exemplifies the laborious industry of the man of genius in providing
his subconsciousness with material for future use, and training it to
respond more fully to the demands of the upper consciousness. It was
Balzac’s habit to wander for days among the people, inquiring into
their customs, manners, motives, and ways of thinking; and he would
travel a hundred miles to get the data for a few lines of description.
The result, when his genius began to show itself, after a long and
painful period of incubation, was the creation of a series of works
that will be read and reread as long as books are printed.
Of Dante, Boccaccio tells us that “taken by the sweetness of knowing
the truth of the things concealed in Heaven, and finding no other
pleasure dearer to him in life, he left all other worldly care and
gave himself to this alone; and, that no part of philosophy might
remain unseen by him, he plunged with acute intellect into the deepest
recesses of theology, and so far succeeded in his design that, caring
nothing for heat or cold, or watchings or fastings, or any other
bodily discomforts, by assiduous study he came to know of the divine
essence and of the other separate intelligences that the human
intellect can comprehend.”
Napoleon is known to have occupied his mind almost incessantly with
problems of military strategy. Even at the opera he would forget the
music in wrestling with such questions as, “I have ten thousand men at
Strassburg, fifteen thousand at Magdeburg, twenty thousand at Würzburg.
By what stages must they march so as to reach Ratisbon on three
successive days?” Mozart, on the contrary, thought, lived, and moved in
an atmosphere of music. He could not so much as go for a walk or play a
game of billiards without humming to himself over and over again airs
that he was striving to develop to his satisfaction.
“Nobody,” he once declared, “takes so much pains in the study of
composition as I. You could not easily name a famous master in music
whom I have not industriously studied, often going through his works
several times.”
Schiller, even as a boy, “felt that without diligence no mastery can
be won.” Halley once asked Newton how he had made his marvellous
discoveries in the physical realm. “By always thinking about them,” was
his reply. Thus the record might be continued down to the Edisons and
Bergsons and Debussys of to-day.
Quite evidently, what happens is that the perpetual concentration of
attention on some one problem or set of problems, not merely deposits
in the subconscious an exceptional wealth of material, but also favours
the emergence of the results of its manipulation of that material. Just
as, in the case of the ordinary man, it is only when he is intensely
interested in, say, the detection of an error in book-keeping, that he
is likely to have the cause of that error made plain to him by a sudden
“happy thought,” or through the medium of a dream.
It may, then, be stated as a well-established fact that intense
interest plus persistent effort is the prime essential to the highest
success in any sphere of human activity. Of importance, also, is
the fact that, as a general thing, the “set” of a man’s mind, the
direction which his interest most readily takes, is indicated more or
less clearly in the first years of life. This is proved not only by
the early lives of the world’s most eminent men and women, but also
by the results of careful statistical investigations into the life
histories of “average” people. Especially impressive are the findings
of an inquiry carried out not long ago by that well-known American
psychologist, Edward L. Thorndike, and reported by him in _The Popular
Science Monthly_, vol. lxxxi (1912).
Professor Thorndike submitted to one hundred third year students in
Columbia College, Barnard College, and Teachers’ College, New York, a
list of subjects of study, including mathematics, history, literature,
science, drawing, and such hand-work as carving, carpentering,
gardening, etc. Each student was required to fill in a tabular blank
showing the order in which the various subjects were of greatest
interest to that particular student: (1) during the last three years of
elementary school attendance, (2) during the high school period, and
(3) at the time of the investigation. Blanks were also to be filled
indicating the student’s judgment as to his or her ability in each of
the respective subjects during the period covered by the inquiry.
From the statistics thus gathered two things stood out clearly. No
fewer than 60 per cent. of the students made returns showing that the
subjects which appealed to them most strongly in their college work
were the subjects that had most interested them in early life; and an
even closer correspondence (65 per cent.) was shown between intensity
of interest and intellectual ability. Professor Thorndike then extended
his investigation to include two hundred other individuals, and
obtained virtually the same results.
“These facts,” it is not surprising to find him saying in comment,
“unanimously witness to the importance of early interests. They are
shown to be far from fickle and evanescent.... It would indeed be hard
to find any feature of a human being which was a more permanent fact of
his nature than his relative degree of interest in different lines of
thought and action.”
What this means, unquestionably, is that every parent, in planning the
education of his children or in assisting them to choose a vocation,
should make a real effort to gain some insight into their special
interests. Not only so, but there is reason for adding that he should
also endeavour to ascertain and cultivate those interests while his
children are still quite young. Otherwise he is likely to find them
growing to manhood and womanhood—as, under present conditions, most
children do grow—with the strongest of their “worth while” interests so
attenuated that really effective mental effort is next to impossible.
In these circumstances—unless they chance, as Charles Darwin did, to
come under the influence of a personality able to rouse their dormant
powers into exceptional activity—the likelihood is that they will
achieve only mediocre results, muddling along through life even when
they happen to hit on vocations truly suited to them.
Are we to infer that children, at a tender age, should be encouraged
to think seriously about serious subjects? Assuredly, provided
the subjects be made sufficiently interesting to them. It is not
without significance that a large majority of men of genius have
been distinguished for their precocity; or, if not precocious in the
ordinary sense of the term, they have busied themselves in childhood
with mental activities allied to those for which they afterward
attained eminence.
Napoleon’s interest in military problems dates from his boyhood. Lord
Kelvin, the foremost physicist of the nineteenth century, was making
electrical machines when only nine years old, and played with them as
other children play with dolls and marbles. Thomas Hobbes translated
the “Medea” of Euripides into Latin iambic verse before he was
fourteen. Cicero at thirteen is credited with having written a treatise
on the art of oratory. Fénelon preached his first sermon when only
fifteen years old. Grotius at the age of fourteen was widely known for
his learning. Hallam, the famous historian, could read well before he
was five, and had turned author four years later. Galileo, like Lord
Kelvin, constructed mechanical toys in his childhood.
Not to accumulate instances tediously, it need only be added that, in
making a survey of the biographies of a thousand eminent British men
and women, the English psychologist, Havelock Ellis, found that only
forty-four were specifically mentioned as not having been precocious,
while nearly three hundred were mentioned as having been distinctly
precocious in one sense or another. Even in the case of the forty-four,
Mr. Ellis discovered, several were really as precocious as any of the
three hundred, being “already absorbed in their own lines of mental
activity.” To this class belong, for example, Landor, Byron, and
Wiseman, the last of whom is described as having been in boyhood, “dull
and stupid, always reading and thinking.” Nor, according to the results
of Mr. Ellis’s investigation, did precocity have any unfavourable
effect on the health of these men and women of genius.
All similar investigations, in fact, go to show that intellectual
activity makes for longevity—that those who think hardest are likely
to live longest. Of one group of nearly eight hundred and fifty
men of genius it was found that only two hundred and fifty died
before they were sixty years old, while one hundred and thirty-one
lived to be eighty or older. For another group of five hundred, an
average life-span of nearly sixty-five years was found, as against a
life-span of fifty-one years for all classes of people who pass the
age of twenty. In the case of still another group, studied by a third
investigator, an average of seventy-one years was established.
What gives these figures greater significance is the fact that in
many instances the man of genius is exceptionally frail in early
life. Mr. Ellis, in his statistical study, found that more than two
hundred—or more than 20 per cent. of the eminent men and women included
in his survey—were “congenitally of a notably feeble constitution,”
yet that among these were some of the longest lived. How is this to
be explained? Only on the theory that the joy they felt in doing work
congenial to them promoted bodily as well as mental vigour. And, in
point of fact, it is to-day a commonplace among psychologists that
pleasurable emotions make for increased strength, while disagreeable
feelings make for weakness.
Viewed from whatever angle, therefore, “being interested” is one of
the most important things in the world to every one of us. The earlier
we become interested—intensely interested—in some specific field of
activity, the brighter our future prospects will be.
But—this is the crucial question in the present connection—is the
awaking of a lively interest, an interest so intense that it spurs to
incessant endeavour in some special field, sufficient to account for
the achievements of the man of genius? Granting that the man of genius
depends for his results, as I have tried to show, on the extent to
which he upbuilds and stimulates his subconscious powers by conscious
observation and thought, must we not assume that he possesses,
to begin with, an exceptional mental capacity? Or is favouring
circumstance in his environment—the occurrence of events that make
so profound an impression on his mind as to arouse a fervent longing
for accomplishment—sufficient to explain him? In short, would it be
possible, by careful education and the wise adjustment of environmental
influences, so to develop any individual of normal mentality that he
might achieve in his chosen life-work results usually regarded as
bearing the stamp of genius?
Such, decidedly, is my belief. I base it partly on the repeated failure
of investigators to demonstrate the operation of heredity in the making
of the vast multitude of men of genius who, in the history of mankind,
have sprung from all sorts and conditions of ancestors, rich and poor,
proud and humble, wise and ignorant. Partly I base it on the many
instances in which men of genius have themselves been able to trace
the determination of their activities to fortunate happenings in early
life. But most of all I base it on certain experiments in education
undertaken by parents entirely unaware of the interrelationship between
conscious thinking and subconscious “inspiration,” yet intuitively
believing that the sooner a child is habituated to using his mind to
good purpose the more he will accomplish in later life.
IV
INTENSIVE CHILD CULTURE
The student body of Harvard University at present includes three youths
whose remarkable intellectual achievements and the manner of their
upbringing have given rise to much discussion in American educational
circles. The oldest of these students was graduated from Tufts College
at the age of fourteen, gained the degree of Ph.D. at Harvard when
only eighteen, and now is continuing his studies abroad as the holder
of a Harvard travelling fellowship. The youngest of the trio became
a special student at Harvard before he was twelve, was graduated
with honours when scarcely sixteen, and is at present engaged in
post-graduate studies. The third passed the regular Harvard entrance
examinations when less than fourteen, completed his college course
with distinction in three years, and to-day is studying law.
What has excited controversial interest in these youths is not so much
their precocity, striking though that is, as the fact that in each
case they have been educated along novel lines from their earliest
childhood. Their fathers, who have worked independently of one another,
assert, indeed, that their unusual mental development is not due to any
exceptional talent, but is the result of the peculiar home training
they have received; the implication being that a similar development
is possible to every normal child if reared in the same way. Besides
which, the fathers contend that the prevailing method of giving
children little or no formal education until they are old enough to go
to school is fundamentally wrong; that the home is the proper place in
which to begin a child’s education, and that the proper time to begin
is with the first dawning of the child’s ability and desire to use his
reasoning powers. Or, as one of them has recently declared:
“In the large majority of children the beginning of education should be
between the second and third year. It is at that time that the child
begins to form his interests. It is at that critical period that we
have to seize the opportunity to guide the child’s formative energies
in the right channels. To delay is a mistake and a wrong to the child.
We can at that early period awaken a love of knowledge which will
persist through life. The child will as eagerly play in the game of
knowledge as he now spends the most of his energies in meaningless
games and objectless, silly sports.” (Boris Sidis’s “Philistine and
Genius,” pp. 67-68.)
Some few educators in this country have already tentatively approved
the new ideas in child-training as exemplified by the methods pursued
and the results obtained in the case of these youthful Harvard
students. For the most part, however, their promulgation has been
greeted skeptically, even with caustic criticism. On the one hand,
it is alleged that the parents cannot positively prove that the
achievements of their boys are not the result of inherited gifts
rather than the special education given them; and, on the other hand,
the position is taken that, assuming the correctness of their fathers’
contention in this respect, it is by no means evident that such
training is desirable.
In the words of one critic, to begin the education of a child at two or
three is to rob that child of his childhood. The training in question
is described as a “forcing” system, much talk is heard of “mind
strain,” and the prediction is freely made that the ultimate outcome
can only be to drive children thus educated into an asylum for the
insane, or into an early grave.
My own belief is that the critics are wrong. I have long been
acquainted with all three of these students, and in one case have
had opportunity to observe rather closely the process of mental and
physical development for upward of eight years. All three are sturdy,
strong young fellows; if anything above the average for their years
in stature and weight. Time alone, of course, can tell whether they
will live to a good old age. But if they should die or become insane,
I am satisfied that neither misfortune could justly be attributed to
their parents’ educational methods. On the contrary, the principles
underlying these methods seem to me for the most part so beneficial
that I believe the time will come when they will be quite generally
adopted.
Decidedly, though, I should not express myself with such assurance were
it not for the fact that these same principles have long ago been put
to the test and impressively vindicated. I wonder if the name of James
Thomson of Annaghmore has ever been heard by those who have so hastily
condemned the parents of the three Harvard students? Doubtless not,
else they would surely have moderated their denunciations.
Thomson, who was born in the year 1786, the son of a Scotch-Irish
farmer, was pre-eminently a “self-made” man. Seemingly doomed to the
obscure existence of an ordinary farm-labourer, he had emancipated
himself by dint of an extraordinary energy. With but slight aid he
contrived, while a mere child, to teach himself to read, write, and
cipher. In the fields, and by candle-light in his farm home, at every
opportunity, he studied little text-books that were to him the most
fascinating things in the world because they gave him knowledge. He
was determined to become an educated man, and continually he urged his
father to let him go to school.
To school eventually he went, in the neighbouring village of Ballykine,
and there, as in his childhood, he found his greatest delight in the
study of mathematics. He must, he told himself, know more about this
great science; he must know everything that could be learned about it.
Also, being of a religious turn of mind, he planned to fit himself to
become a clergyman. Obviously, whether to learn higher mathematics, or
to qualify for the ministry, it was necessary to go to college. And to
college he did go; but, so difficult were his circumstances, not until
he was a man full-grown.
From 1810 to 1814—that is, from the age of twenty-four to
twenty-eight—he spent six months of every year at the University of
Glasgow. The other six months he spent earning his living. Finally he
received the coveted M.A. degree, and having in the meantime become
more enamoured of mathematics than of a clerical career, he accepted
appointment to the teaching staff of an academy in Belfast, where,
married to a sweetheart of his Glasgow days, he soon entered upon the
additional task of bringing up a family.
It is at this point that he becomes of special interest to us. For,
looking back at the stupendous obstacles he himself had had to overcome
in gaining an education, he resolved to do everything in his power to
make the road to learning easy for his children.
To do this, it seemed to him, the proper course to pursue was to begin
their education as soon as they showed an intelligent interest in the
world about them. For, he argued, quite in the manner of the fathers
of the three Harvard students of to-day, it is because the education of
children begins too late that they find it hard to learn, and strain
their minds in the attainment of knowledge. Let a child get accustomed
to using his mind to good purpose in early childhood, and study will
never be a tax on him but a perpetual joy. This, thought he, is the way
all children should be brought up.
And, with the faithful co-operation of his wife, this was the way James
Thomson brought up his own children. He taught them, boys and girls, to
spell and to read almost as soon as they could speak. He taught them
mathematics, history, geography, and the elements of natural science.
One of the busiest of men—for he was a writer of mathematical text-books
as well as a class-room instructor—he made great sacrifices for the sake
of their education. He would even get up at four in the morning to work
on his text-books and to prepare his lectures, so as to be sure of
having freedom to instruct his little ones during the day. Especially
he made it a point to fertilise their minds, to whet their interest in
worth while things, in the course of table-talk and when out walking
with them.
“When spring came,” one of his daughters, Mrs. Elizabeth King, has
recalled in a delightful volume of family reminiscences, “our father
generally took a walk with us in the early morning before breakfast,
and he used to invent interesting topics of conversation, which were
carried on through successive mornings. Two of us held his hands and
two walked quite near, but the places of honour were shared alternately
by the four. I remember all being intensely interested in a series of
talks on the progress of civilisation, in which every one, even little
Willie, suggested ideas, and took part in the conversation.
“We also in these walks made imaginary voyages of discovery, full of
adventure, calling at various ports, and sailing up rivers to obtain
the products of the countries we visited, and become acquainted with
the inhabitants. We explored the icy regions of the north, the
burning deserts of Africa and Arabia, and the fragrant forests of
Ceylon. There was no end to our travels and the wonders we saw when we
walked with our father. Sometimes we transported ourselves to ancient
days, and sailed with the Argonauts in search of the golden fleece,
or accompanied the Greeks to Troy to recover the beautiful Helen, or
joined Ulysses in his protracted wanderings. Our father always led the
talk, but we all assisted.”
His two older sons, James and William, were the special objects of
his care, particularly after their mother’s death, which occurred
when James was eight and William six. After this sad event he lived
more than ever with these two boys, giving up part of his bedroom to
them, and diligently drilling them in the rudiments of an all-round
education. When, in 1832, he was appointed professor of mathematics at
his old university, he continued their home training, and in addition
obtained permission for them to attend his university lectures and the
lectures of some other professors.
Two years later, James being then twelve and William ten, they were
admitted as full-fledged undergraduates. And, precocious though they
were, they also were healthy, vigorous, active boys, full of fun and
eager to romp and play. Like other boys they delighted in games and
toys, with the sole difference that in many instances their toys were
scientific instruments. Thus, they made with their own hands little
electrical machines with which to give harmless and laughter-provoking
shocks to their friends.
In a word, all who knew them liked them—and marvelled at them. There
was abundant cause for marvel. Not only did they keep up with their
studies with ease, but in more than one department of knowledge they
outdid their classmates, some of whom were well into their twenties.
The following excerpt from “The Book of the Jubilee” gives a vivid
idea of the scholastic achievements of these two remarkable boys in
the first years of their life at Glasgow University:
“At the end of his first winter’s work William Thomson carried off two
prizes in the Humanity Class; this before he was eleven. In the next
session we follow him to the classes of Natural History and Greek—we
wonder what the present occupants of these chairs would say to a
stripling under twelve who presented himself at their lectures—and his
name figures in both prize-lists.
“Sympathy is not lacking for the hard-worked school-boy of to-day; but
what would the child of twelve think of the holiday task of translating
Lucian’s ‘Dialogues of the Gods,’ with full parsing of the first three
dialogues! This is the piece of work for which William Thomson, Glasgow
College, receives a prize in May, 1836.
“Next session we find the two brothers together in the Junior
Mathematical Class, of the Junior Division of which they are first
and second prize-men. They appear again at the head of the list for
the Monthly Voluntary Examinations on the work of the class and its
applications. Proceeding to the Senior Mathematical Class in 1837-38,
they again stand at the top, nor have they failed to present themselves
for the Voluntary Examinations. William is not satisfied with this
class, but in addition receives the second prize in the Junior Division
of Professor Robert Buchanan’s Logic Class.”
And, continuing to win laurels, at the close of the next session they
took the first and second places as prize-men in natural philosophy,
while William the following year gained the class prize in astronomy,
and was awarded a university medal for an essay, “On the Figure of
the Earth,” the manuscript of which, a carefully bound volume of
eighty-five pages, is still in existence. He was then not sixteen years
old.