COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



chasms. A perfectly smooth lump of butter, 

 irregularly furrowed by a sharp knife held per- 

 pendicularly, would present a surface like that 

 of the human brain. Now the amount of intel- 

 ligence depends in some way on the number 

 and irregularity of these furrows. In the low- 

 est monodelphian mammals, as the rodents and 

 the lowest monkeys, there are no furrows, or 

 only a few very shallow ones. In the carnivora 

 and ungulata there are numerous furrows, some 

 of them tolerably deep, but all of them sym- 

 metrically arranged. As we proceed to the 

 higher apes, we find the furrows increasing in 

 number and depth, though not yet losing their 

 symmetry of arrangement. Idiots, young chil- 

 dren, and adult savages have these creases few 

 and regular ; and in the lower races their ar- 

 rangement is similar in different individuals. 

 But in civilized man the creases are very nu- 

 merous, deep and irregular ; and they are not 

 alike in any two individuals.^ 



^ Phrenologists have done good service by familiarizing the 

 unlearned public with the fact that the quantity of mental 

 capacity is related to the quantity of brain. But the character 

 of this relationship is seriously misinterpreted both by phreno- 

 logists and by the rest of the unlearned public. It is impossible 

 to say that a man with an unusually large head must be a man of 

 unusual mental capacity, because the quantity of mental capacity 

 depends on many other factors besides quantity of brain. It not 

 onlv depends upon the sinuous creasing of the brain-surface here 

 described, which can in no wise be detected by an examination 

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