Mind in the making : a study in mental development / by Edgar James Swift.

  • Edgar James Swift
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mind in the making : a study in mental development / by Edgar James Swift. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    efforts were always desultory, and became more and more rare until at length, when the hour of his school exercises arrived, Patrick was scarcely ever to be found.” 1 Instead, he went fishing and hunting for days and weeks at a time. His biographer, Wirt, could not learn “ that he gave in his youth any evidence of that precocity which sometimes distinguishes uncommon genius. His companions recollect no instance of pre- mature wit, no striking sentiment, no flash of fancy, no remarkable beauty or strength of expression; and no indication, however slight, either of that impassioned love of liberty, or of that adventurous daring and in- trepidity, which marked so strongTy his future charac- ter. So far was he, indeed, from exhibiting any one prognostic of this greatness, that every omen foretold a life, at best of mediocrity, if not of insignificance. His person is represented as having been coarse, his man- ners uncommonly awkward, his dress slovenly, his con- versation very plain, his aversion to study invincible, and his faculties almost entirely benumbed by indo- lence. No persuasion could bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the forest, like one of the aborigines of the country, and divided his life between the dissipation and uproar of the chase and the languor of inaction.” 2 Started in business as a merchant by his father, his indolence brought speedy failure. Married at eighteen without any means of support, his father and father-in- law came to his aid with a little farm, the work of which he so hated that relief soon came in failure. Another at- tempt at business, followed by bankruptcy, and he de- 1 Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, by William Wirt, 1852. 2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 24.