæotechnic dawn,
where man is proved, by his works of art and all the traces of his
hearth and home, to have been still a rude hunter and cave-dweller. The
Canstadt type of skull is assumed to be that of the earliest European
race of which traces have thus far been discovered; and it is
unquestionably markedly inferior in development to that of the artistic
Troglodytes of the French Reindeer period. Yet remarkable examples of
atavism, as in the skull of St. Mansuy, the missionary bishop of Toul,
in Lorraine, in the fourth century, and in that of Robert the Bruce,
show a reversion to this early type, in accompaniment with exceptional
intellectual capacity. The Neanderthal skull, an extreme example of the
primitive type, is pronounced by Professor Schaaffhausen to be the most
brutal of all human skulls; though this impression is mainly due to the
abnormal development of the superciliary ridges, in which it undoubtedly
approximates to the chimpanzee or the gorilla. But it has an estimated
capacity of 75 cubic inches, and a corresponding cerebral development in
no degree incompatible with the idea that the remains recovered from the
Neanderthal cave may be those of a skilled hunter; and one apt in the
ingenious arts of the primitive tool-maker.
Whatever other changes, therefore, may have affected the brain as the
organ of human thought and reasoning, it does not thus far appear that
the average mass of brain has greatly increased since the advent of
European man. Important exceptions have indeed been noted. Professor
Broca’s observations on the cerebral capacity of the Parisian population
at different periods, based on nearly 400 skulls derived from vaults and
cemeteries of dates from the eleventh or twelfth to the nineteenth
century, appear to him to show a progressive cerebral development in
that centre of European civilisation.[163] But though the assumption is
not inconsistent with other results of civilisation, and is the
necessary corollary of the postulate that intellectual activity tends to
development of brain, the fact that the crania presented a still greater
diversity in type than in size reminds us of the intermixture of races
on the banks of the Seine, and the consequent necessity for much more
extended observations before so important a deduction can be received as
an established truth.
Taking the average brain-weight of the human adult as already stated,
all male brains falling much below 40 oz. or 1130 grammes, and female
brains below 35 oz. or 990 grammes, may be classed as _microcephalous_;
and all above the maxima of the medium male and female brain, viz. 52½
oz. or 1480 grammes, and 47½ oz. or 1345 grammes, may be ranked as
_megalocephalous_, or great brains.
Professor Welcker, who devoted special attention to the whole subject
under review, assumes another and simpler test when he says that skulls
of more than 540 to 550 millimetres, or 21.26 to 21.65 inches in
circumference—the weight of brain belonging to which is 1490 to 1560
grammes (52.5-55 oz. av.)—are to be regarded as exceptionally large.
But while an excess of horizontal circumference may be accepted as
indicating good cerebral capacity, it must not be overlooked that the
adoption of it as the key to any definite or even approximate
brain-weight ignores the important elements of variation involved in the
difference between acrocephalic and platycephalic head-forms. The volume
of brain in Scott, and probably in Shakespeare, appears to have depended
more on its elevation than its horizontal expansion. The same was also
the case with Byron. The intermastoid arch, measured across the vertex
of the skull from the tip of one mastoid process to the other, furnishes
an accurate gauge of this development. Of thirteen selected male English
skulls in Dr. Davis’s collection, the mean of this measurement is 15.1;
and of thirty-nine male and female English skulls, it is only 14.4. Of
the whole number of eighty-one English skulls described in the
_Thesaurus Craniorum_, three exceptionally large ones are: No. 123, that
of an ancient British chief, of fully 6 ft. 2 in. in stature, from the
Grimsthorpe Barrow, Yorkshire; No. 905, a calvarium of great magnitude,
very brachycephalic, and with the elevation across the middle of the
parietals apparently exaggerated by compression in infancy, from Hythe,
Kent; and No. 1029, another male skull, remarkable alike for its size
and weight, and with a peculiarity of conformation ascribed by Dr. Davis
to synostosis of the coronal suture. The intermastoid arch in those
exceptionally large skulls measures respectively 16.0, 16.2, and 16.9,
whereas the same measurement derived from the cast of Scott’s head taken
after death, yields the extraordinary dimensions of 19 inches. This last
measurement is over the hairy scalp. But after making ample allowance
for this, the vertical measurement of the skull and consequently of the
brain is remarkable.
Full value has been assigned at all periods to the well-developed
forehead. It is characteristic of man. The physiognomist and the
phrenologist have each given significance to it in their respective
systems; and it has received no less prominent recognition from the
poets. A fully developed forehead is assumed as distinctive of the male
skull. But Juliet, in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, when depreciating
her rival, exclaims, “Ay, but her forehead’s low”; and the jealous Queen
of Egypt, in _Antony and Cleopatra_, is told of Octavia that “her
forehead is as low as she would wish it.” “The fair large front” of
Milton’s perfect man is the external index of an ample cerebrum: the
organ to which the seat of consciousness, intelligence, and will is
assigned. It is therefore consistent with this that a low, retreating
forehead is popularly assumed to be the characteristic index of the
savage, and of the unintellectual among civilised races. But the
cerebral characteristics of both ancient and modern civilised races have
still to be studied in detail; and the influence of race and sex on the
form of the head and the mass and weight of the brain, involves some
curious questions in relation to the oldest illustrations of the
physical characteristics of man, and to the effect of civilisation on
the relative development of the sexes.
Early observations led Dr. Pruner-Bey and other ethnologists of France
to recognise in certain ancient Gaulish skulls of a brachycephalic type
the evidences of a primitive race, assumed to represent the inhabitants
of France and of Central Europe during its Reindeer period, and which
appeared to be assigned with reasonable probability to a Mongol origin.
But in the Cro-Magnon cavern, and in other caves more recently explored,
the remains of a race of men have been brought to light markedly
dolichocephalic, and no less striking in cranial capacity. Dr. Broca
speaks of these ancient cave-dwellers of the valley of the Vézère as
characterised by “sure signs of a powerful cerebral organisation. The
skulls are large. Their diameters, their curves, their capacity, attain,
and even surpass, our medium skulls of the present day. The forehead is
wide, by no means receding, but describing a fine curve. The amplitude
of the frontal tuberosities denotes a large development of the anterior
cerebral lobes, which are the seat of the most noble intellectual
faculties.”
This primitive race of hunters, marked by such exceptional
characteristics, belonged to the remote Reindeer period of Western
Europe, and was contemporary with the mammoth, the tichorine rhinoceros,
and the fossil horse, as well as with the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and
other long-extinct carnivora of Europe. The remarkable evidence of their
intellectual capacity has already been reviewed, in considering the
manifestations of the artistic faculty among primitive races. Their
weapons and implements, including carved maces or official batons, as
they are assumed to be, contribute additional evidence of skill and
latent capacity among a primitive race of hunters and cave-dwellers. Dr.
Broca, after a consideration of the merits of their ingenious arts,
says: “They had advanced to the very threshold of civilisation”; and Dr.
Pruner-Bey thus comments on their characteristics: “If we consider that
its three individuals had a cranial capacity much superior to the
average at the present day; that one of them was a female, and that
female crania are generally below the average of _male_ crania in size;
and that nevertheless the cranial capacity of the Cro-Magnon woman
surpasses the average capacity of male skulls of to-day, we are led to
regard the great size of the brain as one of the more remarkable
characters of the Cro-Magnon race. This cerebral volume seems to me even
to exceed that with which at the present day a stature equal to that of
our cave-folks would be associated; whilst the skulls from the Belgium
caves are small, not only absolutely, but even relatively in the rather
small stature of the inhabitants of those caves.”
The Canstadt head is undoubtedly an unintellectual type suggestive of an
inferior, though not necessarily an older savage race; for the evidence
of climate, contemporary fauna, and other indices of the environments of
the Cro-Magnon cave-dwellers, all point to an early Post-Glacial era.
Dr. Isaac Taylor, in his _Origin of the Aryans_, assuming the priority
of the Canstadt man, speaks of him as “this primitive savage, the
earliest inhabitant of Europe.” The forehead in this type is low and
receding, and the cerebral capacity generally correspondingly inferior.
The relative superposition in some discoveries of ancient human remains,
as in the alluvium and gravels of a former bed of the Seine, at
Grenelle, lends confirmation to the idea that in this poorly-developed
cranial type we recover the physical characteristics of the earliest
type of the European savage thus far brought to light. But no disclosure
of regular sepulture, or of implements or carvings assignable to him,
have hitherto furnished the means of determining his condition or mode
of life.
The disclosures of the rock-shelters in the valley of the Vézère are, on
the contrary, replete with interest, from the evidence they furnish of a
race of savage hunters, in whom ingenious skill and great artistic
aptitude gave evidence of latent intellectual capacity of a high order.
The remarkable size of crania accompanying those examples of primitive
art seemingly pertaining to the Troglodytes of the Mammoth and Reindeer
periods of Central Europe, is the more significant from its bearing on
the evidence of progressive cerebral development adduced by Dr. Broca
from skulls recovered from ancient and modern cemeteries of Paris. It
appears, indeed, to conflict with any theory of a progressive
development from the Troglodyte of the Post-Glacial age to the civilised
Frenchman of modern times. Professor Boyd Dawkins has accordingly been
at some pains in his _Cave Hunting_ to show that the conclusions formed
by previous observers as to the epoch of their burial are not supported
by the facts of the case; and he sums up his review of the whole
evidence by expressing a conviction that he “should feel inclined to
assign the interments to the Neolithic age, in which cave-burial was so
common. The facts,” he adds, “do not warrant the human skeletons being
taken as proving the physique of the palæolithic hunters of the
Dordogne, or as a basis for an inquiry into the ethnology of the
palæolithic races. Professor Boyd Dawkins also pronounces the same
doubts in reference to the equally characteristic male skeleton found in
a cave at Mentone, and to others obtained in the Lombrive and other
caves. It is not to be overlooked that the possibility of the intrusion
of human remains into earlier strata constitutes an important element
suggesting caution in reasoning from such evidence. For the remains of
man differ from those of other animals found in such series of deposits
as mark a succession of periods, in so far as they pertain to the only
animal habitually given to the practice of interment. Human skeletons
found under such circumstances may have been artificially intruded long
subsequent to the accumulation of the breccia in which they lay.
Happily, however, any doubts as to the contemporaneity of the human
remains with the other cave relics has been removed by the discovery of
skeletons, similar in type, in other caverns in the same valley—and
especially in that of Laugerie Basse,—in positions which seem to leave
no room for questioning their being of the same age as the works of art
found along with them.
Other examples of the ancient man of Europe show him in like manner
endowed with a cerebral development in advance of the rudest races of
modern times. The skull found by Dr. Schmerling in the Engis cave, near
Liège, along with remains of six or seven human skeletons, was embedded
in the same matrix with bones of the fossil elephant, rhinoceros, hyæna,
and other extinct quadrupeds. It is a fairly proportioned,
well-developed dolichocephalic skull; and, like others of the ancient
human skulls of different types thus far found, has signally
disappointed the expectations of those who count upon invariably finding
a lower type the older the formation in which it occurs. “Assuredly,”
says Professor Huxley, “there is no mark of degradation about any part
of its structure. It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which
might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the
thoughtless brain of a savage.” Even the famous Neanderthal skull, of
uncertain geological antiquity, but pronounced to be “the most brutal of
all human skulls,” acquires its exceptional character, as already noted,
chiefly from the abnormal development of the superciliary region.
* * * * *
It is a universally accepted fact that the size of the male head and the
weight of the brain are greater than those of the female. The average
weight of the male brain is found to exceed that of the female by about
10 per cent; or, as it is stated by Professor Welcker, the brain-weight
of man is to that of woman as 100 to 90. But the difference of stature
between the two sexes has to be taken into account. The average, based
on various series of observations to determine the mean stature for man
and for woman, shows the latter to be about 8 per cent less than the
former; or, as Dr. Thurnam has stated it more precisely:
RATIO OF STATURE AND BRAIN-WEIGHT IN THE TWO SEXES
MALE. FEMALE.
Stature 100 92.0
Weight of brain 100 90.3