第1段

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.

一直以来，人们对天才和神童都有着浓厚的兴趣。词语"genius"源自拉丁文的"gens"（家族）和"genius"（创造者）一词，源自早期罗马家族中作为家族领袖的神明崇拜。最初，genius涉及到家族领袖——父长（paterfamilias）延续自己的能力。逐渐地，genius演变为代表一个人的特点，进而代表个体的最高品质，这些品质源于他们的"genius"或者说指引精神。如今，人们仍然寄望于星座、基因、占星术或遗传学，希望能找到卓越能力或个人特质的源头。

第2段

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.

天才和天赋的概念已成为我们民间文化的一部分，而人们对此持有矛盾的态度。我们羡慕那些有才华的人，但也对他们持怀疑态度。在有关天才的神话中，人们普遍相信，如果一个人在某个领域有天赋，那么在其他方面就一定有缺陷；知识分子是不切实际的；神童过早地闪耀并最终燃尽；有才华的人都很古怪；他们身体虚弱；天才与疯子只有一线之隔；天才在家族中遗传；有才华的人聪明过人，不需要特殊帮助；天赋和高智商是一回事；某些种族比其他种族更聪明、更擅长音乐或数学；天才未被认可和奖赏；逆境使人变得聪明；有天赋的人有责任利用自己的才能。语言中也出现了许多这样的词汇，如"文化人"，对许多人来说，它是一种贬义词。

第3段

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.

19世纪对天才的本质产生了相当大的兴趣，并产生了一些关于著名神童的研究。对我们来说，这些关于天才的研究最重要的两个方面可能是：父母和导师对儿童的早期鼓励和教育在其智力、艺术或音乐发展上产生了积极作用，但后来却给他们的生活带来了很大困难；以及教师和学校经常无法认识到他们的才能。然而，这些研究所产生的证据存在一定的困难，虽然它们在收集各种轶事、表面相似性和例外情况方面非常迷人，但它们不符合我们今天所称之为"标准参照"的定义。换句话说，例如，当我们汇总关于早期疾病、养育方法、教育等信息时，我们还必须考虑到其他历史来源中关于那个时代这些是普遍还是特殊的信息。例如，婴儿死亡率高，寿命比今天短得多，家庭教育在贵族和富人家庭中很常见，霸凌和体罚在最好的私立学校中很常见，而且大多数研究对象都是来自特权阶级的人。直到20世纪的儿科学和心理学的发展，研究才能更加客观，尽管并不总是非常科学。

第4段

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.

然而，无论如何定义天才，他们只是在历史的迷雾中显现出来的一座座高峰，只能被特定观察者从他们特定的视角所看见。改变观察者和视角，消除一些迷雾，就会出现不同的高峰。天才是我们称赞因其杰出成就而被我们所认可的人，他们站在人类能力连续体的尽头附近，这个连续体从平庸和普通一直延伸到无能。塞缪尔·约翰逊博士的观察仍然具有很大的道理，“真正的天才是一个具有广泛普遍能力的思维，偶然地朝某个特定方向发展”。对于"广泛"这个词，我们可能持有不同的观点，因为我们怀疑并不是所有具有天赋的音乐家都能成为具有天赋的科学家，反之亦然，但是不能否认的是，正是那种偶然的决定，培养或引发了他们的天赋，使之成功地倾注到他们已经取得巨大成就的领域中。在能力连续体中，有数以百万计的有才华的男人、女人、男孩和女孩。

第5段

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.

我们欣赏、享受或对天才作品或神童的成就感到惊叹的是他们展示出的技能或能力，这些能力与我们自己的相似，但又远远超过我们。然而，他们的思想并没有不同于我们自己，这可以从科学家如开普勒或爱因斯坦的艰苦探索成为学童常识这一事实得出证明，同时像保罗·克利（Paul Klee）这样的艺术家所创造的曾经被认为是奇怪的形状和色彩，如今很快就出现在我们穿的织物上。这并不是为了贬低他们的成就，他们的成就超过我们自己，就像争分夺秒的人超过了我们的慢跑一样。

第6段

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.

如果我们接受每个人的大脑都是独特不同的这一观点，那么将天才和有天赋的人视为拥有独特不同大脑的人也是合理的。教育的目的是使我们之间的差异更大，在接受教育的过程中，我们可以从那些比我们更有才华的人的成就中学习。但是，在我们试图效仿天才或鼓励我们的孩子效仿之前，我们应该注意到，我们从他们那里学到的一些东西可能是令人不愉快的。我们可能会羡慕他们的成就和声名，但我们也应该认识到，他们为此付出的代价可能是坚持不懈、专注一意、奉献一切、对个人生活的限制、对精力和时间的要求，以及他们经常需要展示出巨大的勇气来保持自己的正直或者取得成功。

第7段

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.