Rev. W. F. Crafts, Ph.D., writes of the success of scores of men who
were born physically defective:
The list includes club-footed Byron, halting Akenside, frail
Spinoza, deformed Malebranche, disfigured Sam Johnson, Walter
Scott, “a pining child”; Sir Isaac Newton, “who might have been
put in a quart pot when born”; Voltaire, who was for some time
too small and weak to christen; Charles Sumner, who weighed
three and a half pounds at birth; Lyman Beecher, who weighed
but three pounds at first, and was laid aside by his nurse to
die; Goethe, Victor Hugo, and D’Alembert, who were so weak at
birth that they also were not expected to live, and also Pope,
Descartes, Gibbon, Kepler, Lord Nelson, Sir Christopher Wren,
James Watt, John Howard, Washington Irving, William Wilberforce,
and many others whom the world has delighted to honor as mental
giants--a list that well-born children could hardly match--whose
bodily weakness in infancy in any but a Christian land would
have marked them as unworthy to be raised to manhood. The study
of such a group ought to be an inspiration to boys handicapped
by any physical weakness, and it also suggests that mind and
will may conquer the most adverse circumstances.
(2368)
=Pibroch, The=--See MUSIC OF DESPAIR AND OF HOPE.