It is probably more than mere imagination to believe that men of the same type follow the same career—that a priori a priest looks like a priest, a soldier a soldier, a lawyer a lawyer, and so on. It is more difficult to believe that men change in facial form and expression in accordance with their manner of life, their trend of thought, or their daily occupation. And it is almost impossible to believe that a man may grow to look like another after many years of close association in the same career, when at its beginning there existed no resemblance between them.
An anatomist may tell you that when the human brain reaches its fifteen-power standard (its maximum growth, at the age of twenty) the cranium, or bone box that contains it, will not grow more. It delights me, lover of inequality that I am, to inform the anatomist that there is no standard at all for a few exceptional brains, that they go on increasing the number of the cells of the cerebrum until, at a great age, physical decay begins; and, in order to accommodate these new cells, the cranium itself expands and grows.
This expansion and growth in the size of the head is more marked, perhaps, in successful statesmen and politicians than in other men. Herbert Spencer attributes success to the strength of our emotions. I do not know if statesmen are more emotional than other men, but from a study of
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