Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/72

62 mental receptivity is over no further development takes place. The second group, comprising those children who are mostly indifferent to ordinary school learning but are absorbed in their own lines of thought, certainly contains a very large number of individuals destined to attain intellectual eminence. They by no means impress people by their 'precocity'; Scott, occupied in building up romances, was a 'dunce'; Hume, the youthful thinker, was described by his mother as 'uncommon weak-minded.' Yet the individuals of this group are often in reality far more 'precocious,' further advanced along the line of their future activities, than the children of the first group. It is true that they may be divided into two classes, those who from the first have divined the line of their later advance, and those who, like the youthful Diderot, are only restlessly searching and exploring; but both alike have really entered on the path of their future progress. The third group, including those children who are only noted for their physical energy, is the smallest. In these cases some powerful external impression—a severe illness, an emotional shock, contact with some person of intellectual eminence—serves to divert the physical energy into mental channels. In those fields of eminence in which moral qualities and force of character count for much, such as statesmanship and generalship, this course of development seems to be a favorable one, but in more purely intellectual fields it scarcely seems to lead very often to the finest results. On the whole, it is evident that 'precocity' is not a very valuable or precise conception as applied to persons of intellectual eminence. The conception of physical precocity is fairly exact and definite. It indicates an earlier than average attainment of the ultimate growth and maturity. But we are by no means warranted in asserting that the man of intellectual ability reaches his full growth and maturity earlier than the average man. And even when as a child he is compared with other children, his marked superiority along certain lines may be apparently more than balanced by his apparent inferiority along other lines. It is no doubt true that, in a vague use of the word, genius is very often indeed 'precocious'; but it is evident that this statement is almost meaningless unless we use the word 'precocity' in a carefully defined manner. It would be better if we asserted that genius is in a large number of eases mentally abnormal from the first, and if we were to seek to inquire precisely wherein that mental abnormality consisted. With these preliminary remarks we may proceed to note the prevalence among British persons of genius of the undefined conditions commonly termed 'precocity.'

It is certainly very considerable. Although we have to make allowance for ignorance in a large proportion of cases, and for neglect to mention the fact in many more cases, the national biographers note that