Part 2

The supposed arrest of the brain of the Bantu at the age of puberty owing to the closing of the sutures of the skull at an earlier age than happens with Europeans is another popular notion for which a sort of pseudo-scientific authority may be quoted from encyclopædias and old books of travel. The opinion of modern authorities on this subject is that those who say that the closure of the sutures of the skull determines brain growth would or should also say that the cart pulls the horse, for, if the sutures of the Native skull close at a somewhat earlier date in the average Native than in the average European then it simply means that the Native reaches maturity slightly earlier than the average white man.

The loss of mental alertness which is said by some to be peculiar to the Natives at the time of puberty is very often met with in the European youth or girl at that period of life. Competent observers have of late years come to the conclusion that this supposed falling off in intelligence, in so far as it may differ in degree from what has so often been noticed in European boys and girls at that point of development, is due to psychological and not to physiological causes. It is realised that this lapse in mental power of concentration in European youth in the stage of early adolescence is prevented by the force of example and fear of parental and general reprobation coupled with unbroken school-discipline, all of which factors are as yet seldom present in the surroundings of the average Bantu boy or girl.

The outward ethnic differentiæ of the Bantu are admittedly palpable and patent to everyone, but in the opinion of competent observers there is nothing in the anatomy of the black man to make him a lower beast than the man with the white skin. It is now seen that there is no apparent relation between complexion or skull shape and intelligence, but while this is so there appears to be a correlation between the size of the brain and the number of cells and fibres of which it is made up, although this correlation is so weak as to be difficult of demonstration.

The capacity of the normal human cranium varies from 1,000 cubic centimetres to 1,800 cubic centimetres, the mean capacity of female crania being 10 per cent. less than the mean of male crania. On this basis skulls are classified in the text books as being microcephalic when below 1,350 cubic centimetres, such as those of the extinct Tasmanians, Bushmen, Andamanese, Melanesians, Veddahs, and the Hill-men of India; mesocephalic, those from 1,350 to 1,450 cubic centimetres, comprising Negroes, Malays, American Indians, and Polynesians; and megacephalic, above 1,450 cubic centimetres, including Eskimos, Europeans, Mongolians, Burmese and Japanese. The mean capacity among Europeans is fixed at 1,500 cubic centimetres, and the average weight of the brain at 1,300 grams.

These figures show that the skull capacity of the average European is larger than that of the average Negro, and as it seems plausible that the greater the central nervous system, the higher will be the faculty of the race, and the greater its aptitude for mental achievements, the conclusion that the European is superior in this respect seems on the face of it to be well grounded. There are, however, certain relevant facts which qualify this inference, and these must be briefly considered.

The anthropologist Manouvrier measured thirty-five skulls of eminent white men and found them to be of an average capacity of 1,665 cubic centimetres as compared to 1,560 cubic centimetres general average derived from 110 ordinary individuals. On the other hand he found that the cranial capacity of forty-five murderers was 1,580 cubic centimetres, also superior to the general average. Professor Franz Boas, in discussing this experiment, says that most of the brain weights constituting the general series are obtained in anatomical institutes, and the individuals who find their way there are poorly developed on account of malnutrition and of life under unfavourable circumstances, while the eminent men represent a much better nourished class. As poor nourishment reduces the weight and size of the whole body, it will also reduce the size and weight of the brain. Dr. Arthur Keith when dealing with the so-called Piltdown skull in his book "The Antiquity of Man" says to the same effect that the size of brain is a very imperfect index of mental ability in that we know that certain elements enter into the formation of the brain which take no direct part in our mental activity, so that a person who has been blessed with a great robust body and strong, massive limbs requires a greater outfit of mere tracts and nerve cells for the purposes of mere animal administration than the smaller person with trunk and limbs of a moderate size.

It seems fair, therefore, to assume that the brain-weights of big men of the Zulu, the Xosa and the Fingo tribes will be considerably above those of European women, but to conclude from this that the capacity of the big black man is higher than that of the average white woman would hardly be possible to-day. I would say here that I do not accept the suggestion, recently advanced, that the mental faculty of woman is qualitatively different from that of man. I hold that there is no difference of any kind between the intellectual powers of the male and female human being. The comparative lack of mental achievement on the part of women in the past I believe to have been due to a natural, and, as I think, wholesome feminine disinclination to take up intellectual studies and scientific pursuits that until recently have been deemed the prerogative of men, and not to any innate inferiority of the female brain.

According to Professor Sollas, whose high authority cannot be disputed, the size of the brain when looked at broadly seems to be connected with the taxinomic rank of the race, but when we come to details the connection between cranial capacity and mental endowment becomes less 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.

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 shows some advantage in this respect as compared, say, with the Bushmen. But then you have to write off so much for their respective types of body, a bigger body going in general with a bigger head, that in the end you find yourself comparing mere abstractions. Again, the European may be the first to cry off on the ground that comparisons are odious; for some specimens of Neanderthal man, in sheer size of brain cavity, are said to give points to any of our modern poets and politicians.... Nor, if the brain itself be examined after death, and the form and number of its convolutions compared, is this criterion of hereditary brain-power any more satisfactory. It might be possible in this way to detect the difference between an idiot and a person of normal intelligence, but not the difference between a fool and a genius."

In his book, "The Human Body," Dr. Keith, in dealing with racial characters, begs his readers to break away from the common habit of speaking and thinking of various races as high and low. "High and low," he says, "refers to civilisation; it does not refer to the human body."

The foregoing authoritative opinions serve to show that the Bantu, as compared with other races, labour under no apparent physiological disabilities to hinder them in the process of mental development. Let us now consider in the light of modern psychology upon first-hand and reliable evidence the allegation of mental inferiority that is constantly brought against these people.

THE MIND OF THE NATIVE.

The white man has conquered the earth and all its dark-skinned people, and when he thinks of his continued success in the struggle for supremacy he feels that he has a right to be proud of himself and his race. He looks upon the black man as the fool of the human family who has failed in every way, whereas he, the lord of creation, has achieved the impossible, and this comparison which is so favourable to himself naturally leads him to set up achievement as the sole test of ability. If asked why the African Native has never accomplished anything at all comparable with the feats of the European or the Asiatic the average white man will answer, without hesitation, that it is because the Native has always lacked the necessary capacity.

The average white man has a more or less vague notion that his own proud position at the top of human society is the result of the continuous and assiduous use of the brain by his forefathers in the struggle for existence under the rigorous conditions of a northern climate during thousands of generations by which constant exercise the mental faculty of his race grew and increased till it became, in course of time, a heritable intellectual endowment, whereas the Natives of Africa by failing always to make use of whatever brain power they might have been blessed with in the beginning have suffered a continuous loss of mental capacity.

The idea that the evolution of the human intellect is a perpetually progressive process by means of the constant use of the brain in the pursuits of increasing civilisation towards the eventual attainment of god-like perfection is one that appeals strongly to the popular fancy, and its corollary, that those who fail during long periods to make full use of their mental equipment in the ways of advancing civilisation must gradually lose a part, if not the whole, of their original talents, is commonly accepted as being warranted by the teaching of modern science.

But science, as a body, does not support the view that bodily characters and modifications acquired by an individual during his lifetime are transmissible to his offspring; in other words, science does not, as a body, accept the theory that the effects of use and disuse in the parent are inherited by his children. Modern science does not, indeed, definitely foreclose discussion of the subject, but what it says is that the empirical issue is doubtful with a considerable balance against the supposed inheritance of acquired characters.

Very recently evidence has, indeed, been adduced to prove that "Initiative in animal evolution comes by stimulation, excitation and response in new conditions, and is followed by repetition of these phenomena until they result in structural modifications, transmitted and directed by selection and the law of genetics." The student who tenders this evidence is Dr. Walter Kidd who claims that his observations of the growth of the hair of the harness-horse prove that the prolonged friction caused by the harness produces heritable effects in the pattern of the hairy coat of this animal. It is admitted by this observer that such momentary and acute stimuli as are involved in the mutilation of the human body by boring holes in the ears, knocking out teeth, and by circumcision, which practices have been followed by so-called savages during long ages, seldom, if ever, lead to inherited characters, but he maintains that the effect of prolonged friction by the collar on the hair on the under side of the neck of the harness-horse has produced marks or patterns in the same place on certain young foals born by these horses.

These observations must, of course, be submitted to strict examination before science will pronounce its opinion. Meanwhile I may be allowed to cite what Dr. Kidd calls an "undesigned experiment," which to my mind goes far to prove that the effects of prolonged friction on the human body during many generations is not heritable. The custom followed by many Bantu tribes of producing in their women an elongation of the genital parts by constant manipulation must have been practiced during very many generations, certainly much longer than the comparatively recent harnessing of horses in England, for we know how tenaciously primitive people cling to their old customs, generation after generation, for thousands of years, and yet no instance has ever been noticed by these people, who are very observant in these matters, of any sign of such an inherited characteristic in any of their female children.

The ordinary layman, though he may feel strongly interested in the problems of heredity and evolution, has seldom the leisure or the opportunity for the careful study of biological data, and he must therefore leave these to the specialists in scientific enquiry, but he is by no means precluded from using his own common-sense in drawing conclusions from the ordinary plain facts of life observable around him. It is when we come to consider this most important question in its bearing upon the mental side of the human being that the ordinary layman feels himself to be no less competent to form an opinion than the trained man of science.

Is it possible, then, we ask, for the parent whose intellect has been developed through training in his lifetime to transmit to his children any portion of this acquired increment of mental capacity, or, putting the question in more concrete terms, is it possible for a parent to transmit to his offspring any part of that power to increase the size and quality of the brain which may be assumed to have resulted in his own case from mental exercise? The question must not be misunderstood. We do not ask whether clever parents do as a rule have clever children; what we want to know is whether the successive sharpening of the wits of generations of people does, or does not, eventually result in establishing a real and cumulative asset of mental capacity.

Seeing that universal education has only come about within the latter part of the last century it must be clear that the vast majority of the present generation of educated Europeans are descended from people who never had any of that education which so many people nowadays regard as essential to the development and growth of the intellectual powers. But although education has only recently become, in various degrees, common to all white people, the light of learning has always been kept burning, however dimly at times, in certain places and circles, and it may, perhaps, be possible to find people to-day who are the descendants of those favoured few who have enjoyed, during many unbroken generations, the privilege of liberal education. Now let us assume that there are at present a small number of such people in the forefront of the intellectual activity of the day, and then let us ask ourselves whether these leaders of thought who can claim long lineal descent from learned ancestors show any mental capacity over and above that which is displayed by those commoners who are also in the foremost ranks of thought and science, but who cannot lay claim to such continuous ancestral training.

If we admit the existence of two such separate classes to-day then the answer must surely be that there is no mental difference discernible between them. But I think we may safely conclude that there has been very little of the kind of descent here presumed. It would be well-nigh impossible to find people who could prove an unbroken lineage of educated forbears going back more than four hundred years. During the middle ages the monks of the Church were the chief and almost sole depositories of education and learning, and as they were bound by their vows to life-long celibacy there could be no transmission from them to posterity of any of that increased capacity of brain which we are supposing as having been acquired by each individual through his own mental exertion. We know, of course, that there were frequent lapses from the unnatural restraint imposed on these men so that some of them may have propagated their kind, but such illegitimate offspring was not likely to remain within the circle of learning and therefore could not perpetuate the line. We of to-day know full well that the son of the common labourer whose forefathers had no education can, with equality of opportunity, achieve as much and travel as far in any field of mental activity as can the scion of the oldest of our most favoured families.

There does not seem to have been any augmentation of human brain power since written records of events were begun. Indeed it would seem rather as if there had been in many places a decrease in intellectual capacity, as when we compare the fellahin of modern Egypt with their great ancestors whom they resemble so closely in physical appearance that there can be little doubt about the purity of their descent. The same may be said about the modern descendants of the people who created "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." And when we consider the period of the Renaissance we cannot say that civilised man of to-day is superior to those people who after centuries of stagnation and general illiteracy were yet able to seize and develop the long-forgotten wisdom and philosophy of antiquity.

To go still further back and to venture beyond the historical horizon into the dim past when prehistoric man roamed over Europe is a task manifestly beyond the powers of the ordinary layman, and here we must, perforce, trust ourselves to the guidance of those students whose training and special learning entitle them to speak with authority.

The so-called Piltdown skull which was discovered in 1912 is accepted as representing the most ancient of human remains yet found in England, its age being estimated at somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 years. In discussing the size and arrangement of the lobes and convolutions of the brain which this cranium must have contained, Dr. Arthur Keith, who is admittedly the highest authority on the subject to-day, makes the following statement: "Unfortunately our knowledge of the brain, greatly as it has increased of late years, has not yet reached the point at which we can say after close examination of all the features of a brain that its owner has reached this or that status. The statement which Huxley made about the ancient human skull from the cave of Engis still holds good of the brain: 'It might have belonged to a philosopher or might have contained the thoughtless mind of a savage.' That is only one side of our problem, there is another. Huxley's statement refers to the average brain, which is equal to the needs of both the philosopher and the savage. It does not in any way invalidate the truth that a small brain with a simple pattern of convolutions is a less capable organ than the large brain with a complex pattern. If then we find a fairly large brain in the Piltdown man, with an arrangement and development of convolutions not very unlike those of a modern man, we shall be justified in drawing the conclusion that, so far as potential mental ability is concerned, he has reached the modern standard. We must always keep in mind that accomplishments and inventions which seem so simple to us were new and unsolved problems to the pioneers who worked their way up from a simian to a human estate."

In his concluding remarks upon this important find, Dr. Keith iterates his opinion: "Although our knowledge of the human brain is limited--there are large areas to which we can assign no definite function--we may rest assured that a brain which was shaped in a mould so similar to our own was one which responded to the outside world as ours does. Piltdown man saw, heard, felt, thought and dreamt much as we still do. If the eoliths found in the same bed of gravel were his handiwork, then we can also say he had made a great stride towards that state which has culminated in the inventive civilisation of the modern western world."

Professor Herbert Donaldson of the University of Chicago, gives it as his opinion that "In comparing remote times with the present, or in our own age, races which have reached distinction with those which have remained obscure, it is by no means clear that the grade of civilisation attained is associated with a corresponding enlargement in the nervous system, or with an increase in the mental capabilities of the best representatives of those communities."