278 
THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
impressions are more acute; but now comes the more important 
consideration—the storehouse of these materials—the recipient of 
these impressions—the brain. What find we there ? 
Anatomists have compared the relative bulk of the brain in 
different animals, and the result is curious and interesting. In 
man, the weight of the brain amounts to of that of his body; 
in the Newfoundland dog it is in the poodle and the bar¬ 
bette it is -rjcj) i n the ferocious and stupid bull dog ; in the 
horse it is 4^0 j and in the ox it is -g^. The largest brain which 
Sommering found in a horse weighed lib. loz.: the smallest in 
the adult man was 21 b. 5joz. 
There is something more than this. When cut into, the brain 
seems to be composed of two distinct substances, the central 
or medullary , of a white colour—that which is connected with the 
origins of the nerves, or which is the origin of the nerves—and an¬ 
other portion, of a different colour, consistence, and minute organi¬ 
zation—distinct from, not running into it, or proceeding from it— 
principally occupying the external part of the brain, but stride or 
portions of it found everywhere, and at the origin of every nerve. 
This anatomists recognize under the name of the cortical or cine- 
ritious portion. 
These vary in their relative proportion in different animals. 
Where the animal nerves are developed, as in inferior animals, the 
medullary portion prevails ; where the animal nerves are smaller, 
the cortical substance proportionally preponderates. The horse will 
afford us an apt illustration of this. His whole brain is not one 
half so large as that of the human being; but the medullary sub¬ 
stance, the mass of nervous origins, is many times as large as 
in man; and the cortical proportion is in the same ratio di¬ 
minished. In the monkey tribe the comparative bulk of brain is 
nearly equal to that of man ; but in these animals it is made up 
of medullary matter principally—in the human being the cortical 
abundantly preponderates : in the one, there is that which is con¬ 
nected only with animal existence ; in the other, the greater pro¬ 
portion is devoted to the faculties of the mind : and thus it re¬ 
sults that the inferior animals with larger nerves, and more me¬ 
dullary substance, have far acuter senses; and that man, excel- 
