602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the anomaly is only an apparent one. The scholar, the historian, and 

 the critic are alike dependent on an exceptional power of acquisition 

 and of memory, and this is well known to be a precocious endowment. 

 Moreover, it is an endowment which is fairly certain to be duly noted, 

 seeing that it is precisely the aptitude which is at the basis of school- 

 renown. This is borne out by the fact that the class of scholars, etc., 

 though high up in respect of early manifestation of ability, are not so 

 distinguished in the matter of early production or of early attainment 

 of excellence. 



The next group in our combined scale of precocity is scientists. 

 Their high place is, I believe, largely owing to the mathematicians. 

 The mathematical faculty is well known to be a precocious one. The 

 fact that it is often found in the company of musical capacity suggests 

 that there is a common mental ingredient. In each we note the play 

 of inventive imagination on a circumscribed mass of material easily 

 acquired, viz., tone-images in the one case, and symbol-images in the 

 other. On the other hand, the representatives of the natural sciences 

 which involve prolonged processes of observation, etc., are much less 

 forward. 



The shifting position of novelists in our three scales is, perhaps, 

 the most curious outcome of our investigation. Like the poet, the 

 novelist employs as his chief mental implement the faculty of sensuous 

 imagination. Hence the relatively high position in our first table. At 

 the same time the novel presupposes much more in the way of knowl- 

 edge of the world and reflection on its ways than the poem. Its most 

 distinctive aptitude, perhaps, is a minute knowledge of character ; a 

 circumstance which brings it into close relation to one of the most ab- 

 stract of the sciences, viz., psychology. 



Respecting philosophers little need be said. That a considerable 

 fraction should begin to write after thirty, and almost as large a pro- 

 portion attain fame after forty, is just what one might antecedently 

 expect. Indeed, nowhere perhaps is early achievement so truly mar- 

 velous as in the severe domain of abstract speculation. It is not a 

 mere coincidence, I take it, that the two most brilliant examples of 

 this precocity, Berkeley and Schelling, are metaphysicians whose 

 writings are so deeply tinged with the glow of a poetic imagination. 



In this attempt to explain our results we have confined our atten- 

 tion to the intellectual ingredient in genius. But we might also take 

 into account the emotional and volitional factor that is to say, the 

 specific impulse which prompts and sustains the creative activity. And 

 by so doing we might still further illustrate the general agreement 

 between our facts and the laws of mental development. Thus, for ex- 

 ample, the artistic impulse, which according to our tables shows itself 

 to be most precocious, appears also to be the one first manifesting it- 

 self in a decided form in the historv of the average individual, and of 

 the race. The child and the race alike develop a crude art before they 



