文档介绍：On the brain
On the brain
BY
PROFESSOR . HUXLEY, .
1
On the brain
[This essay is taken from 'The Descent of Man and Selection in
relation to Sex' by Charles Darwin where it appears at the end of
Chapter VII which is also the end of Part I. Footnotes are numbered
as they appear in 'The Descent of Man.']
The controversy respecting the nature and the extent of the
differences in the structure of the brain in man and the apes, which arose
some fifteen years ago, has not e to an end, though the subject
matter of the dispute is, at present, totally different from what it was
formerly. It was originally asserted and re-asserted, with singular
pertinacity, that the brain of all the apes, even the highest, differs from that
of man, in the absence of such conspicuous structures as the posterior
lobes of the cerebral hemispheres, with the posterior cornu of the lateral
ventricle and the hippocampus minor, contained in those lobes, which are
so obvious in man.
But the truth that the three structures in question are as well developed
in apes' as in human brains, or even better; and that it is characteristic of
all the Primates (if we exclude the Lemurs) to have these parts well
developed, stands at present on as secure a basis as any proposition in
comparative anatomy. Moreover, it is admitted by every one of the long
series of anatomists who, of late years, have paid special attention to the
arrangement of plicated sulci and gyri which appear upon the
surface of the cerebral hemispheres in man and the higher apes, that they
are disposed after the very same pattern in him, as in them. Every
principal gyrus and sulcus of a chimpanzee's brain is clearly represented in
that of a man, so that the terminology which applies to the one answers for
the other. On this point there is no difference of opinion. Some years
since, Professor Bischoff published a memoir (70. 'Die Grosshirn-
Windungen des Menschen;' 'Abhandlungen der K. Bayerische