Brag—See [Pretense].
BRAIN IN MAN
All, if not most animals, have brains. Man, in common with his kingdom, has a brain; but because of its greater weight and perfection, scientists see in it an illustration of man’s vast superiority over all below him.
Note has to be taken among the mammalia themselves, from the marsupials to man, of the presence or absence of one testing character, and that the chief—the perfect brain. This is found in one creature, occupying, as it were, the inner ring and core of the concentric circles of vitality, and in one alone. In the lowest variety of man it is present—present in the negro or the bushman as in the civilized European; and absent in all below man—absent in the ape or the elephant as truly as in the kangaroo or the duckmole. To all men the pleno-cerebral type is common: to man, as such, it is peculiar. And till we hear of some simian tribe which speculates on its own origin, or discusses its own place in the scale of being, we shall be safe in opposing the human brain, with its sign in language, culture, capacity of progress, as a barrier to Mr. Darwin’s scheme.
(284)
Bravery—See [Loyalty].
BRAVERY OF WOMEN
Henry Savage Landor, one of the many passengers on the Baltic, added chapter after chapter to the good story of the bravery and coolness displayed by men and women when the Republic was struck, and throughout the hours of waiting and of rescue:
In all my travels through the countries of the two hemispheres, never have I seen displayed a spirit of womanhood that could be better in such an extreme than was that of the women of the Republic. When we of the Baltic met them, it was as they were being brought to our vessel in a tossing sea in small boats after nearly a score of hours spent on the crowded Italian emigrant vessel, to which they had been taken from another wreck. Yet not only was there no whimpering, but they actually came aboard with smiling faces. They forgot that all their traveling possessions were doomed, forgot all the ordeal they had encountered, and showed themselves happy and contented because they thought, most of them, that in the face of disaster, all that the hands of willing men could do to help them had been done.
(285)