By the time Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 5 years old he had composed his first clavier pieces. Before he reached puberty his symphonies and sonatas had made his name familiar throughout Europe.
To what was his precocity attributable? "He owed all to the unfathomable and inscrutable largess of Mother Nature in collaboration with the intelligent and inexorable training imposed by an earthly father,'' says "The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians.''
John Stuart Mill, the 19th-century philosopher of liberalism, Thomas Babington Macaulay, historian and statesman, and Albert Einstein, the physicist and mathematician, were bright youngsters. All, however, were so late in beginning to speak that their parents were troubled.
Almost identical tales, surely apocryphal, are told of Mill and Macaulay's first words. Mill first spoke after his mother had given him medicine, and Macaulay after a lady had spilled hot tea in his lap. In each case the women had expressed concern for the boys. Each supposedly replied, "Thank you, madam, the agony is now much abated.''
Einstein was supposedly 6 when he uttered his first words, "This soup is too hot,'' to which his mother replied, "Why have you not spoken before now?'' "Because,'' Einstein said, "until now everything was in order.''
James H. Hammond, the brilliant John C. Calhoun's political lieutenant, eulogized his mentor noting that "Mr. Calhoun had not youth. ... He sprang into arena like Minerva from the head of Jove, fully clothed in armor: a man every inch himself, and able to contend with any other man.''
Hyperbole is forgivable in a funeral oration, but the point that Calhoun showed exceptional intelligence and maturity at a young age is undeniable.
Occasionally the question arises, how was it that the 13 colonies, with a population about the size of Mississippi's today, produced at once Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, et al., whereas 50 states, several score times as populous, can produce not one statesman of comparable stature?
Leaders of distinction, it seems, are as rare as children of great learning or accomplishment. Why?
We recall Jonathan Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.''
Today's bright child, of Mozartian or Millian aptitude, would not be able to pursue his genius. Whether in public or private school our current young genius would languish with others of his age. Instead of translating Homer or writing for the clavier, he would read "Run, Spot, Run,'' or something as inane.
Classroom inanities are wonderful antidotes to genius. The child with too much spunk can be conformed to the pace of his classmates by Ritalin.
Socialization is an egalitarian value that trumps genius, and the school is the place of its inculcation. Young geniuses, however, like older ones, tend to be loners, oddballs impervious to social redemption. It is hard to imagine a child capable of grasping Immanuel Kant who would enjoy tossing a jackstone in a friendly game with a classmate.
Any meager social skills gained by association with classmates would be offset by the obliteration of her Muse. Grade schools nourish the mediocre, but they are poisonous to the genius.
Sigmund Freud noted in "Civilization and its Discontents'' that democracies were "psychologically impoverished,'' in that individuals of the leader type (geniuses of a kind different from the intellectual giants) do not acquire the importance that natural endowment and upbringing cause them to crave.
In "The Closing of the American Mind,'' Allan Bloom noted that "democracy is hostile to the desire for political glory and usually prevents its fulfillment.'' The students of the 1960s, he says, substituted "conspicuous compassion'' for a frank admission of political ambition. The 60s radicals masqueraded "tyrannical impulses ... as compassion,'' and "the love of glory was disguised as love of equality.''
The campus radicals of the 60s are today's leaders, determined to deceive us into believing they feel our pain. Our electorate would not vote for a politician as haughty as Washington, who would not condescend to spuriously bare his soul to Oprah.
Abraham Lincoln had an affinity for the common man that would appeal to the modern egalitarian sensibility, but no one with his face could win the vote of a couch-potato polity. Politicians are nowadays celebrities and ought not only look like Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts, but sink to the same vacuity.
Mother Nature has ever dealt genius with a sparing hand, whether of intellect or leadership, and there is no reason to think she is more parsimonious today than before. In a democracy, however, the confederacy of dunces is vigilant, always ready to suppress genius.
But hope persists: America is blessed with plenty of money and can purchase abroad the scientists and scholars to rectify the domestic shortage. Asia continues to furnish what atrophied Afro-European stock cannot.
Sadly, political leadership cannot be imported. The prescient founders established a government that not even empowered mediocrities have been able to ruin. We tremble when we reflect, however, that nothing is foolproof.
Having pointed out democracy's shortcomings, I reiterate Winston Churchill's observation that democracy is the worst form of government, except for the others.