PHILISTINE AND GENIUS

By Boris Sidis, M.A., Ph. D., M.D.

(Published ca. 1910)

      The love of knowledge, the love of truth for its own sake, is entirely neglected in our modern scheme of education.

      In the education of the young generation the purpose is to bring up the child as a good man, as a liberal-minded citizen, devoted soul and body to the interests of social welfare. This purpose in the education of the young citizen is of the utmost importance in every society, but it is a vital need in a democratic society. We do not want narrow-minded patriots devoted to party-factions, nor bigoted sectarians, nor greedy entrepreneurs fastening in trusts, like so many barnacles, on the body-politic. We do not want ringleaders and mobs, unscrupulous bosses and easily led voters. What we need is men having at heart the welfare of their fellow-men.

      The purpose of education provided by the nation for its young generation is the rearing of healthy, talented, broad-minded citizens. We need, above all, good citizens, active and intelligent, with a knowledge of life and with a delicate sense of discrimination and detection of evil in all its protean forms; we need strong-minded citizens with grit and courage to resist oppression and root out evil wherever it is found. A strong sense of recognition of evil should be the social sense of every well-educated citizen as a safeguard of social and national life. The principle of evil under all its guises is at the basis of the true education of man.

      Is it not strange that this vital principle of education, the recognition of evil,--a fundamental principle with the great thinkers of humanity, -- should remain so sadly neglected by our educators and public instructors? Our educators are owl-wise, our teachers are pedants and all their ambition is the turning out of smooth, well-polished philistines. It is a sad case of the blind leading the blind.

      Awaken in early childhood the critical spirit of man; awaken, early in the child’s life, love of knowledge, love of truth, of art and literature for their own sake, and you arouse man’s genius. We have average mediocre students, because we have mediocre teachers, department-store superintendents, clerkly principals and deans with bookkeeper’s souls, because our schools and colleges deliberately aim at mediocrity.

      "Ribot in describing the degenerated Byzantine Greeks tells us that their leaders were mediocrities and their great men commonplace personalities. Is the American nation drifting in the same direction? It was the system of cultivation of independent thought that awakened the Greek mind to its highest achievements in arts, science and philosophy; it was the deadly Byzantine bureaucratic red tape with its cut-and-dried theological discipline that dried up the sources of Greek genius. We are in danger of building up a Byzantine empire with large institutions and big corporations, but with small minds and dwarfed individualities. Like the Byzantines we begin to value administration above individuality and official, red-tape ceremonialism above originality.

      We wish even to turn our schools into practical school-shops. We shall in time become a nation of well-trained clerks and clever artisans. The time is at hand when we shall be justified in writing over the gates of our school-shops "mediocrity made here!"

      I have spoken of the fundamental law of early education. The question is "how early?" There are, of course, children who are backwards in their development. This backwardness may either be congenital or may be due to some overlooked pathological condition that may be easily remedied by proper treatment. In the large majority of children, however, the beginning of education is between the second and third year. It is at that time that the child begins to form his interests. It is at that critical period that we have to seize the opportunity to guide the child’s formative energies in the right channels. To delay is a mistake and a wrong to the child. We can at that early period awaken a love of knowledge which will persist through life. The child will as eagerly play in the game of knowledge as he now spends the most of his energies in meaningless games and objectless silly sports.

      We claim we are afraid to force the child’s mind. We claim we are afraid to strain his brain prematurely. This is an error. In directing the course of the use of the child’s energies we do not force the child. If you do not direct the energies in the right course, the child will waste them in the wrong direction. The same amount of mental energy used in those silly games, which we think are specially adapted for the childish mind, can be directed with lasting benefit, to the development of his interests in intellectual activity and love of knowledge. The child will learn to play at the game of knowledge-acquisition with the same ease, grace and interest as he is showing now in his nursery-games and physical exercises.

      If, however, you do not neglect the child between the second and the third year, and see to it that the brain should not be starved, should have its proper function, like the rest of the bodily organs, by developing an interest in intellectual activity and love of knowledge, no forcing of the child to study is afterwards requisite. The child will go on by himself,--he will derive intense enjoyment from his intellectual activity, as he does from his games and physical exercise. The child will be stronger, healthier, sturdier than the present average child, with its purely animal activities and total neglect of brain-function. His physical and mental development will go apace. He will not be a barbarian with animal proclivities and a strong distaste for knowledge and mental enjoyment, but he will be a strong, healthy, thinking man.

      Besides, many a mental trouble will be prevented in adult-life. The child will acquire knowledge with the same ease as he learns to ride the bicycle or play ball. By the tenth year, without almost any effort, the child will acquire the knowledge which at present the best college-graduate obtains with infinite labor and pain. That this can be accomplished I can say with authority; I know it as a fact from my own experience with child life.

      From an economical standpoint alone, think of the saving it would ensure for society. Consider the fact that our children spend nearly eight years in the common school, studying spelling and arithmetic, and do not know them when they graduate! Think of the eight years of waste of school buildings and salaries for the teaching force. However, our real object is not economy, but the development of a strong, healthy, great race of genius.

Boris Sidis – 1

      Boris was born into an upper middle class family in Berdich, the state [near the city of] of Kiev in the Ukraine or Little Russia. At the age of eight he knew several of the Semitic languages and was well read in history which was one of his lifelong favorites. He composed poems, while still a youngster, that were put to music and sung by the townspeople. His family line can be traced eight hundred years. His parents died in the first World War. He had two brothers and two sisters. One sister is a medical doctor, as is an older brother. The younger brother was chief engineer at the Nepa Plant in Russia in 1928-1929 when Dr. Sarah Sidis went to Russia on a tour of Europe as an American representative of the League of Women Voters. The remaining sister is a wife of a lawyer. The home life of Boris was pleasant. His father was a moderately well to do merchant; he had a governess up until he was eight or so. There were few servants in his father’s house, however.

      Boris had always planned on attending the University of Moscow and when he was in his middle teens he thought he would be able to go to Keshnoff, an academy which comparable to preparatory schools in this country and included junior college. Although he was under siege he was allowed to enter at the same time as his group of friends who were mostly a year or so older than he. All in all there were about a dozen students in their group and all managed to board at the same house.

      On Sunday afternoons they continued their home town practice of going out into the surrounding countryside and teaching the peasants. The Czarist police began watching the boys when their unusual behavior of teaching peasants became known and after about a month the police appeared at their boarding house. The landlady, sympathetic to Boris’ dream of education for all the Russian people, heard of the police’s impeding search and quickly burned all their teaching materials that she found in Boris’ room. The twelve were arrested. Two were hanged as an object lesson before the others, and the rest were sent to Siberia. As walking in the snow barefooted and chained together for eight-hour periods was common practice, only six survived the journey.

      Boris was confined to solitary confinement. This period when he was forced to be alone in terrible discomfort for days on and was often attributed by Boris himself as one of his greatest creative periods. He body was confined but he could still think. By concentrating on subject matter that took his awareness away from his misery, he was able to survive.

      The governor learned that while he was the youngest of the prisoners he had been the leader and had been taken from his cell, dressed, and brought to a big party he was lavishly wined and dined. After the banquet he was told he had a chance to go home if he would fill in the details of what the movement had been all about. Education was considered a political movement because it interfered with the social hierarchy that supported the political structure of Russia at this time. He refused and was taken back to prison, this time to be put into a body-sized cell that did not allow for reclining except with the knees against the wall. He passed out finally and when he next awoke, found himself in a prison hospital--two months had passed. He recovered and they sent him back to prison.

      Meanwhile his father had been using every influence he had to get Boris paroled from prison on the basis that he never leave his home town again, report to the parole officers at certain times the remainder of his life. However, further education would be impossible for him because of the fact that he had been a political prisoner. He was finally released and went back home, but being unable to get anymore education or to be unable to put into practice theories of education for everyone, he was cut off from all that he had ever loved. He prevailed upon his father to get him out of the country. This was arranged and Boris and two or three others who had been sent back to their home towns came to New York with $500 that Boris’ father had given him. They arrived in this country in 1876. Between them the money did not last long.

      Boris’ first job was with the Singer Sewing Machine Company for $5.00 a week. He lasted a week and lived on this for three weeks with a herring and black bread diet. He spent all of the time he could in the library. His next job was in a New Jersey hat pressing factory. He then decided he could find the kind of atmosphere he sought in Boston as it had the reputation as the cultural center of America. It was winter time and the room he finally got for as little as possible was so cold that a glass of water left overnight would be ice in the morning. The room only cost a dollar a week and this left him free from unskilled jobs longer so as to enable him to spend the time in libraries he so coveted. After being in this country four or five months, he spoke and wrote English. The people who rented his room to him suggested he tutor other young Russians in English. One of the first articles he wrote in this country he sold to the Boston Transcript.

      Next year he got a room with a little more heat but he still only had the survivor coat in which he had arrived from Russia. He stopped by a Russian tailor, a man about forty years old, to get a tear in his coat sewn. The man did not speak English and could not read. His one great ambition was to read Spinoza. They made a bargain; Boris would teach him to read Spinoza and the tailor would make him a winter coat. Within a year the man was attending lectures on Spinoza and within another year he had joined an American union and became a union leader who lectured to immigrant and American laborers. This was Boris’ first student in America.

      While still in Europe, Boris had written a novel, longhand and in Russian which he called Helena. When he entered Harvard he took it to an English professor and it became misplaced. He never wrote the novel again but named only his daughter Helen.

      During the presidency of William Jennings Bryan the Silver Standard inspired Boris to write an article about the reaction to the "silver craze" and he took it to the Century. Several months passed and he heard nothing so under the urging of Sarah, then a student of his, he went to the office to inquire about it. He was informed there probably had been no return address or postage and the office attendant showed no great curiosity as to what had happened to it. The editor of the periodical happened in the office during the conversation and noticed Boris’ agitation inquired as to the subject matter of the article. Boris answered that it was about the hysteria of the crowds over the silver craze. "Oh," the editor replied, "something psychological." Boris informed him he didn’t wish to argue over the title of the subject matter (a word unfamiliar to him at the time) he was just interested in getting it back. The editor, impressed by the young foreigner’s vehemence, banged his hand on the desk in union with Boris and the office boy found it promptly. The editor read it, found it pertinent to the common political causes and paid Boris $100 for it.

      The silver craze was actually of less interest to Boris than was the American reaction to it. To give knowledge to others or show them how they could find it was the main motivating factor in Boris’ life. He brought many of his best loved books with him from Russia and gave them to the Boston public library so that others may be able to enjoy them also. He never sought money; in fact, he shied away from it after seeing what it did to others. He always feared the distracting effects of being able to earn large amounts of it.

      Sarah was taking lessons from him by now and it was common for him to talk over his dreams and ambitions with her. He was an intellectual and a social idealist. (William absorbed his father’s ambitions and his dislikes for anything involving the desperate acquisition of wealth).

      On entrance into Harvard the examining board exempted Boris from taking exams on everything but physics and Latin. He took courses in these two subjects for one semester along with courses in economics under Cummings; philosophy under Royce. Professor Lyons helped him get these courses free of charge by scholarship as he knew how little money the young Russian student had. Sarah talked to Dr. Royce after the first semester’s work to see if he would use his influence to get Boris to enroll in Harvard for a degree--attaching of degrees to learning always annoyed him. Boris did enroll and his first year he took literature from Oliver Wendell Holmes; psychology from William James; ethics from Palmer; experimental psychology from Munestraberg [Münsterberg]. Sarah encouraged him to go and talk to his teachers to see if he could not get through in two years instead of the regular four. The faculty decision was to graduate him in one year Magna Cum Laude. Elliot was president of Harvard at that time.

      The next year he got a Fellowship through Edward Lyons from the J. P. Morgan fund. He was offered $750 for study here of $1,000 for study abroad. He was married by then so he remained in this country. 1897, his third year at Harvard and the year that Sarah was to graduate from Boston Medical School, he was working on his Ph.D. and writing Psychology of Suggestion. He did experiments at home with patients and volunteers.

      Sarah had entered Boston Medical School in September of 1893, the fall before she and Boris were married (Christmas vacation). Boris registered for the Ph.D. in 1895 but did very little work on it the first year. He did not want the degree and it was Sarah who realized the practical importance of such recognition.

      In 1894 he got his Master’s. At the end of his first Ph. D. year William James said he was going to send him to someone to talk to who might be able to help him find a position. He sent him to Teddy Roosevelt in New York, for it was just before he was to leave this office for that of the Presidency. Boris talked to him for several hours and Teddy was so impressed he made him stay overnight so that he could take Civil Service exams early the next morning. He was made Associate Director of the New York State Hospitals for the Insane and $50,000 was appropriated to improve conditions of treatment. Boris went all over the state lecturing to the various heads of hospitals--a young man without his Ph. D. or medical degree (both of which he later received).

      At this stage in his career he helped establish the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. He first approached Morton Prince, then professor at Tuft’s and later at Harvard, on the ideas. Prince had received the Nobel prize and was independently wealthy. Morton Prince was the head of the periodical; William James and Boris Sidis were on the staff along with two neurologists, Putman and Taylor. That year Boris was alone in New York as Sarah was still in school but she visited him on Easter vacation as he never liked to be without her.

      Boris came in contact with the man when he had been returned to his father’s house. He lived there, in the same room without ever leaving or taking his eyes from the antics of the child-like man for about four weeks. Sarah was still studying in Boston and couldn’t be there. Boris did not undress or lie down to sleep; he got down on the floor to watch the man and studied him from all angles. Then Boris started to train him as a child. He tried to instill in this child all the old knowledge that he had lost. When the boy was sleeping, Boris listened to the verbalizing of his dreams and quizzed him on whatever words came out. He used the semi-conscious state and pumped and prodded at whatever came up. Other doctors had used the day hours but Boris made use of the sleeping hours and came to realize that the semi-hypnoidal state was more revealing than any observation during waking hours. After about three months from the time Boris observed and worked with young minister, he was back in the ministry, married and as happy as if nothing had ever happened. Many fingers were pointed at Boris because was then without a Ph.D. or medical degree, but Dr. White (Binghampton State Hospital) was one of the few to appreciate to his treatment.

This gave birth to the book Multiple Personality. Boris never received any money for his services and this is typical of his interest and perseverance along the creative lines that interest him.

* * * * *

(Philistine and Genius)

Nervous Ills, Their Cause and Cure

The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology

Psychology of Laughter

Symptomatology, Psychognosis and Diagnosis of Psychopathic Diseases

The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases

The Source and Aim of Human Progress

The Psychology of Suggestion

Multiple Personality

Psychopathological Researches by Sidis, White and Parker

An Experimental Study of Sleep

The Doctrine of Primary and Secondary Sensory Elements

The Nature of Hallucinations

A Study of Galvanometric Deflections by Sidis and Kalmus

        Director Psychopathological Hospital and Psychopathic Laboratory, New York Infirmary for Women and Children - 1901

        Director, Sidis Psychotherapeutic Institute, Portsmouth, N.H. -

        Associate Editor, Archives of Neurology and Psychopathology

(As told to secretary

      Sarah’s first vivid remembrance occurs when she was about four when she recalls Sunday walks around the village park, woods and streets, known as family promenading. Sarah was started on household tasks by the time she was five. Her father made a little footstool for her and she made the beds and dusted the house. Her older sister, by three and a half years, did the family cooking. As new babies survived, the girls within the family took on the babies as little mothers so that as the family increased in size, the parents became accustomed to think of their younger offspring as the charges of two or three older girls. "Sarah, your baby is crying," was not a strange comment for Sarah’s mother to make. Sarah learned to read and write at the age of six and soon after this the father taught her rudimentary arithmetic so that she could help him in his figures. He was a wheat merchant. He considered her the brightest of the lot. She was known for her energy even as a child and despite all he chores she could always dance if a tune were available. Sarah resembled her mother the most and was known for her sparkling eyes.

      The most important incident that decided the family to come to this country was a robbery ...[illegible]... were carried off and the house damaged by the razing. Her mother was knocked unconscious, her father’s teeth knocked out and one baby killed. Her father armed himself with a rake, ran outside and challenged them. Father took the little money there was hidden from the bandits and with Sarah came to this country. It took a year for the older sister to earn enough money to get here and then the three set about saving every penny they could so that they could send for the family.

      On the trip over they had been stuck in Hamburg because of lack of funds for two tickets and Sarah had made the rounds begging for half-fare ticket. She was finally granted this on an English boat and they traveled in steerage with the chickens. She won a contest for dancing on the trip over and the seamen, taken by her vivaciousness and smile, kept her and her father in food. When they arrived in New York, they had fifty cents.

      Sarah had a letter to a struggling young plumber’s wife in Boston whose mother had been a friend of her mother’s. They spent their last cent to get there. They lived with her three or four weeks and she would not take payment. She knew Sarah had to have the foreignness taken off before she could get a job and bought her a corset and a hat to make her look older. A cot was set up for the father in the kitchen and Sarah had a bed from two dining room chairs in the living room. Their first money went for American clothes that were so necessary in order to get a decent job.

      Sarah was introduced to several young men while working and living with the Barnetts but was not interested in marriage and babies as she had had too many years of that already. She wanted to learn so that she would not have to follow the road of most immigrant girls, or girls in general of that day, and find a young man who showed promise and tie herself down early in life to childbirth and homemaking.

      When she was fifteen, her older sister came and the two girls found several young immigrants who thought as they did about education and they arranged for young college students to tutor the group for a dollar a week. By now Sarah was a seamstress in an expensive dress shop and most of the money was being saved for the passage money for the rest of the family in Russia. When enough money had been saved the family was sent for. Sarah found an apartment for the family with a bathroom two flights down. After the family came there were always many parties. Her mother found company nice and with one daughter who did all the cooking and another who did all the cleaning, entertaining was not too difficult.

      The student group that Sarah and her older sister Ida started lasted about a year and then dissolved. Sarah by then had heard of Boris and how he gave lessons to those who really wanted to learn, so she went to him for lessons. Sarah was the only girl who kept up the lessons for any length of time as the rest gradually found husbands and settled down. It was Boris who suggested to her that she could go to college. She had never been to high school and her family was disgusted with the idea. Imagine the nerve of a sixteen year-old immigrant girl who had to work eight or ten hours a day to support her family thinking she had the ability or the time for a college education!

      Boris began teaching her the high school curriculum and after six months she went to take her college entrance exams. She was passed with honors and enrolled in Boston Medical School. A good friend of Boris’, a Rabbi in the newly established Jewish Reform Church, lent Sarah the needed forty dollars for her first semester’s tuition. This was the only money either of them ever borrowed. When it came time for her to pay her second semester, she went to the Dean and told him she did not have the money and would have to drop out as she would not borrow it from anyone. He said if she did not come he would send a policeman for her and that she did not have to pay. She never paid after that.

      Christmas vacation of her first year in medical school she and Boris decided to get married. He was attending Harvard at the time. Sarah was under-age. As marrying a very poor young man who would probably never have any money, since he currently showed no interest in it, was obviously not her family’s idea of a good suitor, they decided to go to Providence and get married very quickly. The Rabbi friend of Boris arranged to have a friend of his, a Supreme Court judge of Rhode Island, at his home to perform the ceremony, and the young people spent the weekend as the guests of the Rabbi.

        They had rented two attics their first year of married life as it enabled both of them to study and cost no more than one room. Boris did not have to pay tuition at Harvard and with tutoring students they managed to get along. Sundays, Sarah spent the day cleaning her parent’s home and doing the week’s washing. She still sewed a good deal and made all her own and her husband’s clothes. They subsisted mainly on black coffee and second day bread and it used to be a standard joke as to whether they would ever be able to afford cream for their coffee. It was quite a while before they were able to afford a little milk. Neither minded because they were used to hard work and doing without and they had their common dreams and were able to get the learning they both desired so much.