LXXX. With regard to organization, I am inclined to think, that the variation of it, may greatly vary the operations of the soul; though we don’t to this day know, which organization is best suited to, or conduces most to, distinguishing and reasoning well. Aristotle pretends, that those with small heads are the best reasoners, a conjecture, which before he committed it to writing, he took care should correspond with the measure of his own head. Others give their vote in favour of large heads; these we may conclude, are not of the little-headed race, if they had, we might suppose they would have been on the side of Aristotle. Cardinal S’frondati, in his Curso Philosophico, says, that the reasoning organs of Cardinal Richelieu were double, to which he attributes the signal perspicuity, and intellectual agility of that minister. I apprehend, that he must mean double in magnitude, and not in number, for that would be monstrous; and this corresponds with what many others say, that the larger the brain is in quantity, the better people reason, which they collect from having observed, that the human brain is bigger in proportion than that of any other animal. Martinez and others, in their books of anatomy, excluding the great heads and the little ones, maintain, that those of the middle size are the best adapted for the operations of the understanding. Those who go about taking measure of the members of the body, in order to compute the value of the soul, may say what they please; but experience shews, that among men with large heads, you will find some stupid, and others ingenious, and that the same thing is to be observed among those with small ones. If a difference in the magnitude of the head or the brain, was to induce an inequality in the operations of the understanding, we should find a great difference in point of comprehension, among men of unequal stature, because in proportion as they were larger or smaller, so would their sculls and brains be; but this is contrary to observation. LXXXI. But with all this, and even admitting what Pliny says to be true, that the material substance of the brain, is larger in men than it is in women, touching which matter, I beg leave to suspend my judgment, till the assertion is affirmed by some able anatomists; but I say, admitting the thing to be true, it proves nothing; for if the comprehending better, was to be governed by this material exceeding in the substance of the brain, it would follow, that an ingenious man, should have forty or fifty times more brain than an ideot, and that men of large bulk should be people of much more perspicuity than those of small stature, as we must suppose their brains to be in proportion to their size; but those, he who writes this can persuade to believe it, should return him thanks, for broaching a doctrine so well suited to their capacities.