Analyzing Character: The New Science of Judging Men; Misfits in Business, the Home and Social LifeBlackford, Katherine M. H. (Katherine Melvina Huntsinger)
Science
Analyzing Character: The New Science of Judging Men; Misfits in Business, the Home and Social Life
Blackford, Katherine M. H. (Katherine Melvina Huntsinger)
Characters and characteristics; Success
The greatest artists, musicians, writers, and thinkers are men of genius
and are, therefore, in a sense, abnormal. Lombroso, in his work, "The Man
of Genius," produces a great deal of interesting evidence showing the
similarity between the manifestations of genius and those of insanity.
Lombroso's conclusions have been more or less discredited, but later
investigations and practically all students agree that the true genius is
more or less an abnormality. In his case, some one or two faculties are
developed out of all reasonable proportion to the others. Naturally
enough, in such cases there is no need for a vocational counsellor. The
genius devotes himself to his music, or his painting, or his writing,
because there is nothing else he can do, nothing else in which he takes
any interest, and because the inner urge is so powerful as to be
irresistible.
But grossly deceived are those who imagine that the fire of genius burns
away any necessity for drudgery. On the other hand, genius seems to
consist very largely of a capacity for almost infinite drudgery. A
prominent engineer once said to us that all great inventions which become
commercially practicable are the joint product of a genius and a drudge,
or rather, of a genius and a corps of drudges. The genius, in a flash of
inspiration, conceives a new idea. Having conceived it, he can only sit
down and wait for a new inspiration, while the drudges take his idea, work
out its details, modify and conform it to conditions, and, finally,
harness it to the commercial wagon. This sounded well and has a great deal
of truth in it. Yet the most slavish drudge in the Edison laboratories and
factories is Edison himself. The hardest worker in all the Westinghouse
plant was Westinghouse. And who but the Wright brothers themselves made a
commercial success of the aeroplane? Sometimes, it is true, one man
conceives an idea which he is unable to work out and which must be made
practical by others, but more often than not he stumbles on the idea more
by accident than because he is looking for it. So the young man or the
young woman who has hopes of winning fame in the world of art, music, or
literature should assay himself or herself first of all for a willingness
to work, to work hard, and to work endlessly.
INDICATIONS OF ENERGY
Such energy is indicated by the large nose, high in the bridge, which
admits large quantities of oxygen into the lungs; by high cheek bones,
oftentimes by a head wide just above the ears, by square hands and
square-tipped fingers, by hard or elastic consistency of fibre.
Persistence and patience are indicated by brunette coloring and plodding
by a well-developed and rather prominent jaw and chin. Havelock Ellis and
other anthropologists have noted the fact that dark coloring is more
frequently found in artists and actors than light hair, eyes, and skin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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