CHILDHOOD PATTERN OF GENIUS—McCURDY 533 
contacts, and by his intimacy with his sister, who had much less 
freedom than he and who became increasingly embittered by the 
educational discipline of their father. In his autobiography he notes 
that he was not on friendly terms with a brother, 3 years younger, 
who died in childhood, and scarcely retained any memory of the three 
subsequent children who also died young. How close he and his sister 
were may be gaged by these words regarding the aftereffects of his 
love affair with Gretchen, at about 14: “my sister consoled me the 
more earnestly, because she secretly felt the satisfaction of having 
gotten rid of a rival; and I, too, could not but feel a quiet, haltf- 
delicious pleasure, when she did me the justice to assure me that I was 
the only one who truly loved, understood, and esteemed her” [14, p. 
192]. 
Pascal was so precious in the eyes of his father, after his mother’s 
death when he was 3, that, as the older sister tells us, the father could 
not bear the thought of leaving his education to others, and accord- 
ingly became and remained his only teacher. At 18 Pascal’s health 
broke down from ceaseless application. He was frequently in the 
company of the learned men surrounding his father. Huis primary 
emotional attachment was to his younger sister, Jacqueline; her re- 
ligious retirement strongly influenced his own religious development. 
Macaulay early became absorbed in books, but his studies were more 
unobtrusively guided by his father and mother and other relatives 
than in the cases preceding. He was especially attached to his mother 
in early childhood, and at home among his brothers and sisters was 
overflowingly happy and playful. <A sister writes: “He hated 
strangers, and his notion of perfect happiness was to see us all work- 
ing round him while he read aloud a novel, and then to walk all to- 
gether on the Common” [30, p. 67]. He was reluctant to leave home 
for school for even a single day, and he was acutely homesick when 
placed in a boarding school at about 12; there, though tolerated and 
even admired by his fellow pupils, he had little to do with them, liv- 
ing almost exclusively among books. The children at home passion- 
ately loved him. It should not be overlooked that his father was a 
deeply religious man of great force of character, energetic in religious 
and political reform movements of considerable scope. 
Bentham’s father, ambitious to make a practical lawyer of his first 
and for 9 years his only child, kept him to a rigorous schedule of in- 
struction in everything from dancing and military drill to Greek 
from a very early age. From 7 to 12 he spent the winters at a board- 
ing school, which he did not enjoy; in the vacations at home his 
schooling, under private tutors, was much more intensive. He was 
happiest on visits to grandparents in the country, where he could 
talk to an old gardener or climb up a tree and read a novel. Too small 
and weak to win the admiration of his fellows, “he tried to be in- 
