一直以来，天才和神童都倍受人们关注。genius一词源于拉丁语“gens”(=家族)；拉丁语词条“genius”意为“父”，来自于罗马早期，当时人们对一种神明狂热崇拜，并尊其为家族的首领。在genius的最初形态中，它与家族首领——也就是一家之长——永生的能力有关。后来，genius逐渐被用来表示人的特点；再后来， genius便用以指代一个人从他的“父亲”或精神领袖身上所传承的最佳特质。今天，人们仍然醉心于对星相和基因的研究，希望能够通过占星术或遗传学找到出色能力和个人特征的来源。

There has always been an interest in geniuses and prodigies. The word 'genius', from the Latin gens (= family) and the term 'genius', meaning 'begetter', comes from the early Roman cult of a divinity as the head of the family. In its earliest form, genius was concerned with the ability of the head of the family, the paterfamilias, to perpetuate himself. Gradually, genius came to represent a person's characteristics and thence an individual's highest attributes derived from his 'genius' or guiding spirit. Today, people still look to stars or genes, astrology or genetics, in the hope of finding the source of exceptional abilities or personal characteristics.

天才和天赋的概念已经成了民间文化的一部分，但人们对其所持的态度却是矛盾的。我们羡慕天才却不信任他们。在天才的神话里，人们普遍认为：如果人们在某方面很有天赋，那么他们一定会在其他方面有所不足；知识分子往往不切实际；神童过于才华横溢而早早地“泯然众人矣”；天才往往秉性古怪；天才的体质都很孱弱；天才和疯子只有一线之隔；天赋是家族遗传的；天才很聪明，所以不需要任何特别的帮助；天才和高智商是一回事；有些种族比其他人更聪明、更有音乐天赋或更有数学头脑；天才总被埋没，得不到应有的回报；逆境出英才：天才有责任运用他们的天赋。英语中有很多这样的表达，如：highbrow(自以为文化修养很高的人)，egghead(书呆子)，blue-stocking(女学者)，wiseacre(自以为聪明的人)，know- all(自以为无所不知的人)，boffin(科学家)；另外，对于很多人来说intellectual是一个贬义词。

19世纪，人们对于天才的本质表现出相当大的兴趣，而且做了不少针对著名神童的研究。或许现在对于我们来说，大部分对天才的研究中包含以下两个最重要的方面：其一，早期教育中父母和教师对孩子进行的频繁的鼓励和教导对孩子在智力、艺术或音乐方面的发展是有益的，但这也给孩子以后对生活的适应方而带来了巨大的困难；其二，老师和学校常常认识不到孩子所具备的才能。尽管在研究中搜集的轶闻趣事、显著相似点以及例外状况都颇为吸引人，但是，想要利用这些研究得出的证据也有一定困难，因为它们不符合我们今天所谓的常模参。换句话说，比如当我们在搜集有关早期疾病、养育方式、学校教育等信息时，我们也要考虑到在其他的历史资料中所记载的、关于这种情况在当时有多么普遍或不寻常的信息。例如，当时的婴儿死亡率很高，人的寿命也比今天短得多，家教对于贵族和富裕家庭司空见惯，恃强凌弱和体罚在最好的私立学校里也屡见不鲜，而且大多数的研究对象来自特权阶级。直到20世纪，随着儿科学和心理学的发展，相关研究才得以在更加客观的基础上进行——尽管依然并不总是很科学。

The concept of genius and of gifts has become part of our folk culture, and attitudes are ambivalent towards them. We envy the gifted and mistrust them. In the mythology of giftedness, it is popularly believed that if people are talented in one area, they must be defective in another, that intellectuals are impractical, that prodigies burn too brightly too soon and burn out, that gifted people are eccentric, that they are physical weaklings, that there's a thin line between genius and madness, that genius runs in families, that the gifted are so clever they don't need special help, that giftedness is the same as having a high IQ, that some races are more intelligent or musical or mathematical than others, that genius goes unrecognised and unrewarded, that adversity makes men wise or that people with gifts have a responsibility to use them. Language has been enriched with such terms as 'highbrow', 'egghead', 'blue-stocking', 'wiseacre', 'know-all', 'boffin' and, for many, 'intellectual' is a term of denigration.

无论如何进行定义，天才只不过是从历史的迷雾之中凸显出来的一座座山峰，只有特定的观察者通过他们特殊的角度才能看到。而改变观察者和视角，拨开些许迷雾，许多不同的山峰出现在眼前。我们用“天才”这个词来指代那些因其出色成就而被我们所认可的人，那些人几乎处在了人类能力连续体的顶端，往下依次是平凡者、平庸者和无能者。Samuel Johnson博士的观察还是颇有道理的：“真正的天才在各方面都拥有着巨大的潜能，很偶然地被决定了向一个特定的方向发展。”但我们可能会对“各方面”这一点有所保留，因为我们怀疑是否所有天才音乐家都可以成为天才科学家，反之亦然。但是有一点毋府置疑：正是偶然的决定培养或触发了他们的才能，使之有了用武之地，让他们可以成功地把自己的能量注入其中。在芸芸众生之中，有能之士成千上万，有男有女，有成人也有孩童。

天才的作品或神童的成就令人欣赏、喜爱和惊叹之处在于其体现了他们的技能和本领，这些技能和本领虽然与我们的相似，但远远高于我们的水平。然而事实可以证明他们的智力和我们的并非迥然不同，比如，像Kepler和Einstein这样的科学家历尽艰辛所取得的科学发现现已成为学童的常识性知识；像Paul Klee这样的画家所创造的曾经非比寻常的形状和颜色很快就出现在了我们穿着的面料上。当然，这并没有降低天才成就的价值。他们的成就与普通人的相比就好像在四分钟内跑完一英里的运动员之于普通慢跑者一样，前者远远超越了后者。

The nineteenth century saw considerable interest in the nature of genius, and produced not a few studies of famous prodigies. Perhaps for us today, two of the most significant aspects of most of these studies of genius are the frequency with which early encouragement and teaching by parents and tutors had beneficial effects on the intellectual, artistic or musical development of the children but caused great difficulties of adjustment later in their lives, and the frequency with which abilities went unrecognised by teachers and schools. However, the difficulty with the evidence produced by these studies, fascinating as they are in collecting together anecdotes and apparent similarities and exceptions, is that they are not what we would today call norm-referenced. In other words, when, for instance, information is collated about early illnesses, methods of upbringing, schooling, etc. , we must also take into account information from other historical sources about how common or exceptional these were at the time. For instance, infant mortality was high and life expectancy much shorter than today, home tutoring was common in the families of the nobility and wealthy, bullying and corporal punishment were common at the best independent schools and, for the most part, the cases studied were members of the privileged classes. It was only with the growth of paediatrics and psychology in the twentieth century that studies could be carried out on a more objective, if still not always very scientific, basis.

只有在承认了每个人的大脑都是独特的这一前提下，认为天才和有天赋者的大脑独一无二、异于常人这一想法才能算是合理的。教育的目的就在于使我们更加与众不同，而在受教育的过程中，我们可以从比我们更有天赋的人的成就中学有所得。但是，在效仿天才或鼓励我们的孩子这样做之前，我们应该注意到，从他们身上学到的某些东西结果可能并不令人愉快。我们可能会羡慕他们的成就和名誉，但是也应该看到他们为此所付出的代价，看到他们的锲而不舍，专心致志，献身精神，自我约束，他们对自己时间和精力的严格要求，以及多少次他们不得不表现出极大的勇气来保持自身的正直或艰难地走成功。

天才和天赋只是具有相对意义的描述性术语，并没有实质内容。我们顶多可以通过对其进行定义并将其置于某一语境中来赋予它们一些准确的意思。但是，无论怎样做，我们都不能蒙蔽自己，认为神童或天才与其他人不一样，只是他们对自己能力表现开发的程度与我们不同而已。

Geniuses, however they are defined, are but the peaks which stand out through the mist of history and are visible to the particular observer from his or her particular vantage point. Change the observers and the vantage points, clear away some of the mist, and a different lot of peaks appear. Genius is a term we apply to those whom we recognise for their outstanding achievements and who stand near the end of the continuum of human abilities which reaches back through the mundane and mediocre to the incapable. There is still much truth in Dr Samuel Johnson's observation, 'The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction'. We may disagree with the 'general', for we doubt if all musicians of genius could have become scientists of genius or vice versa, but there is no doubting the accidental determination which nurtured or triggered their gifts into those channels into which they have poured their powers so successfully. Along the continuum of abilities are hundreds of thousands of gifted men and women, boys and girls.

What we appreciate, enjoy or marvel at in the works of genius or the achievements of prodigies are the manifestations of skills or abilities which are similar to, but so much superior to, our own. But that their minds are not different from our own is demonstrated by the fact that the hard-won discoveries of scientists like Kepler or Einstein become the commonplace knowledge of schoolchildren and the once outrageous shapes and colours of an artist like Paul Klee so soon appear on the fabrics we wear. This does not minimise the supremacy of their achievements, which outstrip our own as the sub-four-minute milers outstrip our jogging.

To think of geniuses and the gifted as having uniquely different brains is only reasonable if we accept that each human brain is uniquely different. The purpose of instruction is to make us even more different from one another, and in the process of being educated we can learn from the achievements of those more gifted than ourselves. But before we try to emulate geniuses or encourage our children to do so we should note that some of the things we learn from them may prove unpalatable. We may envy their achievements and fame, but we should also recognise the price they may have paid in terms of perseverance, single-mindedness, dedication, restrictions on their personal lives, the demands upon their energies and time, and how often they had to display great courage to preserve their integrity or to make their way to the top.

Genius and giftedness are relative descriptive terms of no real substance. We may, at best, give them some precision by defining them and placing them in a context but, whatever we do, we should never delude ourselves into believing that gifted children or geniuses are different from the rest of humanity, save in the degree to which they have developed the performance of their abilities.