A STUDY OF BRITISH GENIUS. 59 



A STUDY OF BRITISH GENIUS. 



By HAVELOCK ELLIS. 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 



IF we consider the time of birth of our group of British persons of 

 preeminent ability we find that April shows the largest number 

 of births and January the fewest number. In passing from January 

 to February there is a marked and sudden rise, so that when we 

 consider the lotal births, according to the quarter of the year, the 

 first, second and fourth quarters are fairly equal, but there is a de- 

 cided deficiency in the third quarter. This is not quite the result which 

 we find on considering the birth-rate among the ordinary population 

 of England and Wales during the nineteenth century. Here the 

 birth-rate during the first and second quarters agrees in being very 

 high, while the third and fourth quarters invariably show a low rate. 

 The discrepancy is in the fourth quarter, persons of preeminent 

 ability being born during that quarter in unduly high proportion. In 

 order to reach the time of conception, and so consider the possible 

 significance of these facts, we must, of course, push these periods three 

 months forward.* 



The first significant fact we encounter in studying the life-histories 

 of these eminent persons is the frequency with which they have shown 

 marked constitutional delicacy in infancy and early life.f A group 

 of at least five — Joanna Baillie, Hobbes, Keats, Newton, Charles Wesley 

 — were seven months children, or, at all events, notably premature 

 in birth; it is a group of very varied and preeminent ability. Not 

 including the above (who were necessarily weakly), at least eight are 

 noted as having been very weak at birth, and not expected to live; 

 in several cases they were, on this account, baptized on the same day. 

 In addition to these, fifty-five are described as being of very delicate 

 health in infancy or childhood. Further, we are told of sixty-nine 



* For a discussion of the normal phenomena, see H. Ellis, 'Studies in the Psy- 

 chology of Sex,' 'The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity.' 



tMr. A. H. Yoder ('Pedagogical Seminary,' October, 1894) stumbled across this 

 fact in the course of his interesting study of the early life of a group of men of 

 genius, but failed to realize its significance. He put it aside as due to a desire on 

 the part of biographers to niagnify the mental at the expense of the physical 

 qualities of their subjects. There is no evidence whatever for this gratuitous 

 assumption. 



