The former, that is to say,
may become the fathers of eminent children from the period of sexual
maturity up to the age of forty-three or beyond. When, however, the
father is himself of high intellectual distinction, Vaerting finds that
he was nearly always under thirty, and usually under twenty-five years
of age at his distinguished son's birth, although the proportion of
youthful fathers in the general population is relatively small. The
eleven youngest fathers on Vaerting's list, from twenty-one to
twenty-five years of age, were (with one exception) themselves more or
less distinguished, while the fifteen oldest, from thirty-nine to sixty
years of age, were all without exception undistinguished. Among these
sons are to be found much greater names (Goethe, Bach, Kant, Bismarck,
Wagner, etc.) than are to be found among the sons of young and more
distinguished fathers, for here there is only one name (Frederick the
Great) of the same calibre. The elderly fathers belonged to large
cities and were mostly married to wives very much younger than
themselves. Vaerting notes that the most eminent geniuses have most
frequently been the sons of fathers who were not engaged in
intellectual avocations at all, but earned their livings as simple
craftsmen. He draws the conclusion from these data that strenuous
intellectual energy is much more unfavourable than hard physical labour
to the production of ability in the offspring. Intellectual workers,
therefore, he argues, must have their children when young, and we must
so modify our social ideals and economic conditions as to render this
possible.
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