Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) - An Index to Kinships in Near Degrees between Persons Whose Achievements Are Honourable, and Have Been Publicly Recorded by Edgar Schuster;Francis Galton
page 13 of 179 (07%)
page 13 of 179 (07%)
|
in the term of an "ingenious" artisan, and has come to be applied to
something akin to inspiration. This simply means, as I suppose, though some may think differently, that the powers of unconscious work possessed by the brain are abnormally developed in them. The heredity of these powers has not, I believe, been as yet especially studied. It is strange that more attention has not been given until recently to unconscious brain-work, because it is by far the most potent factor in mental operations. Few people, when in rapid conversation, have the slightest idea of the particular form which a sentence will assume into which they have hurriedly plunged, yet through the guidance of unconscious cerebration it develops itself grammatically and harmoniously. I write on good authority in asserting that the best speaking and writing is that which seems to flow automatically shaped out of a full mind. CHAPTER IV.--PROPORTION OF NOTEWORTHIES TO THE GENERALITY. The materials on which the subject of this chapter depends are too various to lead to a single definite and trustworthy answer. Men who have won their way to the front out of uncongenial environments owe their success principally, I believe, to their untiring energy, and to an exceptionally strong inclination in youth towards the pursuits in which they afterwards distinguished themselves. They do not seem often to be characterized by an ability that continues pre-eminent on a wider stage, because after they have fully won a position for themselves, and become engaged in work along with others who had no |
|