THE SECRET OF GENIUS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3889, 25 September 1928, Page 72

THE SECRET OF GENIUS.

By Professor J. Arthur Thomson. Writers repeat from one another two familiar statements, that genius cannot, be defined and that, even if its nature Mere known, that would not help man towards its production. But the biologist is bound to distrust both these statements. For a genius is. a wellproportioned large mutation, and the number of them could be increased by more careful breeding. In the realm of organisms new variations are continually emerging. Variability is a fundamental fact of life. But many of the novelties or new departures are quantitative and on a small scale—a little more of this and a little less of that. These may be of profound importance in the course of generations, if the fitter are consist*”!infostered and the less fit persistently handicapped. This is the Darwinian theory of progress. * * * But besides the small continuous germinal fluctuations there ar e brusque discontinuous mutations, meaning by discontinuous that they are not linked to the norm or average by intergrades. They are germinal steps of a qualitative rather than a quantitative kind; and biology owes much to Bateson and to De Vries for the evidence they collected to show that mutations are common. Whereas Lamarck had said: “Nature is never brusque”; it has been proved that the Proteus of Life does more than creep it leaps. Some mutations, it must be noted, are small in amount, not mbre than minute idiosyncrasies; but others are large new departures, new patterns, geniuses. Whether they are large or small, they illustrate in subsequent generations the laws of Mendelian inheritance. A human genius is the expression of germinal mutation—a novel combination of promising hereditary factors or genes ■which form a new pattern of a not unstable type. It differs from an idiosyncrasy in its magnitude and in usually forming part of a mental inheritance that is at a high level in other or in many other directions. ** . * Talent may be defined as the intensification of a melftal quality, raising it to the second or third or even to a higher power; but genius is tr new pattern, a power -of reaching forward to something quite original. And while genius may be expressed along one line only, such as mathematical or musical, metaphysical or pictorial, analytical or inventive, it is sometimes associated with great talent in several directions. The mathematical genius may be a talented ' musician. Yet there should be no mixing up of genius with talent. For talent is high intensification of quality, while genius is a new pattern of qualities at high level. Genius is sometimes particulate rather than general, affecting only one line of activity, but it may be that the particulateness is due to preoccupation rather than to limitation. One of the accursed conventional errors that take such an unconscionable time to.die is the notion that, genius verges on the pathological. The belief is not

supported either by biographical inquiries or by biological principles. A genius is necessarily ahead of his time, and his intensity as well as his originality may well make sluggish minds uncomfortable. So it is convenient to tell St. Paul—a genius if there ever was one—“ much learning doth make thee mad.”

In a pathological mental or neural variation there is sometimes an emancipation or originality which suggests genius, but there is no intrinsic correlation between genius and instability We have Lombroso fin part to blame for the widespread erroneous belief that genius is akin to insanity—he fell into the common fallacy of selecting his facts. It is to be suspected that there is an unpleasant home-truth in Professor E. M. East’s saying that the conception of genius as a mental abnormality is largely due to our own inferiority complexes. Geniuses trouble us, so we regard them with an intellectual leer. Maudsley wrote that “ there is hardly ever a man of genius who has not insanity or nervous disorder of some form in his family, but East, in referring to the 1030 great men dealt with by Havelock Ellis in his “ Study of British Genius,” notes that insanity could be traced in less than 1 per cent, of the parents of these distinguished personalities. Very few men of genius have become insane, though some have been a bit explosive. The story of geniuses being prone to epilepsy is simply another yarn Genius usually means supreme mental health, and, like supreme bodily health, it may readily lead to over-exertion; but it is not akin to the pathological. That would be more true of the sub-health of stupidity.

We mean by genius the highly endowed originality of the millionth min who lifts humanity on his wings—of such men as Archimedes, Aristotle. Burns, Beethoven, Cellini, Confucius. Dante, Descartes. Eudoxus, Euler, Fichte, Francis of Assisi, Galileo, Goethe, Heo-cl, Homer. Isaiah (which ?)’John the Evangelist, Kant, Kepler, Lagrange, Leibnitz, Milton, Mozart, Napier, Newton, Ossian, Ovid, Paul Plato—we can’t remember a Q —Raphael, Shakespeare, Teresa—we can’t remember any U except Ulysses, who was a work of genius—da Vinci. Virgil, Watt, Washington, Xavier, and Zeno—for his command to “ live according to Nature.” Now no couple can put their heads together and determine to be parents of genius,, yet it is nonsense to say thar there is no recipe for its production For, as a genial biologist has said, it is due' to “ a congregation of complementary genes of high quality,” and it appears as the outcome of the lovemarriage of two talented personalities of diverse gifts. It is entirely independent of “ class,” but it arises in fine stock It has many' degrees, but it is always new. Tt is occasionally handed on t-> the next generation, but two geniuses hardly ever marry, and rarely do they have children, and still more rarely’ children like themselves. The duality of genius is apt to behave as a Mendelian necessity to mediocrity, but it is th-* most precious thing in'the world.—John o’ London’s Weekly.