高中英语 名著 On the Brain（大脑）阅读素材（pdf）.pdfVIP

On the brain On the brain BY PROFESSOR T.H. HUXLEY, F.R.S. 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 yet come 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 the complicated sulci and gyri which appear upon the surface of the cerebral hemispheres in man and the higher apes, that they