"Mental capacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... typical peasant of Europe stand exactly on a par in respect to their power of general intelligence. If by power we are to understand sheer potentiality, I know of no sufficient evidence that enables us to say whether, under ideal conditions, the average degree of mental capacity would in the two cases prove the same or different. But I am sure that the ordinary peasant of Europe, whose society provides him, in the shape of an analytic language, with a ready-made instrument ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... exercise their mental faculties and who consequently sink into a state of mental sloth and nervous weakness." "If we look abroad upon society, we shall find innumerable examples of mental and nervous debility from this cause. When a person of some mental capacity is confined, for a long time, to an unvarying round of employment, which affords neither scope nor stimulus for one half of his faculties, and, from want of education or society, has no external resources; his ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... spear and throwing-stick, his method of climbing trees, of tracking animals, and of hunting. Although the Australian may be superior in acquirements, it by no means follows that he is likewise superior in mental capacity: indeed, from what I saw of the Fuegians when on board and from what I have read of the Australians, I should think the case ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to chemical changes, that have to be attained. Beyond this, and the application of map drawing to give accurate ideas and to awaken interest in geography and history, it is open to discussion whether any Fact subject need be taught as schooling at all. Ensure the full development of a man's mental capacity, and he will get his Fact as he needs it. And if his mind is undeveloped he can make no use of any fact he has. The subject called "Human Physiology" may be at once dismissed as absurdly unsuitable ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... engrossing that we would forget to do our duty—when he would declare, "No tickling, no story!" When we were a little older, our elder sister told us one winter the ever-delightful "Lady of the Lake." Of course, she told it in prose and arranged it to suit our mental capacity. Our father was generally in his corner by the fire, most probably with a foot in either the lap of myself or youngest sister—the tickling going on briskly—and would come in at different points of the tale and repeat line after line of the poem— much to our disapproval—but ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... a general who approached him, and began explaining the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him, straining each faculty to understand the essential points of the impending battle, but was mortified to feel that his mental capacity was inadequate for the task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen stopped speaking and, noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of ignorance as the ingenuity of a slave-holder of Delaware could keep one possessed of as much mother-wit as he was, for he was not quite so ignorant as the interests of the system required. His physical make and mental capacity were good. He was decidedly averse to the peculiar institution in every particular. He stated, that a man named Samuel Laws had held him in bondage—that this "Laws was a man of no business—just sat about the house and went about from store to store and ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... that I may be pardoned if I appear to overestimate the remarkable mental capacity and power of comprehension and discrimination which my pupil possesses, I wish to add that, while I have always known that Helen made great use of such descriptions and comparisons as appeal to her imagination and fine poetic nature, yet recent developments ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... that all heavy bodies fall directly towards the earth, cannot have escaped the attention of the most primitive intelligence. The arboreal habits of our primitive ancestors gave opportunities for constant observation of the practicalities of this law. And, so soon as man had developed the mental capacity to formulate ideas, one of the earliest ideas must have been the conception, however vaguely phrased in words, that all unsupported bodies fall towards the earth. The same phenomenon being observed to operate on water-surfaces, and no alteration ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the seventeenth century, swept all before them and made vast regions a solitude. They were now comparatively quiet; but far in the Northwest, another people, inferior in number, organization, and mental capacity, but not in ferocity or courage, had begun on a smaller scale, and with less conspicuous success, to play a similar part. These were the Outagamies, or Foxes, with their allies, the Kickapoos and the Mascoutins, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... are a very ancient race—more ancient, in their isolation and freedom from complicated customs, habits, and mode of life than other savages—but they are not primitive in the sense of being ape-like in structure or in want of mental capacity. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... continue to show pluck and a taste for things military, as by birth he is bound to do, we will relieve him of the abbey on the eve of his marriage, while he will have profited thereby up to that time. If, on the contrary, my son should show but inferior mental capacity, and a pusillanimous character, there will be no harm in his remaining among the Church folk; he will be far better off there than elsewhere. The essential thing for a parent is to study carefully and in good time the proper vocation for his children; the essential thing ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... inferior, according to Garth, in physical development. Golbery describes them as "robust and courageous, of a reddish-black color, with regular features, hair longer and less woolly than that of the common negroes, and high mental capacity." Dr. Barth found great local differences in their physical characteristics, as Bowen describes the Foolahs of Bomba as being some black, some almost white, and many of a mulatto color, varying from dark to very bright. Their features ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... your superior in rank and wealth in Madrid, since his arrival here, he had no heart to give, and still remained true to you! Know that by his daring bravery, his manliness, his modest bearing, and above all, his clear-sighted and brilliant mental capacity he has challenged our own high admiration; but you, alas! must turn in scorn your proud lip upon him! Think not we have these facts from him, or that he has reflected in the least upon you; he is far ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... all sorts of written examinations were demanded. These he disliked additionally because his handwriting never had developed in proportion to his mental capacity. No matter how he strove, the letters remained childishly awkward. No two of them seemed to point in the same direction. Not even his futile efforts at singing could fill him with a more ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... defects; that your chance of having certain disabling diseases are small; that your intelligence is high, and so on. I can't really measure things such as initiative, wit, courage, determination, all the things that make one human so much better than another of equal physical and mental capacity." ...
— Mother America • Sam McClatchie
... now were. To her father it would appear wonderful that his daughter should have come to love such a man as Mr. Saul, but Mrs. Clavering knew better than he how far perseverance will go with women—perseverance joined with high mental capacity, and with high spirit to back it. She was grieved but not surprised, and would at once have accepted the idea of Mr. Saul becoming her son-in-law, had not the poverty of the man been so much against him. "Do you mean, my dear, that you wish him to remain here after ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... died in 1685 and the scene at his deathbed encouraged in England suspicions of Catholic policy and in France hope that this policy was near its climax of success. Though indolent and dissolute, Charles yet possessed striking mental capacity and insight. He knew well that to preserve his throne he must remain outwardly a Protestant and must also respect the liberties of the English nation. He cherished, however, the Roman Catholic faith and the despotic ideals of his Bourbon mother. On his deathbed he avowed his real belief. ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... "In mental capacity, the Sandwich Islanders do not appear at all inferior to any other people. Their progress in agriculture, and their skill in handicrafts, is fully proportionate to their means and situation. The earnest attention which they paid to the work of our smiths, and the various ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... of my communication, wrote me a nine-page prose-poem epic about the only fish in the world—black-bass. Professor Kellogg always falls ill and takes a vacation, during which he writes me that I have not mental capacity to appreciate my luck. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... industry, continuity of purpose, indomitable courage, capacity for great concentration of mind, and oblivion to all distracting surroundings. With such characteristics, combined with the rare endowment of mental capacity and insight regarding the principles of engineering science, small wonder is it that his life was one so rich in results. It could not have been otherwise, and the results simply came as a consequence of the combination of the characteristics of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... it is the record of an industrious, enterprising people who have made great political and social progress. Indeed it may be said that the political and material progress that these two sections of the Canadian people have conjointly made is of itself an evidence of their mental capacity. But whilst reams are written on the industrial progress of the Dominion with the praiseworthy object of bringing additional capital and people into the country, only an incidental allusion is made now and ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... like stature and eye-color. Just as a worker-bee inherits a specific form of nervous system which cooeperates with the other equally determined organic systems, wherefore the animal is forced to perform "instinctively" its peculiar specialized tasks, so the mental capacity of a human being is largely determined by congenital factors. Upon these primarily depends his success or failure. It is quite true that environment has a high degree of influence, so great indeed that some speak of a "social heredity"; ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... schools of, established Brown, Jeremiah H., studied at Pittsburgh Brown, J.M., attended school in Delaware Brown, William Wells, author; leader and educator Browning family, progress of Bruce, B.K., learned to read, Bryan, Andrew, preacher in Georgia Buchanan, George, on mental capacity of Negroes Buffalo, colored Methodist and Baptist churches of, lost members Burke, E.P., found enlightened Negroes in the South mentioned case of a very intelligent Negro Burlington, New Jersey, Quakers of, interested in the uplift of the colored people ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... therefore not solely a result of evolution from beasts, but was produced by an act of special creation by God. The animal forms were too crude to express full divinity; the human being was uniquely given a tremendous mental capacity-the 'thousand-petaled lotus' of the brain-as well as acutely awakened occult centers ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... of black Phillis Wheatley seem to him to prove not much; but the letters of black Ignatius Sancho he praises for depth of feeling, happy turn of thought, and ease of style, though he finds no depth of reasoning. He does not praise the mental capacity of the race, but, at last, as if conscious, that, if developed under a free system, it might be far better, he quotes the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the proposed line, they all sang its praise. "First-rate! excellent!" they cried, "the natural talents of your second son, dear friend, are lofty; his mental capacity is astute; he is unlike ourselves, who have read ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin |
