viciousness but because he wanted to see what would happen. Played innumerable pranks on his schoolmates and teachers, who did not understand him, so that he was constantly in mischief and upset all discipline. After he had entered Herbart Hall1 his inquisitive tendency was made use of through experimental studies of all kinds, in the science laboratory, in the workshop, in road and building construction, and in many other ways. He was given opportunity to apply his great energy in numerous outdoor games and sports, playing Indian, building wigwams, camp-fires, etc. His book-studies were carefully co-ordinated with this life activity. He stayed only a few months, and left altogether rearticulated, mentally and emotionally. Since then he has been standing at the head of his classes in select private schools.

The case of the little 52-year-old boy, W. S. (Case 19), mentioned in the previous group, may be referred to here, if we should be inclined to consider his linguistic and mathematical tendencies sufficiently pronounced to outweigh his other possibilities; this, however, would perhaps be a premature conclusion. Reference may be made to the historical personality of Ulysses S. Grant (Case 27). When he retired from the army after the Mexican War he failed in every business pursuit in which he engaged. He was distinctly of a non-practical type from the point of view of commercial efficiency. But he found his place again as a leader of men when his time came.

1At that time used as a laboratory school of the "National Association for the Study and Education of Exceptional Children," at "Watchung Crest," Plainfield, N. J.

Fourth Group: Children of Neuropathic and Psychopathic Tension.1

Here we have the genius and the crank; the great leader of men, the prince of commerce, the poet, and the philosopher; the musical prodigy and the artist of high degree, with his Bohemian contempt for conventionalities. The distinction between representatives of this group and the previous group is not always easy to make, and depends largely upon the psychic aspect of the case upon the equipoise of the nervous system and the stability of the mental stamina. Sometimes it is merely a matter of degree, or grade. An individual of one-sided development may easily slip into the truly pathological class at any given moment of tension.

In some individuals of this fourth group sentiment is apt to overpower the reasoning faculties, and hysterical

1 It may be well to insert here the definitions of various terms as used by the medical profession:

Neurasthenia: exhaustion of nerve force. Neuropathic: pertaining to nervous diseases. Neurosis: a nervous affection without lesion. Neurotic: nervous, pertaining to neuroses; pertaining to the nerves or the nervous system. Neurology: science of nervous structure and function. Neuropsychosis: a combined nervous and mental disease. Psychiatry: the treatment of mind diseases. Psychosis: any disease of the mind. Psychotherapy: treatment of disease by mental influence. Psychopathology: the pathology of mental diseases. Psychoneurosis: a functional mental disease. Psychopathy: any disease of the mind (cf. psychosis). Psychasthenia: mental fatigue (sometimes used in the sense of mental weakness=feeble-mindedness).

It will be seen that the terms are not very clearly differentiated in every way; later writers employ them in individual ways. Some insist that every psychopathic condition is a neuropathic condition, and vice versa. But neurologic terms are mostly used to denote physiologic function; psychologic terms, to denote mental function. These two functions are, however, so minutely interrelated that substitution of terms cannot always be avoided.

conditions are frequent. Or there is cleverness of extreme acumen untempered by qualities of the heart. There is always some psychic defect present which endangers the mental equilibrium. In this sense genius is akin to insanity. The greatest criminals of history belong to this class, whether they were international crooks, or sitting on thrones, or in the counting-houses. In them the moral tone is unhealthy, self-control is weakened, the ego is exaggerated and morbidly sensitive. In certain individuals of this class overefficiency in one direction is offset by complete underdevelopment in all others; here we have the idiots-savants.

Individuals of the idiot-savant type exhibit the most prodigious ability in a certain well-circumscribed field while all others lie fallow. Musical prodigies, lightning calculators, and memory prodigies of this type may be clearly idiotic and feeble-minded, and their special gift appears as the result of a mechanical process in the brain which has no significance for the intellectual value of the individual. The very facility of a man like Inaudi (Case 28) to give immediate answers to extremely complex mathematical problems with large rows of figures eliminates conscious thought and judgment entirely, and places him in the class of freaks of nature. In a large institution for the feeble-minded the author saw a young man, distinctly idiotic, who was able to tell you instantly, when told the date of your birthday, on what day of the week it would fall that year, or on what weekday you were born (Case 29). Such persons are mere living calculating-machines. The study of their cases has this significance that it will throw light upon certain mechanical and subconscious processes in the central nervous system which are involved in mental operations.

According to Tredgold, there is a man in the Earlswood Asylum, England, who entered at the age of 15 and is now over 70. He did not walk until 7 years old, was never tolerated in school and learned to write and spell only a few simple words. His memory was good and he showed an early aptitude for drawing. He was very deaf. After sixty years' work, this man has over fifty excellent crayons to his credit, wonderful carvings in wood and ivory, and a 10-foot model of a fullrigged man-of-war of the old wooden type, built to the minutest detail. He has also constructed a huge and awe-inspiring mechanical doll, 13 feet high. By a wonderful internal machinery this figure will turn its head, raise its arms, open and shut its eyes and mouth, protrude the tongue, etc. Yet this man is feeble-minded, superlatively egotistic, glories in self-praise, and is stubborn and emotionally unstable. He is a genius, yet cannot take care of himself in the outside world except under supervision. He is considered an idiot-savant. But what might have been his possibilities if properly diagnosed in childhood? (Case 30.)

Wunderkinder. Another class in this group, the one to which the German term "Wunderkinder" has been applied, develops marvellous excellency without completely destroying the balance of the mind. Genius represents the most brilliant type of this order, and is a "Wunderkind" grown up.

Doctor Paul Carus says this about the genius:1

The soul of a genius consists of motor ideas which are correct representations of things in the objective world and of the work to be performed. They interact without the laborious effort of conscious concentration. They act with machine-like accuracy,

1 "Our Children,” p. 154

so as to allow attention to be concentrated upon the main purpose of the work and not upon its details. A genius originates partly by inheriting a disposition for easily acquiring certain functions, or generally by possessing the knack of viewing the world correctly. Whatever may be the cause of genius, it certainly shows itself in the playful ease with which work of great importance is performed. Genius is instinct on a higher

plane.

...

This would show a relationship between the genius and the idiot-savant, inasmuch as there is the mechanical element in the make-up of both. There is more of instinctive impulse than of conscious application. But the difference consists in the use for higher purposes of activity which the genius consciously makes of his instinctive endowments. It should be noted that Carus recognizes the part which motor ideas play in the constitution of the genius, a fact to which reference will be made later.

An Early Reader.-What this mechanical element is may become clearer from a report published in the Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung (Langensalza, March, 1910), on one Otto Pöhler (Case 31), the early reader of Braunschweig.

He began to read letters, words, and figures at the tender age of 14 years. The case of this boy, who was at the time of the writing of the article nearly 17, has been carefully studied, and cranial measurements have been taken. It appeared that when he was a child his occipital bone was unusually prominent, and the axes of the eyes were farther apart than in average children. Doctor Oswald Berkhan comments as follows: "Professor Hermann Munk has shown that the convolutions of the hindbrain have a close connection with the visual function, and that in this region (he calls it the visual spheres = 'Sehsphären') those

1Cf. the accomplishments in this field of Winifred Sackville Stoner, Jr., p. 108.