Alger (1) sees isolation as a necessary corollary of the insistence upon perfection and accuracy which characterizes genius:
A passion for perfection will make its subject solitary as nothing else can. At every step he leaves a group behind. And when, at last, he reaches the goal, alas, where are his early comrades?
These references to the early experience of the genius in meeting the uncordial response of the world as constituted, with its resultant tendency to isolation, connect themselves with an account found in the Apocryphal New Testament, in a portion called the Hebrew Gospels.
And Joseph, seeing that the child was vigorous in mind and body, again resolved that he should not remain ignorant of the letters, and took him away, and handed him over to another teacher. And the teacher said to Joseph: I shall teach him the Greek letters, and then Hebrew. He wrote out the alphabet and began to teaching him in an imperious tone, saying: Say Alpha. And he gave him his attention for a long time and he made no answer, but was silent. And he said to him: If thou art really a teacher, tell me the power of the Alpha and I will tell thee the power of the Beta. And the teacher was enraged at this, and struck him.
SPECULATION AND COMMENT CONCERNING GENIUS
The ecology of genius has evoked speculation and comment.
Thus Churchill (3) says:
Mountain regions discourage the budding of genius because they are areas of isolation, confinement, remote from the great currents of men and ieas that move along river valleys. They are regions of much labor and little leisure, of poverty today and anxiety for the morrow, of toil-cramped hands and toil-dulled brains. In the fertile alluvial plains are wealth, leisure, contact with many minds, large urban centers where commodities and ideas are exchanged.
The origins of genius have also engaged the attention of speculative thinkers. For instance, Dixon (4) and also Hirsch (7) offer the hypothesis that racial mixture is an antecedent of genius. Kretschmer (8) would by inference subscribe to this theory, since he holds that genetically genius results from the union of unlike elements, to which he refers as "bastardization":
The investigation of the family history of highly talented individuals demonstrates very clearly the effect of biological "bastardization," and shows why it may lead to the production of genius. . . . It results in a complicated psychological structure, in which the components of two strongly opposing germs remain in polar tension throughout life. . . . This polar tension acts as an effective and dynamic factor and produces in the genius the labile equlibrium, the effective super-pressure, that continuous, restless impulsiveness, which carries him far beyond placid, traditional practice and the simple satisfaction of life. On the other hand, in regard to his intellectual abilities, the polar tension creates in the genius his wide mental horizon, the diverse and complicated wealth of his talent, the all-embracing personality.
Kretschmer also allies himself with those who hold the concept of genius as closely related to insanity, quoting selected cases in proof: