Commentary on Human Temperaments as They Depend on the Structure and Fabric of the Body

indicates. That the relative quantity of the body and brain is not to be altogether neglected, however, is evident from the fact that we very often find the encephalon of stupid men to be quite small a.

d) The relative mass of the nerves and the sensorium, which indeed embraces everything that remains in the brain of both kinds, beyond the nerves and those parts which pertain most closely to their origins, along with the spinal cord adhering to it b.

This remarkable observation by the illustrious Soemmering c would be strengthened even more if the specific weight of the sensorium could be compared with the specific weight of the nerves, or at least of some part of them; for the thickness of the nerves can be increased by a greater quantity of their nutritive juice and other causes, while their substance is not increased at all.

e) The diverse force of the vital sensorium, undoubtedly necessary for carrying out its functions.

One cannot successfully conclude the vitality of the sensorium from the vitality of the nerves and the whole body. For pathological examples are not rare which show that, in great acuteness of genius, sensibility can be diminished, and others, where, with almost all memory destroyed, the faculty of the soul to perceive impressions brought through the sensory organs still flourishes, which the illustrious van Swieten experienced himself while performing experiments on his own body with henbane d.

f) The diverse shape of the cranium.

This is not a frequent cause, I admit, of a diverse innate temperament of the soul; for rarely—except for the custom of certain peoples of North America, by which they compress the heads of boys in various ways e—will it happen that the head is so compressed in a difficult birth that a diverse innate temperament of the soul arises from the strange shape of the cranium formed thereafter. It can happen, however, sometimes, and indeed Boerhaave and Willis saw that the heads of the foolish were always badly formed, or oblong, or angular, or otherwise alien to the natural form f. Nevertheless, one must beware lest we always consider the diverse shape of the cranium conspicuous in different men as the cause of the temperament of the soul; very often the cause of the diversity of the skull's figure, as well as of the mind's temperament, lies beneath the skull g.

a) The smallest brain I saw was in a very stupid woman, 1 1/2 lbs., with a body weight of 100 lbs. The illustrious Wrisberg, loc. cit.
b) The illustrious Blumenbach, Physiological Institutions, §. 192.
c) loc. cit., §. 57, 62.
d) Maiberr, loc. cit., p. 382.
e) The illustrious Blumenbach, Description of the Bones of the Human Body, p. 89.
f) Boerhaave, Lectures on his own Institutions, §. 797.
g) The famous Herder, Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, Riga 1784, Vol. I, p. 208.