The consequence of the disproportion has been that the
superfluous brain has exhaled, as a mere necessity.[A] If Tacitus had
fared in any sort like his brother,--if there had been anything like an
equitable division between them of muscle and brain, it is more than
probable that we should have lost the illustrious historian.
[Footnote A: It has been adduced as an important proof of the soul's
immortality, that frequently, as physical power declines, the mind
exhibits unusual activity. But the argument moves in the opposite
direction. For of what sort is this unusual activity? That which results
from unbalanced nerves; and the indications are that not only are the
physical harmonies disturbed, but that the same disturbing cause has
impaired the delicate adjustments of thought itself. Sometimes there is
manifested, towards the near approach of death, an almost insane
brilliancy; as, for instance, in the case of a noted theologian, who
occupied the last minutes of his ebbing life with a very subtile
mathematical discourse concerning the exceeding, the excruciating
smallness of nothing divided into infinitesimal parts.
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