Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and HygieneHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Adolescence; Children -- Health and hygiene; Educational psychology
Lancaster's summaries show that of 100 actors, the average age of
their first great success was exactly 18 years. Those he chose had
taken to the stage of their own accord, for actors are more born than
made. Nearly half of them were Irish, the unemotional American stock
having furnished far less. Few make their first success on the stage
after 22, but from 16 to 20 is the time to expect talent in this line,
although there is a second rise in his curve before and still more
after 25, representing those whose success is more due to intellect.
Taking the average age of 100 novelists when their first story met
with public approval, the curve reaches its highest point between 30
and 35. Averaging 53 poets, the age at which most first poems were
published falls between 15 and 20. The average age at which first
publication showed talent he places at 18, which is in striking
contrast with the average age of inventors at time of the first
patent, which is 33 years.
A still more striking contrast is that between 100 musicians and 100
professional men. Music is by far the most precocious and instinctive
of all talents. The average age when marked talent was first shown is
a little less than 10 years, 95 per cent showed rare talent before 16,
while the professional men graduated at an average age of 24 years and
11 months, and 10 years must be added to mark the point of recognized
success. Of 53 artists, 90 per cent showed talent before 20, the
average age being 17.2 years. Of 100 pioneers who made their mark in
the Far West, leaving home to seek fortunes near the frontier, the
greatest number departed before they were 18. Of 118 scientists,
Lancaster estimates that their life interest first began to glow on
the average a little before they were 19. In general, those whose
success is based on emotional traits antedate by some years those
whose renown is more purely in intellectual spheres, and taking all
together, the curves of the first class culminate between 18 and 20.
While men devoted to physical science, and their biographers, give us
perhaps the least breezy accounts of this seething age, it may be,
because they mature late, nearly all show its ferments and its
circumnutations, as a few almost random illustrations clearly show:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account