"There is?"
"He's got a very rare type of mind. It's probably perfectly balanced." The little man lit his pipe and continued: "The vast majority of us have some sort of imbalance, mentally. He hasn't. When I say imbalance, I mean the sort of thing that makes for genius, a phenomenal memory, an outstanding, effortless talent, amnesia, any form of insanity, or even something like a violent temper. Anything, so to speak, overemphasized."
"Is it physical? I mean, does it have anything to do with the size or weight of the brain, or anything like that?"
"You can take the brain of a genius and that of an ordinary person of average intelligence, and find them exactly the same in measurements and tissue condition. The popular conception of the genius as a man with a bulging forehead is so much nonsense. Plenty of lunatics and retarded individuals have bulging foreheads."
"Then what does it have to do with?"
"Ah! That's the big question. Nobody knows. You can take two men, equal physically in every respect, equal in upbringing, education, health, and with the same sized brain. One of them might turn out to be a genius, the other an average individual, and nobody knows what makes the difference. Nobody knows what makes an infant prodigy, or what it is which enables a child of two to read easily, or a kid of five or six to play some instrument as if he'd been at it for years or compose symphonies, or master advanced mathematics. Same answer. Nobody knows. It's got nothing to do with heredity. So few geniuses have had genius offspring that they form exceptions to the rule. Again, why does an infant prodigy sometimes lose his gift or talent entirely as he grows older? We don't know. All we know is that the gift or talent is there, but where it comes from, or why it is in one brain and not in another, we don't know. But surely you don't have to have me to tell you all this, Phil? What's on your mind?"
"Listen to this," Snow said, and went to the tape recorder.
He rewound the tape to its beginning, depressed the switch marked Play, and presently they heard the two voices, Snow's and Richardson's.
"Now!" said Snow as the point on the tape approached.