892 EKPORT— 1893. 



also those of natural selection, are conscious sensation, heredity, and a few other 

 properties of organic matter ; elements which are common, in a more or less degree, 

 to all living things. As soon as the sequence of natural phenomena attracted the 

 attention of man, and his intelligence reached the stage of consecutive reasoning on 

 the invariableness of certain eifects from given causes, this new power came into 

 existcDce; and its operations are, apparently, so diSerent from those of its com- 

 ponent elements that they can hardly be recognised as the ofispring of natural 

 forces at all. Its application to the adjustment of his physical environments has 

 ever since been one of the most powerful factors, not only in the development of 

 humanity, but in altering the conditions and life-functions of many members of 

 the animal and vegetable kingdoms. 



I have already pointed out that the brain can no longer be regarded as a single 

 organ, but rather as a series of organs connected by bonds of union — like so many 

 departments in a Government office in telephonic communication — all, however, 

 performing special and separate functions. When, therefore, we attempt to com- 

 pare the brain capacity of one animal with that of another, with the view of 

 ascertaining the quality of their respective mental manifestations, we must first 

 determine what are the exact homologous parts that are comparable. To draw 

 any such inference from a comparison of two brains, by simply weighing or 

 measuring the whole mass of each, would be manifestly of no scientific value. 

 For example, in the brain of a savage the portion representing highly skilled 

 motor energies might be very much larger, while the portion representing logical 

 power might be smaller, than the corresponding jjarts in the brain of a philosopher. 

 But should these inequalities of development be such as to balance each other, the 

 weight of the two organs would be equal. In this case what could be the value of 

 any inference as to the character of their mental endowments ? Equal-sized 

 brains do not display equivalent, nor indeed analogous, results. To postulate such 

 a doctrine would be as irrational as to maintain that the walking capacities of 

 different persons are directly proportional to the weight of their bodies. Similar 

 remarks are equally applicable to the skulls of prehistoric races, as it would appear 

 that evolution had done the major part of its work iu brain development long 

 before the days of neolithic civilisation. Huxley's well-known description of the 

 Eugis skull — ' a fair average skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, 

 or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage ' — goes far to settle 

 the question from its anatomical point of view. Until localisation of brain func- 

 tions makes greater progress it is, therefore, futile to speculate to any great extent 

 on the relative sizes of the skulls of different races either iu present or prehistoric 

 times. 



But there is another aspect of the question which militates against Mr. 

 Wallace's hypothesis, viz., the probability that many of the present tribes of 

 savages are, in point of civilisation, in a more degenerate condition than their fore- 

 fathers who acquired originally higher mental qualities under natural selection. 

 There must surely be some foundation of truth in the widely-spread tradition of 

 the fall of man. And, if such be the case, we naturally expect to find some stray 

 races with inherited brains of greater capacity than their needs, in more degenerate 

 circumstances, may require. An exact equivalent to this may be seen in the 

 feeble intellectuality of many of the peasants and lower classes among the civilised 

 nations of modern times. Yet a youth born of such parents, if educated, often 

 becomes a distinguished philosopher. It is well known that if an organ ceases to 

 perform its functional work it h.ns a tendency to deteriorate, and ultimately to dis- 

 appear altogether. But from experience we know that it takes a long time for the 

 effects of disuse to become manifest. It is this persistency that accounts for a 

 number of rudimentary organs, still to be met with in the human body, whose 

 functional activity could only have been exercised ages before man became 

 differentiated from the lower animals. Such facts give some support to the 

 suggestion, previously made, that philosophy, as such, has no specially locahsed 

 portion in the brain. Its function is merely to direct the current of mental forces 

 already existing. 



But, again, Mr. Wallace's argument involves the assumption that the un- 



