adult male human cranium surpasses the largest of the gorillas (62 – 3212 = 2712). Secondly, the adult crania of gorillas which have as yet been measured, differ among themselves by nearly one-third, the maximum capacity being 34·5 cubic inches, the minimum 24 cubic inches; and, thirdly, after making all due allowance for difference of size, the cranial capacities of some of the lower apes fall nearly as much, relatively, below those of the higher apes, as the latter fall below man.'[1]
Are we then to conclude, that differences in mental power have no intimate connection with the comparative volume of the brain? We cannot draw such an inference, because the highest and most civilised races of Man exceed in the average of their cranial capacity the lowest races, the European brain, for example, being larger than that of the negro, and somewhat more convoluted and less symmetrical, and those apes, on the other hand, which approach nearest to Man in the form and volume of their brain being more intelligent than the Lemurs, or still lower divisions of the mammalia, such as the Rodents and Marsupials, which have smaller brains. But the extraordinary intelligence of the elephant and dog, so far exceeding that of the larger part of the Quadrumana, although their brains are of a type much more remote from the human, may serve to convince us how far we are as yet from understanding the real nature of the dependence of intellectual superiority on cerebral structure.
Professor Rolleston, in reference to this subject, remarks, that 'even if it were to be proved that the differences between Man's brain and that of the ape's are differences entirely of quantity, there is no reason, in the nature of things, why so many and such weighty differences in degree should not amount to a difference in kind.
- ↑ Huxley, On the Relation of Man to the rest of the Animal Kingdom. London, 1863.
