THE EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN
interfere with the general recognition of the preëminence of the brain as the organ of mind. Why, then, should any difficulty be raised in opposition to the patent fact that the brain itself “in continuance was fashioned,” in strict accordance with an inherited plan, which is common also to that of our nearest living relations in the animal world?
I have here called attention to the fact that the rapid development of our knowledge of the human brain and of the effects of injury of disease to different parts of it has made it possible for us to identify the structures whose activities find expression as mind and personality. In the brains of other living creatures corresponding structures can be detected, which conform in every respect except size to those areas which in man we have recognized as the special instruments of the mind. The resemblance of the brain of some creatures, like the chimpanzee and gorilla, to the brain of man is much closer than that of either to the brain of any other animal. The only reasonable and satisfying explanation of such close resemblances, both in structure and in function, is the inference that (a) these other creatures have the undeveloped germs of a mind similar in kind to man’s (one, however, that has definitely lost the power of significant development or further progress of the kind distinctive of man’s immediate ancestors), and (b) that both the brain and the mind of man are the results of a long process of development from ancestors common to those of other living creatures having brains of the same essential type.
SELECTED REFERENCES
- Smith, G. Elliot. Essays on the Evolution of Man. Oxford University Press, 2d ed., 1927.
- Herrick, C. Judson. Introduction to Neurology. W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia and London, 1920.
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