50 INTRODUCTION. 



accessions are trifling, compared with tliose which arc 

 l^ained under the fostering hand of cultivation. Never- 

 theless, the highest degree of cultivation practised on an 

 individual would operate but little on that individual 

 himself. He might be conquered, but he would be un- 

 tamed ; his wild nature would still appear under all the 

 mask that fear and hunger might cover him with : nei- 

 ther is there any doubt but he would escape the first 

 moment it was in his power, and instinctively seek his 

 native plains. By some extraordinary provision of na- 

 ture, the rational faculties of the mind are found to be 

 equally capable of hereditary cultivation as the form 

 of the body ^^ ; and the powers and energies derived 

 from cultivation are handed down from sire to son, and 

 receive additional improvement, as discipline and care 

 are bestowed to bring the intellectual phenomena into 

 action. 



This hereditary transit of cultivated qualities, this 

 genealogical accumulation of knowledge, has never met 

 with sufficient consideration among philosophers and 



^' Precisely to understand how the faculties, under cultivation, 

 become capable of being handed down in hereditary descent equally 

 with the improved person, would require a knowledge of the mutual 

 dependance that mind and body have on each other, and of the ex- 

 act nature of the coimection between them. That the intellectual 

 functions are intimately connected with the organization and physi- 

 cal condition of the brain, we are certain ; and although we have 

 reason to consider the brain as only the organ by which the intellec- 

 tual phenomena are administered, yet it will be evident that any 

 increase in either the quantity or quality of the brain will enlarge 

 the means whereby such phenomena are produced. That the vo- 

 lume of brain is increased in the cultivated dog, every one must 

 admit who remarks the ditfercnce between the expanded head of the 

 domestic, and the more narrow and contracted one of the wild 

 breeds. 



