MATHEMATICAL PRODIGIES.
They with the pen or pencil problems solved;
He, with no aid but wondrous memory.
Prominent among the precocious mathematicians of the present day is a colored boy in Kentucky, named William Marcy, whose feats in mental arithmetic are truly wonderful. His powers of computation appear to be fully equal to those of Bidder, Buxton, Grandimange, Colburn, or Safford. He can multiply or divide millions by thousands in a few minutes from the time the figures are given to him, and always with the utmost exactness. Recently, in the presence of a party of gentlemen, he added a column of figures, eight in a line, and one hundred and eighty lines, making the sum total of several millions, within six minutes. The feat was so astounding, and apparently incredible, that several of the party took off their coats, and, dividing the sum, went to work, and in two hours after they commenced produced identically the same answers. The boy is not quite seventeen years of age; he cannot read nor write, and in every other branch of an English education is entirely deficient. It is worthy of remark that mathematics is the only department of science in which such feats of imbecile minds can be achieved. The supposition would not, a priori, be admissible; but frequent facts prove it. A negro, a real idiot, was not long since reported in Alabama, who could beat this Kentuckian in figures, but could scarcely do any thing else worthy of a human intellect. Precocious mathematicians, not imbecile, have usually turned out poorly; few of them, like Pascal, have shown any general capacity. These facts suggest inferences unfortunate for mathematical genius, if not for mathematical studies. They have sublime relations, in their “mixed” form, with our knowledge of the universe; but their relations to genius—to human sentiments and sensibilities—to the moral and ideal in humanity,—are, to say the least, quite equivocal. The calculating power alone would seem to be the least of human qualities, and to have the smallest amount of reason in it; since a machine like Babbage’s can be made to do the work of three or four calculators, and better than any of them.