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Hereditary Genius
15
Everybody who has trained himself to physical exercises discovers the
extent of his muscular powers to a nicety. When he begins to walk, to row,
to use the dumb bells, or to run, he finds to his great delight that his thews
strengthen, and his endurance of fatigue increases day after day. So long as
he is a novice, he perhaps flatters himself there is hardly an assignable limit
to the education of his muscles; but the daily gain is soon discovered to
diminish, and at last it vanishes altogether. His maximum performance
becomes a rigidly determinate quantity. He learns to an inch, how high or
how far he can jump, when he has attained the highest state of training. He
learns to half a pound, the force he can exert on the dynamometer, by
compressing it. He can strike a blow against the machine used to measure
impact, and drive its index to a certain graduation, but no further. So it is in
running, in rowing, in walking, and in every other form of physical exertion.
There is a definite limit to the muscular powers of every man, which he
cannot by any education or exertion overpass.
This is precisely analogous to the experience that every student has had of
the working of his mental powers. The eager boy, when he first goes to
school and confronts intellectual difficulties, is astonished at his progress.
He glories in his newly-developed mental grip and growing capacity for
application, and, it may be, fondly believes it to be within his reach to
become one of the heroes who have left their mark upon the history of the
world. The years go by; he competes in the examinations of school and
college, over and over again with his fellows, and soon finds his place
among them. He knows he can beat such and such of his competitors; that
there are some with whom he runs on equal terms, and others whose
intellectual feats he cannot even approach. Probably his vanity still
continues to tempt him, by whispering in a new strain. It
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