GENIUS AND PRECOCITY. 603 



take seriously to inquiry. How far this consilience extends with ref- 

 erence to the relative position of the several classes in our scheme I 

 will not now venture to say. 



Genius is precocious, then, in the sense of manifesting itself early. 

 But what of its subsequent history ? Does it soon attain the summit 

 of its development, or go on improving as long as, or even longer than, 

 ordinary intelligence ? This, as was pointed out at the beginning of 

 this essay, is, in a measure, a different inquiry, and one too long to fol- 

 low out here. There are special difficulties, too, in pursuing this line 

 of research. Although it is, in a general way, an easy matter to say 

 when a man of genius produces his first distinctly original work, it is 

 exceedingly difficult to determine how long he goes on improving. 

 Critics are far from agreed, for example, as to the relative value of the 

 earlier and later work of Goethe, Beethoven, Turner, etc. It may, 

 however, be safely asserted that early manifestation of genius is not 

 incompatible with a prolonged and even late development. Haydn, 

 Beethoven, Michael Angelo, Titian, Milton, Goethe, Voltaire, Gibbon, 

 Lessing, Newton, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Mill, and other great names, are 

 examples of such a lengthy process of development. Indeed, there is 

 much to support Mr. Galton's view that eminent men surpass ordinary 

 men not only in superiority from the first, but also in a more pro- 

 longed development.* 



Such a conclusion, it may be observed, would seem to accord with 

 what we know of the general laws of mental evolution. For, if we 

 compare the different races of man, or the different species of animals, 

 we find that, in general, the higher the cerebral organization attained, 

 the longer the process of development. Men of great original power, 

 having the most highly organized type of brain, may be expected to 

 illustrate the most prolonged movement of mental growth. 



From this point of view we are able, I think, to see the difference 

 between the course of development of a truly great intellect, and that 

 of a precocious but stunted intelligence. That there are many clever 

 children that never "come to anything," or, at least, do not fulfill their 

 early promise, is a fact which nobody, probably, will deny. Some of 

 these would perhaps have distinguished themselves if they had had 

 better opportunities, or, at least, more ambition and energy of charac- 

 ter. But, allowing for this, one finds a good remainder of youths who 

 appear to have had a rapid but early arrested mental development. 

 Such an early display of quickness, followed by a lengthy period of 

 ordinary mediocrity, or even dullness, looks like a too great forward- 

 ness of ordinary human ability. In other words, the clever child is in 

 this case not an exceptional being, but a quite average one, whose 

 cerebral development has somehow outrun the common attainment of 

 his years. He is like a tree that bears fruit too soon. On the other 



* See " Hereditary Genius," p. 44. Mr. Galton has kindly sent me a fuller statement 

 of his view on this point. 



