BookRix

When Paul Morphy Plays Seven Games Of Chess At Once And Blindfold, When
Young Colburn Gives _Impromptu_ Solution To A Mathematical Problem
Involving fifty-Six Figures, We Are Struck With Hopeless Wonder: Such
Power Is Separated by The Very Extent Of It From Our Mental Operations.
But When We Further Observe That These Feats Are Attended by Little Or
No Fatigue,--That This Is The Play, Not The Tension Of Faculty, We
Recognize A New Kind, Not Merely A New Degree, Of Intelligence. These
Men Seem To Leap, Not Labor Step By Step, To Their Results. Colburn Sees
The Complication Of Values, Morphy That Of Moves, As We See The Relation
Of Two And Two. What Is Multiform And Puzzling to Us Is Simple To Them,
As The Universe Lies Rounded and Is One Thought In the Original Mind. We
Seek In vain For The Secret Of This Mastery. It Is Private,--As Deeply
Hidden From Those Who Have As From Those Who Have It Not. They Cannot
Think Otherwise Than So, And To This Exercise Have Been Provoked by
Every Influence In life. The Boy Who Is An Organized arithmetic And
Geometry Will Count All The Hills Of Potatoes And Reckon The Kernels Of
Corn In a Bushel, And His Triangles Soon Begin To Cover The Barn-Door.