Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/287

 SCIENCE AND FEMINISM 281

whalers brain considerably exceeds that of the male human brain^ the weight of the elephant's being from 4^100 to 4^800 g., and that of the whale from 1^900 to 2,800 g. Hence it would seem rash to attach much importance to absolute brain size in comparing male and female intel- ligence. This skepticism is supported by the individual differences in the brain weight of men as compared with concomitant individual dif- ferences in intellect. While it is true that distinguished men often have a brain of more than average size, this is by no means uniformly the case. Noted scientists have been known to fall appreciably below the mean, while persons of moderate ability have turned out to possess enormous brains. In Waldeyer's series the two extremes, 900 and 2,000 g., were found to belong to two mentally quite normal men.

Abandoning the comparison on this basis, we may investigate the relative brain weights, i. e., the weight of the brain in relation to the total weight of the body. But here we get the result that woman has a relatively larger brain than man. While the ratio of male and female body weight is as 100 : 83, the brain weights stand in the ratio of 100 : 90. Schultze has calculated the proportion of brain and body weight in man and woman according to the determination of various scholars, and finds a uniform difference in favor of woman. Thus, Schwalbe sets man's average brain weight at 1,375 g., woman's at 1,245 g. ; and man's total weight at 65,000 g., and woman's at 55,000 g. This yields a proportion of 1 : 47.47 for man and of 1 : 44.17 for woman.

Can we legitimately infer from these undoubted facts that woman is intellectually superior to man ? Hardly, if we draw upon correspond- ing data from the animal kingdom at large. For then we discover that the human species as a whole is surpassed by the rat, that the mole oc- cupies an intermediate position between man and woman, and that the elephant has a very small relative brain weight. The comparison on this basis is not wholly worthless, for we find that of equally heavy animals the biologically higher type has a relatively heavier brain, and that of two closely related and presumably equally intelligent animals (such as the lion and the cat) the smaller invariably has a greater rel- ative brain weight. It has been suggested with some plausibility that woman's superior relative brain weight is an illustration of the general rule last-mentioned.

What conclusion, then, can be drawn from the facts of brain weight as to the superior mental organization of either sex? Obviously, the only sane inference is that such superiority on either side is quite un- proved. Some correlation between brain and intelligence undoubtedly exists ; but not in the sense that the size of the brain fully determines intelligence. Bartels's summing up of the situation seems the only warrantable one : so far as we can infer anything from the brain weight of man and woman there is presumably equality of mental abilily.' • Plotz-BartelB, op, dt,, p. 48.

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