Einstein, the searcher

by Alexander Moszkowski

The only true, and at the same time necessary as well as sufficient, breeding is carried out by Nature herself in conjunction with social conventions, which promise the more success the less they assume the character of incubators and breeding establishments. If you wish to apply tests to discover pupils of genius in any class, examine as much as you like, excite interest and ambition, distribute prizes even, but not for the purpose of separating at short intervals the shrewd and needle-witted heads from the rest; and do not lose sight of the fact that among those who appear as the sheep as a result of these systematized tests to discover ingenuity there are many who, ten or twenty years later, will take up their positions as men of eminent talent.

There is no essential difference between the forced promotion of such pupils and the breeding of super-men according to Nietzsche's recipe as exemplified by his Zarathustra.

Assuming that super-men are justified in existing at all, they will come about of themselves, but cannot simply be manufactured. Workmen, taken as a class, represent super-men more definitely than an individual such as Napoleon or Cæsar Borgia. So the "super-scholar" exists perhaps already to-day, not as an individual phenomenon, but as a whole, representing his class. Whoever has had experience in these things will know that nowadays there are difficult subjects in which it is possible to apply to pupils of fifteen years of age tests that are far above the plane of comprehension of pupils of the same age in former times, provided that the average is considered, that no accidental or artificial separation has occurred, that no pretentiously witty questions have had to be answered, and that there has been no systematic and inquisitive search for talent.

Let us rest satisfied if we find that the sum-total of talent is continually on the increase. On the other hand, it is by no means proved that we are doing civilization a service by persisting in the impossible project of abolishing from the world the struggle for existence prescribed by Nature. It is an elementary fact, and one that is easy to understand, that many talents perish unnoticed. On the other hand, observe the long list of eminent men who fought their way upwards out of the lowest stages of existence only to recognize that the difficulties that have been overcome are mostly necessary accompaniments of talent, that is, that Nature's way of selection is to oppose obstacles and raise difficulties in order to test their powers. In the case of the poor lens-grinder Spinoza and many others ranging to Béranger, who was a waiter, what a chain of desperate experiences, yet what triumphs! Herschel, the astronomer, was too poor to buy a refracting telescope, and it was just this dispensation of poverty that made him succeed in constructing a reflecting type composed of a mirror. Faraday, the son of a blacksmith without means, made his way for years as a bookbinder's apprentice. Joule, one of the founders of the mechanical theory of heat, started as a beer-brewer. Kepler, the discoverer of the planetary laws, was descended from a poverty-stricken innkeeper. Of the members in Goethe's circle, Jung-Stilling, of whom Nietzsche was so fond, was a tailor's apprentice; Eckermann, Goethe's intimate associate, was a swine-herd, and Zelter was a mason. We could add many recent names to this list, and very many more if we continue the line backwards to Euripides, whose father was a publican and whose mother was a vendor of vegetables. This might serve as a basis for many reflections about the "upward course of the talented," and about its less favourable reverse side. For one might put the apparently paradoxical question whether a soaring career for many or all talents is a necessity for our civilization, or whether it would not be better to have a substratum interspersed with talent, to cultivate a mossy undergrowth which is to serve as nourishment for the blooming plants of the upper layer.

Maximum is not equivalent to optimum, and we learned elsewhere that Einstein is far removed from identifying them. In the previous case it was a question of the problem of population; and in the course of the discussion he mentioned that we are subject to an old error of calculation when we regard it as a desirable aim to have a maximum number of human beings on the earth. It seems, indeed, that this false conclusion is already in process of being corrected. A beginning is being made with new and very active organizations and unions whose programme is to reduce the number so that an optimum may be attainable by those left.

If we extend this line of reasoning still further, we arrive at the depressing question whether too much might not be done for talent, not only as regards breeding it, but also in favouring the greatest number. It is quite possible that in doing so, we might overlook, or take insufficient account of the harm that might be done to the lower stratum, in that we should be depriving it of forces which, according to the economy of Nature, should remain and act in concealment.

This fear, as here expressed, is not shared by Einstein. However brusquely he repudiates breeding, he speaks in favour of smoothing the way for talent. "I believe," he said, "that a sensible fostering of gifts is of advantage to humanity generally and prevents injustice being done to the individual. In great cities which give such lavish opportunities of education, this injustice manifests itself less often; but it occurs so much the more in rural districts, where there are certainly many cases of gifted youths who, if recognized as such at the right age, would attain to an important position, but who, together with their gifts, become stunted, nay, go to ruin, if the principle of selection does not penetrate to their circle."

This brings us to the most difficult and most dangerous point. The spectre of responsibility is rapping at the portals of society, and is reminding us insistently that it is our duty to see that no injustice be done to any talent that may be among us. And this duty is but little removed from the demand that it should be disburdened of the worries of daily life, for, so the moral argument runs, talent will ripen the more surely the less it has to combat these ceaseless disturbances of ordinary life.

But this thesis, so evident on moral grounds, will never be proved empirically. On the contrary, we have good reason to suppose that necessity, the mother of invention on the broader scale, will often in the case of the individual talent prove to be the mother of its best results. Goethe required for his development an unchallenged life of ease, whereas Schiller, who never emerged from his life of misery, and who, up to the time when he wrote Don Carlos, had not been able to earn sufficient with his pen to buy a writing-desk, required distress to make his genius burst into flower. Jean Paul recognized this blessing of gloomy circumstances when he glorified poverty in his novels. Hebbel followed him along this path by saying that it is more fruitful to refuse the most talented person the necessities of life than to grant them to the least gifted. For among a hundred who have been chosen by the method of sifting, there will be only one on the average who will receive the certificate of excellence in the test of future generations, for the latter use entirely different methods of sifting from that practised by a committee of examiners who expect ready answers to prepared questions.

This projects us on to the horns of a severe dilemma that scarcely allows of escape. The consciousness of duty towards the optimum expresses itself only in a maximum of assistance, and overhears the whispered objection of reason that Nature has also coarser means at her disposal to attain her ends; in her own cruelty of selection she often enough proves the truth of Menander's saying, which, freely translated, says: to be tormented is also part of man's education. The fact that Einstein—with certain reservations—favours the giving of help to the selected few, it is for me a proof, among many others, of his love towards his fellow-men, which fills his heart absolutely, all questions of relativity notwithstanding.