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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III IJKAl X WEIGHT AND MENTAL FACULTY What we have arrived at so far is that the gray matter is the physical basis of the mind. No one now disputes this. The eye does not see any more than an opera glass sees. It is one place only in the gray cortex which actually sees. And as with the consciousness of sight, so doubtless the seat of every other special form of mind consciousness is somewhere in this mysterious layer. But how far does this take us? Not very far, because if we hence should infer that consciousness in all its forms of sensation, feeling, perception, thought, etc., depended wholly on the existence of so much gray matter, we should soon encounter a series of material, i. e., physical, facts and conditions which, if they did not actually contradict such inferences, would at least seriously modify them. To hegin with the simplest as well as the most physical facts. In all animals there is a close correspondence between the degree of development of any organ and its functional power or activity. A powerful arm implies a big arm, or at least not an undersized one. Is a powerful brain likewise a big brain, or at least not an undersized brain? In other words, does the actual size of brain in man bear any direct relation to mental capacity? This question may be answered in the affirmative, only, however, with so many qualifications that it then becomes by itself of little account in our discussion. Thus the brains of most idiots and of half-witted persons are usually smaller and weigh less than the average of normal brains, while many men distinguished for their mental powers have had large and heavy brains. But the exceptions are very numerous both ways. Thus, assuming the average weight of normal European 49 LANE MF.OICAL LIBRARY STANFORD UNIVERSITY ...