The Elk Mountain pilot., 1920-05-06
NOT TRUE GENIUS
"Wonder Children" Merely Intel
IectuaHy Precocious.
In Most Cases They Are Possessors Of
an AbnormaIIy. Retentive Memory
DO Not Necessarily Die
Young.

A few days ago there appeared an
account of the doings Of Samuel Resch-
evski, wonderful chess player, eight
years old. who is confoundlng Berlin
with his uncanny knowledge and skill.
These wonder children" always
arouse especial interest, and, as many
explanations are put forward to ac-
count for their apparent genius, there
are gloomy forebodings as to their
meeting with an early death.
There have been many wonder chill
dren" In the past, and It is strange,
though true, that quite large proper
tion have lived to the average age.
In recent years there have been a
number of child evangelists who have
startled the world by their eloquence
and theology. In the United States a
few years ago boy nine years old at
tempted to convert the whole country,
and when ten years old he was actual
ly appointed minister OF a church in
North Carolina.
In Great Britain there are records of
child twelve years old who preached
in Baptist church at Porthcawl, and
small boy who, at the tender age of
three, began preaching to crowded au-
diences and continued to do so until
well after ten years old.
In the case Of such prodigies, their
talents consist chiefly in an abnormal,
retentive memory and, provided that
their temperaments are not emotional,
they stand the mental strain exceed
ingly well. though there is, of course,
the danger attached to the excessive
physical strain which they frequently
undergo.
To this type belong those children
who learn rapidly by heart such things
as the tunes, words and numbers of all
hymns in the ancient and modern
hymn-book. It is such children, with
high development of one faculty. who
most often meet with early death, and
maybe 1t was in such cases that old
saying. "The wise die young" had its
origin.
But the child chess player in Berlin
belongs rather to the type of intellect
ual precocities. such us the learned
child of Lubbock of the early part of
the eighteenth century. This child
could recite the whole Of the Old and
New Testaments before he was two
years old, and little later he was an
authority on religious history and dog
ma. He mastered also ancient and
modern geography end history and sew
eral languages before his death at the
age of four years. ~
A contemporary of this wonSerfnl
child was fluent in Ave languages be-
fore he was five, and translated the
Hebrew Bible into Latin and French
at the age Of eight. He survived un-
til he was nineteen.
Historical and clinical evidence are
both definite in showing that wonder
children" are no more liable than other
children to de young, nor is 1t found
that children who assimilate knowl-
edge readily and retain It show any un-
due signs Of fatigue.
The great point in the case Of chill
dren marked by special brilliance is to
avoid any attempt at making the bril-
lance apply to everything, for In SO
doing the existing brilliance in the one
special direction may tend to disap-
pear. In the same way those who are
intellectually brilliant must not be
forced to become industrious in a
practical way, for such Interference in
var.ably brings on over-strain and
breakdown.