The dome of thought, the palace of the soul;
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul;
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul;
if indeed it be not, to one class of reasoners, the mind itself. Certain it is that no acute disease can affect it without a corresponding disorder of the functions of mind; and with this organ much below the average size, intellectual weakness may always be predicated. But at the same time, it is significant to note that the human brain, stinted in its full proportions, and reduced to a seeming equality with the anthropomorpha, exhibits no corresponding capacities or instincts in lieu of the higher mental qualities. Microcephaly is the invariable index, not of mere limited intelligence and mental capacity, but of actual mental imbecility. If the augmentation of the brain of the anthropomorpha from 55 to 115 cubic inches be all that is requisite for the transformation of the irrational ape into the reasoning man, it would seem to be in no degree illogical to look for the accompaniment of the inversion of the process by an approximation, in some instances, to certain capacities and functions of the ape. But there are no indications of this. In some examples of microcephaly, the so-called animal propensities do indeed manifest themselves to excess; but there is no reproduction of the animal nature, instincts, or capacities, analogous to the scale of cerebral development of the orang or chimpanzee. A microcephalous idiot, who died at the age of twenty-two, in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, had a brain weighing only 13.125 oz., or 372 grammes. In describing this case, Professor Owen remarks: “Here nature may be said to have performed for us the experiment of arresting the development of the brain almost exactly at the size which it attains in the chimpanzee, and where the intellectual faculties were scarcely more developed. Yet no anatomist would hesitate in at once referring the cranium to the human species.” And so is it with the encephalon. The brain of the chimpanzee is a healthy, well-developed organ, adequate to the amplest requirements of the animal; whereas the microcephalous human brain is inadequate for any efficient, continuous cerebral activity: not merely limited in its range of powers. Much, however, may yet be learned from a careful attention to the imperfect manifestations of activity in certain directions, in cases of microcephalic idiocy, and noting the predominant tendency in each case, with a view to subsequent examination of the brain. By this means it may be foundpossible to refer certain forms of mental activity to special variations in the structure of the organ, or to distinct members of the encephalon.
Dr. Laennec exhibited to the Anthropological Society of Paris a microcephalous idiot of the male sex, aged fourteen years. “This child is entirely unconscious of his own actions, and his intellectual operations are very few in number, and very rudimentary. His language consists of two syllables,ouiandla, and he takes an evident pleasure in pronouncing them. He takes no heed in what direction he walks. He would step off a precipice, or into a fire.” Attention was specially directed to the idiot’s hands: “The thumbs are atrophied, and cannot be opposed to the other fingers. The palms of the hands have the transverse creases, but not the diagonal—the result of the atrophy of the thumbs. Hence the hand resembles that of the chimpanzee. The dentition too is defective. Though fourteen years of age, the child has only twelve teeth.” Here it is curious to note the analogies in physical structure to the lower anthropomorpha in other organs besides the brain, for it only renders more striking the absence of any corresponding aptitudes.
Dr. J. Barnard Davis, in his interesting monograph onSynostotic Crania among Aboriginal Races of Man, produces some remarkable illustrations of the effect of premature ossification of the sutures of the skull in arresting the full development of the brain, and so rendering it unequal to the due performance of its functions. “I have,” he says, “the cranium of a convict who was executed on Norfolk Island, which I owe to the kindness of Admiral H. M. Denham. This man was executed there when that beautiful isle was appropriated to the reception of the most dangerous and irreclaimable convicts from the other penal settlements. It is a microcephalic skull, rather dolichocephalic, of a man apparently about forty years of age. It exhibits a perfect ossification of the sagittal and of the greater portion of the lambdoidal sutures. The coronal suture is partially obliterated at the sides in the temporal regions, and can only be distinguished by faint traces in all its middle parts. In this case there has not been any compensatory development of moment in other directions. The calvarium is not abridged in its length, which is 7.1 inches, equal to 179 millimetres; probably it is a little elongated. It is, however, very narrowbeing only 4.8 inches, or 122 mm. at its widest part, between the temporal bones. So that the result is a very small, dwarfed, almost cylindrical calvarium. The internal capacity is only 59 ounces of sand,[159]which is equal to 71.4 cubic inches, or 1169 cubic centimetres.” Here is a skull considerably below the lowest mean of the crania of any race in Morton’s enlarged tables, or in the more comprehensive ones furnished in Dr. Davis’sThesaurus Craniorum. Another skull nearly approximating to it is that of a Cole, one of the savage tribes of Nagpore, in Central India, who are said to go entirely naked. It is described in the supplement to theThesaurus Craniorumas that of “Chara,” a Cole farmer, aged fifty, and its internal capacity is stated as 59.5 oz. av., equivalent to 71.7 cubic inches. The Coles appear to be small of stature. The heights of three of them, whose skulls are in the same collection, were respectively 5 ft. 5 in., 5 ft. 2 in., and 5 ft., and the average internal capacity of five male skulls is only 66.6. The small stature in this and others of the native races of Central India, has to be taken into account in estimating the relative size of the brain. But, after making all due allowance for this, the Cole skulls are remarkable for their small size, being smaller even than the ordinary Hindoos of Bengal. Yet one of them, “Cootlo,” whose skull is among those included in the above mean, commanded a band of insurgents in the Porahant rebellion of 1858, and made himself a terror to the district.
The microcephalism of races, as well as of individuals, of small stature, must not be confounded with the true microcephaly of a dwarfed or imperfectly developed brain, which is invariably accompanied with mental imbecility. The Mincopies of the Andaman Islands are spoken of by Professor Owen as “perhaps the most primitive, or lowest in the scale of civilisation, of the human race.”[160]Mr. G. E. Dobson, in describinghis first visit to one of their “homes,” says: “Although none of the tribe exceeded 64 inches in height, so that on first seeing them we thought the shed contained none but boys and girls, I was especially struck by the remarkable contrast between the size of the males and females.”[161]Dr. J. B. Davis has given, in the supplement toThesaurus Craniorum, the dimensions of a male Mincopie skeleton in his collection. The age he assumes to have been about thirty-five. The internal capacity of the skull is 62 oz. (Calais sand), equivalent to 75.5 cubic inches, and the entire height of the skeleton is 58.7 inches. It belongs, says Dr. Davis, to a pigmy race, is small in all its dimensions, and is particularly small in the dimensions of the pelvis. Of their skulls, moreover, he adds, “it is somewhat difficult to determine the sex with confidence. They are all small (but this is a character of the race), they are delicate in development, and they have that fulness of the occipital region, and smallness of the mastoid processes, which are marks of femininism.”
Mr. Alfred R. Wallace connects the Mincopies with the Negritos and Semangs of the Malay peninsula, a dark woolly-haired race, dwarfs in stature. Dr. Davis says of the six Mincopie skulls in his collection, four male and two female, as well as of others which he has seen: “They are all remarkably and strikingly alike, not merely in size but in form also. They are all small, round, brachycephalic crania of beautiful form.” Moreover, though classed as “lowest in the scale of civilisation,” the Mincopies betray no deficiency of intellect. The admirable photographs which illustrate Mr. Dobson’s narrative show in the majority of them good frontal development. The brain is not, indeed, relatively small. Their canoes are made of the trunk of a tree, hollowed out; and Mr. Dobson remarks: “The construction of their peculiar arrows and fish-spears with movable heads exhibits much ingenuity, and the use of no small reasoning power in adapting means to an end.”
We are indeed too apt to apply our own artificial standards as the sole 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, thewommeraor throwing stick, and thebomerang, 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 ofa 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 apost-mortemexamination 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 apost-mortemexamination 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 inthe 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 females4 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 Europeancivilisation.[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 asmicrocephalous; 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 asmegalocephalous, 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 theThesaurus Craniorum, three exceptionally large ones are: No. 123, that of an ancient British chief, of fully 6 ft. 2 in. in stature, fromthe 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, inThe Two Gentlemen of Verona, when depreciating her rival, exclaims, “Ay, but her forehead’s low”; and the jealous Queen of Egypt, inAntony 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 CentralEurope 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 ofmalecrania 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, buteven 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 hisOrigin 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 hisCave Huntingto 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 exceptionalcharacter, 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
Here again, however, it becomes important to take into consideration other elements of difference besides weight; for, as Tennyson insists, “Woman is not undevelopt man, but diverse.” The results of Wagner’s observations on the superficial measurements of the convolutions of the brain point to the conclusion that in the female the lesser brain-weight may be compensated by a larger superficies. Ranked in the order of their relative weights in grammes, six average brains of men and women were found to stand thus:—
But the same brains, when tested by the degrees of convolution of the frontal lobe, measured in squares of sixteen square millimetres, irrespective of the question of relative size, ranked as follows, advancing the female (d) from the fourth to the first place, and reducing the male (c) from the third to the sixth place:—
But, as already indicated, some modern disclosures tend to raise the question whether the difference between the sexes, in so far as relative volume of brain is concerned, has not been increased as a result of civilisation. The disparity in size between the Cro-Magnon male and female skeletons is quite as great as that of modern times, but the capacity of the female skull is relatively good.
Other observations, such as those of Professor Rolleston “On the People of the Long Barrow Period,” seem to indicate a nearer approximation in actual cranial capacity of the two sexes in prehistoric times than among modern civilised races. On the assumption that intellectual activity tends to permanent development of brain, it is consistent with the conditions of savage life that it should bring the mental energies of both sexes into nearly equal play. They have equally to encounter the struggle for existence, and have their faculties stimulated in a corresponding degree. As nations rise above the purely savage condition of the hunter stage, this relative co-operation of the sexes is subjected to great variations. The laws of Solon with reference to the right of sale of a daughter or sister, and the penalties for the violation of a free woman, show the position of the weaker sex among the Greeks at that early stage to have been a degrading one. But the change was great at a later stage; and much of our higher civilisation is traceable to the early establishment of the European woman’s rights, which Christianity subsequently tended to enlarge. The position of woman among the ancient Britons appears to have been one of perfect equality with man. Among the Arabians and other Mohammedan nations, including the modern Turks, the opposite is the case; and the whole tendency of the creed of the Koran, and the social life among Mohammedan nations, must be towards the intellectual atrophy of woman. Hence it is consistent with the diverse conditions of life that, in so far as cerebral development is the result ofmental activity, a much closer approximation is to be looked for in the mass and weight of brain in the two sexes among savage races, than among nations where woman systematically occupies a condition of servile degradation, or of passive inertness.
Some interesting results of the actual brain-weights of Negroes and other typical representatives of inferior savage races have been published, including examples of both sexes; and although the observations are as yet too few for the deduction of any absolute or very comprehensive conclusions, they furnish a valuable contribution towards this department of ethnical comparison. In 1865, Dr. Peacock published the results of observations on the brains of four Negroes and two Negresses; and to those he subsequently added a seventh example.[164]Others are included in the following table. But I have excluded some extremes of variation, such as the two given by Mascagni, one of which weighed 1458 grammes, or 51.5 oz. av., and the other only 738 grammes, or 26.1 oz. av. In addition to such actual brain-weights, Morton, Tiedemann, Davis, Wyman, and others, have gauged the skulls of Negroes, American Indians, Mincopies, Tasmanians, Australians, and other savage races, as well as those of many civilised and semi-civilised nations, and thereby contributed valuable data towards determining their relative cranial capacity. In hisCrania Ægyptiaca, Dr. Morton, when discussing the traces of a Negro element in the ancient Egyptian population, says: “I have in my possession seventy-nine crania of Negroes born in Africa, for which I am indebted to Drs. Goheen and M’Dowell, lately attached to the medical department of the colony of Liberia, in Western Africa; and especially to Don Jose Rodriguez Cisneros, M.D., of Havana, in the island of Cuba. Of the whole number, fifty-eight are adult, or sixteen years of age and upwards, and give eighty-five cubic inches for the average size of the brain. The largest head measures ninety-nine cubic inches; the smallest but sixty-five. The latter, which is that of a middle-aged woman, is the smallest adult head that has hitherto come under my notice.”[165]
NEGRO BRAIN-WEIGHT
The influence of race on the volume, weight, disposition, and relative proportions of the different subdivisions of the human brain, and so of brain on the character of races, has thus far been very partially tested. But the diversities of race head-forms—brachycephalic, dolichocephalic, platycephalic, acrocephalic, etc.—are now well-recognised, though their relation to cerebral development still requires much research for its elucidation. The ancient Roman forehead, as illustrated by classic busts, and confirmed by genuine Roman skulls, was low but broad, and the whole head was platycephalic. The Greek had a high forehead, and the works of the Greek sculptors show that this was regarded as typical. But contemporary with the classic races were the Macrocephali of the Euxine and the Caspian Seas, who, like many modern tribesof the New World, purposely aimed at depressing a naturally receding forehead, and thereby exaggerated the typical forehead characteristic of certain ancient barbaric races.
In the case of hybrids the interchange of physical and mental characteristics of the parents, including modifications of head-form, is a familiar fact. The English head-form appears to be an insular product of intermingled Briton, Teuton, and Scandinavian elements, which has no continental analogue; and its subdivisions, or sub-types, vary with the ethnical intermixture. The Scottish head appears to exceed the English in length, while the latter is higher. Where the Celtic element most predominates, the longer form of head is found; but even in the most Teutonic districts the difference between the prevailing head-form and that of the continental German is so marked that the latter finds it difficult to obtain an English-made hat which will fit his head.[166]Here the diversities of head-form are accompanied with no less marked differences of individual and national character.
Professor Welcker determined the average capacity of the German male skull as 1450 cubic centimetres, equivalent to 88 cubic inches, and representing an average brain-weight of 49 oz. Dr. Davis, by a similar process, assigns to the Germans, male and female, the larger mean brain-weight of 50.28 oz.; but by combining the means of both sexes, as derived from his own tables and those of Huschke and Wagner, we obtain a mean weight of German brain of 1314 grms., or 46.37 oz. The results of an extensive series of observations by Dr. Broca, on the male French skull, yield a mean capacity of 1502 cubic centimetres, or 91 cubic inches, representing an average brain-weight of 50.6 oz. Morton, taking his average from five English skulls, gives the great internal capacity of 96 cubic inches; while Davis arrives at a capacity of only 90.9 cubic inches from the examination of thirty-two skulls, male and female; and for the Scottish and Irish, each of 91.2 cubic inches, from an examination of thirty-five skulls. But unfortunately the Davis collection, so rich in other respects, derived its chief English specimens from a phrenological collection; and, along with a few large skulls, contains “many small and poorEnglish examples.”[167]The average weight of the English brain may therefore, as Dr. Davis admits, be assumed to be higher than the mean determined by him. “Still a comparison with actually tested weights of brains shows that there cannot be any material error.” The average brain-weight of twenty-one Englishmen, as given by him, is 50.28 oz., that of thirteen women is 43.13; and of the combined series, 47.50. The results determined by the same process in relation to the other nationalities of Europe are exhibited in detail in Dr. Davis’s tables, printed in thePhilosophical Transactions.
Such averages are, at best, only approximations to true results; and when obtained, as in Morton’s English race, from a very few examples, or in Davis’s, from exceptional skulls, collected under peculiar circumstances or for a special purpose, they must be tested by other observations. According to Dr. Morton, for example, the mean internal capacity of the English head is 96 cubic inches, while that of the Anglo-American is only 90 cubic inches. Such a conclusion, if established as the result of comparison of a sufficiently large number of well-authenticated skulls, would be of great importance in its bearing on the influence of change of climate, diet, habits, etc., as elements affecting varieties of the human race. But determined as it was in the Morton collection, from five English and seven Anglo-American specimens, it can be regarded as little more than a mere chance result. Ranged nearly in the order of mean internal capacity of skull, the following are the results arrived at, mainly by gauging the skulls in various collections available for such comparisons of different races of mankind. In presenting them here, I avail myself of Dr. Thurnam’s researches, augmenting them with other data subsequently published, including results deduced from Dr. Davis’s minute reports of his own extensive collections, and taking Tiedemann’s capacity of 92.3 for the European skull as 100.
RATIO OF CUBICAL CAPACITY OF SKULLS OF DIFFERENT RACES
The tables of Dr. Morton and Dr. Davis furnish materials for drawing comparisons between diverse nations of the great European family; but though they are of value as contributions to the required means for ethnical comparison, they fall far short of determining the average cranial capacity of the different nationalities. Whilst, for example, the tabular data in theThesaurus Craniorumshow a mean internal capacity of 94 cubic inches for the combined Teutonic family, the Finns yield the higher mean capacity of 96.3 cubic inches. Again, Dr. Thurnam found that the results of the weighing of fifty-nine brains of patients at the Friends’ Retreat near York, mostly persons of the middle class of society, yielded weights considerably above those which hesubsequently obtained from testing those of pauper patients in Wilts and Somerset. But this has to be estimated along with the undoubted ethnical differences which separate the population of Yorkshire from that of Somerset and Wiltshire. An interesting paper in the West-Riding Asylum Reports gives the results of the determination of 716 brain-weights, rather more than half being males. The average is 48.149 oz. for the male, and 43.872 for the female brain; whereas the average weights of 267 male brains of a similar class of patients in the Wilts County Asylum, as given by Dr. Thurnam, is 46.2 oz., and of 213 female brains, 41.0 oz. The results of the observations carried on by Dr. Boyd at St. Marylebone yield, from 680 male English brains, a mean weight of 47.1 oz., and from 744 female brains a mean weight of 42.3 oz.; whereas Dr. Peacock determined, from 183 cases in the Edinburgh Infirmary, the weight of the male Scottish brain to average 49.7, and that of the female brain to average 44.3 oz. Here the results are determined by so numerous a series that they might be accepted as altogether reliable, were it not that in the former case they are based to a large extent on a purely pauper class; whereas the patients of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh include respectable mechanics and others from many parts of Scotland, among whom education is common. It is not to be doubted, indeed, that a considerable difference in the form and size of the head, and no doubt also in brain-weight, is to be looked for amongst English, Scotch, Irish, German and French men and women, according to the county or province of which they are natives, and the class of society to which they belong.
The comparative ratio of the cubical capacity of the skull, or the average brain-weight, in so far as either is indicative of ethnical differences among members of the European family of nations, has thus to be determined by numerous examples; or dealt with in detail in reference to the different nationalities. Even in single provinces or counties, social position, and probably education, must be taken into account; so that a series of observations on hospital and pauper patients may be expected to fall below the general average; and fallacious comparisons between European peoples may be based on data, correct enoughper se, but unjust when placed alongside of adifferent class of results. The great mass of evidence in reference to brain-weight has thus far been mainly derived, in the case of the sane, from one rank of life. A comparison of the results with those derived from the insane of various classes of society shows less discrepancy than might have been anticipated. But there are certain cases of hydrocephalous and other abnormally enlarged brains which have to be rigorously excluded from any estimate of the size or weight of the brain, either as a race-test or as an index of comparative mental power.
Were it possible to select from among the great intellects of all ages an adequate series of representative men, and ascertain their brain-weights, or even the cubical capacity of their skulls, one important step would be gained towards the determination of the relation between size of brain and power of intellect. But we have little other data than such hints as the busts of Æschylus, Pericles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other leaders of thought may supply. Malcolm Canmore—Malcolm of the great head, as his name implied,—stands forth with marked individuality from out the shadowy roll of names which figure in early Scottish history. Charlemagne, we should fancy, merited a similar designation. But the portraits of his modern imperial successor, Charles V., show no such loftiness of forehead. Judging from the portraits and busts of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Cromwell, Napoleon, and Scott, their brains must have considerably exceeded the ordinary size. In the report of thepost-mortemexamination of Scott, the physicians state that “the brain was not large.” But this, no doubt, means relatively to the internal capacity of the skull in its then diseased condition. The intermastoid arch, as already noted, shows a remarkably exceptional magnitude of 19 inches, whereas the average of fifty-eight ancient and modern European skulls, as given in theThesaurus Craniorum, is only 14.60. The portraits of Wordsworth and Byron show an ample forehead; and the popular recognition of the “fair large front” of Milton’s typical man as the index of superior intellect is an induction universally accepted. But, on the other hand, examples of intellectual greatness undoubtedly occur with the brain little, if at all, in excess of the average size. On the discovery of Dante’s remains at Ravenna in 1865, the skull was pronounced to be ample, and exquisite in form. But itsactual cubical capacity and estimated brain-weight fall considerably below those of the highest ascertained brain-weights of distinguished men. Again, looking at the casts of the skulls of Robert the Bruce and the poet Burns, the first impression is the comparatively small size of head, and the moderate frontal development in each. Robert Liston, the eminent surgeon, remarked of the former: “The division of the cranium behind the meatus auditorius is large in proportion to that situated before it. The skull is also remarkably wide and capacious in that part, whereas the forehead is rather depressed”;[168]and more recent observers have not hesitated to recognise in it a reversion to the Canstadt type of the primitive European savage. Other characteristics so markedly indicate the elements of physical rather than intellectual vigour, that Liston expressly pointed out the analogy to “the heads of carnivorous animals.” The Bruce was indeed pre-eminently distinguished for courage and deeds of personal prowess; but it was no less by statesmanlike qualities, calm, resolute perseverance, and wise prudence, that he achieved the independence of his country.
George Combe, the phrenologist, to whom the original cast of Burns’s skull was first submitted, thus states the case in reference to the frontal development of the poet: “An unskilful observer looking at the forehead might suppose it to be moderate in size; but when the dimensions of the anterior lobe, in both length and breadth, are attended to, the intellectual organs will be recognised to have been large. The anterior lobe projects so much that it gives an appearance of narrowness to the forehead which is not real.”[169]The actual dimensions of the skull are, longitudinal diameter, 8 inches; parietal diameter, 5.95; and horizontal circumference, 22.25.
In the year 1865 the bones of Italy’s greatest poet, Dante, were submitted to a minute examination under the direction of commissioners appointed by the Italian Government to verify the discovery; and careful measurements were taken of the skull. Dr. H. C. Barlow, describing it from personal observation, says: “The head was finely formed, and the cranium showed, by its ample and exquisite form, that it hadheld the brain of no ordinary man. It was the most intellectually developed head that I ever remember to have seen. The occipital region was prominently marked, but the frontal was also amply and broadly expanded, and the anterior part of the frontal bone had a vertical direction in relation to the bones of the face” (Athenæum, September 9, 1865). But however intellectually developed and exquisite in form the poet’s skull may have appeared, the actual measurements fall short of the amplitude here assigned to it. The dimensions are as follows: Internal capacity, determined by filling the calvarium with grains of rice, 3.1321 lbs. av., or a little over 50 oz.; circumference, 52 cent. 5 mill.; occipito-frontal diameter, 31 cent. 7 mill.; transverse diameter, taken between the ears, 31 cent. 8 mill.; height, 14 cent. If the internal capacity is accepted without any correction, it would yield 57 oz., but if allowance be made, as in the actual weighing of the brain, for the abstraction of the dura mater and fluids, of say 8 per cent, this would reduce it to about 52.5, or nearly the same weight as that of the mathematician, Gauss. Professor Welcker deducts from 11.6 to 14 per cent, according to the size of the skull; Dr. J. B. Davis recommends a uniform deduction of 10 per cent. If we apply the latter rule, it will reduce the estimated weight of Dante’s brain to 51.3 oz.[170]
Another interesting example of the skull of an Italian poet is that of Ugo Foscolo, a cast of which was taken on the transfer of his remains to the Church of Santa Croce at Florence. Though only fifty years old at the time of his death, the skull was marked by “the entire ossification of the coronal, sagittal, and lambdoidal sutures, and that atrophy of the outer table, manifested by a depression on each side in the posterior half of each parietal, leaving an elevated ridge in themiddle, in the position of the sagittal, which is but rarely observed except in extremely advanced age.”[171]Sir Henry Holland, who knew the poet intimately, describes him as resembling in temperament the painter Fuseli, “passionately eccentric in social life.” Full of genius and original thought, as the writings of Foscolo show him to have been, he “was fiery and impulsive, almost to the verge of madness.”[172]He died in England in obscurity and neglect; but a regenerated Italy recalled the memory of her lost poet, and transferred his remains to Santa Croce’s consecrated soil. The estimated size of his brain is given as 1426 cubic cents., equivalent to 87 cubic inches internal capacity, which corresponds to a weight of brain of 48.44 oz. The longitudinal diameter is 6.90; the parietal diameter 5.70; the intermastoid arch 15.0; and the horizontal circumference 520 mm., or 20.5 inches. The brain capacity of the poet was thus little more than the European mean deduced by Morton from the miscellaneous examples in his collection.
Dr. J. C. Gustav Lucae, in hisZur Organischen Formenlehre, furnishes views and measurements of two other skulls of men of known intellectual capacity. One of these is Johan Jacob Wilhelm Heinse, the author ofArdinghello, a work of high character in the elements of æsthetic criticism, though as a romance fit to rank withDon Juanin subjective significance and morality. He wrote another romance entitledHildegard; in addition to numerous articles and translations of Petronius, Tasso, etc., which won for him the high commendation of Goethe, and the more guarded admiration of Wieland. His skull, as figured by Dr. Lucae, shows the frontal suture still open at the age of fifty-three, at which he died. The internal capacity of the skull is stated as 41.4 oz., equivalent to 1173 grms. In this, as in other examples hereafter referred to, Dr. Lucae has gauged the capacity of the skull with peas, and gives the weight in “unzen.” In the results deduced from them here theunzenare assumed to be Prussian ounces, the lb. of 12 oz. equal to 350.78348 grms. As already noted, the determination of the internal capacity of the skull by varying tests, such as pease, rice, and sands of diverse degreesof fineness, leads to uncertain results. In those here deduced from the data furnished by Dr. Lucae, the unzen have been tested by a series of experiments made with a view to correct the error necessarily resulting from the fact that peas do not entirely fill the cavity. The results show that 82.5 grms. of ordinary sized peas occupy the space of 100 grms. of water. Deducting 10 per cent for membranes and fluids, the estimated brain-weight of Heinse is 1379 grms. or 48.7 oz. av. The dimensions of the skull are given thus:—
The other example produced by Dr. Lucae is that of Dr. Christian Heinrich Bünger, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Marburg. In this skull the frontal suture is still more strongly defined at the age of sixty than in that of Heinse. The internal capacity of the skull is stated as 42.8 oz., equivalent to 1213 grms., which, dealt with as above stated, yields 1410 grms. or 49.8 oz. av. Other dimensions of the skull are given as follows:—
The premature ossification of the sagittal suture, by arresting the expansion of the brain laterally, is a frequent source of abnormal elongation of the head. On the other hand the frontal suture, which ordinarily closes in the man-child before birth, though persistent in the lower animals, is occasionally found to remain open in man till maturity, as in the two notable cases here described. Darwin refers to it as a case ofarrested development. “This suture,” he says, “occasionally persists, more or less distinctly, in man after maturity, and more frequently in ancient than in recent crania; especially, as Canestrini has observed, in those exhumed from the Drift, and belonging to the brachycephalic type. In this and other instances the cause of ancient races approaching the lower animals in certain characters more frequently than do the modern races, appears to be that the latter stand at a somewhat greater distance in the long line of descent from their early semi-human progenitors.”[173]It may be permissible to express a doubt as to this relative frequency of the occurrence of the frontal suture in ancient and modern races, since the great naturalist does not state it as a result of his own observations. Not only am I led to do so from repeatedly noting its occurrence in modern crania; but its effect can in no way favour arrested development. It must rather admit of the free expansion of the frontal lobes of the brain, the decrease of which in a progressive ratio is characteristic of the orang, chimpanzee, and baboon.