"Mental capacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a negro of limited mental capacity and possessed very little acquired knowledge. He was clean and tidy in his habits, keenly interested in his environment, and well oriented in all spheres. He lacked insight into the nature of his trouble. Attention could be easily gained and ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... remember the comparative blessings afforded by nature to those melancholy specimens of the human family, will, I think, exclaim with me, that the Esquimaux of Greenland are as superior to them in mental capacity, manual dexterity, physical enterprise, and social virtues, as the Englishman is to ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... the excitement and agitation that convulsed the country during the period which ended with the affray at Ballingarry, and through the haze which time has cast over the attempted revolution of '48, his figure looms up in bold proportions, suggestive of mental capacity, fortitude of soul, and tenacity of purpose. For him, as for many of his brilliant associates, the paths of patriotism led down to proscription and pain; but O'Doherty fulminating the thunderbolts of the Tribune, or sowing the seeds of patriotism amongst the students of Dublin, was not one ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... dexterity; my mind, as well as my hands, did its work very lamely when it was applied, or ought to have been applied, to the practical details which, as they are the chief interest of life to the majority of men, are also the things in which whatever mental capacity they have, chiefly ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... 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 Butler, Bishop, ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... almost been sure of the facts, as they 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 what he ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... 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 for ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... "never talked to me about anything. He didn't like the idea of being succeeded, hated to think of a time when affairs would have to go on without him. I fancy that he rather despised my mental capacity, or else thought that by just looking at him I should learn. So he never talked to me—not on these subjects I mean; and I am still not sure whether I ought to talk to you. I don't really know where State secrets begin and where they end, or whether I have the right to ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... all who came in touch with the magazine. In the first place, interested in his progress, I had seen to it that he was properly introduced wherever that was possible and of benefit to him, and later on, by sheer force of his mental capacity and integrity, his dreams and his critical skill, he managed to center about him an entire band of seeking young writers, artists, poets, playwrights, aspiring musicians; an amusing and as interesting a group as I have ever seen. Their points of rendezvous appeared to be those same ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... way of looking at nature (instead of the esthetic or scientific, both of which are as much beyond his mental capacity as the faculty for sentimental love) is also illustrated by the following Dakota tale, showing how two ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of heaven we can form no conception; but its negative delights form a sufficiently attractive picture,—no pain; no thirst; no hunger; no horror of the past; no fear of the future; no failure of mental capacity; no intellectual deficiency; no morbid imaginations; no follies; no stupidities; but above all, no insulted feelings; no wounded affections; no despised love or unrequited regard; no hate, envy, jealousy, or indignation of or at others; no falsehood, dishonesty, dissimulation, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the bookselling trade, to be received with any degree of favor or submission. For whilst the University of Paris, by whom these statutes were framed, encouraged and elevated the profession of the librarii, she required, on the other hand, a guarantee of their wealth and mental capacity, to maintain and to appreciate these important concessions; the bookseller was expected indeed to be well versed in all branches of science, and to be thoroughly imbued with a knowledge of those subjects ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... like a spider than Mr. Strangman it would have been difficult to imagine. He was an alert, nervous man, with bright, kind eyes, a flexible mouth and very restless hands. His whole nature hung on wires, as if—which was indeed the case—his mental capacity was too big and overpowering for his physical strength. His manners under the strain of work were jerky and abrupt, but otherwise he was a very kindly and genial man. To Joan he was excessively ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... which in this country the owners of land on the borders of rivers and navigable streams have in the bed of the river, in Kempshall's case—a masterly opinion, in which the whole Court concurred. I might also mention the great case of Alice Lispenard, in which he considered the degree of mental capacity requisite to make a will, a case involving a vast amount of property in this city, decided by his opinion. There is also the case of Smith against Acker, relating to the taint of fraud in mortgages of personal property, in which he carried the Court with him against the Chancellor and overturned ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... predisposition to the abnormity known as microcephalism, or small-headedness. They were not absolute idiots, but remarkably slow-spoken and all extremely averse to active occupations. An active disposition is generally a pretty safe gauge of mental capacity. Intellectual vigor leads to action. To a person of mental resources inactivity is more irksome than the hardest work, and sluggishness is justly used as a synonyme of imbecility. Exertion under the pressure of want is, however, not incompatible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... publicly declared, while he was editor of the Law Times, that although he thought that he knew something of law, yet he was not ashamed to confess that he had not sufficient legal knowledge or mental capacity to enable him to fully comprehend a quarter of the law ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... was not considered, in that warlike age, as likely to shine as a warrior. His mental capacity, in general, was likewise not very highly esteemed. His talents were, in truth, very much below mediocrity. His mind was incredibly small. A petty passion for contemptible details characterized him ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a nation are two great institutions equally important, and requiring for their wise development equal mental capacity. And in the economy of Providence in regard to the distribution of responsibility between the sexes, while man has hitherto modified governments, woman, among Christian nations—and possibly among pagan also—has always moulded ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 books but are ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... them to herself, and was known to her fellows of the class simply as a cheerful, sincere student, eager in her investigations, and never impatient at anything, except an insinuation that women had not as much mental capacity for science ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... which divert men from intellectual pursuits were closed to the Jews. Thus they were protected by their privations from the temptations of material things and worldly ambitions. Driven by circumstances to intellectual pursuits, their mental capacity gradually developed. And as men delight in that which they do well, there was an ever ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... is the No Man's Land of the law," mused Mr. Tutt. "Roughly, mental capacity to understand the nature of one's acts is the test, but it is applied arbitrarily in the case of human beings and a mere point of time is taken beyond which, irrespective of his actual intelligence, a man is held accountable for whatever he does. Of course that ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... results of standardization so far given, concern changes in the worker's mental capacity, or attitude. Such changes, and other changes, will be discussed from a different viewpoint under "Teaching." As for results to the worker's body, one of the most important is the elimination ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... impression of a vast mental capacity turned to the lifelong study of a fascinating subject and acquiring in it the dignity of attitude and the naturalness which mastery inevitably produces. War has been the constant meditation of this powerful brain. In "La Conduite de la ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... extensively with the deaf, but the light in which they have been viewed has been indicated fairly clearly. Judicial dicta and opinions have been of less frequency and importance than legislation, and have rather dealt with the mental capacity of the deaf in certain legal relations and proceedings, as in their responsibility for crimes, the making of wills, the appointment of interpreters, etc. Legislation itself has not often been engaged in providing for the ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... the mental capacity and the mental processes of some of the highest mammals, there is the same superior degree of interest attaching to the study of wild species that the ethnologist finds in the study of savage races of men that have been unspoiled by civilization. Obviously, it is more interesting to fathom ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the will," said this gentleman, "let me inquire, sir, whether there is any doubt in your mind of your mother's mental capacity at the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... show that Man has always regarded himself as possessed of latent faculties, or capacities of a mysterious or extraordinary nature: that is to say, transcending in scope or power anything within the range of ordinary conscious mental capacity. Such for example is the Dream, in which there occurs such a mingling of madness with mysterious intuitions or memories that it is no wonder it has always been regarded as allied to supernatural intelligence. ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... singly or combined, cause the speaker's cheek to blanch before an audience, but neither can any one doubt that coddling will magnify this weakness. The victory lies in a fearless frame of mind. Prof. Walter Dill Scott says: "Success or failure in business is caused more by mental attitude even than by mental capacity." Banish the fear-attitude; acquire the confident attitude. And remember that the only way to acquire it ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... declared to Tom, "he's the first contemporary I've ever met whom I'll admit is my superior in mental capacity." ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... knowledge is measured by the increased habit of looking at facts from new points of view, as much as by the accumulation of facts. The mental capacity of one age does not seem to differ from that of other ages; but it is the imagination of new points of view that gives a wider scope to that capacity. And this is cumulative, and therefore progressive. Aristotle viewed the solar system as a geometrical problem; Kepler ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... ability that holds men down but lack of industry. In many cases the employee has a better brain, a better mental capacity than his employer. But he does not improve his faculties. He dulls his mind by cigarette smoking. He spends his money at the pool table, theater, or dance, and as he grows old, and the harness of perpetual service galls him, he grumbles at his lack ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... You haven't the mental capacity of a white mouse,' he cried, and explained the dials and the sockets for bomb-dropping till it was time to mount and ride the wet clouds ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 too delicate for such conduct. No, it ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... 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, and thus soon become that which he already is. For not only the tendency, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... mental 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
... theme of praise even to the most casual observer) 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 that body as in our own, but education, discipline, and a well-regulated system ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... physical characteristics 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 ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... been 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 of them, and by analogy we have no reason to suppose that they ever will ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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
... of this disowned son poor Etienne would still have been the object of his aversion. In his eyes the misfortune of a rickety, sickly constitution was a flagrant offence to his self-love as a father. If he execrated handsome men, he also detested weakly ones, in whom mental capacity took the place of physical strength. To please him a man should be ugly in face, tall, robust, and ignorant. Etienne, whose debility would bow him, as it were, to the sedentary occupations of knowledge, was certain to find in ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... room for the mental capacity, the executive ability, and the splendid organizing genius of this type of man in outdoor work. Our great forests and fields are not producing twenty-five per cent of the amount of wealth that they should ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... excellence in professions which they entered late in life; but not one instance in the case of a man who entered the naval profession late in life. And though some civilian heads of navies have shown great mental capacity, and after—say three years'—incumbency have shown a comprehension of naval matters greater than might have been expected, none has made a record of performance like those of the naval ministers of Germany and Japan; or of Admiral Barham, as first lord of the admiralty, or Sir ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... group to disparage outsiders, and, on the other hand, for our tendency to confuse progress in culture and general intelligence with biological modification of the brain, we shall have to reduce very much our usual estimate of the difference in mental capacity between ourselves and the lower races, if we do not eliminate it altogether; and we shall perhaps have to abandon altogether the view that there has been an increase in the mental capacity of the white ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... present point of view. In so far as a really great man busies himself mainly with things that are objective, which are socially and morally neutral—such as electricity, natural history, mechanical theory, with the applications of these—of course, the mental capacity which he possesses is the main thing, and his absorption in these things may lead to a warped sense of the more ideal and refined relationships which are had in view by the writer in quest for degeneracy. It will still be admitted, however, by those who are conversant with the ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... stage dancing may become a specialty dance. But it really takes a person with good mental capacity as well as expert dancing ability to develop what others may do well, make of it an outstanding and triumphant success, and identify it with one's self before the public ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... see the relative value of the two systems of thought when put to a practical test in human affairs. Imagine an unscrupulous man of great mental capacity who is amassing an enormous fortune through sharp practices that enable him to acquire the earnings of others while he safely keeps just within the limits of the law. We can point out to him that while he is not violating the law, and cannot therefore be prosecuted, he is nevertheless ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... wish to withdraw his 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 ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... 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. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... "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 ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... 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 ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... seized upon every mind. Even if her testimony were not true, but merely the wanderings of a mind not fully restored, the interest of it was intense. Mr. Fox, glancing at the jury, saw there would be small use in questioning at this time the mental capacity of the witness. This was a story which all wished to hear. Perhaps he wished to hear ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... continued Zenith, "what actually took place on our planet. When the movement for giving woman a higher education began, men looked at the subject just as you do now. Women were supposed to be of inferior mental capacity, and it was thought to be a foolish thing to attempt to educate them. 'Better educate the boys,' men said, 'and let the girls learn to cook and sew and to play the piano; that is all that will ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... we 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 mental powers, for want of exercise to keep up due vitality in ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... and that quite as well as in England, where there is, and must be any amount of inequality in the attainments and earnestness of the candidates, and where no examination can secure the fitness or even the mental capacity of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ambitious man, like Louis Napoleon, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... was satirically expressive of the extraordinary sharpness of their eyes and intellects. They were seated at a table, engaged in examining addresses so illegible, so crabbed, so incomplete, and so ineffably ridiculous, that no man of ordinary mental capacity could make head or tail of them. All the principal London and Provincial Directories, Guides, and Gazetteers were ranged in front of the blind officers, to assist them in their arduous labours, and by the aid of these, ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... the hop tonight, I hope, Miss Wilder," he observed, introducing a topic suited to a young lady's mental capacity. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... imbecility prevails over villainous stupidity. The final blow is dealt upon the Gorndyke nose. Diana is retrieved by this last of the safe-guarders, and we are left to a melancholy calculation as to what the mental capacity of their issue is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... opinion, however, respecting the mental capacity of the youth, for whose sake the poor girl had wandered so many miles; and I no longer wondered that she saw a difference between ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... and an unbending will. These qualities his savage neighbors early recognized and bowed before in deep respect, and because of these no Lancaster enterprise but claimed him as its leader. His manual skill and dexterity must have been great, his mental capacity and business energy remarkable, for we find him not only a farmer, trader, blacksmith and hunter, but a surveyor and builder of roads, bridges and mills. The records of the town show that he was seldom ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... throughout characteristic of the so-called era of the Judges. It is a natural phenomenon readily explained on psychologic grounds. The Mosaic national conception of the "Eternal" entered more and more deeply into the national consciousness, and, accommodating itself to the limited mental capacity of the majority, became narrower and narrower in compass—the lot of all great ideas! The "Eternal" was no longer thought of as the only One God of the whole universe, but as the tutelar deity of ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... looted in the first week of March. The new movement bore a more serious aspect than that under Aguinaldo and his colleagues, who, at least, were men of certain intelligence, inspired by a wish to secure reforms, whereas their successors in revolt were of far less mental capacity, seeking, apparently, only retaliation for the cruelties inflicted on the people. It is possible, too, that the premium of P800,000 per 35 rebel chiefs inflamed the imaginations of the new leaders, who were too ignorant to appreciate the promised ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... body 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 ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... has been stated, the mind of a man is built up, through the brain instrument, by the sense impressions transmitted to his consciousness. In other words, all he knows with his mind first came into his mental capacity from outside impressions of things and ideas. The fewer the impressions that come into the mind through the brain, the less does a man know. And only the impressions that come into a particular mind center develop that center. (For example, ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... modern machinery a larger and larger amount of inventive skill is engaged in adjusting machine-tending to the physical and mental capacity of women and children. The evolution of machinery has not moved constantly in this direction. In cotton-spinning, for example, the earlier machines—Hargreave's jennies and Arkwright's water-frames—were ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... We are required by it to understand that in slavery-time the [163] planters had some organized method, rendered impracticable by the Emancipation, of checking, for their own personal safety, the growth of the coloured population. If we, in deference to the superior mental capacity of our author, admit that self-interest was no irresistible motive for promoting the growth of the human "property" on which their prosperity depended, we are yet at liberty to ask what was the nature of the "old lines" ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... wicked propensities, which gave countenance to the slanders of his enemies and at the same time earned for him the distrust and aversion of his political coadjutors, he has found countless accusers and not a single vindicator. Resembling George Jeffreys in temper and mental capacity, he resembled him also in posthumous fame. A shrewd, selfish, overbearing man, possessing wit which was exercised with equal promptitude upon friends and foes, he alternately roused the terror ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... but slightly in mental capacity, and civilizational development. Perhaps their very low level in this respect is ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... 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; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... liked the man, but it was clear that his mental capacity had its limits. Though she would not have had him expatiate on the fact, she had expected him to realize that his mission was to uphold the white man's supremacy, and establish tranquillity, commerce and civilization in ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... feelings appear to arise unconsciously rather than consciously. Moreover, probably as a result of collective thought and feeling, motives and beliefs are developed and elaborated in a way quite beyond the mental capacity of any one individual of the community. Beliefs are formulated which have a grandeur of conception and a beauty of expression well worthy of admiration. The beauty and native vigor of some of the earlier myths are examples of this. They live in the tribe as traditions. No one person ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... the workman who is best suited to actually doing the work is incapable of fully understanding this science, without the guidance and help of those who are working with him or over him, either through lack of education or through insufficient mental capacity. In order that the work may be done in accordance with scientific laws, it is necessary that there shall be a far more equal division of the responsibility between the management and the workmen than exists ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... better advantage when only a few pairs are kept and fed daily at some settled place; but to make really interesting pets two are quite sufficient, and may be made very amusing companions. Some species may possess more mental capacity than others. Those I have to speak of were snow-white trumpeters. A pair was sent to me, but, to my sorrow, I found on opening the basket that the male bird had escaped on the way; so I could only put the solitary hen in ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... African mother."[24] Less happy was the career of Francis Williams of Jamaica, a plaything of the human gods. Born of negro parents who had earned special privilege in the island, he was used by the Duke of Montague in a test of negro mental capacity and given an education in an English grammar school and at Cambridge University. Upon his return to Jamaica his patron sought his appointment as a member of the governor's council but without success; and he then became a schoolmaster ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... healthily unresponsive as is her Yale or Harvard brother. If she cannot yet weave her modest acquirements into the tissue of her life as unconcernedly as her brother does, it is not because she has been educated beyond her mental capacity: it is because social conditions are not for her as inevitable as they are ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... In order to measure something, it has to stay the same long enough to get it measured. In order to describe something, it has to hold still long enough to be observed. In order to form a logical opinion of a creature's mental capacity, it has to demonstrate some perceptible mental capacity to start with. You can't get very far studying a creature's habitat and social structure when most of its habitating goes on under twenty ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... substantially built, so framed that he looked taller than the limit of his inches, broad-chested, big-limbed, coarse-handed, Tom's figure differed essentially from that of the ordinary type, and as his figure so his style and mental capacity. Serene in the face of perils of the sea, with all of which he is familiar, he was afraid of no man in daylight, though a child ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the girls and boys down South, and lectured in the towns around us, telling his own story with remarkable eloquence for one who had no early advantages. He was naturally an orator, and only needed a habit of speaking to make apparent his exceptional mental capacity. Aunt Hildy was not as strong when 1860 dawned upon us, and she said on New Year's evening, which with us was always devoted to a sort ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... physical and mental vigor, prodigious 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 man ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... scarred and wrinkled, their eyes dull, their hands whitened and creased with the constant exposure to damp and cold, yet the scars of frost-bite were very few ... to-day after a night's rest our travellers are very different in appearance and mental capacity."[171] ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... put into our minds by selfish and false religious teachers. The English put the finishing touch. They have a habit of writing history; they pretend to study the manners and customs of all peoples, God has given us a limited mental capacity, but they usurp the function of the Godhead and indulge in novel experiments. They write about their own researches in most laudatory terms and hypnotise us into believing them. We in our ignorance, then fall at ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... 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 ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... 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 said ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 else than giving ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... rank the Dyaks above the Malays in mental capacity, while in moral character they are undoubtedly superior to them. They are simple and honest, and become the prey of the Malay and Chinese trailers, who cheat and plunder them continually. They are more lively, more talkative, less secretive, and less ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... number of children could be made nothing of, and would necessarily fall out of the ranks, and supply candidates enough for degradation to common mechanical business: but this enormous difference in bodily and mental capacity has been mainly brought about by difference in occupation, and by direct maltreatment; and in a few generations, if the poor were cared for, their marriages looked after, and sanitary law enforced, a beautiful type of face and form, and a high intelligence, ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... sound. To determine their age the teeth were examined and the skin pinched on the back of the hand. In the case of old slaves the pucker would remain for some seconds. There was also rigorous examination as to mental capacity. Slaves who displayed unusual intelligence, who could read or write or who had been to Canada were not wanted. Bibb notes that practically every buyer asked him if he could read or write and if he had ever run away. Of the slave ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... divide his time between Vancouver and the scene of practical operations, and he remembered that the man he had promoted had been Helen's protege. James Gillow was a fair draughtsman, also, and, if not remarkable otherwise for mental capacity, wielded a facile pen, and Geoffrey found it a relief to turn his rapidly-increasing correspondence over to him. It was for this reason Gillow accompanied him on a ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss |
