ARE TOWNSMEN CLEVEREST?

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 113, 16 May 1927, Page 8

ARE TOWNSMEN CLEVEREST?

WHERE ARE THE BEST BRAINS?

Do men and women with the best brains come from cities? If we take artists, banisters, engineers, inventors— members of almost any profession, in fact—we find that the majority of the best known came from towns. It is-often said that brains are not inherited—in other words, that the children of clever people are often stupid. Facts prove the contrary. Sir Francis balton, one of the greatest authorities on the subject, having studied the families of English judges over a period of two and a-half centuries, found that while only one in four thousand of the general population of the country became eminent," the proportion among the sons of these judges was one in eight A French scientist, M. Albert Odin, has for many years been studying the lives and birthplaces of his best-known countrymen, and has come to the conclusion that Paris alone has produced nine times as many men of brains as all the rest of Fiance put together. He says, moreover, that the cities of France produce thirty-five times as many clever people as the villages. In Germany, Italy and Spain, too, the geniuses are city-bora and niostlv eitvbred. America is fond of boasting of her log cabins as nurseries for genius. Alas cold fact knocks the bottom out of this boast, for someone who has analysed tattell's "American Men of Science" has found that the ratio of city-bred geniuses among America's scientific men is three times as great as those who are countrvborn. . J The reasons why town children are brighter than those from the country are difficult to discover, but crowds always mean competition, and town children are, as a rule, more lively in brain than those who live in country districts. They begin to learn life's lessons earlier and so get a start which most seem to' keep.