The Production Of Ability

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Title:     The Production Of Ability
Author: Havelock Ellis [More Titles by Ellis]

The growing interest in eugenics, and the world-wide decline in the birth-rate, have drawn attention to the study of the factors which determine the production of genius in particular and high ability in general. The interest in this question, thus freshly revived and made more acute by the results of the Great War, is not indeed new. It is nearly half a century since Galton wrote his famous book on the heredity of genius, or, as he might better have described the object of his investigation, the heredity of ability. At a later date my own _Study of British Genius_ collectively summarised all the biological data available concerning the parentage and birth of the most notable persons born in England, while numerous other studies might also be named.

Such investigations are to-day acquiring a fresh importance, because, while it is becoming realised that we are gaining a new control over the conditions of birth, the production of children has itself gained in importance. The world is no longer bombarded by an exuberant stream of babies, good, bad, and indifferent in quality, with Mankind to look on calmly at the struggle for existence among them. Whether we like it or not, the quantity is relatively diminishing, and the question of quality is beginning to assume a supreme significance. What are the conditions which assure the finest quality in our children?

A German scientist, Dr. Vaerting, of Berlin, published on the eve of the War a little book on the most favourable age in parents for the production of children of ability (_Das guenstigste elterliche Zeugungsalter_).[1] He approaches the question entirely in this new spirit, not as a merely academic topic of discussion, but as a practical matter of vital importance to the welfare of society. He starts with the assertion that "our century has been called the century of the child,"[2] and for the child all manner of rights are now being claimed. But the prime right of all, the right of the child to the best ability that his parents are able to transmit to him, is never even so much as considered. Yet this right is the root of all children's rights. And when the mysteries of procreation have been so far revealed as to enable this right to be won, we shall, at the same time, Dr. Vaerting adds, renew the spiritual aspect of the nations.

The most easily ascertainable and measurable factor in the production of ability, and certainly a factor which cannot be without significance, is the age of the parents at the child's birth. It is this factor with which Vaerting is mainly concerned, as illustrated by over one hundred German men of genius concerning whom he has been able to obtain the required data. Later on, he proposes to extend the inquiry to other nations.

Vaerting finds--and this is probably the most original, though, as we shall see, not the most unquestionable of his findings--that the fathers who are themselves of no notable intellectual distinction have a decidedly more prolonged power of procreating distinguished children than is possessed by distinguished fathers. The former, that is to say, may become the fathers of eminent children from the period of sexual maturity up to the age of forty-three or beyond. When, however, the father is himself of high intellectual distinction, Vaerting finds that he was nearly always under thirty, and usually under twenty-five years of age at his distinguished son's birth, although the proportion of youthful fathers in the general population is relatively small. The eleven youngest fathers on Vaerting's list, from twenty-one to twenty-five years of age, were (with one exception) themselves more or less distinguished, while the fifteen oldest, from thirty-nine to sixty years of age, were all without exception undistinguished. Among these sons are to be found much greater names (Goethe, Bach, Kant, Bismarck, Wagner, etc.) than are to be found among the sons of young and more distinguished fathers, for here there is only one name (Frederick the Great) of the same calibre. The elderly fathers belonged to large cities and were mostly married to wives very much younger than themselves. Vaerting notes that the most eminent geniuses have most frequently been the sons of fathers who were not engaged in intellectual avocations at all, but earned their livings as simple craftsmen. He draws the conclusion from these data that strenuous intellectual energy is much more unfavourable than hard physical labour to the production of ability in the offspring. Intellectual workers, therefore, he argues, must have their children when young, and we must so modify our social ideals and economic conditions as to render this possible. That the mother should be equally young is not, he holds, necessary; he finds some superiority, indeed, provided the father is young, in somewhat elderly mothers, and there were no mothers under twenty-three. The rarity of genius among the offspring of distinguished parents is attributed to the unfortunate tendency to marry too late, and Vaerting finds that the distinguished men who marry late rarely have any children at all. Speaking generally, and apart from the production of genius, he holds that women have children too early, before their psychic development is completed, while men have children too late, when they have already "in the years of their highest psychic generative fitness planted their most precious seed in the mud of the street."

The eldest child was found to have by far the best chance of turning out distinguished, and in this fact Vaerting finds further proof of his argument. The third son has the next best chance, and then the second, the comparatively bad position of the second being attributed to the too brief interval which often follows the birth of the first child. He also notes that of all the professions the clergy come beyond comparison first as the parents of distinguished sons (who are, however, rarely of the highest degree of eminence), lawyers following, while officers in the army and physicians scarcely figure at all. Vaerting is inclined to see in this order, especially in the predominance of the clergy, the favourable influence of an unexhausted reserve of energy and a habit of chastity on intellectual procreativeness. This is one of his main conclusions.

It so happens that in my own _Study of British Genius_, with which Dr. Vaerting was unacquainted when he made his first investigation, I dealt on a larger scale, and perhaps with somewhat more precise method, with many of these same questions as they are illustrated by English genius. Vaerting's results have induced me to re-examine and to some extent to manipulate afresh the English data. My results, like Dr. Vaerting's, showed a special tendency for genius to appear in the eldest child, though there was no indication of notably early marriage in the parents.[3] I also found a similar predominance of the clergy among the fathers and a similar deficiency of army officers and physicians. The most frequent age of the father was thirty-two years, but the average age of the father at the distinguished child's birth was 36.6 years, and when the fathers were themselves distinguished their age was not, as Vaerting found in Germany, notably low at the birth of their distinguished sons, but higher than the general average, being 37.5 years. There have been fifteen distinguished English sons of distinguished fathers, but instead of being nearly always under thirty and usually under twenty-five, as Vaerting found in Germany, the English distinguished father has only five times been under thirty and among these five only twice under twenty-five. Moreover, precisely the most distinguished of the sons (Francis Bacon and William Pitt) had the oldest fathers and the least distinguished sons the youngest fathers.

I made some attempt to ascertain whether different kinds of genius tend to be produced by fathers who were at different periods of life. I refrained from publishing the results as I doubted whether the numbers dealt with were sufficiently large to carry any weight. It may, however, be worth while to record them, as possibly they are significant. I made four classes of men of genius: (1) Men of Religion, (2) Poets, (3) Practical Men, and (4) Scientific Men and Sceptics. (It must not, of course, be supposed that in this last group all the scientific men were sceptics, or all the sceptics scientific.) The average age of the fathers at the distinguished son's birth was, in the first group, 35 years, in the second and third groups 37 years, and in the last group 40 years. (It may be noted, however, that the youngest father of all in the history of British genius, aged sixteen, produced Napier, who introduced logarithms.) It is difficult not to believe that as regards, at all events, the two most discrepant groups, the first and last, we here come on a significant indication. It is not unreasonable to suppose that in the production of men of religion, in whose activity emotion is so potent a factor, the youthful age of the father should prove favourable, while for the production of genius of a more coldly intellectual and analytic type more elderly fathers are demanded. If that should prove to be so, it would become a source of happiness to religious parents to have their children early, while irreligious persons should be advised to delay parentage. It is scarcely necessary to remark that the age of the mothers is probably quite as influential as that of the fathers. Concerning the mothers, however, we always have less precise information. My records, so far as they go, agree with Vaerting's for German genius, in indicating that an elderly mother is more likely to produce a child of genius than a very youthful mother. There were only fifteen mothers recorded under twenty-five years of age, while thirteen were over thirty-nine years; the most frequent age of the mothers was twenty-seven. On all these points we certainly need controlling evidence from other countries. Thus, before we insist with Vaerting that an elderly mother is a factor in the production of genius, we may recall that even in Germany the mothers of Goethe and Nietzsche were both eighteen at their distinguished sons' birth. A rule which permits of such tremendous exceptions scarcely seems to bear the strain of emphasis.

It must always be remembered that while the study of genius is highly interesting, and even, it is probable, not without significance for the general laws of heredity, we must not too hastily draw conclusions from it to bear on practical questions of eugenics. Genius is rare and abnormal; laws meant to apply to the general population must be based on a study of the general population. Vaerting, who is alive to the practical character which such problems are to-day assuming, realises how inadequate it is to confine our study to genius. Marro, in his valuable book on puberty, some years ago brought forward interesting data showing the result of the age of the parents on the moral and intellectual characters of school-children in North Italy. He found that children with fathers below twenty-six at their birth showed the maximum of bad conduct and the minimum of good; they also yielded the greatest proportion of children of irregular, troublesome, or lazy character, but not of really perverse children who were equally distributed among fathers of all ages. The largest number of cheerful children belonged to young fathers, while the children tended to become more melancholy with ascending age of the fathers. Young fathers produced the largest proportion of intelligent, as well as of troublesome children, but when the very exceptionally intelligent children were considered separately they were found to be more usually the offspring of elderly fathers. As regards the mothers, Marro found that the children of young mothers (under twenty-one) are superior, both as regards conduct and intelligence, though the more exceptionally intelligent children tended to belong to more mature mothers. When the parents were both in the same age-group the immature and the elderly groups tended to produce more children who were unsatisfactory, both as regards conduct and intelligence, than the intermediate group.[4]

But we need to have such inquiries made on a more wholesale and systematic scale. They are no longer of a merely speculative character. We no longer regard children as the "gifts of God," flung into our helpless hands; we are beginning to realise that the responsibility is ours to see that they come into the world under the best conditions, and at the moments when their parents are best fitted to produce them. Vaerting proposes that it should be the business of all school authorities to register the ages of the pupils' parents. This is scarcely a provision to which even the most susceptible parent could reasonably object, though there is no cause to make the declaration compulsory where a "conscientious" objection existed, and in any case the declaration would not be public. It would be an advantage--though this might be more difficult to obtain--to have the date of the parents' marriage, and of the birth of previous children, as well as some record of the father's standing in his occupation. But even the ages of the parents alone would teach us much when correlated with the school position of the pupil in intelligence and in conduct. It is quite true that there are unavoidable fallacies. We are not, as in the case of genius, dealing with people whose life-work is complete and open to the whole world's examination. The good and clever child is not necessarily the forerunner of the first-class man or woman; and many capable and successful men have been careless in attendance at lectures and rebellious to discipline. Moreover, the prejudice and limitations of the teachers have also to be recognised. Yet when we are dealing with millions most of these fallacies would be smoothed out. We should be, once for all, in a position to determine authoritatively the exact bearing of one of the simplest and most vital factors of the betterment of the race. We should be in possession of a new clue to guide us in the creation of the man of the coming world. Why not begin to-day?

 

NOTES:

[1] He has further discussed the subject in _Die Neue Generation_, Aug.-Nov., 1914, and in a more recent (1916) pamphlet which I have not seen.

[2] The reference is to _The Century of the Child_, by Ellen Key, who writes (English translation, p. 2): "My conviction is that the transformation of human nature will take place, not when the whole of humanity becomes Christian, but when the whole of humanity awakens to the consciousness of the 'holiness of generation.' This consciousness will make the central work of Society the new race, its origin, its management, and its education; about these all morals, all laws, all social arrangements will be grouped."

[3] It is not only ability, but idiocy, criminality and many other abnormalities which specially tend to appear in the first-born. The eldest-born represents the point of greatest variation in the family, and the variation thus yielded may be in either direction, useful or useless, good or bad. See, _e.g._, Havelock Ellis, _A Study of British Genius_, pp. 117-120. Soeren Hansen, "The Inferior Quality of the First-born Children," _Eugenics Review_, Oct., 1913.

[4] Marro, _La Puberta_ (French translation _La Puberte_), Ch. XI.

[The end]
Havelock Ellis's essay: The Production Of Ability

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