Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/282

272 weak or small. Short-sight, another condition occurring on a basis of hereditary nervous defect, is noted as occurring in an extreme degree thirteen times; and in a certain number of cases the other senses are defective or absent. Convulsive or twitching movements of the face, etc., are unusually frequent, and are noted in nine cases.

A condition to which I am inclined to attribute considerable significance from the present point of view is clumsiness in the use of the hands and awkwardness in walking. A singular degree of clumsiness or awkwardness is noted many times by the national biographers, although they have certainly regarded it merely as a curious trait, and can scarcely have realized its profound significance as an index to the unbalanced make-up of the nervous system. This peculiarity is very frequently noted as occurring in persons who are tall, healthy, robust, full of energy. As boys they are sometimes not attracted to games, and cannot, if they try, succeed in acquiring skill in games; as they grow up all sorts of physical exercise present unusual difficulties to them; they cannot, for instance, learn to ride; even if fond of shooting, they may be unable to hit anything; they cannot write legibly; in walking they totter and shuffle unsteadily; they are always meeting with accidents. Priestley, though great in experiment, was too awkward to handle a tool; Macaulay could not wield a razor or even tie his own neckcloth; Shelley, though lithe and active, was always tumbling upstairs or tripping on smooth lawns. It would be easy to fill many pages with similar examples. It is noted of thirty-four eminent men on our list that they displayed one or more such inaptitudes to acquire properly the muscular coordinations needed for various simple actions of life. In numerous cases this clumsiness was combined with voice defect.

The existence of all these nervous incoordinations and defects is not evidence of disease, but it is yet in harmony with the evidence that we have obtained regarding the diseases most prevalent among British persons of genius. We have seen that the national biographers have revealed the special frequency of consumption, of spasmodic asthma, of angina pectoris, of gout, among persons of high intellectual aptitude. To a large extent these pathological conditions are closely related, and even interchangeable among themselves; they are all closely related to various neurotic conditions. A man of genius may indeed be, as it were, highly charged with nervous energy, but that energy is apt to be ill-balanced, and by no means always equably and harmoniously distributed throughout the organism.