CHAPTER XI.THE BRAIN.
The brain is the seat or the centre of the intellect, in short, the mental organism. The “school men” believed that mind, intellect, the reasoning faculty, whatever we may term it, had no locality or organism, but, on the contrary, was some impalpable, shadowy, unfixed principle that existed as much in the feet or hands as in any other portion of the body. And even Locke and Bacon, while they promulgated the great truths of inductive philosophy, were not sufficiently grounded in its elementary principles to understand clearly the foundation of their own doctrines. Nor did Dugald Stuart, Dr. Brown, or even the great Kant, of more modern times, understand any better the fixed truths on which rest the vast and imperfect systems of philosophy which they labored so assiduously to build up in their day. It remained for Gall, Spurzheim, and their followers to do this—to demonstrate certain great elementary truths which form a foundation, eternal as time itself—for the mental phenomena to rest upon, and whatever advance may be made hereafter in the study of these phenomena, its basis is immovable. Metaphysicians were wont to shut themselves up in their libraries and to analyze their own emotions, etc., which when noted down, became afterwards the material for ponderous lectures or the still more ponderous volumes inflicted on society. Rarely, perhaps, were these speculations connected with the brain—indeed it is a rare thing to find a physiologist indulging in metaphysical speculation, whilethe most famous among the “philosophers” were profoundly ignorant of that organ, though they fancied they knew all about its functions! The man that should undertake to write a treatise on respiration, and at the same time was utterly ignorant of the structure of the lungs, or to give a lecture on the circulation, while he knew nothing of the blood vessels, would certainly be laughed at, and yet innumerable volumes have been written, and continue to be written, on the functions of the brain or on “moral and mental philosophy,” by men who never saw a human brain in all their lives! Gall and Spurzheim did, therefore, a great good to the world when they began their investigations of the laws of the mind, by the study of the brain itself as the first and absolutely essential step to be taken in these investigations. It is true, they, and especially their followers, sought to set up a fancy science under the name of Phrenology, and the former thus, to a great extent, neutralized a reputation which otherwise would have secured the respect of the scientific world. And it is also true that others before them had recognized the same truths with more or less distinctness, but it is certain that Gall and Spurzheim demonstrated and placed beyond doubt the great, vital, and essential truth that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that the mental capacity, other things being equal, is in exact proportion to the size of the brain relatively with the body. This truth holds good throughout the animal world, and the intelligence of any given animal or species of animal, is always in keeping with the size of the brain when compared with the size of the body.
The brain is composed of anterior and posterior portions—of the cerebrum and the cerebellum—the first the centre of intelligence, the latter of sensation, or the first the seat of the intellect, and the latter of the animal instincts, and the proportions they bear to each other determines the character. As theanterior portion is enlarged and the posterior diminished the creature ascends, or as the anterior portion is diminished and the posterior portion enlarged it descends, in the scale of being. These are the general laws governing men and animals. There is intelligence in proportion to the size of the brain compared with that of the body, and in the former there is intellectual capacity—latent or real—in proportion to the enlarged cerebrum and diminished cerebellum. It is true we see every day seeming contradictions to the laws in question, but they are not so, not even exceptions, for they are not general but universal. Every day we meet people with small heads and great intelligence, with large heads and large stupidities, but a closer examination may disclose the truth that the seemingly small head is all brain, all cerebrum, all in front of the ears, while the large one is all behind, and only reveals a largely developed animalism. And even when this is not sufficient to explain the seeming anomaly, there is a vast and inexhaustible field for conjecture—of accident—where misapplied or undeveloped powers have been the sport of circumstances. A man may have a large brain, great natural powers, in truth, genius of the most glorious kind, and the world remain in total ignorance of the fact, and among the countless millions of Europe doomed generation after generation to a profound animalism, there doubtless have been many “mute inglorious Miltons,” who have lived and died and made no sign of the Divinity within. On the contrary, there have been men of much distinction—of great usefulness to their fellows and to the generations after them, who, naturally considered, were on the dead level of the race, but by their industry, perseverance, and energy have left undying names to posterity. Then, again, circumstances have made men great. An epoch in the annals of a nation—great and stirring events in the life of a people—stimulate and call into exercise qualities and capacities thatmake men famous, who otherwise would not be heard of. Our own great revolutionary period furnished examples of this, and still later, we have Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and their senatorial cotemporaries, who many doubtless think will never be equalled, though their equals in fact are in the senate now, and only need similar circumstances to manifest that equality.
The organism of the race—the species—whether human or animal, never changes or varies from that eternal type fixed from the beginning by the hand of God; and men, therefore, are now, in their natural capacities what they always have been and always will be, whatever the external circumstances that may control or modify the development of these capacities. And the brain being the organ or organism of the mind, as the eye is of the sight or the ear of the sense of hearing, it may be measured and tested, and its capabilities determined, with as entire accuracy as any other function or faculty. Not, it is true, as the phrenologists or craniologists contend, that the brain reveals the character of individuals of the same species, but the character of the species itself, and its relative capabilities when contrasted with other races or species of men. This is beyond doubt or question, or will be beyond doubt or question with all those who understand it, and taking the Caucasian as the standard or test, the capabilities of the Mongol, the Malay, the Aboriginal American, or negro, may be determined with as absolute certainty as the color of their skins or any other mere physical quality. The brain of the Caucasian averages ninety-two cubic inches, that of the negro seventy-five to eighty-five inches, while the bodily proportions can scarcely be said to vary. There are great variations among whites as to size—there are giants as well as dwarfs, and quite as great variety in the form,—from the “lean and hungry Cassius,” to the rounded proportions of a Falstaff orDaniel Lambert. But on a Southern plantation of a thousand negroes, sex and age are the only difference or the principal difference that one sees, and a stranger would find some trouble to recognize any other, or at all events to distinguish faces. The brain of the negro corresponds in this respect with the body, and though there are doubtless cases where there is some slight difference, there seems to be none of those wide departures witnessed in these respects among whites.
The material, the fibre or texture of the brain itself is little understood, and though it is quite likely that what we call genius is attended by a corresponding delicacy or fineness of texture in the nervous mass, and future exploration in this abstruse matter may reveal to us important truths, at this time little is known in regard to the brain except the great fundamental and universal law that, in proportion to its size relatively with that of the body is there intellectual power, actual or latent. Many, doubtless, fancy that there are immense differences in men in this respect—that a Webster, or Clay, or Bonaparte are vastly superior to common men—but they have only to remember that the brain is the organ of the intellect, to see its fallacy. The notion has sprung from the habitudes of European society, where a man clothed in the pomp and parade of high rank is supposed to be vastly and immeasurably superior to his fellows, while, in truth, most of these, or, at all events many of these are absolutely (naturally) inferior to the base multitudes that prostrate themselves in the dust at their feet. Nevertheless, there are striking differences in these respects; not more so, however, than in strength of body, beauty of features, difference of hair, complexion, etc. But in the case of the negro there is an eternal sameness, a perpetual oneness, the same color, the same hair, the same features, same size of the body, and the same volume of brain. All the physical and moral facts that make up the negro being irresistiblylead to the conclusion that the Almighty Creator designed him for juxtaposition with the superior white man, and therefore such a thing as a negro genius—a poet, inventor, or one having any originality of any kind whatever—is totally unnecessary, as they are totally unknown in the experience of mankind. Some, with more or less white blood, have exhibited more or less talent, possibly even have shown eccentric indications of genius, but among a million of adult typical negroes, there probably would not be a single brain that would vary from the others sufficiently to be detected by the eye, and therefore not an individual negro whose natural capacities were so much greater than those of his fellows as to be recognized by the reason.
Such are briefly the leading and fundamental facts that constitute the mental organism and distinguish the intellectual character of races, that separate white men and negroes by an interval broader and deeper than in any other forms of humanity, and render an attempted social equality not merely a great folly but a gross impiety. As has been stated, in exact proportion to the volume of brain, relatively with the size of body in men and animals, there is intelligence, and as the cerebrum or anterior portion predominates over the cerebellum or posterior portion, there is a corresponding predominance of intellectualism over animalism in the human races. The negro brain in its totality is ten to fifteen per cent. less than that of the Caucasian, while in its relations—the relatively large cerebellum and small cerebrum—the inferiority of the mental organism is still more decided; thus, while in mere volume, and therefore in the sum total of mental power, the negro is vastly inferior to the white man, the relative proportion of the brain and of the animal and intellectual natures adds still more to the Caucasian superiority, while it opens up before us abundant explanations of the diversified forms in which that superiorityis continually manifested. There are no terms or mere words that enable us to express the absolute scientific superiority of the white man. We can only measure it, or indeed comprehend it, by comparison, but this will be sufficiently intelligible when it is said that the past history and present condition of both races correspond exactly with the size and form of the brain in each. The science, the literature, the progress, enlightenment and intellectual grandeur of the Caucasian from the beginning of authentic history to this moment, and which have accompanied him from the banks of the Nile to those of the Mississippi, are all fitting revelations of the Caucasian brain, while the utter absence of all these things—the long night of darkness that enshrouds the negro being, and which is only broken in upon when in juxtaposition and permitted to imitate his master, is the result or necessity of his mental organism.
There being nothing superior to the Caucasian, it may be said that he is endowed with unlimited powers; that is, while the mental organism remains the same, his powers of acquisition and the increase of his knowledge have no limit. A generation in the exercise of its faculties acquires a certain amount of knowledge; this is transmitted to the next; it, in turn, adds its proportion, and so on, each generation in its turn accepting the knowledge of its progenitors and transmitting with its own acquisitions the sum total to its successors. This is called civilization, and we can suppose no limit to it, except it be in the destruction of the existing order and a new creation. On the contrary, the negro brain is incapable of grasping ideas, or what we call abstract truths, as absolutely so as the white child, indeed as necessarily incapable of such a thing as for a person to see without eyes, or hear without ears. In contact with, and permitted to imitate the white man, the negro learns to read, to write, to make speeches, to preach, to edit newspapers, etc.,but all this is like that of the boy of ten or twelve who debatesà laWebster or declaims from Demosthenes. People ignorant of the negro mistake this borrowed for real knowledge, as one ignorant of metals may have a brass watch imposed on him for a golden one. The negro is therefore incapable of progress, a single generation being capable of all that millions of generations are, and those populations in Africa isolated from white men are exactly now as they were when the Hebrews escaped from Egypt, and where they must be millions of years hence, if left to themselves. Of course this is no mere opinion or conjecture of the author. It is a necessity of the negro being—a consequence of the negro structure—a fixed and eternally inseparable result of the mental organism, which without a re-creation—another brain—could no more be otherwise than water could run up hill, or a reversal of the law of gravitation in any respect could be possible. But people, ignorant of the elementary principles of science as well as of the nature of the negro, fancy that this is quite possible; that, however inferior the organism of the negro in these respects, it is the result of many centuries of savagery and “slavery,” and therefore if he were made “free,” given the same rights with the same chances for mental cultivation, that the brain might gradually alter and become like that of the white man! This involves gross impiety, if it were not the offspring of ignorance and folly, for it supposes that chance and human forces are more potent than the Almighty Creator, whose work is thus the sport of circumstances. They would seek by stimulating the mind to add ten per cent. to the negro brain—then to add to the cerebrum while they diminished the cerebellum—certainly a work of much greater magnitude than changing the color of the negro skin; but even the most ignorant or the most impious among these people would scarcely undertake the latter operation. If reason could at all enterinto the matter, it would surely be more reasonable to suppose that mind might be changed by acting on matter, rather than the reverse, and therefore it would be better to change the color of the skin, as the first, as it would also be the most practicable, step to be taken in this grand undertaking of setting aside the Creator and re-creating the negro. But, after all, their labors would fail—after they had changed the color, after they had increased the volume of the brain and duly modified its relations as well as altered its texture—in short, when they had turned him into a white man, then all would be in vain, for such a brain could no more be born of a negress than an elephant could be!