THE INBORN POTENTIALITY OF THE CHILD 321 



Dr. Maudsley has remarked that many a Napoleon has died an 

 inglorious death upon the scaffold. Genius belongs to no social 

 order or class, nor can we explain in the majority of cases 

 whence it comes. The part that chance plays by a happy and 

 harmonious combination of germs in the production of genius 

 is shown by the fact that the most outstanding figure of the 

 Renaissance period — Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1516) — sculptor, 

 painter, architect, engineer, musician, philosopher, and universal 

 genius, was the illegitimate son of a Florentine lawyer by a 

 peasant woman. There was nothing in the history of the Da 

 Vinci family to suggest constructive imagination ; several 

 generations of lawyers of no remarkable note was the only family 

 history pointing to intellectual ability. Moreover, the father 

 of Leonardo had a large family born to him in wedlock ; he was 

 married to four women, the last two gave birth to nine sons and 

 two daughters. He had but one illegitimate child by the peasant 

 woman, who subsequently married and had a family, none of 

 whom attained any fame. The wonderful child, as remarkable 

 for its beauty and strength as in its early manifestations of 

 supreme mental endowments, was fortunately for posterity 

 cherished by its father, who spared no opportunity which 

 nurture and education could provide to develop this marvellous 

 product of Nature. Would Leonardo have been what he was, 

 had he not been born in the Renaissance period and had his 

 wonderful talents developed by education ? I could cite 

 numbers of other illustrious men whose forbears had given 

 no evidence of especial genius or talent, and who attained an 

 everlasting place on the scroll of fame. Isaac Newton was the 

 son of a small farmer proprietor of Cleethorpes ; Michael 

 Faraday the son of a blacksmith ; Dalton, the son of a weaver ; 

 Turner the painter the son of a barber whose mother became 

 insane, and from whom he probably inherited his eccentricity 

 and imaginative genius. It is a probable fact that great men 

 owe their genius in a great number of instances to their mother 

 in whom it is latent. Abraham Lincoln himself said, " All 

 I have and all I hope for I owe to my angel mother," and 

 Goethe poetically described his dual inheritance of body and 

 mind in the following lines : 



Vom Vater hab ich die Statur, 

 Des Ernstes Lebens fiihren, 

 Vom Miitterchen die Frohnatur, 

 Und Lust zu fabulieren, 

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