brains is that of Gambetta, who was behind none of his compeers in
ability, and yet had the smallest brain of all. The first table of
the "Average Weight of the Human Body and Mind," compiled from Dr.
Boyd's researches among the sane, which was based on more than two
thousand post-mortem examinations, gives 45.9 ounces as the average
brain weight of boys from seven to fourteen years of age, and 40.2
ounces as that of boys and 40.1 ounces of girls from four to seven
years of age. And this little brain of 40.9 ounces appertained to
a man, "a lofty, commanding, mental figure, standing out in bold
relief from the crowd of mediocrities which he dwarfs and shadows,"
the embodiment of the French Republic, who steered it through one
of its most perilous crises, "the foremost Frenchman of his time,"
who "established his claim to be placed in the very front rank of
European statesmen," and whose untimely death was spoken of as
"nothing less than the sudden extinction of a powerful individual
force, one of the most powerful, indeed, of such forces hitherto
operating in Europe."
In illustration of the association of large brains with small minds,
we have compiled from various sources of recognized authority a list
of one hundred and twenty-five persons of ordinary or weak minds,
idiots, imbeciles, and criminals, whose brains were generally larger
than those of the distinguished men subjects of the preceding notes.
Of these, Rustan, an ignorant and unknown workman, appears with a
brain weighing 78.3 ounces;[36] the dwarfed Indian squaw who follows
him, of 73.5 ounces;[37] an illiterate and weak-minded man had a
brain of 71.3 ounces;[38] and a congenitally imbecile person cited
by Dr. Ireland, with one of 70.5 ounces.[39] Another imbecile cited
by Dr. Ireland had a brain of 63.2 ounces, and the brain of an idiot
with a large head, eighteen years old, who had an idiotic sister,
weighed 62.8 ounces. The brain of the idiot, No. 56 of the men in
the table, 59.5 ounces, is exceeded in size by those of only five
on the list of famous men, while eleven persons recorded as idiots,
imbeciles, and children had brains heavier than his. An idiot boy
of fourteen years, very malicious, who never spoke, and who nearly
killed his sister with a pick, had a brain weight of 57.5 ounces.
Thirty men out of three hundred and seventy-five examined in the West
Riding Asylum gave brain weights of 55 ounces and upward, showing
that such weights are not so rare as some have supposed. In another
asylum in England one out of every dozen brains examined showed a
weight of 55 ounces or more.
In _Nachrichten_, of Göttingen, 1860, pp. 70-71, Dr. Rudolph Wagner
gave a table of thirty-two persons whose brains he examined, among
whom were five distinguished men; but the largest brain weight
recorded in it, 55.9 ounces, has opposite to it the legend, "Idiotic
grown man."
To this list we might have added a large number of persons whose
brains weighed less than 53 ounces. Yet the brains of Daniel Webster,
Agassiz, Napoleon I, Lord Byron, Baron Dupuytren, General Skoboleff,
and other famous men concerning whose large brains much has been
said, weighed less than this; and we might have appended hundreds of
brain weights of idiots, imbeciles, and other insignificant persons,
from 53 ounces down to 49 ounces--probably about the average weight
in central Europe. In support of our contention is, further, an
observation by Dr. Rudolph Wagner in _Nachrichten_, February 29,
1860, pp. 71, 72, that "very intelligent men certainly do not differ
strikingly in brain weight from less gifted men."
Dr. Clendenning presents in the Croonian Lectures the following
entries of brain weights of male subjects of different ages, the
tendency of which is to show that the male encephalon loses, after it
is grown, more than an ounce every ten years:
15 to 30 years 50.75 ounces.
30 to 50 " 49.66 "
50 to 70 " 47.1 "
70 to 100 " 41.5 "
A number of other eminent anatomists have given similar evidence of
decrease in brain weight as intellectual power increases.
The "Professor at the Breakfast Table," the late Dr. O. W. Holmes,
a learned man and experienced physician and professor of anatomy in
Harvard University for thirty-five years, says: "The walls of the
head are double, with a great chamber of air between them, over the
smallest and most crowded organs. Can you tell me how much money
there is in a safe, which also has thick walls, by kneading the
knobs with your fingers? So, when a man fumbles about my forehead,
and talks about the organs of individuality, size, etc., I trust him
as much as I should if he felt over the outside of my strong box,
and told me that there was a five-dollar or a ten-dollar bill under
this or that rivet. Perhaps there is, only he doesn't know anything
about it. We will add that, even if he knows the inward dimensions
of the strong box, he could not thence determine the amount of cash
deposited in it."
The internal size of Spurzheim's skull was in cubic inches exactly
the same as that of the skull of Joachim, an imbecile six feet
nine inches in height, with a brain weight of 61.2 ounces, whereas
Spurzheim's brain weighed only 55 ounces.
Whoever has examined heads in the dissecting room of a medical
college knows that, except in rare cases of disease, the brain
does not fit the skull, but is surrounded by three membranes and a
watery fluid; and this liquid, it has been ascertained, is generally
sufficient to admit of its performing certain movements.
There can be no doubt that the brain moves in the skull, changing
its position, according to the laws of gravitation, in much the
same way as the lungs, heart, and liver do in the body. It has been
observed many times to move, as well as to pulsate, when exposed to
view during the life of the individual. It is subject to two regular
and constant motions--one produced by the arteries, the other by
respiration. It has also a third motion, discovered and described
by Dr. M. Luys, who stated, in a paper read before the Academy of
Medicine of Paris, that "the brain is subject to certain changes
of position, dependent on the attitude of the body. Thus, if a man
lies on his back or side, or stands on his head, the brain undergoes
certain changes of position in obedience to the laws of gravity; the
movements take place slowly, and the brain is five or six minutes in
returning to its previous position." From these anatomical data M.
Luys deduced some interesting and practical conclusions, by which
he explained, for example, the symptoms of vertigo which feeble
persons experience when suddenly rising from a horizontal position.
He suggested whether the pains of meningitis may not be due to an
interference with these normal movements, and urges the value of
giving the brain the change produced by a horizontal position at
night.
The average cranial capacity is admitted to be 96 cubic inches in
England and 94 in New York; and it is to the unusual quantity of
fluid of some cases, and to the extraordinary thickness of the skull
in others, that we are to attribute the frequent discrepancy between
the external dimensions and the size of the encephalon. Daniel
Webster's cranial capacity was 122 cubic inches, yet his brain of
53.5 ounces was just what George Combe has laid down as the average
weight for an adult man. Water and lymph, we are told, filled the
skull. Professor De Morgan's head, almost free from hair, measured
24.87 inches in circumference, and the dimensions were all those of a
very large head, sufficient to contain from 65 to 70 ounces of brain,
yet his brain weighed only 52.75 ounces, or little, if at all, above
the average in the cold parts of the temperate zones. De Morgan was
sixty-five years of age when he died. He was much emaciated, and "the
brain was distinctly shrunken," not filling the interior cavity,
where its place was supplied, as is usual in such cases, by serum or
water. There is no known method whereby any man can determine whether
brain or water fills the greater part of any living skull. A small
orange may have a thin rind, and contain a good amount of eatable
substance, while a large one may have so thick a skin that the fruit
proves utterly disappointing.
Another proof that the skull is formed without regard to the brain
is the following: "The bony cabinet and its contents are developed,
to a certain extent at least, independently. This is very clearly
demonstrated by a fact which was observed by Gratiolet, and is too
frequently forgotten. The subject is an infant in whom the cranium
presented the normal conformation. The brain was, nevertheless,
almost entirely wanting."[40]
Dr. Gall was a poor arithmetician, and his biographer says that every
kind of numerical calculation fatigued him. He could not go through
a process of multiplication or division that was at all complicated,
and knew nothing of geometry or of the problems of mathematics.[41]
George Combe said of himself: "Arithmetic has always been to me
a profound mystery, and to master the multiplication table an
insurmountable task.... This faculty in me is, in fact, idiotic."
Again he said: "When a boy, I never could learn arithmetic. At the
end of five years' teaching I could not subtract, divide, or multiply
any considerable number of figures with accuracy and facility, and
can not now do so.... At the present day I can not sum a column of
figures correctly."[42]
With these facts in view, our wonder at finding the theories of
these men at variance with all exact calculation is considerably
diminished. We propose to test some of their theories by arithmetical
processes. We found that the sixty famous men entered in the table of
authenticated brain weights show an average of 51.3 ounces. We now
take all the idiots and imbeciles in the table of "Large Brains and
Small Minds," and find the average 59.4 ounces; so that the matter
is left to stand thus: Ten idiots and five imbeciles average 59.2
ounces; sixty famous men average 51.39 ounces: in favor of idiocy and
imbecility, 7.9 ounces.
The heaviest brain in the table of small minds is that of Rustan,
an ignorant and entirely unknown laborer. He was a healthy man, and
his brain, when it was weighed, was in a healthy condition. Its
weight was recorded by Dr. Carl A. Rudolphi, a Swedish naturalist
and physiologist of Stockholm, who became professor of anatomy and
physiology at Berlin in 1810. It reached the unexampled figure of
78.3 ounces; while the brain of Turgenieff, the heaviest among famous
men, was 71 ounces--showing a difference of 7.3 ounces in behalf of
the inferior mind.
Since writing the above, the following appeared in Tit-Bits, a weekly
paper published in London, England, March 19, 1898:
"It must not be assumed, however, that intellect is in direct
ratio to the weight of the brain; for while the brains of certain
intellectual men, such as ... Dr. Abercromby, weighed more than 60
ounces, a certain Strand newspaper-boy, who was in intelligence
almost an idiot, had a brain which weighed no less than 80 ounces."
Dr. Austin Flint, of New York, in his Physiology, gives the average
weight of the brains of men as 50.2 ounces. Dr. Peacock, of Great
Britain, makes it 50 ounces 3 drachms between twenty-five and fifty
years of age. Dr. Thurman gives 49 ounces as the average throughout
Europe, while Dr. F. Tiedemann, a famous naturalist of Germany,
reckons it at 53.2 ounces.[43] Dr. Krause, a learned German, places
it still higher, at 55.4 ounces.[44] Now, if we strike a balance
between the highest and the lowest of these estimates, the mean will
be 52.2. Then, recalling the average of our sixty famous men, which
we found to be 51.3 ounces, it is shown to be nine tenths of an ounce
below the average of ordinary men.
Our tables of national average brain weights do not quite agree,
because some of the subjects had been wasted by disease for many
months before death, whereby the brain was diminished along with
other parts of the body. Those who, like Dr. Boyd's subjects, died
in hospital, showed too light an average for healthy Englishmen. Dr.
Krause's subjects may have been healthy men killed in battle, and
those of Tiedemann persons who died suddenly. Executed criminals
show a fairly high average of brain weight, because there has been
in their case no diminution through long-continued illness.[45] We
should recollect that Whewell, the famous English philosopher and
head master of Trinity College, Cambridge, England, was in good
health when killed by a fall from his horse; so was Gambetta, when
his life was ended by a pistol shot. The brain, however, suffers
less from the power of disease than the general bodily form. One
month under the most wasting sickness would probably not diminish
the brain more than an ounce or two, but a year or more would make a
considerable difference.
Taking, now, the sixty heaviest brains of persons not noted for
intellectual greatness, we find the averages to be 63.2 ounces.
Comparing this with the average of sixty famous men, 51.3 ounces,
we find a difference in favor of imbeciles, idiots, criminals, and
men of ordinary mind of 11.9 ounces. George Combe estimated that
about 53.5 ounces was the average weight of the adult brain. Thus
the average brain weight of all the eminent men whom we have brought
into the comparison, 51.3 ounces, is below Combe's estimate of that
of mankind in general. Again, the ten heaviest brains of our list of
famous men give an average weight of 61.1 ounces, while the average
given by the ten heaviest of the opposite class is 70.4 ounces, or
9.3 ounces greater. While our list of eminent men shows only five
whose brains exceeded 58.6 ounces in weight, those of seventy-six of
the common throng--seven of them idiots or imbeciles--rise above that
figure. These figures augur badly for the doctrine that would attach
importance to heavy brains for giving force and depth of individual
character.
Phrenologists assert that each organ of a mental faculty occupies
a certain position perceptible on the outside of the brain, with a
definite area which they have mapped out. They also hold that each of
these organs extends to the center of the base of the brain, tapering
to it somewhat like a cone, having its base turned toward the outer
world. They make no account of the fissures, the intervening sulci
and anfractuosities that must cut many of these supposed cones, some
at right and some at oblique angles. Then the large, long cavities or
ventricles intercept and would hinder many of them from reaching the
central, basilar part of the brain. The anatomical structure of the
brain thus appears fatal to this theory of the organs.
Large and complicated convolutions of the brain with deep sulci have
been regarded by some persons as inseparable from superior powers of
mind. The supposition is erroneous and groundless. The rodents, such
as beavers, squirrels, rats, mice, etc., have but little brain and no
convolutions whatsoever;[46] yet the beaver exhibits great foresight,
economy, industry, and mechanical skill in building his dam, erecting
his house, and storing up bark as food for the winter. Moreover,
these animals live in societies and labor in union by ingenious
methods for a common purpose, with nice judgment. "So great a variety
of labors," says Dr. Leuret, "is needed for the constructions carried
on by the beaver; they include so many instances of well-made
choice, so many accidental difficulties are surmounted by these
animals, that it is impossible not to recognize in their actions
the characteristics of a rather high intelligence."[47] The sheep
has a much larger brain than the beaver, with numerous and complete
convolutions, yet it is one of the most stupid of domestic animals.
Again, though birds have convolutions in the cerebellum, they have
none in the cerebrum, and yet they are more capable of education than
any living beings except the human race. The eagle is complete master
of the lamb; the magpie, the hawk, the raven, and the parrot with his
talking powers, are not excelled in sagacity by the dog, the horse,
or the elephant, notwithstanding the latter animals have brains of
superior size and elaborate convolutions.
Squirrels manifest foresight and economy in storing nuts for the
winter's use; yet they have no brain convolutions. The cetacea,
especially whales, have much larger brains than men, with more
numerous and more complex convolutions and deeper sulci; yet their
intelligence bears no comparison with that of the human race.
Three eminent men are known to have had very small convolutions of
the brain--viz., Louis Asseline, Dr. Tiedemann, and Baron von Liebig.
We have to add to this remarkable list two, not named, but described
by Dr. Wagner as having been very intelligent, who yet possessed very
few convolutions in their very small brains.[48] As Wagner's book was
printed before Liebig died, he could not have been one of the two to
whom the author referred.
Idiots often possess as large brains as men distinguished for
intellectual power, and their brains have as deep sulci, and
convolutions as fine, as large, and as complex. Our table of the
common and weak-minded contains a mention of an idiot whose brain
weighed 53 ounces, or exactly as much as Napoleon's, and had fine
convolutions and a large frontal lobe, but who could never learn to
speak.
The elephant carries a far larger brain than man, finely formed,
broad and high in front, with much more numerous and complex
convolutions and deeper anfractuosities, and yet no intelligent
person would for a moment claim that its mind excels or even equals
that of man.
It may be well here to allow some eminent physiologists to give their
views on this subject. "The researches of anatomists have disposed of
every point advanced by Gall. Curiously enough, M. Camille Dareste
has placed beyond dispute the fact that the number and depth of
the convolutions bear no direct proportion to the development of
intelligence, whereas they do bear a direct proportion to the size
of the animal.... It is notorious that the instinct of propagation,
the instinct of destructiveness, the instinct of constructiveness,
and other qualities are manifested by animals having no brains,
nothing but simple ganglia."[49]
Dr. Bastian demonstrates the convolutional theory thus: "In animals
of the same group or order, the number and complexity of the
convolutions increase with the size of the animal.... There can not,
therefore, be among animals of the same order any simple or definite
relation between the degree of intelligence of the creature and the
number or disposition of its cerebral convolutions."[50]
We have the following testimony in our favor from Dr. Rudolph Wagner,
of Göttingen: "Examples of highly complicated convolutions I have
never seen, even among eminent men whose brains I have examined....
Many convolutions and great brain weight often go together. Higher
intelligence appears in both kinds of brains, where there are many
or where there are few convolutions. It is not proved that special
mental gifts go with many convolutions."[51]
Another theory of mind is based on the gray matter of the brain,
the amount of which has been supposed to be proportionate to mental
capacity. As this gray matter, however, averages only about one fifth
of an inch in thickness, it seems rather a thin foundation for the
human intellect if the condition is good that "size is a measure of
power."
The late Dr. W. B. Carpenter stated the matter thus: "The cortical
substance or gray matter of the hemispheres essentially consists
of that vesicular nerve substance which, in the spinal cord as in
the ganglionic masses generally, is found to occupy the interior.
The usual thickness is about one fifth of an inch; but considerable
variations present themselves in this respect, as also in the depth
of the convolutions."[52]
Daniel Webster's brain had gray substance to the depth only of
one sixteenth of an inch.[53] It thus appears that his brain had
a thinner layer of gray matter than the average of common-minded
men--one among the many proofs that facts are against all theories
that connect brain conditions with intellectual power.
Dr. Ireland thus describes an idiot boy who, though thirteen or
fourteen years of age, was only three feet eight inches in height:
"In expression he was dull and inanimate, with an old face and a
short, squat figure.... The convolutions were broad and simple, but
not shallow. The gray matter was as broad as usual."[54]
The writer has examined many brains of persons morally or
intellectually below the average--such as murderers, negroes, and
others sunk in ignorance. He has invariably found the layer of
vesicular or gray matter to be thicker than that of Daniel Webster's
brain. Elephants, porpoises, whales, dolphins, and the grampus all
have this layer thicker than the most intellectual men. Another great
objection to locating mind in the gray matter of the brain is that
this substance is found in the interior part of the spinal cord, and
in all the nerve centers throughout the body; so that, if mind is
situated in it, it is not confined to the brain, but dwells in the
spine also, and is distributed all through the human frame. Still
another objection lies in the fact that wherever the gray matter
exists near the surface of the brain, it consists of three distinct
layers, separated by a white substance, and the outermost layer is
white, not gray.[55]
The _septum lucidum_ consists of gray matter. The _corpus striatum_,
situated at the base of the lateral ventricles, nearly in the center
of the brain, was from three eighths to half an inch in diameter in
an ox which was dissected in Edinburgh. This is about the same amount
as is found in the _corpus striatum_ of the human brain. There would
be lively times if it were possible for a mental faculty to occupy at
once all the localities where gray matter is found!
None of the suppositions about certain qualities of mind inhering
in particular portions of the brain have been proved, nor have they
stood the tests of science.
The theories which have assumed that the cultivation of the intellect
gives shape and size to the brain within and consequently to the
skull without, advocates of which have not been wanting, have been
disproved by the collected facts. "There is no proof," says Dr. J. C.
Nott, in his Types of Mankind, "of the theory that the cultivation of
the mind or of one set of faculties can give expansion or increased
size of brain. The Teutonic races, in their barbarous state, two
thousand years ago, possessed brains as large as now, and so with
other races."
The St. Louis Globe Democrat of November 13, 1885, gives an account
of some excavations on the Mount Ararat farm, east of Carrollton,
Illinois, where the bones of thirty-two Indians or mound builders
were unearthed. "They were not a diminutive race, as some people have
supposed, some of the thigh bones being sixteen inches long, and some
of the skulls twenty-four inches in circumference." A skull having
a circumference of twenty-four inches means a head that measured
from twenty-five to twenty-six and a half in life, when the cranium
was covered with skin and muscles. The average head of white men
in New York to-day is only twenty-two and a half inches round. So
the culture of the white race for centuries has not developed their
heads to near the size of those of the uncultured mound builders
who inhabited America many centuries ago. Our own opinion is that
cultivation by means of a thorough classical education, where the
appetite is restrained, as usually occurs, tends rather to diminish
the size of the head, by reducing the temporal muscles and the
adipose tissue under the scalp.
The Engis skull is one of the most ancient known to exist, and
belonged to the stone age, or about the same time as the Neanderthal
skull. Professor Huxley describes it as being well formed, and
considerably larger than the average of European skulls to-day in the
width and height of the forehead and in the cubic capacity of the
whole.