CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 117 



has proved that the illiterate peasants of Auvergne have a 

 much greater cranial capacity than that of the learned and 

 cultured denizens of Paris. And, as if to show conclusively 

 that there is no necessary connection between intellectual 

 capacity and size of cranium, authentic measurements dis- 

 close the fact that some of the most gifted men the world 

 has known had small heads. Among these were Dante and 

 Voltaire. The skull of the latter is one of the smallest 

 which has thus far been observed. 



What has been said regarding the relation of cranial 

 volume to intellectual capacity, as revealed by the measure- 

 ments of the skulls of ancient and modern, savage and 

 civilized peoples may likewise be predicated of the dif- 

 ferences in the sizes of the crania of men and women. No 

 argument as to the greater or less intelligence of either 

 sex can be based on mere craniometric determinations. ' ' At 

 the best, cranial capacity is but a rough indication of brain 

 size ; and to measure brain size by the external size of the 

 skull furnishes still rougher and more fallacious approxi- 

 mations, since the male skull is more massive than the 

 female." 



Even the slight morphological differences between male 

 and female skulls some anthropologists deny that there 

 are any at all afford no more ground for conclusions in 

 favor of the superiority of one or the other sex than the 

 relative differences in size. Such trifling differences as do 

 exist exhibit, as Virchow has pointed out, an approxima- 

 tion of men to the savage, simian and senile type, and an 

 approach of women to the infantile type. Havelock Ellis, 

 commenting on this difference, pertinently remarks, "It is 

 open to a man in a Pharisaic mood to thank God that his 

 cranial type is far removed from the infantile. It is 

 equally open to woman in such a mood to be thankful that 

 her cranial type does not approach the senile. ' n 



But much stress as has been laid on physical power, 

 i Man and Woman, p. 94, London, 1898. 



