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The subjection of women / by John Stuart Mill
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viously recorded,) was that of a woman. Next, I must observe that the precise relation which exists between the brain and the intellectual powers is not yet well understood, but is a subject of great dispute. That there is a very close relation we cannot doubt. The brain is certainly the material organ of thought and feeling: and (making abstraction of the great unsettled controversy respecting the appropriation of different parts of the brain to different mental faculties) I admit that it would be an anomaly, and an exception to all we know of the general laws of life and organization, if the size of the organ were wholly indifferent to the function; if no accession of power were derived from the greater magnitude of the instrument. But the exception and the anomaly would be fully as great if the organ exercised influence by its magnitude only. In all the more delicate opera­tions of natureof w r hich those of the animated creation are the most delicate, and those of the nervous system by far the most delicate of these differences in the effect depend as much on differences of quality in the physical agents, as on their quantity: and if the quality of an in­strument is to be tested by the nicety and deli­cacy of the work it can do, the indications point to a greater average fineness of quality in the brain and nervous system of w 7 omen than of men.