BRAIN WEIGHT AND INTELLIGENCE.

North Otago Times, 22 May 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

BRAIN WEIGHT AND INTELLIGENCE.

i 4 i There is something very mournful 'says Professor'W. I. Thomas, in the the labours of those men who have devoted their lives to the study of ] the brain weight of men, women, and : races on the assumption that there is a direct relation between intelligence and the bulk of the brain. It would be about as valid to assume . that a vessel of water and a vessel of lye of the same ■ weight have the same potency, or that timepieces of the same weight arc necessarily • equally good timekeepers. Great , men may have great brains, or they I may not. Turgenieff, the famous Russian writer, holds the record at 2,012 grams, while the brain of Gambetta, who was a greater man in popular achievement, weighed only 1,160, or only 160 grams above the point at which, according to the calculations of French anthropologists, idiocy begins. Great Men and Weak Ilealth.-In a scries of 500 brains the lowest and highest will, in fact, differ as much as 650 grams in weight, but there will be found no constant relation between the weight and the intelligence. It is significant, indeed, that men of small stature, weak health, and even physical affliction, have, if anything more than an ordinary chance of becoming famous. Their attention is limited, and they are stimulated to win out in spite of their handicap. Pasteur is a clear case of a truly great man. He was paralysed on one side from 18G8 until his death in 1895, but, as BerthoUct says, it was after be was stricken (hat his inventive genius perhaps shone most brightly. Herbert, Spencer, Darwin, and Von Hnrtmann hardly had a well day in their working lives. Pope was so feeble that he could hardly draw on his own stockings. Napoleon was of small stature and of weak health and physique.—"Popular Science Sift- j ings."