37'2 THE SIZE AND WEIGHT 



cultured and intelligent people is likely to be greater than 

 among uncultured and non-intelligent people, the answer 

 to this question may be unmistakeably in the affirmative- 

 and this, as Le Bon has pointed out in regard to ' cranial 

 capacities,' is the real direction in which we ought to look 

 for evidences of class or racial superiority. 



This modified or more correct form of an old notion is 

 based upon various facts which give it a very distinct sup- 

 port. As previously stated, the proportion of 'decidedly 

 megalocephalous ' male brains has been found, among 

 the lower and less educated members of society, to range 

 between 4 and 6 per cent, for persons under sixty years 

 of age ; while in the above table of Brain- weights of 

 Distinguished Men (which, be it observed, is in no sense 

 a selected list, since it comprises all such weights known 

 to the writer as having been recorded) the proportion of 

 those exceeding 55 oz. amounts to nearly 23 per cent., 

 and might have been much larger still had it not been 

 for the great age of some of the distinguished individuals 

 whose brains were examined. For, notwithstanding a 

 marked amount of senile atrophy in some of these brains 

 no less than eleven of them still weighed 5'2| to 55 oz. 

 It seems quite possible that those of Sir James Simpson, 

 Daniel Webster, Lord Campbell, and Professors De 

 Morgan and Gauss, may each have exceeded 55 oz. in 

 weight when these distinguished men were not only in 

 good health but distinctly under sixty years of age. And 

 in this case the number of ' decidedly megalocephalous ' 

 Brains among these twenty- three Distinguished Men 

 would be raised to about 45 per cent. The list is small 

 from which to draw any conclusions, but the difference 

 in proportion indicated seems to be far too great to be 

 attributable to mere chance. 



Apart from the existence of actual morbid changes, the 



