see whether there
is any relative proportion between brain and intellect.

_Range of intellectual power in Man._--First, let us consider what this
wonderful instrument, the brain, is capable of in its higher
developments. In Mr. Galton's interesting work on "Hereditary Genius,"
he remarks on the enormous difference between the intellectual power and
grasp of the well-trained mathematician or man of science, and the
average Englishman. The number of marks obtained by high wranglers, is
often more than thirty times as great as that of the men at the bottom
of the honour list, who are still of fair mathematical ability; and it
is the opinion of skilled examiners, that even this does not represent
the full difference of intellectual power. If, now, we descend to those
savage tribes who only count to three or five, and who find it
impossible to comprehend the addition of two and three without having
the objects actually before them, we feel that the chasm between them
and the good mathematician is so vast, that a thousand to one will
probably not fully express it. Yet we know that the mass of brain might
be nearly the same in both, or might not differ in a greater proportion
than as 5 to 6; whence we may fairly infer that the savage possesses a
brain capable, if cultivated and developed, of performing work of a kind
and degree far beyond what he ever requires it to do.

Again, let us consider the power of the higher or even the average
civilized man, of forming abstract ideas, and carrying on more or less
complex trains of reasoning. Our languages are full of terms to express
abstract conceptions. Our business and our pleasures involve the
continual foresight of many contingencies. Our law, our government, and
our science, continually require us to reason through a variety of
complicated phenomena to the expected result. Even our games, such as
chess, compel us to exercise all these faculties in a remarkable degree.
Compare this with the savage languages, which contain no words for
abstract conceptions; the utter want of foresight of the savage man
beyond his simplest necessities; his inability to combine, or to
compare, or to reason on any general subject that does not immediately
appeal to his senses. So, in his moral and aesthetic faculties, the
savage has none of those wide sympathies with all nature, those
conceptions of the infinite, of the good, of the sublime and beautiful,
which are so largely developed in civiliz