WHAT WE DO WITH OUR BRAINS 21 



To say that the human cerebral cortex is the organ 

 of civilization is to lay a very heavy burden on so 

 small a mass of matter. One is reminded of Darwin's 

 amazement that the wonderfully efficient and diversi- 

 fied behavior of an ant can be carried on with so 

 small a brain, which is "not so large as the quarter 

 of a small pin's head." The complexity of the human 

 brain is as far beyond that of an ant as human 

 conduct is higher than ant's behavior. 



The individual human brain controls the indi- 

 vidual's behavior, and when we say that the human 

 cerebral cortex is the organ of civilization this does 

 not mean that any single brain must perform the 

 stupendous labor of keeping the wheels of civilization 

 moving. But in a social organization every indi- 

 vidual's behavior knits in with that of the others, and 

 so his cerebral functions act in a social as well as a 

 physico-chemical environment. And as his personal 

 consciousness develops into a social consciousness 

 the cortical mechanisms are correspondingly en- 

 larged. The human cortex is twice as big and more 

 than twice as intricate as that of an ape of equal body 

 weight. 



All higher symbolic thinking, all abstraction and 

 ideation, use language symbolism as a necessary tool, 

 and language is essentially a social function. The 

 distinctively human type of cortical organization has 

 therefore grown out of man's social relationships. 

 It culminates in this same social sphere, as expressed 



