The Press., 1920-06-17
NOT TRUE GENIUS
"Wonder Children" Merely InteI-
 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 cOnfounding 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 chil- dren" in the past, and 1t is strange. though true, that quite large propor- tion have lived to the average age.
 Tn recent years there have been number of child evangelists who have startled the world by their eloquence and theology. Tn the United States 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 church in North Carolina.
 l In Great Britain there are records of a child twelve years old who preached I in a Baptist church at POrthcawl, and a small boy who. at the tender age of three, began prea ching to crowded au- diences and continued to do so until we'll 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 l ,1 {S 1f | 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 a 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 as the learned child of Lubeck 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 and history and sev- eral languages before his death at the age of four years. contemporary of this wonderful child was fluent in five 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.
 l Historical and clinical evidence are both definite in showing that "wonder- children" are no more liable than other children to die young, nor Is 1t found that children who assimilate knOwl- edge readily and retain 1t show any un- due signs of fatigue.
 The great point in the case of chil- dren marked by special brilliance is to avoid any attempt at making the bril- liance 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- variably brings on over-strain and breakdown.