2 72 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 sig- 

 nificance from the present point of view is clumsiness in the use of 

 the hands and awkwardness in walking. A singular degree of clum- 

 siness 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 shoot- 

 ing, 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 awk- 

 ward 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 dis- 

 tributed throughout the organism. 



