CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 



brain, it is asserted, are less ample, less pronounced and 

 less beautiful. "Behold," they exclaim, "a, most positive 

 evidence of inferiority. ' ' These men overlook the fact that 

 certain animals, notably the elephant and divers species of 

 cetaceans, have cerebral convolutions that are more com- 

 plex than those of man. If, then, brain convolutions were, 

 as claimed, a certain index of the degree of intelligence, 

 the whale or the elephant, and not man pace Shakespeare 

 would be ' ' the paragon of animals. ' ' 



But men of science are by no means at one on this 

 alleged sexual difference in brain convolutions. On the 

 contrary, there are many eminent physiologists and anato- 

 mists who contend that the superficies of brain convolu- 

 tions in women is relatively greater than in men. For 

 those who believe and they are probably the majority at 

 present that the seat of mental activity is in the gray 

 matter of the brain, this greater brain surface, due to its 

 convolutions, would be a decided compensation for woman's 

 relatively smaller brain volume. 1 



In whatever way, then, we consider the brains of men 

 and women, whether we compare the ratio of brain weight 

 to height of body or to weight of body, or compare the 

 relative amounts of gray matter in the two sexes, the 

 advantage, in spite of her smaller body, is distinctly in 

 favor of woman. 



From the preceding considerations it seems clear that 

 there is no ground from the point of view of brain anat- 

 omy for considering one sex as superior to the other. They 

 evince, too, that quality as well as quantity of brain tissue 

 must be considered in all our discussions on the relations 



iThe importance of gray matter in mental processes has evi- 

 dently been greatly overestimated, for it has been found to be thicker 

 in the brains of negroes, murderers and ignorant persons than it was 

 in the encephalon of Daniel Webster. It is also much thicker in the 

 brains of dolphins, porpoises and other cetaceans than it is in the 

 most intellectual of men. 



