IS MAN MORE INTELLIGENT THAN WOMAN?

Lake County Press, Issue 2134, 6 September 1906, Page 7

IS MAN MORE INTELLIGENT THAN WOMAN?

The question has lately been mooted as to the relative brain-weight of man and woman. Dr. Raymond Pearl's conclusion is that the difference between the sexes in mean brain-weight is only in part to be accounted for by differences in bodily characters. Mr. Blakcman uses stature, age, length of skull, breadth of skull, height of skull, and horizontal cranial circumference, and shows that the absolute absence in brainweight then appears wholly, and not in part, due to differences in bodily characters.' In other words a man of the same length, .breadth, height, and circumference of skull as the average woman has her mean brainweight.

"Do such men actually exist?" asks Professor Karl Pearson, and he answers, "Undoubtedly." An examination of the curves for male and female cranial characters shows that a considerable percentage of women exceed in cranial dimensions the mean man, and again as large a percentage of men fall in cranial dimensions below the mean woman.

And further examination shows that in stature at each age there are women in excess of the average man, and men less than the average women. Thus, for the very characters Mi-. Blakeman has dealt with, we lind men who are physically like the average woman and women who are physically like the average man. Such men . would have the brainweight of the aA'erage woman, and such woman the brain-weight of the average man. In other words, the man of slender build is a woman in brain weight, and the woman of robust build is a man in brain-weight. The difference in weight of man ; s and woman's brains is thus seen to be precisely the difference between brain-weight in two different groups of men. It is only a sexual difference in so far as di(Terence in 'sexual physique is so, he says, m the "British Medical Journal." Thus, continues Professor Pearson, without raising any sex feeling, we can re-word the problem .so often raised by anatomists. We can. ask whether the man of slender build has more or less of intelligence than the man of robust build, and then inquire how far this is due to greater brain-weight. Undoubtedly the bigger man has the larger brain-weight, but is he more intelligent ? There is a sensible correlation between .size of head and intelligence, but it is so slight that no safe prediction can be made from size to degree of v! intelligence. This may be summed- up almost in the words of Professor Pearson's conclusion of 1902. Fortyfour per cent, of aaiy homogeneous (like or akin) class have heads as large or larger than the mean head of the exceptionally able 2 per cent. Conversely, <kl per cent, of any homogeneous, class are able or abler .than the two per cent, .of this class with exceptionally big heads. The merit of Mr. JUakeman's result is, that it shows that the sexual difference in brain-weight is only sexual because differences in * the sizes of' the. body and head are sexual. It enables the problem of brain-weight and intelligence to be discussed on a ground much Jess controversial than the sexual. Dr. Pearson believes there is iu) useful correlation (similarity of law) between the two characters, that is there is none big enough to base predictions upon. Those anatomists who assort thai, man is more intelligent than woman because he h<is greater brain-weight must be prepared to hold, on precisely the same weight of evidence, that the big man is more intelligent than the small man.