THE TRAITS OF GENIUS.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 262, 14 November 1901, Page 1

THE TRAITS OF GENIUS.

Some conclusions as to the law of genius are derived for the Popular Science Monthly by Mr Havelock Ellis from the study of 559 men and 43 women of note in Britain. They may be thus summarized : The upper and middle classes are rich in geniuses. The country and small towns produce genius more often than cities, and the clergy father the most distinguished children. Geniuses tend to come of large families, to be the children of elderly parents, to he precocious, feeble in health in early life, but fairly long lived. They have usually excellent education ; a large proportion travel extensively in early years. There is among geniuses a tendency to remain unmarried, to marry late in life or to contract sterile marriages. Persons of unusual intellect are often subject to gout, asthma or angina pectoris (nervous diseases), to stammering, melancholy or insanity. Mr Ellis finds that men of one gift are so frequently lacking in all other gifts that they are more nearly allied to the idiotic than to the insane. Insanity is not so much a condition of genius as its frequent penalty. An inheritance favorable to genius is cited in the case of William Morris, who received from his mother a strong constitution, from his father a nervous, gouty strain. “The mistake usually made,” says Mr Ellis, “is to exaggerate the insane character of such a fermentative element, and at the same time to ignore the element of sane and robust vigor which is equally essential to any high degree of genius.”