Part 5
“This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries I sometimes tried to keep, but always and very speedily discarded, finding them a school of posturing and melancholy self-deception. And yet this was not the most efficient part of my training. Good though it was, it only taught me—so far as I have learned them at all—the lower and less intellectual elements of the art, the choice of the essential note and the right word; things that to a happier constitution had perhaps come by nature. And regarded as training it had one grave defect; for it set me no standard of achievement.
“So that there was, perhaps, more profit, as there was certainly more effort, in my secret labours at home. Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful, and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction, and the coordination of parts.”
Balzac, the greatest novelist that France has ever produced, similarly 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.