Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1911 — SIMPLY ACCIDENT OF BIRTH [ARTICLE]

SIMPLY ACCIDENT OF BIRTH

German Scientist Upsets Theories am to Genius—Denies Thdt It Is HereditaryProf. Wilhelm Ostwald, an eminent German scientist, declares that "genius is an accident of nature.” He denies that great talent or conspicuous ability Is hereditary—at least, in any marked or conclusive degree. The truth is, genius is a term of very great elasticity. It is relative, and so, it means one thing here and another thing yonder. One man is agenlus at figures, another at writing, another at mechanical work, another at picking pockets. If it means aptness, It Is the handmaiden of practice, generally; if it means power and. ability successfully applied lo the accomplishment of wonderful land helpful things, it is the slave /of hard work and rigid attention to the same —nothing more or less. Genius never accomplished anything much In this world merely because of its existence therein., It i» like a grand piano—pregnant with magnificent possibilities In the hand* of one who baa learned through year* of toil and application how to get the soul-aspiring music out of it. but m. useless thing. Indeed, In the hands oC one who knows it not. Not that the man who knows it not, moreover, may not himself be able to get startling; results from subtle manipulatiae off a handsaw and a file. The basic principle underlying both is the sameidentical. Genius Is not within the piano, nor yet within the handsaw and file. They are instruments through which It may be made manifest; the genius Is In the man, and Is to be revealed only through the piano and the handsaw, because the man ha* labored to learn how he may truly make it known. So we get back where some philosopher—Mark Twain, perhaps—started us; and we must admit the approximate truth of the contention that genius Is, after all, merely bard work. To call it “an accident of nature’’ la to belittle It and undlgnlfy It Whatever genius 1% It is not an accident. What part heredity plays in differentiating the genius from the common run. so called, of mankind, we ate not prepared to say. But softly that which may so positively be culttvatedl and rounded into full life la no “accident.”—Washington Herald