The Black Man's Place in South Africa by Peter Nielsen
page 11 of 94 (11%)
page 11 of 94 (11%)
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obvious. The Eskimo, for instance, who is of short stature, has a
cranial capacity of 1,550 cubic centimetres, thus surpassing some of the most civilised peoples of Europe, and yet no one of this race has so far startled the world with any kind of mental achievement. "The result," says Professor Sollas, "of numerous investigations carried out during the last quarter of a century is to show that, within certain limits, no discoverable relation exists between the magnitude of the brain--or even its gross anatomy--and intellectual power," and he illustrates this statement by a list giving the cranial capacities and brain-weights of a number of famous men which shows that though Bismarck had a skull capacity of 1,965 cubic centimetres, Liebniz, who attained to the highest flights of genius, had a cranium measuring only 1,422 cubic centimetres. Dealing more particularly with the assumed relation between highly specialised mental faculties and the anatomy of the brain, as apart from its mere size, the same author cites the case of Dr. Georg Sauerwein, who was master of forty or fifty languages, and whose brain after his death at the age of 74 in December, 1904, was dissected by Dr. L. Stieda with the idea that, since it is known that the motor centre for speech is situated in what is called Broca's area, some connection between great linguistic powers and the size or complication of the frontal lobe might be found in this highly specialised brain, but the examination revealed nothing that could be correlated with Sauerwein's exceptional gift.[9] Professor R.R. Marett in his handbook on Anthropology says, in discussing the subject of race, "You will see it stated that the size of the brain cavity will serve to mark off one race from another. This is extremely doubtful, to put it mildly. No doubt the average European |
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