therefore, cannot be a product of the Material Organism—"Il ne pense pas—y a-t-il une preuve plus evidente que la matière seule, quoique par- faitement organisée, ne peut produire, ni la pensée, ni la parole qui en est la signe, à moins qu' elle ne soit animée par un principe supérieur?"
The modern Idealist may avoid his predecessors' anatomical errors; but, if he be true to his principles, he will feel no anxiety to repudiate their metaphysics. He may make his strong position yet stronger, we believe, by adducing biological evidence in disproof of the usually granted assumption, that mental capacity stands always in a certain relation to cerebral development; but holding, as he does, the existence of an essential difference between mind and matter, he makes himself but a materialist for the nonce, if he express any repugnance to such statements as those just quoted on account of any conclusions to which they could lead him. For even if they were wholly, as we believe they are nearly, true to the facts, he could draw from them, if he remained true to his principles, no other conclusions than did Buffon and Tyson.
Reasoners of the kind to which we allude will do well to imitate the logical consistency of the materialistic author of the "Icones Cerebri Simiarum." Tiedemann, at all events, had no half-hearted faith in his creed. He plights his faith to the scalpel and callipers, and betrays no anxiety as to any possible upsetting of his conclusion by such data as consciousness or the history of psychical phenomena could furnish— "Parvus[1] ergo encephalus Orang Utangi rationem physicum et certam prodit ubi jam celeberrimus Soemerring monuit cur animi facultatibus tantopere ab homine distet. In homine prævalere cerebrum summumque hominis bonum rationis usum, ab ipsa maxima encephali evolutione pendere haud dubitari potest. Præcipua et essentialis ergo differentia quæ ipsum hominem et reliqua animantia intercedit in cerebro posita est."
Having indicated our opinion that the dealing with such views as those just quoted from Tiedemann's thirty-second Corollary is to be safely, though by no means of necessity, delegated to the metaphysician, we may proceed forthwith to lay before the reader the anatomical details which will enable him to decide for himself, whether the Heidelberg anatomist, or the French natural historian, was the nearer the truth in a matter of fact.
Multitudinous as are the differences which a detailed comparison of any two brains will disclose, they yet admit of being arranged under four heads. Under the first of these heads we may class those differences, which the observant anatomical eye would detect without the assistance of any anatomical instrument, and could express without being necessitated to employ any technical anatomical language.
Our second class of differences comprehends such as the scales and the callipers reveal.
For the power of describing, and one might almost say, for the
- ↑ Icones, Cor. xxxii, p. 54.
