Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-12-13
Then Never Gro1O Old

son, solemnly bespectacled, If not bearded,
and far too intent upon chill intellectual
Notwithstanding to hob-nob at the hearth
side. But hsrk how DR.. Albert Einstein i'm
pressed a Partisan newspaper man who
recently interviewed him: ''It is hard to
conceal ones establishment at his youthful
appearance. Nothing Is more contrary to the
traditional idea of learned professor, par
ticularly a German one. He wears no glasses
and no scrubby beard, but black NOUS
tache. HI has well marked black eyebrows,
very dark eyes with kind expression, and
quantity of bushy hair which might cause
him to pass for an artist" He is only two
and forty, this world-renowned seer-and he
looks still younger.
Sir Isaac Newton himself, 1t may be re-
called, was but forty-four when he publish
e his PRINCIPAL, and long ere that he had
developed the concepts which stand as a
landmark in science and indeed In human
History; his wonderfully original theory on
light and color was evolved not later than
his thirtieth year. Darwin's great idea,
more momentous in it's influence upon the
world than Napoleonic battles, had taken
form when he was twenty-five. Napoleon, let
US note, since as usually he has thrust him
self in, was at twenty-seven chief command
er of the French armies and during the
next decade fought his most successful cam
paigns Beethoven, when he was thirty-four,
composed the Third symphony, and the
Fifth when he was thirty-sSx. In his engag-
ing and mastery little book, Dynamic
Psychology Professor Woodwork, of Co.
lumbia, observes that, in the main, achievers
have done their highly original work as
young men, "men old enough to have as
simulated the work of their predecessors, but
not so old as to have lost the ardor and
flexibility of YOUTH Yet, their portraits are
commonly those of elderly men; for the rea-
son, he suggests, that they were advanced
in years before their greatness was widely
recognized. That no hard and fast bound
aries can be fixed, however, is evident in
divers illustrious misunderstanding pro-
ducing Don Quixote at fifty-eight, Brown
ing in splendour of poetry long after he
grew gray, Foch winning a world war when
he was only a few summers east of seventy.
But there can be no doubt that the crea-
tive spirit is ever a youthful spirit, whether
many. Only to those who become as little
children does the kingdom of beauty and
wisdom open wide 1t is quite in keeping
with DR.. Einstein's intellectual sweep and
power that he counts sympathy the core OF
greatness as well as of goodness and that
next to the sharing of others sorrows he
links the community Of JOY" One day he
said to friend, "What is there more beau
tiful in life than radiant face?' All artists,
all thinkers, he holds, are 1omrades--no mat
ter the flag, Bezonian. Being one of the few
intellectuals in war-mad Germany who re-
fused to sign the Manifesto of the Ninety
Three, she was deprived for some time of his
professorship in the University of Berlin, but
it was restored to him when his prestige,
which has become universal, made him that
institutions greatest ornament" Still more
interesting, and altogether delightful, is the
interviewer's observation that Eat the pres
ent time although DR.. Einstein is tolerated
and respected, the other professors are more
or less hostile to him because he makes no
mysteries of his philosophic opinions, and
sx,L~
Here indeed is that ''charmng philosophy
of which young Milton sang:
"Not harsh and grabbed, as dull fools sup
pose,
But musical as is Apollo's lutte,
And perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.'
OF his own childhood and youth DR.. Elm
stein appears to have rather dim if not I'M
happy recollections. Born at Ulm. Bavaria,
in 1879, he was taken to Munich as little
boy, and received there most of his school
ing. His . tive spirit suffered under the
Prussianized discipline of classroom and
barracks, and also from the ant1-Semitism
then especially pronounced in Germany. AT
the age of Fifteen" runs the record, "he
went with his parents to Italy. From Milan,
they moved to Switzerland, where he stud
led successfully at Arau and at Zurich, with
the intention of. becoming professor. He
being OF foreign nationality, however, ana
having no personal relations, this was i'm
possible. But in 1901, after residing there
five years, he obtained the rights of the city
of Zurich and became attached to the patent
office in the position of expert This rosi-
ton he occupied from 1902 to 1909, where
he was able to acquire technical knowledge
and still have leisure for his other work"
Flooding with inspirations were those fresh
hearted years. And in 1905, when he was
twenty-siX-the age at which Shakespeare
wrote "Love's Labours LOST - Einstein
published, along with other studies, the
'Electro-Dynamics Of Bodies in Notion in
which was outlined the RELATIVELY theory.
About this time, too, he was ardently bent
upon his "New Determination of the Size of
Atoms" pursuit which old Gradgrind,
laughably ignorant of his own bread-and-
butter debt to pure science, would dismiss as
mere child's play.
And child's play it is in sooth! Genius is
forever and divinely vernal, though it tarry
the winter out; forever eager-eyed, pressing
naively, despite rebuke, up to the Spirit that
suffers little children to come. Lord Bacon
has it most charmingly: "It is the glory
Of God,' he quotes, to conceal thing,
but the glory of the king to find it out Even
as though the divine nature took pleasure in
the innocent and kindly sport of children
playing at lide and seek, and vouchsafed of
His kindness and goodness to admit the
human spirit for His playfellow at that
game"
Gro,O;ng-Pa;ns of Literature
w deIiphtf,,J voIumn of commissioners