What has been said of men achieving renown, notwithstanding ill health, may likewise be affirmed of women. The case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is scarcely less remarkable than that of Darwin. In spite of being a chronic invalid the greater part of her life, she attained a position in letters reached by but few of her contemporaries. The same almost may be said of the three Bronte sisters. The deadly seeds of consumption were sown in their systems in early youth, but, although fully aware that life had "passed them by with averted head," they were, through their indomitable wills, able to send forth from their bleak home in the wild Yorkshire moors works of genius that still instruct and delight the world. From the foregoing it is clear that valetudinarianism, if it prove anything, proves not that it renders intellectual effort impossible, but that it serves as a discipline for the soul. It forces the mind to husband its strength, and thus enables it to accomplish by economy and concentration of effort that which the same mind in a healthy body, with the distractions of society and the allurements of life, would be unable to accomplish. It exemplifies in the most striking manner the truth of what Socrates says in Plato's _Republic_ about the beneficent action of the "bridle of Theages," preventing an infirm friend of his from embracing politics and keeping him true to his first love--philosophy. Failing to show any necessary connection between superior physique and intellectual capacity, between health of body and mental activity, between the amount of food consumed and the degree of intelligence, the class of thinkers whose theories are now under consideration found themselves forced to abandon the argument based on robust health and physical strength and seek elsewhere for support of their views. This, they soon announced, was found in the greater cranial capacity and greater brain weight of the male as compared with that of the female. Following up this fancied clew, anthropologists the world over began measuring skulls and weighing brains in order to determine the supposed ratio of sex-difference. The results of these investigations were far from corroborating the preconceived notions of those who had fancied a necessary correlation between mental capacity and size of cranium, between the weight of encephalon and degree of intelligence. For it was soon discovered that cranial capacity depended on many causes--many of them unknown--and that people having the largest skulls were often far from being the ones dowered with the greatest intellectual power. It was found, for instance, that climate was a determining factor--that the inhabitants of northern regions have larger heads than those who live farther south. Thus the Lapps, in proportion to their stature, have the largest heads in Europe. After these come in order the Scandinavians, the Germans, the French, the Italians, the Arabs.