"Mental capacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foolishness from the rest of the camp, nor was it probable that the combined wisdom of Five Forks ever drove him into exile. My impression is, that he lived alone from choice,—a choice he made long before the camp indulged in any criticism of his mental capacity. He was much given to moody reticence, and, although to outward appearances a strong man, was always complaining of ill-health. Indeed, one theory of his isolation was, that it afforded him better opportunities for taking medicine, of which he ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... only opinions and prophecies, but the results of actual scientific experiments. A recent number of "The Popular Science Monthly" contains an account of experiments made in Jamaica upon the mental capacity for learning of the different races there existing. The experimenter found, he says, "unequal speed," but saw "nothing which can be unmistakably referred to difference of race. The rate of improvement is due almost entirely to the relative elevation ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... I would in this as in many other details take as my model; for they are spread over as large a surface as the Jews—consist, like them, of merchants and traders—similar in numbers—superior in education, (although not in mental capacity)—with a well-ordered and responsible government—and we consequently hear of no distress or disorganization among them; yet it is not to be doubted that as many causes for interference occur in ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... Johnson tells us, means 'a stupid person.' Now, if the name be derived from the bird's simplicity, the Dutch dodoor is as near the mark as the Portuguese doudo. But it may be that the name was given on account of the peculiar form of the bird, and not in illusion to its mental capacity; and, consequently, even dodoor may not be the true origin. We more than suspect that it is really derived from a vulgar, compound epithet, used by Dutch seamen to denote an awkward, clumsily-formed, inactive person. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... faculty of his race grew and increased till it became, in course of time, a heritable intellectual endowment, whereas the Natives of Africa by failing always to make use of whatever brain power they might have been blessed with in the beginning have suffered a continuous loss of mental capacity. ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... large enough to accommodate five, ten, and twenty families, and each household practiced communism in living, but they were unacquainted with the use of stone or adobe brick in house architecture, and with the use of the native metals. In mental capacity and in general advancement they were the representative branch of the Indian family north of New Mexico General F A. Walker has sketched their military career in two paragraphs "The career of the Iroquois was simply terrific. They were the scourge of God upon the continent." [Footnote: ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... strong liquors, and needed the constant watchful care of his master and friend. For some years the probability was that if free he would become a confirmed drunkard and beggar his family. The children were nearly grown, but had little mental capacity. For years Michael had understood that his freedom would be restored to him as soon as he could control his love of ardent spirits" (pp. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... be placed. Instances of the brightness of their natural intelligence have been so numerous in our colleges and educational institutions as to cause public remark. It is therefore safe to say that the mental capacity of the Japanese youth is certainly equal to those of our own in the same class of society. No sooner have they been fairly introduced to American and European civilization than they have taken a stride, of four or five centuries at a single leap, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... at it. Buckle in his opinion given by MacDonnell in "Life Pictures," (the amusing and interesting work of the latter), considers imagination and calculation necessary, but discards any idea of superior mental capacity. ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... able men whose imputed is even greater than their real mental capacity; because the standard of ordinary men is success, —and success, of a certain kind, is assured to those mixed characters which combine the virtue of courage with the vice of unscrupulousness. An ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... same number of people. The obvious trouble with those who consume so much malt liquor is that they keep half tipsy all of the time, and their muddled brains are never in possession of their full mental capacity. There is not much absolute drunkenness to be seen in the streets of this capital, but the bloated faces and bleared eyes of the masses show only too plainly ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... the masses of people become too much impoverished, the national stamina is destroyed, which would be exceedingly bad for Business in case Business should plunge us into war. In the second place, since poverty produces a steady decline in physical and mental capacity, if it goes too far, there is a lack of hands to do the work of Business and a lack of healthy stomachs to consume some of its most ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... created equal to each other in every respect, with the same mental capacity, the same physical ability, with like inheritances of good or bad qualities, and born into exactly similar conditions, and not dependent on each other. But men never were so created and born, so far as we have any record ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... Stoddart says there is every reason to believe that it is a fair sample), this means that the average mental age of Americans is only about fourteen; that 45,000,000, or nearly one-half of the whole population, will never develop mental capacity beyond the stage represented by a normal twelve-year-old child; that only 13,500,000 will ever show superior intelligence; and that only 4,500,000 can be considered "talented." "Still more alarming," the author continues, "is ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... was 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 in ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... us, Mr. Merrick, this society swell has no mental capacity to handle such an uncertain business. He's noted for doing unwarranted things. To me it's a marvel that Von Taer hasn't shipwrecked the family fortunes long ago. Luck ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... 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, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... rectitude and integrity. Pressure and wrath produced no effect, but he offered to appoint Monroe. It might be wise to send a Jacobin, and the President hoped that ambition would preserve this one from compromising the country. He made the mistake of not weighing Monroe's mental capacity more studiously. The least said of the wild gallop into diplomacy of our fifth President the better. He was recalled, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney sent in his place. The French, who had found Monroe entirely to their taste, refused to receive the distinguished lawyer and soldier. To ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... character. McPherson had also been of the same class at West Point with Hood, Schofield, and Sheridan. We agreed that we ought to be unusually cautious and prepared at all times for sallies and for hard fighting, because Hood, though not deemed much of a scholar, or of great mental capacity, was undoubtedly a brave, determined, and rash man; and the change of commanders at that particular crisis argued the displeasure of the Confederate Government with the cautious but prudent ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Yet, in fact, the development theory has nothing to do with the question. If we suppose that the existing and—so far as we know—the only species of man appeared upon the earth with the physical conformation and mental capacity which he retains at this day, we make merely the same supposition with regard to him that we make with regard to every other existing species of animal. How it was that this species came to ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... have seen all Fuegians—one Tasmanian, all Tasmanians. The higher savages, as the New Zealanders, are less uniform; they have more of the varied and compact structure of civilised nations, because in other respects they are more civilised. They have greater mental capacity—larger stores of inward thought. But much of the same monotonous nature clings to them too. A savage tribe resembles a herd of gregarious beasts; where the leader goes they go too; they copy blindly his habits, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... scientific circles. Those who hold back are never lacking, and one cannot be surprised that, in the case of Darwinism, their number is considerable: for on the one hand, to understand it an extraordinarily slight demand is made on one's mental capacity; and on the other hand it is a very convenient and even a seemingly scientific means of obviating the necessity of belief in God. These facts appeal very strongly to ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... question, whether the idiot can be elevated to the standard of mediocrity, physically and intellectually, is not merely one of interest to the psychologist, who seeks to ascertain the metes and bounds of the mental capacity of the race; it is also of paramount importance to the political economist, who wishes to determine the productive force of the community, physical and intellectual; it is of practical interest to the statesman, who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... of a theory she had long held,—namely that there were other types of the human race existing, unknown to the generality of ordinary men and women—types that were higher in their organisation and mental capacity,—types which by reason of their very advancement kept themselves hidden and aloof from modern civilisation. And she forthwith plunged anew into the ocean of scientific problems, where she floated like a strong swimmer at ease with her mind ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... what we have seen as that of the African who visited England, and afterwards said he had been in a huge hill which carried him over great waters. The comprehensiveness of our thought, whether we are asleep or awake, no doubt depends largely upon our idiosyncrasies, constitution, habits, and mental capacity. But whatever may be the nature of our dreams, the mental processes that characterize them are analogous to those which go on when the mind is not held to ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... thought. In attempting to accomplish both purposes in these courses the teachers fail to accomplish either, and the result is chiefly a certain mental training, the practical value of which depends largely upon the mental capacity and skill of each individual teacher, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... 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 ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the ruinous improvidence of the system of slavery, that controlled the decision in Mr. Jefferson's mind, as to the methods by which the system should be terminated. On these points, he was as radical as the extremest abolitionist; but he could not satisfy himself as to the mental capacity of the negro—whether he had the full complement of human capabilities, and the qualifications for equality of citizenship with the white man; for he saw that emancipation, without expatriation, meant nothing ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... points of interest. By them originality, talent and mental capacity are displayed, as well as any deficiency or want of education. There are two styles of capital letters at present in use. The high-class style employed by persons of education is plain and often eccentric, but without much ornamentation. ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... the exhibition of these archives was accompanied by an infinite number of spoken details which seemed to make the identity of the Marquis de Sallenauve indisputable. On all other subjects my father is laconic; his mental capacity does not seem to me remarkable, and he willingly allowed his mouthpiece to talk for him. But here, in the matter of his parchments, he was loquaciously full of anecdotes, recollections, heraldic knowledge; ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... 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 the faculties, and, from want of education or society, has no external resources; the mental powers, for want of exercise, become blunted, and the ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe |
