Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. F. W. H. Myers
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Now among these thirteen names we have two men of transcendent, and three of high ability. What accounts have they given us of their methods?
Of the gift of Gauss and Ampère we know nothing except a few striking anecdotes. After manifesting itself at an age when there is usually no continuous supraliminal mental effort worth speaking of, it appears to have been soon merged in the general blaze of their genius. With Bidder the gift persisted through life, but grew weaker as he grew older. His paper in Vol. XV. of the Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers, while furnishing a number of practical hints to the calculator, indicates also a singular readiness of communication between different mental strata. "Whenever," he says (p. 255) "I feel called upon to make use of the stores of my mind, they seem to rise with the rapidity of lightning." And in Vol. CIII. of the same Proceedings, Mr. W. Pole, F.R.S., in describing how Mr. Bidder could determine mentally the logarithm of any number to 7 or 8 places, says (p. 252): "He had an almost miraculous power of seeing, as it were, intuitively what factors would divide any large number, not a prime. Thus, if he were given the number 17,861, he would instantly remark it was 337×53. … He could not, he said, explain how he did this; it seemed a natural instinct to him."
Passing on to the two other men of high ability known to have possessed this gift, Professor Safford and Archbishop Whately, we are struck with the evanescence of the power after early youth—or even before the end of childhood. I quote from Dr. Scripture Archbishop Whately's account of his powers.
There was certainly something peculiar in my calculating faculty. It began to show itself at between five and six, and lasted about three years. … I soon got to do the most difficult sums, always in my head, for I knew nothing of figures beyond numeration. I did these sums much quicker than any one could upon paper, and I never remember committing the smallest error. When I went to school, at which time the passion wore off, I was a perfect dunce at ciphering, and have continued so ever since.
Still more remarkable, perhaps, was Professor Safford's loss of power. Professor Safford's whole bent was mathematical; his boyish gift of calculation raised him into notice; and he is now a Professor of Astronomy. He had therefore every motive and every opportunity to retain the gift, if thought and practice could have retained it. But whereas at ten years old he worked correctly in his head, in one minute, a multiplication sum whose answer consisted of 36 figures, he is now, I believe, neither more nor less capable of such calculation than his neighbours.
Similar was the fate of a personage who never rises above initials, and of whose general capacity we know nothing.
"Mr. Van R., of Utica," says Dr. Scripture on the authority of Gall, "at the age of six years distinguished himself by a singular faculty for calculating in his head. At eight he entirely lost this faculty, and after that time he could calculate neither better nor faster than any other person. He did not retain the slightest idea of the manner in which he performed his calculations in childhood."
Turning now to the stupid or uneducated prodigies, Dase alone seems to have retained his power through life. Colburn and Mondeux, and apparently Prolongeau and Mangiamele, lost their gift after childhood.
On the whole the ignorant prodigies seldom appear to have been conscious of any continuous logical process, while in some cases the separation of the supraliminal and subliminal trains of thought must have been very complete. "Buxton would talk freely whilst doing his questions, that being no molestation or hindrance to him."[29] Fixity and clearness of inward visualisation seems to have been the leading necessity in all these achievements; and it apparently mattered little whether the mental blackboard (so to say) on which the steps of the calculation were recorded were or were not visible to the mind's eye of the supraliminal self.
I have been speaking only of visualisation; but it would be interesting if we could discover how much actual mathematical insight or inventiveness can be subliminally exercised. Here, however, our materials are very imperfect. From Gauss and Ampère we have, so far as I know, no record. At the other end of the scale, we know that Dase (perhaps the most successful of all these prodigies) was singularly devoid of mathematical grasp. "On one occasion Petersen tried in vain for six weeks to get the first elements of mathematics into his head." "He could not be made to have the least idea of a proposition in Euclid. Of any language but his own he could never master a word." Yet Dase received a grant from the Academy of Sciences at Hamburg, on the recommendation of Gauss, for mathematical work; and actually in twelve years made tables of factors and prime numbers for the seventh and nearly the whole of the eighth million—a task which probably few men could have accomplished, without mechanical aid, in an ordinary lifetime. He may thus be ranked as the only man who has ever done valuable service to Mathematics without being able to cross the Ass's Bridge.
No support is given by what we know of this group to the theory which regards subliminal mentation as necessarily a sign of some morbid dissociation of physical elements. Is there, on the other hand, anything to confirm a suggestion which will occur in some similar cases, namely, that—inasmuch as the addition of subliminal to supraliminal mentation may often be a completion and integration rather than a fractionation or disintegration of the total individuality—we are likely sometimes to find traces of a more than common activity of the right or less used cerebral hemisphere? Finding no mention of ambidexterity in the meagre notices which have come down to us of the greater "prodigies," I begged the late Mr. Bidder, Q.C., and Mr. Blyth, of Edinburgh (the well-known civil engineer and perhaps the best living English representative of what we may call the calculating diathesis), to tell me whether their left hands possessed more than usual power. And I find that in these—the only two cases in which I have been able to make inquiry—there is somewhat more of dextro-cerebral capacity than in the mass of mankind.
We may now pass on to review some further instances of subliminal co-operation with conscious thought;—first looking about us for any cases comparable in definiteness with the preceding; and then extending our view over the wider and vaguer realm of creative and artistic work.
But before we proceed to the highly-specialised senses of hearing and sight, we must note the fact that there are cases of subliminal