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Precocity and Genius Charles Sanders Peirce [?] The Nation, Jan. 13, 1910, 31- 32. The phenomenon presented at Harvard University the other day, when young Sidis, a boy of eleven, gave a paper on Four-Dimensional Bodies before the Mathematical Society, is something quite different from that of the arithmetical prodigy, or lightning calculator. By some peculiar endowment, these prodigies are enabled to perform almost instantaneously arithmetical operations which, by the usual processes, involve a great amount of labor. Some of them have even been able to answer, in a few seconds or minutes, questions relating to the decomposition of large numbers into prime factors, which do not admit of being answered by any known mathematical process other than that of repeated and tedious trial. What special faculty makes these feats possible is a mystery upon which, we believe, very little light has 1

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Precocity and Genius

Charles Sanders Peirce [?]

The Nation, Jan. 13, 1910, 31-32.

 

        The phenomenon presented at Harvard University the other day, when young Sidis, a boy of eleven, gave a paper on Four-Dimensional Bodies before the Mathematical Society, is something quite different from that of the arithmetical prodigy, or lightning calculator. By some peculiar endowment, these prodigies are enabled to perform almost instantaneously arithmetical operations which, by the usual processes, involve a great amount of labor. Some of them have even been able to answer, in a few seconds or minutes, questions relating to the decomposition of large numbers into prime factors, which do not admit of being answered by any known mathematical process other than that of repeated and tedious trial. What special faculty makes these feats possible is a mystery upon which, we believe, very little light has been thrown; but it may be set down as certain that the faculty is something very different from intellectual power in the ordinary sense—not only different from general intellectual power, but also different from that special form of intellectual power which is the equipment of the great mathematician. These prodigies are unable to say how they arrive at their results; nor do they build up a system which carries them beyond the achievement of particular feats and leads to the establishment of new truths or of fruitful generalizations.

        Though the reports of what was actually contained in young Sidis's communication to the Harvard Mathematical Society are too meagre to

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permit of any appraisal of its value, enough is indicated, both in that report and in the boy's previous history, to show that he possesses extraordinary intellectual power in general and that in particular he has the makings of a great mathematician. If, as it appears, he has discovered—or rediscovered—and demonstrated fundamental theorems concerning figures in four-dimensional space, one cannot help feeling that he gives promise of adding one to the short and splendid list of those whose names are landmarks in the history of mathematics. That list, brief as it is, includes several the early dowering of whose genius is not less remarkable than the greatness of their powers. Pascal, without access to any books or instruction in geometry, constructed for himself, before the age of eleven, a geometrical system substantially equivalent to the first book of Euclid, and before he was sixteen completed a wonderful treatise on conic sections, based chiefly on his own researches; Galois was killed in a duel at the age of twenty, but left behind him work the development of which has given occupation to two generations of mathematicians; William Rowan Hamilton, a prodigy in languages in his early boyhood, acquired, without other teaching than that of the books he seized upon and devoured, such mastery of the most profound parts of mathematics that the astronomer royal for Ireland is said to have declared, "This young man, I do not say will be, but is, the greatest mathematician of the age." Young Sidis's attainments in languages, chemistry, and other subjects, and his later intense devotion to mathematics, suggest the story of Hamilton; and his choice of vector analysis—an outgrowth of Hamilton's quaternoins—as his first subject of study at Harvard, is at least an interesting coincidence.

         The idea that precocity—or at any rate precocity of any such character as this—generally dies down into mediocrity has very little foundation. Some actually go so far as to think that the very fact of unusual brilliancy in a child at so early an age is a prophecy of little ability when he grows up; a notion that rests upon the same fallacy as that which regards the children of highly gifted parents as less likely to be highly endowed than other children. They are vastly more likely to be

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thus endowed—as Galton conclusively demonstrated in his "Hereditary Genius"; but great genius is so extremely rare that, in spite of the chances being enormously in their favor, compared with other persons, the children of highly gifted parents have still only a moderate chance of attaining similar distinction. And it is the same way with children who early show great talent. But, of course, there is precocity and precocity; in some cases, we see merely flashes of an early maturity; in others we see early maturity; in others we see early indications of great and unusual powers.

        Another question raised in connection with young Sidis is that of training versus native endowment. Dr. Boris Sidis, the eminent psychologist who is the boy's father, is said to regard his son's achievements as indicating that by proper methods of instruction several years could be cut off from the time actually employed in bringing boys up to the college or university stage. With the proposition itself we have no particular fault to find; but that young Sidis's exploits serve in any degree to establish it we deny without hesitation. The part played by native genius is so manifestly predominant in this case as to nullify any general application. This is evident on the face of the matter; but confirmation of the strongest kind is given, if any were needed, in such precedents as those of Pascal and Hamilton, both of whom made the amazing mathematical conquests of their youth without any outside help whatsoever. And it is equally unnecessary to consider another view that has been ascribed—though, like the one just mentioned, probably erroneously ascribed—to Dr. Sidis. This is the theory that, with a proper personal hold on a boy, you can turn him out a mathematician or anything else. There is no doubt a wide range in which most young men of intellectual power can freely choose their field of distinction; but it is equally certain that the range is strictly limited in most cases. The faculty for mathematics is as distinctive as that for poetry or music; if you take enough pains, you can train almost anybody of ordinary endowment to turn out verses or to compose some kind of music; but you can't make him a poet or a musician. To be a mathematician you

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must have mathematical insight, the mathematical vision; and if young Sidis, like young Hamilton, has that along with remarkable gifts for language and other things, this does nothing whatever to disprove the existence of the thousands of boys who, while gifted in other directions, are blind to the beauties and deaf to the harmonies of mathematics. In fact, we are loath to believe that from the performances of one extraordinary child a man of science would feel disposed to draw any conclusion at all that runs counter to the results of the age-long experience of mankind.

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 BOY PRODIGY OF HARVARDCurrent Literature, 1910, 48, 291-93.

ALTHO the eleven-year-old scientist of Harvard, William James Sidis, fell ill after his recent lecture on the fourth dimension, there is no evidence whatever that his studies have undermined his health. On the contrary, he seems to enjoy enviable bodily vigor. Rumors that he may

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never return to his advanced studies invariably follow his preparations for vacation; but, as vacation and rest enter into his course of education, these rumors need not be taken seriously. In the meantime, the father of the prodigy, Professor Boris Sidis, one of the most eminent of living psychologists, has given, in response to requests innumerable, an authentic account of the scope and aims of his son's intellectual career. "I do not believe in the prevailing system of education for children," writes Professor Sidis. "I have educated my son upon a system of my own, based to some extent upon principles laid down by Professor William James," This system, Professor Sidis insists, has justified itself by its results in the case of the boy prodigy of Harvard. He knows as much at eleven; the father says, "as a gifted professor of mature years," and when he grows up "he will amaze the world." Nor is the result due to heredity or to abnormality of the child's brain. The results achieved in the case of this eleven-year-old lad are due wholly to the methods of training pursued. To quote the father's words as given in a recent issue of the New York American;

        "He is not a freak who can perform vast sums in arithmetic, as some children have done, but he understands the underlying principles of mathematics and whatever he learns.

        "You must begin a child's education as soon as he displays any power to think. Everybody knows how hard it is to learn a new language late in life. The same holds good of all our acquisitions. The earlier they arc acquired the more truly they become part of us.

        "At the same time keep alive within the child the quickening power of curiosity. Do not repress him. Answer his questions; give him the information he craves, seeing to it always that he understands your explanations.

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        "You need not he afraid of overstraining his mind. On the contrary, you will be developing it as it should be developed―will he habituating the child to avail himself of the great fund of latent energy which most of us, to our detriment, so seldom use,

        "The law of ‘reserve mental energy,' as set forth by Professor William James, has much to do with the progress of my son. Professor James explained that the power of getting what is popularly known as 'second wind' might be controlled at will and enable us to accomplish daily and regularly what we can all do under stress of circumstances. If you do prolonged mental work you will find yourself grow tired, but if you keep on working the feeling of fatigue will pass away. You are drawing on your reserve mental energy.

        "As a baby grows more rapidly after birth than at any other time, so his brain develops most rapidly then and becomes less sensitive to impressions as he grows older. The process of education cannot begin too soon.

        "I began to train my boy in the use of his faculties immediately after his birth. He was bound to use them anyway, and therefore I took care that he used them properly. I taught the child to observe accurately, to analyze and synthetize and make sound deductions. Neither his mother nor myself confused him with baby talk, meaningless sounds or foolish gestures, and thus, altho he learned to reason so early, his mind was no more burdened than that of the ordinary child.

        "I knew that as soon as he began to speak his first interest would be in the sounds he was uttering, and so I trained him to identify the elements of sound. Taking a box of large alphabet blocks I named each to him day after day.

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        "In this way he learned to read and spell correctly before he was two years old. What was still more important he learned to reason correctly.

        "When he learned that he could express himself more quickly and clearly on the typewriter than in handwriting, his natural eagerness led him to master the typewriter.

        "I taught him to count with similar blocks, and then, wishing to familiarize him with ideas of time, as well as the meaning and use of numbers, I placed in his hands several calendars and taught him their use. At five from his own studies of these he had devised a method of telling on what day of the week any given date would fall.

        "His interest in anatomy was suddenly aroused by his discovering a skeleton in our house, a relic of my student days. It was almost gruesome to see the enthusiasm with which he studied the bones, identifying each by close comparison with the plates in a text hook on anatomy, Within a very short time he knew so much about the structure of the body that he could pass a medical student's examination creditably at six years of age.

        "His great interest in words gave me an opportunity to start him in the study languages. As I am a polyglot myself, I was usually able to answer his questions about the meaning of words in foreign languages, and to put him in the way of learning more. Thus after English he learned Russian, French, German, Latin and Greek."

        By far the most remarkable achievement of the youthful William James Sidis is his exposition of what is termed the fourth dimension. The literature of the fourth dimension is now voluminous, and few there

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are who have not heard or read of this factor in intellectual processes. For some reason, however, it has been found extremely difficult to popularize the fourth dimensional idea. The practical problem of the fourth dimension, therefore, is less its validity as an intellectual concept than the correct mode of convincing the average person that it is anything more than an academic abstraction with no reference to the world of realities. For instance, in his lecture at Harvard, young Sidis used such words as “hecatonicosihedrigon" and “hexacosihedrigon”―words invented by the boy himself to fit the exigencies of his explanation. By way of preface, therefore, to young Sidis's technical analysis of the fourth dimension, it may be well to read the ensuing paragraphs in which Professor Henry P. Manning, of Brown University, practically applies the abstraction:

        "If you were a point and if you lived on a straight line you would be a one-dimensional man. You could move backward and forward only. You could not look up or down, nor from side to side. Your visible world would lie always in front of your eyes. You could only see the back of the man's head in front of you. You could never turn around and talk to the man behind you.

        "If you lived on a surface you would be a twodimensional man. In other words you would be a smear. You would slide around like quick-silver, but you would have no thickness. You could turn around and see the man behind you, but you could not look down or up at the sky, if there is one in your two-dimensional world.

        "The world in which we live is a world of three dimensions. It has length, breadth and thickness. If the inhabitants of the two dimensional-world, smears on a plate without thickness, were to attempt to imprison you in a two-dimensional jail you could escape simply by stepping over

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the walls of your prison, and your twodimensional jailers would never realize how you eluded them.

        “If there is such a thing as a fourth dimension it would be impossible for us to incarcerate a four-dimensional criminal. He would step out of his jail and we would never know how he escaped. A rope knotted in the middle and fastened to two walls can be unknotted without detaching it from the walls in the fourth dimension. A hollow rubber ball could be turned inside cut in the fourth dimension. A liquid could be poured into a completely enclosed vessel in the fourth dimension."

        Young Sidis's own definition of the fourth dimension was more technical. "It is an Euclidian space," he said, "with one dimension added." To quote from the lecture delivered last January before the faculty of Harvard:

        "My own definition of the Fourth Dimension would be that it is an Euclidian space with one dimension added. It is the projection of the figures of the Third Dimension into space. The third dimensional figures, such as the cube, are used as sides of the figures of the Fourth Dimension, and the figures of the Fourth Dimension are called configurations.

        "It is not possible to actually construct models of the figures of the Fourth Dimension, or to conceive of them in the mind's eye, but it is easy to construct them by means of Euclid's theorem.

        "In his theorem, F equals the faces of the figures, S equals the sides, V the vertices and M equals the angles. The theorem is that F plus S equals V plus M.

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        "It is possible to take any figure of the Third Dimension and with it construct figures of the Fourth Dimension. These figures of the Fourth Dimension are called Polyhedrigons. It is possible to tell how many faces any given figures of the Fourth Dimension will have by applying Euler's theorem. Some figures of the Fourth Dimension, however, cannot be worked out by this theorem, but must all be tried by using logarithms.

        "When a figure of the Fourth Dimension is pressed flat, as I have already said, it is made into a figure of the Third Dimension. It is possible to construct figures of the Fourth Dimension with a hundred and twenty sides called Hecatonicosihedrigons, and also figures with six hundred sides called Hexacosihedrigons. I attach great value in the working out of my theories to the help given by the polyhedral angles of the dodesecahedron which enter into many of the problems. Some of the things that I have found out about the Fourth Dimension will aid in the solution of many of the problems of elliptical geometry."

        In its recent study of boy prodigies, with particular reference to the Harvard case, the Revue Psychologique insists that much of their performance is of the nature of memory work.

 

 BENDING THE TWIG

THE EDUCATION OF THE ELEVEN YEAR OLD BOY WHO LECTURED BEFORE THE HARVARD

PROFESSORS ON THE FOURTH DIMENSION

BY

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HAROLD ADDINGTON BRUCE

ILLUSTRATED WITH A PORTRAIT

The American Magazine, 1910, #69, 690 – 695.

Contributed by Ann Hulbert

 

        Two years ago Prof. William James, in one of the most remarkable articles ever published in this or any other periodical, formulated for the readers of THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE his startling psychological doctrine of the hidden energies of man.

        “Everyone knows,” Professor James wrote, “what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual or muscular, feeling stale―or cold, as an Adirondack guide one put it to me. And everybody knows what it is to ‘warm up’ to his job. The process of warming up gets particularly striking as the phenomenon known as ‘second wind’. On usual occasions we make a practice of stopping an occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so to call it) of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or worked ‘enough’, so we desist.  .  .  .  But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before.

        “We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and a fourth ‘wind’ may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as the physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-

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distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points . . .

        “It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but that may be called upon: deeper and deeper strata of combustible or explosible material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by anyone who probes so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as do the superficial strata. Most of us continue living unnecessarily near our surface.”

        The controversy which these views of Professor James provoked still waxes warm. For the most part his scientific colleagues are at odds with him. Yet all the time, while his critics have been criticising him, facts have been coming to light tending to prove that Professor James’s theory, far from being a gospel of overstrain, is a gospel of hope, opening up to the human race vistas of possibilities and achievement unreached in any epoch of the history of the world.

A Marvel―and Still a Child

        There is at Harvard University today a student who has caused much astonishment, perplexity, and debate among the members of the faculty. He is only eleven years old. At an age when most boys are struggling desperately with the elementals of education, this lad is specializing in advanced mathematics, and, since admission at the beginning of the college year last September, has easily held his own

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with fellow students in most cases more than twice his age. Even before coming to Harvard he had progressed far on the road towards mastery in the science of mathematics. Algebra, trigonometry, geometry, differential and integral calculus―all these he had at his fingers’ ends by the time he was nine or ten. He has even written a treatise on the properties of the hypothetical “fourth dimension.”

        What makes the case of this child-undergraduate still more amazing is the fact that, unlike almost every other “infant prodigy” of whom history gives any account, his marvelous precocity is far from being confined to a single department of knowledge. He is almost as good an astronomer as he is a mathematician, and for the past few months has been industriously charting the heavens according to a new system of his own. He has invented a universal language which, he clams, is free from

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the objections that have been raised against Esperanto. He has studied anatomy, physiology, physics, geography, history, and political science.

        Withal, he has remained essentially a child. He is as truly a boy as is the barefoot urchin playing ball in the street. He is no bulging-browed, bespectacled, anaemic freak. His cheeks have a ruddy glow, his eyes sparkle, he has a ringing laugh, and is fairly bubbling over with animal spirits. He is, in fact, so much of a boy that when, at the age of eight, his parents entered him in a high school, the school authorities, at the end of three months, were glad to see the last of him, so damaging to the discipline of the classroom were his pranks and antics. In some respects he is more childlike than the average youngster of his years and has not yet outgrown his fondness for the toys of the nursery. Of this, as of his wonderful intellectual attainments, I can speak from long personal observation, as I have known him since he was seven.

The Father of the Boy―and His Ideas

        How to account for him is a problem that is puzzling the savants of Harvard. One man, however, the boy’s father, feels absolutely certain that he can give the true and only adequate information.

        His son’s mental growth, he declares, is the result not of heredity, not of exceptional native talent, but of a special education he has received, an education having as its chief purpose the training of the child to make facile, habitual, and profitable use of his hidden energies.

        The father is himself a psychologist with a reputation on two continents. His name is Boris Sidis. Although best known in the scientific world as a medical psychologist, he has for years been making a special study of educational psychology. Like Professor James, with

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whom he is a co-discoverer of the law of latent energy, a subject on which Dr. Sidis has been working and experimenting for years, he is firmly convinced that most of us “live unnecessarily near the surface,” and he throws the blame for this largely on our educational system. In particular, he condemns the custom of delaying any attempt at formal education of the child until he arrives at “school age.”

        “The notion that the young child’s mind should be allowed to lie fallow,” is the way Dr. Sidis put it to me, “is utterly wrong and pernicious. The child is essentially a thinking animal. No power on earth can keep him from thinking, from using his mind. From the moment his inquiring eyes first take in the details of his surroundings he begins the mental processes which education is intended to guide and develop. He observes, he draws inferences from everything he sees and hears, he seeks to give expression to his thoughts.

        “Left to himself, however, he is certain to observe inaccurately and to make many erroneous inferences. Unless he is taught how to think he is sure to think incorrectly, and to acquire wrong thought habits, causing him to form bad judgments respecting matters not only vital to his own welfare but also important to the welfare of society. In fact, in order to get the best results, his training in the principles of correct thinking should begin as soon as, or even before, he starts to talk. There need be no fear of over-taxing his mind. On the contrary, the effect will be to develop and strengthen it, by accustoming him to make habitual use of the latent energy which most people never utilize at all.”

Learning to Spell and to Read Before Three Years Old

        Holding these views, Dr. Sidis, upon the birth of his son―who was named William James Sidis, after Professor James―resolved to put

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them to the test of experiment. To realize his great aim of energizing and rationalizing the child, he began to train him in the use of his observational and reasoning faculties before he was two years old, and, with the aid of a box of alphabet blocks, actually succeeded in teaching him how to spell and read before he was three. He did this by playing with the boy, shifting the alphabet blocks around to spell different words, pointing to the objects spelt, and naming them aloud. The effect of this was not simply to teach the child spelling and reading, but also to give him a thorough grounding in the principles of sound reasoning.

        Moreover, the method employed by Dr. Sidis seemed to impart to his son a power of mental concentration seldom seen in children. All children, as every parent is aware, are eager “tom know about things,” but as a rule their inquisitiveness is easily satisfied, and they flit, like so many butterflies, from one subject to another without giving much thought to anything. Not so with little William James Sidis. Once his attention was arrested, his interest aroused, he was not content until he had learned the exact nature of whatever had excited his curiosity.

        At the age of three and a half, for example, he chanced one day to wander into his father’s office while Dr. Sidis was writing a letter on a typewriter. He watched the movement of the carriage back and forth, he heard the clicking of the types, the ringing of the bell, and forthwith tugging at his father’s coat. What was that machine for, he demanded, how did it work, and many other questions. Then, climbing into his father’s lap, he pressed his little fingers on the keys, and exultantly read the words his father showed him how to form. This first lesson was followed by others, until within six months―when he was only four years old―he was typewriting with considerable dexterity. He had already learned to write with a pencil.

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        When he was six―his parents having in the meantime removed from New York, where he was born, to Brookline, Mass.―he was sent to a public school. His career there was brief but spectacular. In half a year he passed through seven grades, leaving behind him a succession of bewildered, wide-eyed teachers, aghast at the precocity he displayed. An interval of two years of study at home was followed by three months of attendance at the Brookline High School. Then two years more of study at home, and now, as has been said, he is a special student at Harvard, toying with vector analysis and other forms of higher mathematics.

        At Harvard, as may be imagined, his career is being watched with the liveliest interest. Aside from the surprise occasioned by his proficiency in the difficult field of study which he has selected, those who have come into contact with him are most deeply impressed by the manner in which he, so to speak, takes himself for granted. He does not seem to regard his precocity as anything out of the usual, and enters as a matter of course into the new life opened up to him by his admission to the university. He is a regular attendant at the Harvard Mathematical Club, and enters freely into the discussion of the various papers read, his criticisms commanding as respectful a hearing as though coming from a man of mature years.

Lecturing to Professors and Others

        Indeed, not long ago he read a paper of his own before the Mathematical Club, taking as his subject the theme, “Four-Dimensional Bodes.” As may be imagined, the attendance at that meeting of the club was the largest of the year. More than 75 men were present―professors, assistant professors, instructors, students, and some specially invited guests. Not a few came in a profoundly skeptical frame of mind, having

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heard about the boy, but believing that his powers had been greatly overrated.

        Before the evening was at an end they were listening to him with the most intense interest and evident astonishment. Many of them were quite unable to follow his complicated calculations, which he made with assurance and ease. As he explained, in opening his lecture, the “space” with which we are acquainted is of three dimensions, but it is quite conceivable that there may be space with more than three dimensions―with four, five, or any number of dimensions. In four-dimensional space it would be possible to construct mathematical figures of very different form from our ordinary three-dimensional figures. The explanation of how many of these figures there might be, how they could be constructed, and what they looked like, was the subject of his lecture.

        For upward of an hour and a half this little lad in knickerbockers held the closest attention of his auditors, now speaking directly to them, now reading from a carefully prepared paper, with not a little oratorical effect, and now, in a childish scrawl, demonstrating on a blackboard the mathematical proof of the theories he was advancing. As he explained it, figures in the fourth dimension could be of the most remarkable shapes, having even as many as six hundred sides. A six-hundred-sided four-dimensional figure he called a “sextacosiahedragon,” a bit of original terminology which he surpassed when he referred to another many-sided four-dimensional figure as a “hecatonicosahedragon.”

        In conclusion, this youngest lecturer in the annals of Harvard insisted that it was a great mistake to suppose, as do many non-mathematicians, that the hypothesis of the fourth dimension is of no practical value. On the contrary, it is of the greatest usefulness to

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mathematicians, who by its aid are enabled to solve many problems that would otherwise baffle them, and more particularly geometrical problems.

        And all this, be it remembered, is, according to his father, the result of special education, having as its principal object the training of the boy to utilize those hidden energies which, as Professor James pointed out in his AMERICAN MAGAZINE article, the vast majority of people never make any use of whatever.

How the Father and Mother Managed the Boy’s Education

        To attain this object Dr. Sidis has, in the main, relied on the familiar educational principle of teaching a child through appealing to his interest, but he has made the appeal to interest in an unusual way―namely, by systematic application of the influence of that little understood but tremendously powerful psychological factor, “suggestion.”

        Now, suggestion is no mysterious or uncanny force, operable only under exceptional conditions. Everybody knows what is meant by a “suggestive teacher,” a “suggestive book,” a “suggestive picture.” By suggestion is meant nothing more than the intrusion of an idea into the mind with such skill and power that it dominates and, for the moment, disarms or excludes all other ideas which might prevent its realization.

        In dealing with little children, as many educators have long recognized, the one sure way of implanting in their minds the ideas which one wished to make dominant is by arousing their curiosity and stimulating their interest. This has led to the method of education through play, as exemplified in the kindergarten.

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        But Dr. Sidis believed that, if properly manipulated, the method of education through play might be extended to subjects not taught in the kindergarten―that, in fact, a child might be led to undertake and continue the study of any subject provided it were made sufficiently interesting to him.

        Today, as we have seen, his son excels in mathematics. There was a time, however―while he was at the grammar school―when no subject could possibly have been more distasteful to him, and he seemed totally unable, or at all events unwilling, to apply himself to it.

        Discovering this, Dr. Sidis did not attempt to drive him to the study of mathematics. Instead he purchased some toys―dominoes, marbles, etc.―with which he invented games requiring more or less knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Every evening, for an hour or more, he played these games with his little son, deftly managing matters so that his interest in time shifted from the toys to the principles underlying their use. In the boy’s presence, too, he continually discussed with Mrs. Sidis―who has throughout loyally co-operated with her husband in his unique educational experiment―questions involving the practical application of arithmetic and “suggesting” its importance in the affairs of every-day life.

        This process proved so effectual that the boy spontaneously, and with the greatest enthusiasm, took up the study of mathematics, progressing in it so rapidly that in a couple of years his mathematical knowledge was superior to that of his father.

        The same method has been followed by Dr. Sidis in stimulating him to the study of other subjects to which he first showed indifference or positive dislike. And the result has invariably been the same. Once

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really interested he has gone at every subject with eagerness and enthusiasm, grasping and mastering its principles with amazing ease.

        Nor is this the only way in which Dr. Sidis has made use of suggestion to stimulate his son’s intellectual development.

        Everything about us, as is now beginning to be pretty generally appreciated, is of suggestive. From our friends, our books, the very pictures on our walls, from everything in our environment, we constantly receive suggestions which influence us to a varying but nonetheless unmistakable extent. This is particularly true of the plastic period of childhood. Recent psychological investigation has made it certain that everything the child sees or hears, no matter whether he is consciously aware of it or not, leaves a more or less profound impression, is “subconsciously” remembered by him, and may at times exercise a determining influence upon the whole course of his life.

A Story About Helen Keller

        One impressive bit of testimony as to the permanence of the impressions of childhood and their influence upon the child’s later development is afforded by an experience in the life of Miss Helen Keller, who, as is well known, was left by illness deaf, dumb, and blind when less than two years old.

        Among the many accomplishments she has acquired not the least astonishing is her power for appreciating music, which she “hears” by placing her hand lightly on the instrument and receiving its vibrations.

        It occurred to Dr. Louis Waldstein, an authority on the “subconscious,” that quite possibly her appreciation of music was connected with subconscious memories of music she had heard before

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her illness. To test this theory he obtained from her mother copies of two songs which nhad often been sung to Miss Keller as an infant in Alabama, but which she had not heard since.

        These he played in Miss Keller’s presence, with remarkable effect. She became greatly excited, clapped her hands, laughed, and communicated:

        “Father carrying baby up and down, swinging her on his knee! Black Crow! Black Crow.”

        It was evident to all present that she had been drawn back in memory to the surroundings of her infancy. But no one knew what she meant by the words “black crow” until her mother explained that that was the title of a third song which her father used to sing to her. She had not heard it since her nineteenth month, when she lost all sense of hearing, but now, many years afterwards and although dependent solely on the sense of touch, she was able not merely to remember it, but even to recall its name!

        As a psychologist―and, for that matter, as the author of a standard textbook on “The Psychology of Suggestion”―Dr. Sidis was well aware of the possibility of so arranging his son’s environment as to cause it to radiate upon him suggestions quickening and enlarging his intellectual capacities.

With the Boy in His Study Room

        While the boy was still a mere infant, he set aside a room for him, a bright, cheery, well-lighted apartment, hung with a few attractive pictures. A little writing table was placed in one corner of the room, with pad and pencil. Opposite the child’s bed a small bookcase was placed. It

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was filled in part with the ordinary books of childhood―volumes of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, picture books. But it also held books of serious interest, simple tales of travel, of history, of science, and the like, most of them illustrated. As the child grew older, books of a more advanced character were added to his little library, studies in literature and biography, mathematical and scientific text-books. A large revolving globe, showing the countries of the world in bright colors, was placed near the window. Toys having a scientific basis also found a way to his room, which thus became a sort of educational museum, inspiring him with a love for knowledge.

        “And,” says Dr. Sidis, emphatically, “it is because he has been inspired with such an interest, such a genuine enthusiasm, that he has made the progress which people regard as surprising. Any normal child would make as good a showing if he were given the same training. The trouble is that parents neglect their children―allow them to fritter away their energies, to acquire habits of loose and incorrect thinking, at the very time when they stand most in need of careful education. It is the first years that count for most. Then it is that the child should be taught to observe accurately, to think correctly.

        “I do not mean by this that the child should be deprived of play. My boy plays―plays with his toys, and plays with his books. And that is the key to the whole situation. Get the child so interested in study that study will truly be play. Don’t tell me it can’t be done. I have done it.”

        Dr. Sidis would probably speak with less assurance were it not that this is by no means his only experiment in the development of latent energy.

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Story of Another Boy

        Some years ago he made the acquaintance of a young foreigner, a boy of fifteen, who was desperately anxious to secure an education that would fit him for a professional career. His parents, who had but recently arrived in the United States, were very poor, and were bitterly opposed to his “ambitious notions,” believing that instead of going to college he should set to work to earn his living. He had had no schooling in his native land, knew scarcely a word of English, and was ignorant of even the elementary knowledge possessed by the youngest primary-school child. Nevertheless, with a confidence that was pathetic, he applied for admission to a high school.

        “No,” he was told, “we cannot admit you. You do not know enough. You must go first to a primary school and then to the grammar school before you can enter here.”

        He was in despair when Dr. Sidis sent for him.

        “You wish to get into the high school, I hear,” said he. “Very well, you shall. Go and find out exactly what they require you to know before they will admit you, and then come back to me.”

        For hours daily he labored with the boy, teaching him first of all the rudiments of spelling, reading, and arithmetic by methods which “trained him to use his mental faculties correctly and to use them fully.” The result was much the same as achieved in his son’s case.

        At the end of eight months the young foreigner passed with flying colors an examination for admission to the high school. He completed the high-school course with phenomenal rapidity, graduating with the highest honors. Then he entered college, where he again distinguished

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himself, and, passing to a medical school, won further laurels there. Today he is holding a responsible public position.

        In another case the subject of experiment was a man of forty, a tailor by trade. Dr. Sidis became interested in him on learning that, in a dim, vague, inchoate way, he had longings not merely to better himself but to be of some service to humanity. He talked with the man and found that, although rather stupid and uneducated, being scarcely able to read, he was really stirred by altruistic ambitions.

        “Then I took him in hand. I began to educate and energize him. He came to me every day, and when he was not with me he was studying the text-books I gave him to read. I kept him at work, with his mind set on the distinct goal of helping his fellow man.

        “Before long, he displayed an intellectual ability that amazed those who had known him before the process of energizing began. He seemed, as some of his friends said to me, to be a new man. Whereas before he had been timid and diffident he became self-assertive and masterful. He attended and even organized workingmen’s clubs, he developed a marked gift as a public speaker, and before his death, which occurred a few years ago, won considerable reputation as a labor leader.

        “But I could have done much more with him had I had him much earlier. It is by beginning in early childhood that the best results can be obtained. You know the old saying―’As the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.’ Parents cannot too soon begin the work of bending the minds of their children in the right direction, of training them so that they shall grow up complete, efficient, really rational men and women.”

 

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SIDIS GETS YEAR AND HALF IN JAIL

11 OTHER MAY DAY RIOTERS SENTENCED

Boston Herald, Wednesday, May 14, 1919.

 

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Distortion of his likeness aside, this article contains some of his trial testimony.

 

        William James Sidis, who was graduated from Harvard at the age of 15, told Judge Albert F. Hayden in the Roxbury Municipal Court yesterday that he is a Socialist, a believer in the soviet form of government, that he believed in evolution, that he does not believe in a god, that his god is evolution, and that he believes in our form of government to the extent of the Declaration of Independence. Sidis and

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11 other persons who were arrested during the May Day riots in Roxbury were given jail sentences, the so-called Harvard prodigy getting a year and a half.

        The testimony of Sidis in the afternoon and the rebuke of Atty. Edward M. Shanley by Judge Hayden in the morning, when the attorney attempted to introduce evidence which the court excluded, were features of the trial yesterday.

        Patrolman Samuel C. Hutchins of the Dudley street station had, in his direct examination, identified 7 of the 11 defendants who went on trial yesterday morning, including Edmund Savrie, 74 Cedar street, Roxbury; Peter Thompson, 15 Temple street, West end; Alex Glasnick, Sidis, Frank Szydlofski of 90 Hunneman street, Roxbury,  and Samuel Shoyet of 1077A Blue Hill avenue, Roxbury.

        While Hutchins was testifying Patrolman William E. Wiseman, who had preceded him on the witness stand, made some notes having no connection with the hearing, so when Hutchins concluded his testimony Attorney Shanley recalled Wiseman to the witness stand and asked him to tell what notes he had made. Judge Hayden, arising from his chair, excluded the question and told Wiseman not to answer and to step down from the witness box.

        As Wiseman walked to his seat Shanley asked him for the paper and received it. Here Judge Hayden told Attorney Shanley that he would be removed from the cases if he attempted to introduce evidence which the court had ruled out. Shanley replied that he appeared for defendants, stating that he was there to assert their rights and see that they were protected, but the court refused to allow him to proceed and told Atty. Thomas G. Connolly, appearing for other defendants, to take up the defence of those represented by Shanley.

 Bars Attorney

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        Shanley remained within the bar enclosure, but took no part in proceedings until Special Officer Stephen E. Gillis of the Dudley street station identified Andrew Ford of 23 Oakwood street as a parader. Shanley then started to cross-examine Gillis, when Judge Hayden told him that he had been barred from further appearance in the  cases. Atty. Shanley replied that he represented certain people, when the court again interjected, "I refuse to let you proceed."

        Atty. Shanley remarked that it was an autocratic rule, adding that he was present to protect his clients' rights and concluded by saying that the ruling "helps the cause along."

        "Sidis, called to the stand, was quick in his response to questions propounded and seemed, while nervous at times, to be little concerned with the serious charges on which he was in court. 

        He said that his name was William James Sidis, and that he lived at 200 Newbury street, Back Bay.

Questions and Answers

        These questions and answers followed:

        "Were you at the Dudley Street Opera House on May 1?"

        "I was there continuously from 11 in the morning until 2 o'clock in the afternoon."

        "What did the chairman at the Opera House say to those assembled?

        "He said that there was to be a meeting at New International Hall and that we should all go; so I went with the crowd to the new hall."

         "Where were you when the paraders left the hall?"

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        "At the beginning I was in the rear of the line, and at different parts of the line at different times. When we reached Walnut Avenue and Warren Street, I was in the rear."

         "Were you carrying a red flag?

        "I was carrying a red flag, 3 by 3 feet; it was a piece of red silk tacked to a piece of stick."

         "Did you remember witness Sullivan?"

        "He yelled to me to take down the flag and I made no reply."

         "Was there any disturbance on the part of the paraders?"

        "I heard no noise until later some persons started to sing."

Says He's a Socialist

        "Are you a Socialist?"

        "Yes."

         "Do you believe in the soviet form of government?"

        "I do."

         "Will you state briefly what the soviet form of government is?"

         "That will be a rather difficult thing to do."

         "Could you give His Honor a description in 100 words?"

        "The soviet form of government is the present revolutionary form in Russia. The soviet word is the Russian word for counsel. The general principle is that those who do socially useful work are to control the government and industries of the country as officials in government do

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in general. The fundamental principle is that everybody is supposed to work."

         "Would you say in that respect only those who do socially useful work?"

        "I would state that those who do work shall be entitled to control the government, but those who are in non-essential industries should not be counted."

Force if Necessary

         "Do you understand that they intend to get control through industries in which they work?"

        "So I understand."

         "By force if necessary?"

        "I understand every government implies a certain power to suppress opposition."

         "That does not answer the question. You said before that the people want control of the industries of the country. I want to know whether you advocate by force the control of the industries of the country or by the use of the ballot?"

        "I countenance the use of force only in case it should be necessary, and I base my statement on a comparison with the Declaration of Independence of the United States government, which states clearly that the people shall be governed only with the consent of the government [governed]."

         "Who decides? The majority or the minority?

        "The majority."

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         "Do you believe in economic evolution?"

        "I do."

       "Can any person tell what course human events will take or what forms of government?"

        "I say practically that."

Disbelieves in God

        "Do you believe in a god?"

        "No."

        Atty. Connolly then asked the court what God he meant, whereupon Judge Hayden replied, God Almighty.

        Here Sidis said that the kind of a God that he did not believe in was the "big boss of the Christians," adding that he believed in something that is in a way apart from a human being.

         "Asked by his attorney if the soviet ideals necessarily implied violence, he replied in the negative, stating that there should not be any violence on the road to that goal.

        Describing Bolsheviki and political Socialists, Sidis said that the latter believed mainly in the ballot, the former in control of industry. Asked if, on the day of the alleged riots, there were any circumstances attending the marching people that would have been indicative of trouble if the paraders had been left alone, Sidis said, "nothing whatever." If the people had not been interfered with by the hoodlums, he declared, there would not have been any trouble at all.

Shows Him Red Flag

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         The red flag which he had carried was shown to him by his attorney and he said that the red stood for the common blood of humanity as it does in the American flag. Asked what the red in the American flag represented, the defendant said that it stands for the common brotherhood of mankind. He said that he did not believe that we should have idolatry in the world. He added that he did not idolize the red flag, adding that it was just a piece of red silk.

        Cross-examined by Sergt. Dennis J. Casey, appearing for the government, Sidis said he was born in New York city, and that he is 21 years old. He said he was in the draft and claimed exemption because of conscientious objections. Sergt. Casey asked him what feeling he would have if the American flag were trampled upon and Sidis did not answer. He said he saw paraders struck without provocation. Asked if he did not urge the people to go ahead when the police arrived, the defendant said that he told them to stop.

 Not Believer in Force

        Connolly, on re-direct examination, told Sidis that, for a man who believed in the soviet form of government, he certainly did not use much force. And Sidis remarked that he did not believe in using force. He denied that he had said, "To hell with the American flag," as the police testified he had, adding that he never used such language.

        Judge Hayden then asked him why he did not carry an American flag instead of the red flag, and he said he had one in his pocket but that it was not an organized parade. The court asked him if he did not carry it for protection, and the defendant said he had attended several meetings and that it might be wanted.

        "Do you believe in what the American flag stands for," queried Judge Hayden. The defendant answered that he believed in certain ways for what it stands, in the sense of the Declaration of Independence. Asked if Martha H. Foley, the militant suffragist, already sentenced to

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18 months, and himself were not the organizers of the parade and had charge, he replied in the negative. He denied that he was a leader, stating that there were no leaders in the parade, and that as far as he knew, no permit was asked for a parade.

No Thought of Trouble

        Asked if he did not think there would be trouble when he went on the street with a red flag, Sidis said that it did not occur to him. He said that under the American flag he did not stand for lynching of Negroes without trial. Attorney Connolly propounded a question on alleged crowding of mining strikers to hunger in Arizona, asking him if he would stand for that under our flag, he replied in the negative, whereupon Judge Hayden stated that we all know what the American flag stands for Atty. Connolly declared that he didn't, adding that we had slavery here, fighting of armed thugs, and everything else.

        Other defendants who took the stand included Benjamin Barden of Chelsea, treasurer of the Millinery Workers' Union. He admitted he was a Socialist. He was not a parader, he said.

        Peter Thompson testified that he had been at a dentist's office, heard of trouble and that when he came out of the building, hands in his pockets, he was arrested.

        Edmund Savrie of 74 Cedar street, Roxbury, was identified by Patrolmen Morse and Hutchins; Peter Thompson was identified as a parader by Patrolman Hutchins, while Patrolman Moore identified Gedart Gehre. Alex Glasnick was identified by Sergt. Casey, and Patrolmen Hutchins, Moore, Cummings, and Patrolman Gillis and Sergt. Casey identified Andrew Ford as a parader.

Identify Sidis

        Sidis was identified by Sergt. Casey, Patrolmen Wiseman, Hutchins and Cummings. Deomid Pitnichny of 96 Auburn street, Chelsea, was

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identified by Sergt. Casey and Patrolmen Hutchins and McAllister, and Patrolman Murphy picked out Benjamin Barden as one of the marchers. Patrolman McAllister identified Joe Waranski, and Frank Szydlofski was identified by Solomon, Hutchins, Moore and Cashman, while Solomon, Hutchins, Gillis and McAllister identified Samuel Shoyet as a parader.

        After the defence had completed its testimony, Judge Hayden sentenced Edmund Savrie, Peter Thompson, Joe Markovitz, Alex Glasnick, Andrew Ford, Deomid Pitnichny, Benjamin Barden, Joe Waranski and Samuel Shoyet to the house of correction for three months on a charge of rioting and an additional three months for an assault on Hutchins.

        Sidis, Berhe and Szydlofski were given six months for rioting and one year additional for assault. All appealed, Sidis being held in bonds of $5000 for the superior court and the other defendants in $1000 each.

        John Borasnick of 99 Blossom street, Lynn, and Roman Berasofsky and Samuel Andrefsky of 208 Washington street, Walpole, were discharged.

        Several cases of alleged rioting were put over until May 22, but all other cases have been disposed by Judge Hayden, who sat continuously on the cases since May 1.

      

 

Where Are They Now?

April Fool!

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by Jared Manley (pseud. of James Thurber) 1

The New Yorker, Saturday, August 14, 1937, 22-26.

 

 

        One snowy January evening in 1910 about a hundred professors and advanced students of mathematics from Harvard University gathered in a lecture hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to listen to a speaker by the name of William James Sidis. He had never addressed an audience before, and he was abashed and a little awkward at the start. His listeners had to attend closely, for he spoke in a small voice that did not carry well, and he punctuated his talk with nervous, shrill laughter. A thatch of fair hair fell far over his forehead and keen blue eyes peered out from what one of those present later described as a "pixie-like" face. The speaker wore black velvet knickers. He was eleven years old.

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        As the boy warmed to his subject, his shyness melted and there fell upon his listeners' ears the most remarkable words they had ever heard from the lips of a child. William James Sidis had chosen for the subject of his lecture "Four-Dimensional Bodies." Even in this selective group of erudite gentlemen, there were those who were unable to follow all the processes of the little boy's thought. To such laymen as were present, the fourth dimension, as it was demonstrated that night, must indeed have perfectly fitted its colloquial definition: "a speculative realm of incomprehensibly involved relationships." When it was all over, the distinguished Professor Daniel F. Comstock of Massachusetts Institute of Technology was moved to predict to reporters, who had listened in profound bewilderment, that young Sidis would grow up to be a great mathematician, a famous leader in the world of science.

        William Sidis, who at the age of eleven made the front pages of newspapers all over the country, was a Harvard student at the time. To explain how he got there, we must look at his father, the late Boris Sidis. Born in Kiev in 1868, the elder Sidis had come to this country, learned English, and gone to Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1894. His specialty was that branch of psychotherapy which engages to alleviate the nervous diseases and maladjustments by mental suggestion. He wrote a

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book called "The Psychology of Suggestion," and he was greatly interested in experiments in transmitting suggestion by means of the hypnotic state. It was his belief that in its very first years the brain is many times more susceptible to impressions than in later life. When his son was born in 1898, he was born, so to speak, into a laboratory. Boris Sidis by the time was running a psychotherapeutic institute in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was an admirer and friend of the late William James, and he named his son after that great psychologist.

        Boris Sidis began his experiments on his son when little William was two years old. It appears that he induced a kind of hypnoidal state by the use of alphabet blocks. The quick results he got delighted his scientific mind. The child learned to spell and to read in a few months. Within a year he could write both English and French on the typewriter. At five he had composed a treatise on anatomy and had arrived at a method of calculating the date on which any day of the week had fallen during the past ten thousand years. Boris Sidis published several papers in scientific journals describing his baby's achievements. At six, the little boy was sent to a Brookline public school, where he astounded his teachers and alarmed the other children by tearing through seven years of schooling in six months. When he was eight years

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old, William proposed a new table of logarithms, employing 12 instead of the usual 10 as the base. Boris Sidis published a book about his amazing son, called "Philistine and Genius," and got into Who's Who in America.

        The wonder child was going on nine when his father tried to enroll him at Harvard. He could have passed the entrance examinations with ease, but the startled and embarrassed university authorities would not allow him to take them. He continued to perform his wonders at home, and began the study of Latin and Greek. He was not interested in toys or in any of the normal pleasures of small children. Dogs terrified him. "If I see a dog," William told somebody at this time, "I must run away. I must hide. I like the cat. I can't play out, for my mother would have to be there all the time―because of the possibility that I might see a dog." His chief recreation seems to have been going on streetcar rides with his parents. The elder Sidis explained transfers to him and interested him in the names of streets and places. Even before he was five, William had learned to recite all the hours and stations on a complex railroad timetable. He would occasionally recite timetables for guests as other children recite Mother Goose rhymes or sing little songs. Those who remember him in those years say that he had something of the intense manner of a neurotic adult.

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        In 1908, at the age of ten, William James Sidis was permitted to enroll at Tufts College, in Medford. He commuted daily from Brookline with his mother, who was as interested in his phenomenal mental development as his father was. They always went to and from the college on streetcars. The youngster attended Tufts for one year and finally, in 1909, when he was eleven, Harvard permitted him to enroll there as a special student. He matriculated as a regular freshman the following year, and thus became a member of the class of 1914. Cotton Mather, in 1674, had become a Harvard freshman at the age of twelve, and it is probably because of this distinguished precedent that William Sidis was allowed to matriculate at that same age. He was a source of wonder to his fellow students and to the faculty; some of the newspapers assigned reporters to cover "the Sidis case."

        Just how William was prevailed upon to speak before the learned scholars in January of his first year at Harvard is lost to the record, but it is known that he took an eager interest in hearing others lecture and joined easily in group discussions of metaphysics. In his spare time he began to compose two grammars, one Latin, the other Greek. The pressure of his studies and his sudden fame began to tell upon him, however, and it wasn't long after his notable discourse that he had

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a general breakdown. His father was running a sanatorium in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at the time, and William was rushed off there. When finally he came back to Harvard, he was retiring and shy; he could not be persuaded to lecture again; he began to show a marked distrust of people, a fear of responsibility, and a general maladjustment to his abnormal life. He did not mingle much with students and he ran from newspapermen, but they cornered him, of course, on the day of his graduation as a Bachelor of Arts in 1914. He was sixteen years old. He wore long trousers then, and he faced the reporters who descended on the Yard with less of a feeling of embarrassment than he had as a knickered child. But definite phobias had developed in him. "I want to live the perfect life," William told the newspapermen. "The only way to live the perfect life is to live it in seclusion. I have always hated crowds." For "crowds" it was not difficult to read "people." Among those who graduated with William James Sidis that day were Julius Spencer Morgan; Gilbert Seldes; and Vinton Freedley and Laurence Schwab, the musical-comedy producers. The reporters paid no attention to them.

        At sixteen, William James Sidis was a large boy, and when he entered Harvard Law School, he was no longer the incongruous figure he had been. The newspapers had little interest in his comings

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and goings. He attended law school quietly for three years and was apparently a brilliant student, but his main interest was mathematics, and in 1918 he accepted a teaching position at a university in Texas. His fame preceded him, but even if it hadn't, the extreme youth of this mathematics instructor would have been enough to set him off as a curiosity. He found himself the centre of an interest that annoyed and dismayed him. He suddenly gave up his position and returned bitterly and quietly to Boston, where he lived obscurely for some months.

        It was on May 1st, 1919, that young Sidis's name reached the front pages of the newspapers again. With about twenty other young persons, he took part in a Communistic demonstration in Roxbury and was hauled into the municipal court as one of the ringleaders of the group, as, indeed the very individual who had carried the horrific red flag in their parade. On the witness stand, Sidis proved to be more forthright and candid than tactful. He announced to a shocked court that there was for him no god but evolution; asked if he believed in what the American flag stands for, he said only to a certain extent. At one point he launched on an explanation of the Soviet form of government, for the instruction of the magistrate. His Marxist leaning had developed over a period of several years. When the United States entered the

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war, he had announced himself as a conscientious objector, and on several occasions had delivered himself of the opinion that the troubles of the world were caused by capitalism.

        A policeman who had helped break up the parade of the radicals identified Sidis as the man who had carried the red flag. The officer said that he had asked Sidis why he was not carrying the American flag, and that Sidis had replied, "To hell with the American flag!" Returning to the stand, the famous prodigy hotly denied that he had ever spoken to the witness and that he had ever said to anyone, "To hell with the American flag!" He repeated that he was opposed to war and that he believed in a socialized form of government. After a pause, he announced that, as a matter of fact, he had carried an American flag, whereupon, to the amazement of the courtroom, he pulled a miniature American flag from his pocket. He was sentenced to eighteen months in jail for inciting to riot, and assault. He appealed, and while out on bail of $5,000 disappeared from the state in which he had startled erudite professors and shocked patriotic policemen. It marked the beginning of a new and curious mode of life for the young man.

        For five years after that, William James Sidis seems to have achieved the "perfect life" he had spoken of on   the day of his graduation, the life of

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seclusion. Apparently he drifted from city to city, working as a clerk, or in some other minor capacity, for a salary only large enough for him to subsist on. In 1924 he was dragged back into the news when a reporter found him working in an office in Wall Street, at twenty-three dollars a week. He was dismayed at being discovered. He said all he wanted was to make just enough to live on and to work at something that required a minimum of mental effort. The last few reporters who went down to his office to interview him didn't get to see him. He had quit his job and disappeared again.

        Two years later, in 1926, Dorrance & Company, a Philadelphia publishing house which prints "vanity" books―that is, books published at the authors' expense―got out a volume called "Notes on the Collection of Transfers." It was written by one Frank Folupa. Frank Folupa, some pitilessly ingenious reporter discovered, was none other than William James Sidis. Again he was run down and interviewed. He announced that he had been for a long time a "peridromophile"―that is, a collector of streetcar transfers. He had coined the word himself. His book (now out of print) ran to three hundred pages and was a scholarly and laborious treatise on the origin, nature, and classification of nothing more nor less than the slips of paper streetcar conductors hand to

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passengers when they ask for transfers. Many a psychologist and analyst must have been interested to read in the papers that the genius of the precocious child who had astounded the academic world sixteen years before had flowered in this bizarre fashion. The book is worthy of examination. Sidis wrote a preface to the volume, which began this way: "This book is a description of what is, so far as the Author is aware, a new kind of hobby, but one which seems on the face of it to be as reasonable, as interesting, and as instructive as any other sort of collection fad. This is the collection of street car transfers and allied forms. The Author himself has already collected over 1600 such forms." The preface revealed, in another place, that the Author was not without a certain humor. "We may mention," it read, "the geographical and topographical interest, both in the exploration and in the analysis of the transfers themselves. There is also the interesting sidelights which such a collection throws on the politics in which transit companies are necessarily involved; though we hardly recommend that this political interest be carried far enough to induce the collector to take sides in any such disputes. And again: "One may derive much amusement out of transfers―It is said that a Harvard College student got on a street car and, wishing an extra ride, asked the conductor for a transfer. When asked 'Where to?' he said, 'Anywhere.' The conductor

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winked and said, 'All right. I'll give you a transfer to Waverly.' The student was afterwards laughed at when he told the story, and was informed that the asylum for the feeble-minded was located at Waverly." Sidis also included in his preface some verses he had written when he was fourteen years old. They begin:

From subway trains at Central,    a transfer get, and goTo Allston or Brighton or    to Somerville, you know;On cars from Brighton transfer  to Cambridge Subway eastAnd get a train to Park Street,    or Kendall Square, at least.

        "We know," the Author concludes, "someone who was actually helped to take the right route by remembering a snatch from one of these verses." The book discusses all kinds of transfers: standard types, Ham type, Pope type, Smith type, Moran type, Franklin Rapid transfers, Stedman transfers. Of the last (to give you an idea), Mr. Sidis wrote, "Stedman transfers: This classification refers to a peculiar type turned out by a certain transfer printer in Rochester, N. Y. The peculiarities of the typical Stedman transfer are the tabular time limit occupying the entire right-hand end of the transfer

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(see Diagram in Section 47) and the row-and-column combination of receiving route (or other receiving conditions) with the half-day that we have already discussed in detail."

        The year after his book came out (it apparently sold only to a few other peridromophiles), Sidis came back to New York City and once again got a job as a clerk with a business firm. To his skill and experience in general office work, the mathematical genius had now added, ironically, the ability to operate an adding machine with great speed and accuracy, and was fond of boasting of this accomplishment. He lived at 112 West 119th Street, where he made friends with Harry Freedman, the landlord, and his sister, a Mrs. Schlectien. Sidis is no longer with them and they will not tell you where he has gone, but they will forward any mail that comes for him. They are fond of the young man and appreciate his desire to avoid publicity. "He had a kind of chronic bitterness, like a lot of people you see living in furnished rooms," Mr. Freedman recently told a researcher into the curious history of William James Sidis. Sidis used to sit on an old sofa in Freedman's living room and talk to him and his sister. Sidis told them he hated Harvard and that anyone who sends his son to college is a fool―a boy can learn more in a public library. Frequently he talked about his passion for collecting transfers. "He can tell you

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how to reach any street in any city of the United States on a single streetcar fare," said Mr. Freedman in awe and admiration. It seems that Sidis corresponds with peridromophiles in a number of other cities, and keeps up on the streetcar and transfer situation in that way. Once the young man brought down from his room a manuscript he was working on and asked Mrs. Schlectien if he might read "a few chapters" to her. She said it turned out to be a book on the order of "Buck Rogers," all about adventures in a future world of wonderful inventions. She said it was swell. 

        William James Sidis lives today, at the age of thirty-nine, in a hall bedroom of Boston's shabby south end. For a picture of him and his activities, this record is indebted to a young woman who recently succeeded in interviewing him there. She found him in a small room papered with the design of huge, pinkish flowers, considerably discolored. There was a large, untidy bed and an enormous wardrobe trunk, standing half open. A map of the United States hung on one wall. On a table beside the door was a pack of streetcar transfers neatly held together with an elastic. On a dresser were two photographs, one (surprisingly enough) of Sidis as the boy genius, the other a sweet-faced girl with shell-rimmed glasses and an elaborate marcel wave. There was also a desk with a tiny, ancient

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typewriter, a World Almanac, a dictionary, a few reference books, and a library book which the young man's visitor at one point picked up. "Oh, gee," said Sidis, "that's just one of those crook stories." He directed her attention to the little typewriter. "You can pick it up with one finger," he said, and did so.

        William Sidis at thirty-nine is a large, heavy man, with a prominent jaw, a thickish neck, and a reddish mustache. His light hair falls down over his brow as it did the night he lectured to the professors in Cambridge. His eyes have an expression which varies from the ingenious to the wary. When he is wary, he has a kind of incongruous dignity which breaks down suddenly into the gleeful abandon of a child on holiday. He seems to have difficulty in finding the right words to express himself, but when he does, he speaks rapidly, nodding his head jerkily to emphasize his points, gesturing with his left hand, uttering occasionally a curious, gasping laugh. He seems to get a great and ironic enjoyment out of leading a life of wandering irresponsibility after a childhood of scrupulous regimentation. His visitor found in him a certain childlike charm.

        Sidis is employed now, as usual, as a clerk in a business house. He said that he never stays in one office long because his employers of fellow-

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workers soon find out that he is the famous boy wonder, and he can't tolerate a position after that. "The very sight of a mathematical formula makes me physically ill," he said. "All I want to do is run an adding machine, but they won't let me alone." It came out that one time he was offered a job with the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway Company. It seems that the officials fondly believed the young wizard would somehow be able to solve all their technical problems. When he showed up for work, he was presented with a pile of blueprints, charts, and papers filled with statistics. One of the officials found him an hour later weeping in the midst of it all. Sidis told the man he couldn't bear responsibility, or intricate thought, or computation―except on an adding machine. He took his hat and went away.

        Sidis has a new interest which absorbs him at the moment more than streetcar transfers. This is the study of certain aspects of the history of the American Indian. He teaches a class of half a dozen interested students once every two weeks. They meet in his bedroom and arrange themselves on the bed and floor to listen to the one-time prodigy's intense but halting speech. Sidis is chiefly concerned with the Okamakammessett tribe, which he describes as having had a kind of proletarian federation. He has written some booklets on Okamakammessett lore and history, and if properly

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urged, will recite Okamakammessett poetry and even sing Okamakammessett songs. He admitted that his study of the Okamakammessetts in an outgrowth of his interest in Socialism. When the May Day demonstration of 1919 was brought up by the young woman, he looked at the portrait of the girl on his dresser and said, "She was in it. She was one of the rebel forces." He nodded his head vigorously, as if pleased with that phrase, "I was the flag-bearer," he went on. "And do you know what the flag was? Just a piece of red silk." He gave his curious laugh. "Red silk," he repeated. He made no reference to the picture of himself in the days of his great fame, but his interviewer later learned that on one occasion, when a pupil of his asked him point-blank about his infant precocity and insisted on a demonstration of his mathematical prowess, Sidis was restrained with difficulty from throwing him out of the room.

        Sidis revealed to his interviewer that he has another work in progress: a treatise on floods. He showed her the first sentence: "California has acquired considerable renown on account of its alleged weather." It seems that he was in California some ten years ago during his wanderings. His visitor was emboldened, at last, to bring up the prediction, made by Professor Comstock of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology back in 1910, that the little boy who lectured that year on

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the fourth dimension to a gathering of learned men would grow up to be a great mathematician, a famous leader in the world of science. "It's strange," said William James Sidis, with a grin, "but, you know, I was born on April Fools' Day."

―Jared L. Manley 1

 

_________1 In The Years with Ross  Thurber wrote: "It was one of the 'Where Are They Now?' series, for which I did the rewrite (Grossett & Dunlap, 1957, p. 210)." But Jared Manley was Thurber's pseudonym. "Bernstein writes: 'In early 1936 Thurber began to write (really rewrite, since some of The New Yorker's best reporters, like Eugene Kinkead, were doing the research) a number of short, retrospective profiles. Bernstein also reveals that Jared L. Manley was a name that Thurber cobbled together when writing his first piece about an old boxer based on the initials of the boxer John L. Sullivan and Manley based on "the manly art of self-defense".'"—Privacy, Information and Technology

2  Norbert Weiner, who was at the math club meeting wrote: "Young Sidis, who was then eleven, was obviously a brilliant and interesting child. His interest was primarily in mathematics. I well remember the day at the Harvard Mathematics Club in which G. C. Evans, now the retired head of the department of mathematics of the University of California and Sidis's life-long friend, sponsored the boy in a talk on the four-dimensional regular figures. The talk would have done credit to a first- or second-year graduate student of any age, although all the material it contained was known elsewhere and was available in the literature. The theme had been made familiar to me by E. Q. Adams, a companion of my Tufts days. I am convinced that Sidis had no access to existing sources, and that the talk represented the triumph of the unaided efforts of a very brilliant child (Ex-Prodigy, Simon & Schuster, p. 131 - 132)."

3  Minutes of the Harvard Math Club, Wed., Jan. 5, 1910

4  Cf. The Failure Myth by Dan Mahony: "Research shows that most child prodigies go on to lead productive lives. As did Sidis."

Typing  by Bill Paton

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The Failure MythA Short Bibliographical Biography

of W. J. Sidis

Dan Mahony, M. Phil.

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"We attempt to explain rather than advocate."―WJ

 

The failure-myth was a weave of old fallacies, popular misunderstandings

of the new science of psychology, and rigid notions about what

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constitutes success.

"The desire for fame is the last infirmity cast off even by the

wise."—Tacitus

 

INTRODUCTION First came the resurrection of a popular fallacy that child prodigies tend toward unproductive lives. Just why so many believe such a thing is hard to know. There has never been any actual evidence for it.

 

Secondly it was supposed that his father,  a great psychologist, somehow caused his son's genius either through some mysterious psychological technique or by having discovered magical educational methods.   Third: a childhood of "all-work-no-play" had caused his  supposed failure; and fourth: his working at low-paying  jobs was confirmation of all of the above. A fifth false belief was that his fatal brain hemorrhage had  psychological causes.  It is not difficult to refute the failure myth. Let's do so one by one.The first misconception is contradicted by the practical fact

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that no psychologist would claim that genius can be createdby any of the methods of psychology.  The second, 'prodigies-burn-out', has been disproved by abundant historical and statistical evidence, especially that provided by Lewis Terman, which shows that vast majority of prodigies go on tolead productive lives. As did Sidis. The third, "all-work-and-no-play," is contradicted by his mother'sdescription of his early education which was self-motivated."He asked me a question one day, and then triumphantly said,'But you will say, "Let's look it up," and I can look it up myself!'That is the last lesson I gave Billy."—The Sidis StorySaid his father: "My boy plays―plays with his toys, and plays with his books. And that is the key to the whole situation. Get the child so interested in study that study will truly be play."—Bending the Twig

 

The fourth, because Harvard's youngest graduate was as an adultengaged at mere labor, he was therefore a failure. This despite the great scientific discoveries and works of art by persons who were not employees of university corporations. The list is long.Einstein developed his theory of relativity while working as a patent examiner. Newton? Chancellor of the Exchequer. Descartes? Artillery advisor to his king―coordinategeometry. Philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce? Hundreds of articles for encyclopedias and popular  science magazines—besides his many books. Painter Paul Gauguin? Bank telleruntil he quit to pursue his art. Composer Charles Ives? Insurance.(He once said business life made his music richer.)    And Sidis? Accountancy Clerk. He paid his own way instead of living la dolce vita of academe. His hard-earned pay went

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into his research and self-publishing, especially his extensive travel by street-car across the country researching American history at the local level. And while Tacitus's warning about the addictive nature of fame might have guided him to some degree, the Okamakammesset principle of anonymous contribution was the path under foot―the hardest path to find.   The fifth misconception, that his fatal cerebral hemorrhage at age 46 was caused by "thinking too much," rested on the popular confusion of brain with mind. His father, Boris Sidis, died at age 56 from the same physiological cause.  Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D., wrote in 1919 that there is a widespread fear of precocity: "This abject fear of genius and of precocity is one of the  most pernicious philistine superstitions, causing the retardation of the  progress of humanity."—Precocity in Children After years of negative publicity surrounding his son, this great psychologist was deleted fromthe history of American psychology, due in no small part to academe's subservience to public opinion. See the clickable bibliography in theBoris Sidis Archives. In the first discussion of William's genius, in The Nation  in 1910,possibly written by the great Charles Sanders Peirce, we read: "Dr. Boris Sidis, the eminent psychologist who is the boy's father, is said to regard his son's achievements as indicating that by proper methods of instruction several years could be cut off from the time actually employed in bringing boys up to the college or university stage. With the proposition itself we have no particular fault to find; but that young Sidis's exploits serve in any degree to establish it we deny without hesitation. The part played by native genius is so manifestly predominant in this case as to nullify any general application." But whom do we blame for the negative image of William Sidis? The failure myth was not just an invention of the press. It rested in

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the public mind. The press merely fed on it. And reinforced it.  

And all the while, Sidis's adherence to the Okamakammesset principle of anonymous contribution further fed the frenzy. (See also Sidis's Pseudonyms.)   SHORT ANNOTATED CHRONOLOGICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY The following short biography interweaves an  annotated bibliography of Sidis's writings with another of news articles about him during his lifetime. Most of  the press clippings can be found in Harvard's Houghton Library, and from microfilms of New York Times articles which are thoroughly indexed and available on microfilm in many research libraries. The only book about him does not dispute the failure myth. One reviewer wrote, "Amy Wallace... skillfully weaves vitality and wit into this very unfortunate story of wasted genius."   Not so! Well spent genius. Very well spent.   [William James to Boris Sidis, letters andpostcards 1896 - 1907, Houghton Library,Harvard University]-------------------------------------------------------James occasionally replied to Boris's requests forsuggestions re his son's future education James Letters. Boris was one of James's students at Harvard, and was among the first to get the new degree of Ph. D. in PsychologyBoris Sidis Archives.  James's students included Edward Larrabee Thorndike,

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the founder of the Journal of Educational Psychology.  But William Sidis's greatness could not possibly have been caused by anything a psychologist has to offer. At birth came, randomly, his extremely rare IQ, and oh yes, the never mentioned by family, friends, and media—a photographic memory. I say this because I had the privilege of knowing his Sister Helena,  who her seventies all too often would ask: "Don't you remember I told you that?" Some news stories told of his ability to memorize train schedules as he read them. Then came a fine academic home-schooling generatedmostly by himself, but happily and ably aided by his parents (e.g., his mother taught him to how to spell as he learned to speak).  Then came a, presumably, excellent education at Harvard College, and then Harvard Law School. (He completed two years there and left in good standing.)  But declining any further academic affiliation, his life-long self-education and research included hundreds of trolley-car rides to libraries research sites all across America.  Sidis tried to lead a perfect moral life, and remained celibate  as part of that goal. He never spoke ill of anyone. His guiding principle was the ancient wisdom of a deceased Native-American nation he had discovered under foot in Middlesex  County,Massachusetts.  An additional benefit of his principled lifestyle was that heavoided the common ad hominem fallacy of linking his own great abilities with the truth or falsity of his writings. 

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(We readers must do the same. We will judge the truth orfalsity of his writings regardless of its author.)   A PHENOMENON IN KILTSBoston Transcript , Nov. 16, 1906 Massachusetts law required boys to attend school, so he had to endure primary school even though he already had a college-entrance education. The article described his progress through grade school.One wonders why the 3rd and 5th grades took so long.

 

"...the record from the school register of his advance runs: 

   "First Grade - Only a day or two.

   Second Grade - A few Days.

   Third Grade - Three months.

   Fourth Grade - One week.

   Fifth Grade - Fifteen weeks.

   Sixth and Seventh Grades - Five and a half weeks.

Yesterday morning,  Headmaster. . . of the Brookline High School was persuaded to allow me to see the boy at his work at school without letting him know that anyone was looking at him."

This article, while admiring of him, is also an early example of invasion of his privacy. This subject would come up again in a big way 30 years later.  

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 AN INFANT PRODIGYNorth American Review , 1907, #184, 887-888 It wasn't long before naysayers laid down whatwould be a lifelong gauntlet. "With this pathetic eagerness for utterly irrelevant knowledge, went also an exaggerated reverence for the written word." Not so. In fact he had, at an early age, an eagerness for true knowledge and reverence for the truth.   At least the confused article concluded with a positive: "It is to be hoped that the prematuredevelopment will not stop short, but that thedisinterested love of knowledge and of law maysolve some of this world's scientific problems."Such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.The article also mentions he "spent his summers at a hotel in the mountains...It was his pleasing custom to speak of all the guests in the house, in which hespent his summers..." The hotel or guesthouse may well be Shackford's in Albany, NH, which W. J. named "Passaconaway House" in his first bookPassaconaway in the White Mountains , Chapter 13   DR. SIDIS OF BROOKLINEBrookline [MA] Chronicle , Mar. 7, 1908 Boris gets his M.D., becoming perhaps the first to have both a Ph. D. in psychology and M.D. from Harvard. His Ph.D. in psychology was likely looked down uponin the field of psychopathology which was ruled by M.D.'s with little knowledge or understanding of the subject. It's just that they had Rx. Boris's sarcastic opening sentencein a 1899 talk to the American Medico-Psychological

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Assn. was: "I cannot help feeling grateful to you for the honor you have bestowed on me, a mere psychologist,by your kind invitation to read a paper on any subjectin my line of work." Nature & Principles of Psychology  CHILD ENTERS HARVARDBoy Prodigy of  Eleven WillPursue Special Studies New York Times , Sunday, Oct. 10, 1909, p.1. -------------------------------------------------William is front-page news in the Sunday Edition of this prestigious international  newspaper: "The youngest and smallest  student ever matriculated at Harvard,  entered to-day as a special student. He is  William J. Sidis of Brookline, the 11-year-old son of  Dr. and Mrs. Boris Sidis." TheTimes went on to say his parents were originally from Poland. They were from Russia.   HARVARD'S CHILD PRODIGYAll Amazed at Mathematical Grasp of Youngest Matriculate Aged 13 Years-------------------------------------------------"Three years ago the boy first knocked atthe classic gates of Harvard for admittance,but the powers that be refused him on account of his youth." New York Times , Mon., Oct. 11, 1909, p.1  Front page for a second day. Remarkable.

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But already the Times makes a major error: he is not thirteen but eleven years old, as the paper correctly reported just the daybefore.  We begin to see just how much nonfact can make its way into a newspaper. The article goes on to tell how the registrar,referring to previous attempts at  admission, asks: "What, again?" W. J. had passed the entrance exams two years earlier but was rejected because of his age. This year was different however. There was now a prodigy project. Boris had just delivered"Philistine and Genius" to the Harvard Summer School. It dealt with the faults of the educational system and urged early-childhood education. It would come back to haunt him and his son  A SAVANT AT THIRTEEN YOUNG SIDIS KNOWS MORE ON ENTERING THAN MANY ON LEAVINGA Scholar at ThreeNew York Times , Sunday, Oct. 17, 1909, Pt.5, p.9 ---------------------------------------------------------For the second time the Times gets the central fact wrong: his age. And things go downhill from there:"He is a Russian Jew―one is tempted to write 'of course' after that sentence, so common are boy wonders among the Jews, and especially among Russian Jews." Worse follows with the first signs of the Burnout Myth that would persist in the press

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to this day: "Child wonders are usually looked on rather coldly and there are always prophets to predict the sad end of precocity."  SIDIS COULD READ AT TWO YEARS OLDUnder Father's Scientific Forcing Almost from BirthNew York Times , Oct. 18, 1909, p.7 ---------------------------------------------------------Boris has somehow managed to force genius.  SIDIS OF HARVARDNew York Times , Oct. 18, 1909, p.6 ---------------------------------------------------------Asks intelligent questions about his education. Decides reserve energy is his secret power. Maybe so. But as The Nation would soon assert, it is acase of unusual abilities at the far end of the Bell Curve, combined with a pre-school education and home schooling and a student with a love of knowledge.  

SIDIS OF HARVARDYoungest Freshman in the History of the College Boston Sunday Herald , Nov. 7, 1909, p.5 ---------------------------------------------------------

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A picture is worth a thousand words―well maybeless in a newspaper. The distortion of his image implies that something must be wrong with him. He was not a freshman. He was admitted as a special student in a experimental prodigies project. A number of child prodigies from around the country were "accepted" (assembled) to take part in an experimental curriculum. The aim was to educate them in such a way as to grant them a real BA, not one with an asterisk. He was to take a so-called Half-Course (Mathematics 6 1) extended over a full year. He got a B.  He remained a special student for the next threeyears taking a full course load, and was matriculatedas a senior in his fifth year in 1913. His grades?

10 A's, 9 B's, 4 C's:       The senior class included one Richard Buckminster Fuller who, upon receiving a copy of The Animate and the Inanimate 65 years later, expressed in a letter to Scientific American his "...excitement and joy that Sidis did go on to fulfill his promise."  ELEVEN YEAR OLD BOY LECTURES TO MATHEMATICIANSAnswers Questions for Half An Hour; Talks

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About  Parallelopipedon and Hectatonacosahedron With Utmost Ease [Boston Globe ?], Jan. 6, 1910, p.1. ----------------------------------------------------- Fragments: "In the games played in fourth- dimension land the good player is he who can find  new short cuts in arriving at points, planes, faces  and sides. When you find a new short cut you get the  same pleasant sensation as when you are able to fit two pieces into a jig-saw puzzle at the same time. But the real situation is that we live in a three-dimensional  world. We know length, breadth, and height. Suppose we... had one more dimension, a fourth? The easy manner in which, in his discussions, he approached and passed over the word "parallelopipedon" made the professors gasp, and when he began to coin a few words and between breaths slipped out  "hectatonacosahedragon" [hectatonacosahedron?]... After drawing figures and proving theories until everyone in the room was amazed, young Sidis suddenly glanced  at his watch in true platform style and brought his lecture to a close. Then the professors asked him questions for  half an hour."    Boy of 11 Astounds Professors Boston Transcript, Jan. 6, 1910, p.1---------------------------------------------------- Front-page hyperbole. Only a few faculty were present, and none said he was astounded, though one thought Sidis showed "great promise."    

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BOY OF TEN ADDRESSES HARVARD TEACHERSNew York Times , Jan. 6, 1910, p.1  The Times gets his age wrong yet again,this time lower rather than higher. His age was the most important aspect of the news about him at the time.  Here are the minutes of that meeting of the Harvard Math Club.

                                             [Collected Minutes of the Harvard Math Club, p 93.]

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ILLUSTRATING A SYSTEM OF EDUCATION(letter to the Editor) New York Times, Jan. 7, 1910, p.8Young Sidis' Training (letter to the Editor)New York Times, Jan. 9, 1910, p.8The Golden Age of Youth (letter to the Editor) New York Times, Jan. 11, 1910, p.8-------------------------------------------------- Readers begin to wonder about 'burnout'. It is here we begin to see the public's role in what a newspaper says. The burnout myth was a  public misconception. The media here express that misconception.   Sidis An Avatar? (letter to the Editor) New York Times, Jan. 12, 1910, p.8----------------------------------------------------- Apparently not all its readers believed in burnout.   Precocity and Genius The Nation , Jan. 13, 1910, pp. 31-32 -----------------------------------------------------This article, possibly written by the greatAmerican philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce,discusses nurture vs. nature.

 

       The idea that precocity―or at any rate precocity

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of any such character as this―generally dies down into mediocrity has very little foundation. Some actually go so far as to think that the very fact of unusual brilliancy in a child at so early an age is a prophesy of little ability when he grows up; a notion that rests upon the same fallacy as that which regards the children of highly gifted parents as less likely to be highly endowed than other children. They are vastly more likely to be thus endowed―as Galton conclusively demonstrated in his "Hereditary Genius."

       Another question raised in connection with young Sidis is that of training versus native endowment. Dr. Boris Sidis, the eminent psychologist who is the boy's father, is said to regard his son's achievements as indicating that by proper methods of instruction several years could be cut off from the time actually employed in bringing boys up to the college or university stage. With the proposition itself we have no particular fault to find; but that young Sidis's exploits serve in any degree to establish it we deny without hesitation. The part played by native genius is so manifestly predominant in this case as to nullify any general application. This is evident on the face of the matter; but confirmation of the strongest kind is given, if any were needed, in such precedents as those of Pascal or Hamilton, both of whom made the amazing mathematical conquests of their youth without any outside help whatsoever.

  He Has No Equal: William James Sidis World's Most Wonderful Boy Utica [NY] Saturday Globe, Jan. 15, 1910------------------------------------------------------------Article says, "Oh well, look at his fatherand mother. Dr. Sidis is a Harvard man

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and has an international reputation forhis brilliant work...while his wife [Dr.Sarah Sidis] holds the degree of medicineand is wonderfully brilliant."  Professor Sidis Assails Harvard Methods Offers New Child Training Ideas Fragment from Boston (?) newspaper, Jan. 17, 1910. ------------------------------------------------------- Article about Boris's new book  Philistine and Genius reads, "...or at least it is supposed that [Harvard's] President Eliot was referred to..." There must have been some Harvard brew-ha-ha over this matter.  The average Harvard professor doesn't get much media attention at all, let alone a taste of 15-minute  superstardom. But Boris was mainly questioning the educational system in and did not mention Harvard. This matter will reappear shortly.     Of Personal Interest ------------------------------------------------ Boston Advocate, Jan. 17, 1910

...he is of extremely happy disposition, brimming over with humor and fun. His physical condition is splendid, his cheeks glow with health. Many a girl would envy his complexion. Being above five feet four, he towers over the average boy his age...He is healthy, strong, and

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sturdy.

  "Bending the Twig"Sidis" by Harold Addington Bruce American Monthly, 1910, #69, 690-695------------------------------------------------------------ Writer Harold Addington Bruce was a Sidis family friend.   

"Masters of the Mind" by H. A. Bruce American Magazine, 1910, #71, 71-81------------------------------------------------------ Article about the major psychologists of the time presents Boris Sidis and Sigmund Freud as equal in influence. Boris strongly argued against the fundamental assumptions of psychoanalysis in a number of his books. Freud made sure to ignore him.   The Boy Prodigy of Harvard --------------------------------------------------------- Current Literature , 1910, #48, 291-293  "Boy prodigy and the Fourth Dimension" by F. Fleischman Harpers Weekly, 1910, #54, 9  

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Sidis Boy Independent, 1910, #68, 162

 NOTES AND NEWS

        Mrs. Martha S. Jones, of Boston, Mass., has presented her estate and magnificent parks near Portsmouth, N. H., to Dr. Boris Sidis, of Brookline, Mass., for the purpose of establishing a private hospital, to be named 'The Maplewood Farms, Sidis Psychotherapeutic Institute,' in which modern methods of psychopathology and psychotherapeutics will be employed in the treatment of functional nervous diseases. The hospital will open in the early spring.

[Psychological Bulletin, 1910, 7, 75.]

 Advertisement in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1910

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Dr. Sidis To Open Novel Institution Made Possible by Mrs. Martha Jones Gift New Bedford [MA] Standard, June 25, 1911

 (Click.)------------------------------------------------------------------------The first of what became known as residentialtreatment centers. One of its many innovationswas residential family therapy.  [Book review of] Philistine and Genius  by Boris Sidis. New York Times, June 25, 1911, p. 404   Dr. Sidis In An Unkind Mood: His Vigorous and Unkind Indictment of the American System of Popular Education New York Times, June 25, 1911, p. 402------------------------------------------------------------- Review of Boris's 10th book, Philistine and Genius  in which he argued that education should begin much earlier than age five. He added that "In every child there is genius."   Dr. Sidis On EducationBoston Transcript, July 1, 1911  "Intellectual Precocity: Comparison Between

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J. S. Mill and the Son of Dr. Boris Sidis" by Tom Williams Pedagogical Seminary, 1911, #18, 85-103  "Lightning Calculators" by Harold Addington Bruce McClure's Magazine, 1912, #39, 586-596----------------------------------------------------------Has picture of WJS but nothing about him.   "Precocious Children" by Katherine Dolbear Pedagogical Seminary, 1912, #19, 461-491----------------------------------------------------------"The effect of his education seems to have beento produce a boy who can do wonderful, evenbrilliant reasoning but has difficulty in transferringthat reasoning power to everyday affairs. In a classroom at Harvard where a formula was being explainedthe boy became bored and began to balance hishat upside down on his head."Academic statement of the burnout myth. Portrait McClure's Magazine, 1912, #39, 586  Portrait Literary Digest, 1912, #54, 514  "A Record of Experiments" by Joseph Hyslop Proc. of Amer. Soc. of Psychical Research,

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1912, #6, 371-372 -------------------------------------------------------------- A subject in an experimental investigation of psychic processes happens to mention Sidis.   The Dormant Waker New York Times, Feb. 18, 1913, p.12---------------------------------------------------- Discusses Boris's Psychology of Sleep but refers tohim as "a Harvard Professor, unnamed"  [Untitled] New York Times, May 7, 1914, p.10---------------------------------------------------- Leaks, a month early, impending graduation of Sidis from Harvard.  Harvard A. B. At 16, William James Sidis, the youngest student to get degree there New York Times, June 14, 1914, p.1 ---------------------------------------------------------- His transcript indicates he was given no special treatment and that he did well enough on his exams and other requirements to graduate Cum Laude at the age of an average high school senior.     Sidis, W. J., Unconscious Intelligence Appendix IV of Symptomatology,Psychognosis, and Diagnosis of

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Psychopathic Diseases by Boris SidisPh.D., M.D. Boston: Badger, 1914, 432-439.------------------------------------------------------Presents a logical argument against thefoundations of psychoanalysis. The subconscious has been explained in two ways; according to one of these, the phenomena of the subconscious are manifestations of a consciousness, possessing all the attributes of intelligence and other adaptations that any consciousness possesses, while according to the other theory there is behind these phenomena an "unconscious intelligence" which has all the properties of intelligence, but which somehow or other is not conscious.He argues that psychoanalytic theory makes a classicscientific error by assigning different causes to the sameeffects. The effects caused by a psychoanalytic'unconscious' and the effects caused by consciousprocesses, "...have no points of difference sufficientto justify a difference in explanation (p. 435)."                                         Unconscious Intelligence  This Plan Is Full Of Promise New York Times, April 24, 1915, p.10------------------------------------------------------Subtly hints at 'burnout'.  '14 - William James Sidis Is A Fellow In Mathematics (instructing) at the Rice Institute, Houston, Tex. Harvard Bulletin, Oct. 20, 1915

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-------------------------------------------------- Being constitutionally unable to be a faculty member, then or thereafter, he returned to Boston and entered Harvard Law School.   "A Twelve Year Old Boy Wonder Child" by R. H. Moulton American Magazine, Feb. 1915, #79, 56-58  "Portrait" Illustrated World, 1915, #24, 49   "William James Sidis, the Harvard Prodigy Who Graduated At 16, as he looks today (caption under photo)." ------------------------------------------------------ Fragment from Boston Sunday Herald   Bruce, Harold Addington The Riddle of Personality NY: Moffat Yard, 1915, 88-93 ------------------------------------------ Bruce offers a 'bending the twig'theory of education.     Sidis, William, Passaconaway in the White Mountainsby Charles Edward Beals, Jr. (pseud.), with Introductionby Charles E. Beals (pseud., Boris Sidis). 

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Boston: Badger, 1916.Boris wrote the Introduction:The young man who wrote this book commenced his explorations of Passaconaway-land when four years old, at which mature age he climbed to the "turn of the slide" on Mount Passaconaway. With him it was a case of 'love at first sight." He cannot remember when he did not love the White Mountains. And with each succeeding year, that feeling has deepened. How the world looks from a Beal-loved little mountain nest―"Score-o'- Peaks"― the youngster will tell. If, by his chapters, he shall succeed in imparting to some weary soul a tithe of the pleasure which has been experienced by one family during nearly a score of summers, I shall think that it was indeed a happy inspiration which led me to suggest to the lad that he record the things herein set down. The book is magnificently researched and thoroughly footnoted.The history of the Penacook nation contained herein serves asthe first research for The Tribes and the States written a score of years later. It also provides an almost mystical description of theWhite Mountains of New Hampshire (home of the Penacooks)which is so detailed it was likely written by a person with aphotographic memory.        Passaconaway  'Nerves' and Experts On What To Eat: Dr. Boris Sidis Considers Abnormal Psychology Exaggerated Heredity Boston Herald, March 24, 1917-------------------------------------------------------A complete confusion of Boris's theorythat genes play a major part in our makeup and his distinction between the'abnormal' and the 'pathological' in hismasterwork The Foundations of Normaland Abnormal Psychology : "The

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abnormal is the normal out of place [e.g.,walking is normal but not while asleep], the'pathological' is the normal under extremeconditions [e.g., excessive cleanliness]                   Boris Sidis Archives  [ Transcript from Harvard Law School, 1917 ] That he also completed two years at Harvard Law, was never mentioned by the press.   Sidis, William "A Remark on the Occurrence of Revolutions" (with foreword by Boris Sidis)  Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1918, 13, 213-228--------------------------------------------------------------------------Sidis remarks on a statistical correlation between sunspot cycles the occurrence of revolutions.

 However, I do not wish to be understood as saying that the sun-spots cause revolutions. An appearance of sun-spots could not, by itself, produce revolution unless other circumstances are already such as to cause the revolution. All such revolutions would occur anyway, even without the sun-spot variations; but these sun-spot variations superadd natural extremes of climate, causing not only physical discomfort but danger to life and health, thus hastening a revolt that might otherwise have waited for a very long time."   

                                                                     

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  Arrest 114 Men and Women In Connection with Riot Boston Herald, May 3, 1919 -------------------------------------------------------------- "Riot" = peaceful protest.   Arrest 102 In Roxbury Boston Transcript, May 3, 1919   Four Boston Radicals Get Prison Sentences New York Times, May 3, 1919    Boston Rioters' Cases Disposed Of Bangor [Maine] Commercial, May 3, 1919    Sidis Gets Year And Half In Jail Boston Herald , May 14, 1919.

 

 

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Distortion of his beliefs and picture notwithstanding, this article details his testimony in the trial that focused on his beliefs. Interestingly, his political socialism at age 21seems based on the Declaration of Independence and government by consent of the governed. His later libertarianism and pacifism were based on the same principles of the primacy of individual rights. Clickthe picture or the link above it for full text of this article.  Young Sidis, "Harvard Prodigy," Sentenced To A Year And A Half In Jail For Rioting

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New York Times, May 14, 1919, p.1 -------------------------------------------------------------- He served the time in house arrest supervised  by his parents. See his description of this in  "Railroading" in the Past   A Youthful Prodigy In Trouble New York Times, May 15, 1919, p.16 Genius Early Revealed New York Times, May 15, 1919, p.16 ------------------------------------------------------ Burnout myth grows. Having taken part in an anti-draft demonstration suggests burn-out.   Boris Sidis The Harvard Boy Prodigy A Candidate To Serve Out A Jail Sentence Is A Candidate For Attorney General of Massachusetts Lowell [MA] Courier-Citizen, June 11, 1919 -------------------------------------------------------------- Article states, "He stands to know a few things about the law before he gets through." This was a period of high activism and personal profile in public life. His declared 'candidacy' was a symbolic act to make a point.     [Tuesday, January 6, 1920. Sidis completes The Animate and the Inanimate, and then waits five years to publish it (see below.)]  

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 "The Secret Of Sound Sleep" by Boris Sidis M.D., Ph.D. American Monthly, Dec. 1922, p.36 --------------------------------------------------- This article, one of more than 50, was his last.   Dr. Boris Sidis Dies Suddenly Portsmouth [NH] Herald, Oct. 25, 1923   Dr. Boris Sidis DiesNew York Times, Oct. 25, 1923, p.19  Precocity Doesn't Wear Well New York Times, Jan. 11, 1924, p.16 ----------------------------------------------------- More 'burnout' myth.   Sidis Inherits $4000, May 23, 1924 ----------------------------------------------------  Documents      

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Sidis, W. J., The Animate and the Inanimate. (Boston: Badger, 1925). ----------------------------------------------------------------

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He begins the first chapter of this earthshaking work with a remarkable discovery of what might be called the first law of physical laws, modestly presented: 

Among the physical laws it is a general characteristic that there is reversibility in time; that is, should the whole universe trace back the various positions that bodies in it have passed through in a given interval of time, but in the reverse order to that in which these positions actually occurred, then the universe, in this imaginary case, would still obey the same laws.      

The only physical law that does not meet the reversibility requirement is the second law of thermodynamics. And  therein lies a great secret: 

In the theory herein set forth, we suppose that reversals of the second law are a regular phenomenon, and identify them with what is generally known as life. This changes the idea of unavailable energy into that of a reserve fund of energy, used only by life, and created by non-living forces. Hence, in the last analysis, the second law of thermodynamics is to be interpreted as a mental law, as the law determining the direction in which a given mind will conceive of time as flowing.

His discovery has immense ramifications for the way we understand the universe and indeed ourselves. In Chapter 3, he presents a devastating argument against the still popular Big Bang theory. He concludes that the highest probability is that the universe is infinite and eternal as per the First Law of Thermodynamics: energy is neither created nor destroyed; and that the second law of thermodynamics is a psychological law governing the way we perceive the universe. There are other more mysterious ramifications such as the continuity of consciousness after physical death, but this last matter must be left to time.

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Sidis, W. J. Notes on the Collection of Transfers by Frank Folupa (pseud.) Phila.: Dorrance, 1926 From Introduction:

This book is a description of what is, so far as the author is aware, a new kind of hobby, but one which seems on the face of it to be as reasonable, as interesting, and as instructive as any other sort of collection fad. This is the collection of streetcar transfers and allied forms. The author himself has

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already collected over 1000 such forms, there being no duplicates included. We have been very much tempted to give this process of transfer collection some special name, similar to 'philately,' for stamp collection, and 'numismatics' for coin and medal collection. Consequently, we went so far as to coin the term 'peridromophilly' for the general subject of transfer collection, and concurrently with this, 'peridromophile' for the transfer collector.

As usual, Sidis is modest about the importance of his work.The book preserves for posterity a complete record of the UStrolley-car system of the 1920s. The press, apparently without exception, saw it as further evidence of his 'burnout'. But Notes on the Collection of Transfers is taxonomyAristotelian in breadth and detail.  The transfers were collected while he was "riding his hobby" in order to research the Tribes and the States at the local level. Many suggestions have been made re his pseudonym. PerhapsFrank = French, and Folupa = fallu pas (wasn't practical or necessary).  Russia Has Opportunities: Dr. [Sarah] Sidis Recently Returned from Foreign Land Says Wages of People High, Art Appreciated, But Bread Is Scarcity Manchester [NH] Union, March 4, 1929   [Fragment from Ripley's Believe Or Not ]

 

 

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Sidis, W. J., Perpetual Calendar

US Patent No. 1,718,314 , June 25, 1929 US Index of Patents, 1929, 658 - 660. US Patent No. 1,784,117, Dec. 9, 1930 US Index of Patents, 1930, 638 - 640. ------------------------------------------------------ His great discovery is (1) a mere 56 calendars are  necessary for a perpetual calendar, and that (2)  they can be quite simply organized within a circle  which rotates within a surrounding square.  

   The invention relates to perpetual calendars in which week-days can be found directly for any given date whatever; and its object is, first, to provide a means by which all such weekdays can be looked up in a direct, simple, and easily understandable manner; secondly, to avoid the cross-reference tables or complex mechanism, one or the other of which have hitherto generally been features of perpetual calendars providing means to look up the week-day of any given date whatever; thirdly, to provide a perpetual calendar in which, once the calendar is adjusted for any given year, a complete and condensed calendar for the year is plainly visible; fourthly, to simplify the parts and their

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interrelation by the elimination of indicators or pointers which add to the difficulty and expense of manufacture and to the derangement of the operation of the calendar.

Dare anyone dream of the royaltiesfor this invention? Better yet, dareanyone dream of inventing such adevice after so many greatmathematicians had failed to do so?Patent   Photo  Sidis, W. J. The Orarch  A newsletter on liberty and related subjects. Orarchy = limited government, as opposedto anarchy = no government. Sidis was by thistime a 'libertarian', maybe the first to use the term. He may be hinting at this in: The Modern Gray Champion.  Sidis, W. J., The Tribes and the States  by John W. Shattuck (pseud.), ca. 1932. Unpub. ms. 620 pages. 

     There are certain definite departures from the common and well-known points of view regarding America and its past that the reader will notice. At the opening, it is obvious that the beginnings of American history are sought not in Europe but here in America, among the peoples who originally inhabited this country.

    The material is partly the legends and traditions of the tribe itself, some of which are embodied in its poems, which are freely quoted throughout this history; partly well-known historical facts and dates, as interpreted from this different point of view; partly facts which are definitely known but

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which the ordinary history fails to bring out because varying from the standard "patriotic point of view―all originally presented by the "tribe" as isolated material, but in this history for the first time woven into a continuous whole.

---

There are other points of difference from the established text-book view of history, such as: picturing America as a country where popular revolts have been the rule rather than the exception, and even as the origin and inspiration of such revolts throughout the world; describing George Washington, not as the hero of the American Revolution, as he is ordinarily considered, but rather as one who had little sympathy with democracy, and finally overthrew by conspiracy the republic the Revolution established; the existence of a First Republic (John Hancock being its first president) representing the American Revolution, and a Second Republic representing a political counter-revolution; the pre-revolutionary co-operative factory and civil disobedience systems in Massachusetts; or the various peculiar theories of economic and political functions and development as presented here.

At the heart of this extraordinary history of North America from prehistoric times is Sidis's Continuity Theory: 

The history is thus not a history from the point of view of ancestry, but rather of locality. The idea developed is that in each locality there is a certain continuity of tradition that persists in spite of the changing character of its population—not that the geographical characteristics compel this, as some have supposed, but rather that each successive wave of invasion or immigration acquires the traditions from the previous inhabitants of the region.

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In America, as in most cases of this sort, the original institutions of the place not merely have a strong influence on the new people and guide them to the formation of their own societies, but, in so far as they are displaced, show a strong tendency to come back. 

To this day, twenty-six American states retain their Native-American names. The Massachusetts state flag depicts a red man, and even  the Mass. Confederacy, the first white democratic government in  America, adopted a red man as its symbol. Not to mention the concept of federation invented by the Iroquois  (Hodenosaunee) which is still spreading around the world today, and well-established in the rotating presidership (presidency) of the UN Security Council. Sidis's sources for the history of the red people were:  

 "The various designs of the colored beads in a wampum belt expressed ideas as definitely as any form of writing; and tribal history, minutes of meetings--even personal letters,

were written by weaving wampums to express the ideas intended to be

conveyed(Chapter III)."

                                                          The Tribes and the States

 

 

Out Today: Harvard Prodigy New York World Telegram,

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Aug. 13, 1937, p.15 -------------------------------------------- Reports publication of infamous  New Yorker article.

 

 

"Where Are They Now? April Fool" by Jared L. Manley The New Yorker, August 14, 1937, 22-26 ---------------------------------------------------------------- This article, a rewrite of Jared Manley's piece by James Thurber, was central to a famous US Supreme Court decision in 1941. It implied that Sidis's enthusiasm for the Okamakammessets  was evidence of burn-out. As to "April Fool," he  was born on April 1. Many celebrities, such as Carol Burnett, have lost invasion-of-privacy cases due to the legal precedent set by the Sidis case.  

 

Sidis, W. J., Atlantis  ca. 1937. Unpub. ms. missing.

 

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New York Times, Dec. 17, 1941, p.21------------------------------------------------------ Reports US Supreme Court decision  on Sidis's case against The New Yorker magazine for having violated his rights to privacy in its 1937 article. He had not assented to an interview. Sidis personally funded his case.    Sidis vs. F-R Pub. Corp Federal Reporter, 1941, #113, 807-811 ------------------------------------------------------- In a 5 - 4 opinion, hence by the vote of a single Justice, the US Supreme Court decided that famecast upon one's shoulders the burden of losingone's rights of privacy. Chief Justice Brandeis, thedeciding vote, said The New Yorker article was,"...merciless in its dissection of intimate detailsof its subject's life," and further admitted that ALL have the "... right to be protected fromthe prying of the press..." But he proceeded to deny Sidis that right because he was a publicfigure! This case set the precedent which hascome up time and again in celebrity libel cases against the press.  

 

"Meet Boston" by Jacob Marmor (pseud.)What's New In Town, Jan. 3, 1941 - Sept. 18, 1942

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---------------------------------------------------------------------89 weekly columns on interesting and little known facts about Boston and its history. First week wastitled "Strange But True."  (Marmor was Boris'smother's maiden name.)  Peridromophily and Mr. Willie Sidis The Evening Sun (Baltimore), Jan. 8, 1943 -------------------------------------------------------------"Peridromophily" was Sidis's name for his hobby of collecting trolley-car transfers.     One Time Child Prodigy Found Destitute Here Boston Traveler, July 14, 1944, p. 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------ He was far from destitute. He supported himself with full-time jobs and lived in an apartment on Canton St. a working-class section of Boston. He died with no debt and had $625 of earned money in his bank account, which would equal $7000 today.Documents   Inflation Calculator  Hub Prodigy Who Held Clerk's Job Dies Penniless Boston Traveler, July 17, 1944 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Most  Bostonians considered their lovely city to be the Hub of the Universe then. Perhaps it was.   Landlady Tells How Sidis Was Stricken Boston Traveler, July 17, 1944

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  Sidis A "Wonder" In Childhood Dies New York Times, July 18, 1944. p. 21   Sidis Once Prodigy Dies In Hospital In Obscurity Boston Herald, July 18, 1944 ---------------------------------------------------------------Obscurity? His death after a lifetime of press attention was international news.     The Hidden Genius New York Times, July 19, 1944, p.18 --------------------------------------------------- 'Burnout' one more time.   "Sidis' Boyhood Seen Case of All Work and No Play" by Alice Burke Boston Traveler, July 19, 1944   "Sidis Was Victim Of An Experiment" by Shirley S. Smith. Boston Traveler, July 19, 1944   "What Happened To One Child Prodigy" by Ruth Reynolds New York Sunday News, July 23, 1944, 38-41; "Taught Son Everything But How To Live" by Ruth Reynolds

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Boston Sunday Post, August 6, 1944 ----------------------------------------------------------- Same article, different titles.   Prodigious Failure Time, July 31, 1944, #44, p.60 -------------------------------------------- To title an obituary of any human being in this way makes this a low point in the history of journalism. An apology has long been in order given the prestige of this periodical.   Burned Out Prodigy Newsweek, July 31, 1944, #24, 77-78   "William James Sidis" by Hallowell Bowser Saturday Review, July, 1944   Psychology for the Millions by Abraham Sperling, Ph.D. NY: F. Fell, Inc., 1946, 332-339. ------------------------------------------- The City College of New York professorwas the first Sidis biographer. He visited Sidis's  family and friends and tells of having seen adozen manuscripts written by Sidis.  See also Atlantis Manuscript   Philology & Anthropology Mss. In a letter to Julius Eichel, who had been a friend of

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Sidis for more than 20 years, Sperling wrote,

Also I am thoroughly familiar with his desire to avoid publicity and his friends' wishes to observe that desire. However, since the appearance of so many distorted news and magazine articles about Bill since his passing, a true and worthy account of the noble spirit and motives that guided Bill Sidis through life is more than justified (Monday, June 25, 1945). 

Amen to that!

 

Mrs. Sharfman's Lament for William Sidis(Unpublished, ca. 1944)

 

 

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WILLIAM JAMES SIDISby Julius Eichel

The Absolutist, #43, September 5, 1944

Mimeographed weekly newsletter published by conscientious-objector group of which Sidis may have been a member.

In Julius Eichel Papers, Swathmore College Peace Collection

 

Born in Brookline1, Massachusetts April 1, 1898Died in Brookline2, Massachusetts July 1944

This is not a biography in the sense which this term is usually employed. It covers (inadequately, considering the meager space we are devoting to it) parts of Sidis’ life that were so sadly misunderstood by his contemporaries. A biography to be of value must be honest, for that reason we will stick to the facts, shielding no one, but where actions and principles and not the individuals concerned are the important considerations, we will withhold names.

WILLIAM JAMES SIDIS AND PACIFISM  William James Sidis was a libertarian pacifist, and we are not departing from our accustomed devotion to pacifism when we devote this entire issue to his biography. At a time when general disgust with CPS3 slavery is sweeping through CPS, it is well to remind our readers that Sidis was always an ardent opponent of CPS. Before that evil was started we has written a paper opposing the inauguration of CPS and sent copies to a number of friends inviting comments, among them was Sidis. Sidis, under the pen name of Parker Greene (our readers may remember his weekly column in The Absolutist) wrote a similar denunciation, but having a practical turn of mind in such matters, improved upon what we had written and suggested

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an alternative to CPS. In effect he said the government insists that the citizens of this country must do work of "national importance." Well and good. Let the young men and women involved get together voluntarily, and devote their energies, their abilities, and money for building self- supporting projects of a cooperative nature with the government and its bureaucrats excluded from its management. Had his suggestion been adopted or even attempted much good might have resulted from it. But the pacifist churches and their members were hell bent on trying out this noble experiment under conscription, and both papers were suppressed by all pacifist organizations out of deference to the pacifist groups who insisted they wanted CPS.

PACIFISM AND GOVERNMENT  To Sidis government had only one legitimate function, and that is to protect the individual in his inalienable rights. Any government that sins against the individual forfeits its right to existence. From that standpoint all forms of organized violence can meet only with opposition and not cooperation, for such violence entails a denial of civil liberties and individual freedom. We have a clear picture how organized violence defeats the needs of even good intentions in the classical example of the recent civil war in Spain. Here was a democratic and liberal government elected with a clear mandate to rid the country of militarism and repudiate its imperialism. France was to be dismissed as a butcher and a disgrace to humanity, and Morocco was to be liberated. But the labor politicians, as politicians everywhere, found it easier to make promises than to carry them out. The trappings of militarism and imperialism were too seductive. Morocco was held in subjection, and France was exiled to that place and permitted to play the soldier—we know with what disastrous effect. The civil war got started because militarism and imperialism had not been repudiated. With organized violence both sides resorted to terror. Most people have much to loose by such violence and desired to remain neutral, but individual freedom and neutrality were not permitted by either side—that is the first law of organized violence—and the principles that were supposed to activate the loyalists were discarded for the greater glory of victory. There again

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it was determined that rather than freedom, individuals prefer national glory. That is the way of militarism. Sidis was never fooled by this war psychosis, and denounced any attempt to take sides in the civil war in Spain. War is the enemy of all mankind, and that is the great evil we must fight at all costs and at all times.

SIDIS GETS INTO THE NEWS  We first become acquainted with the name of William James Sidis when he was admitted to Harvard at the age of eleven. At the age of twelve he was in the news again for he had created a sensation by lecturing on the fourth dimension to Harvard professors. We next heard of him through the press when he led a May Day parade in Boston on May 1, 1919. We came into personal contact with him the later part of 1922, and almost up to the day of his death we were in constant touch with each other.4

COMMON INTERESTS  We were both libertarians and confirmed conscientious objectors to all forms of organized violence, and particularly national wars. Sidis had a strong love for America and its traditions of freedom, and so did the editor. In World War I, Sidis registered his objections to war, but the armistice of 1918 saved him from a prison term. The editor was not so lucky, for we spent about twenty-six months in prison for opposing conscription and war. It was natural then that we who so strenuously opposed the institution of war and so determinedly fought to uphold the best of our American traditions of liberty, could join hands in combating the common enemy—militarism and the institutions geared to maintain it.

SIDIS AND HIS PARENTS  It would be well to review some of the items that made Sidis the man he was. In our Weekly Prison News Letter  No. 21, August 31, 1943, under the heading, "RAILROADING IN THE PAST", Sidis gives his own story, in his own words, and describes the attitude of his parents towards him. Sidis was very sensitive, and his parents may have been well-meaning, but nevertheless in the interest of realism in this biography, we are going to tell the story of his relationship with his parents as he was accustomed to telling it. William

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James Sidis had intelligent parents. His father was a professor of psychology at Harvard, and was considered an authority in his day. His mother was a physician and also very intelligent. They were in a position to help develop their son’s mental powers to the fullest. Sidis was unfortunate in the fact that his parents were both strong-willed individuals and incompatible. According to Sidis they would be constantly quarrelling making life bitter for everyone on the family. Sidis would say he was the object of their frustrations, and would often get nagged and scolded, and be whipped when either of his parents were cross with each other.

SISTER HELENE  Life became a bit more bearable when his sister Helene was born when he was about ten years of age. Not that the nagging and beating stopped, but he found great comfort in this new sister, for here was one member of his family that made no attempt to dominate him. This attachment to his sister lasted until a year before his death when she crossed him on some manner. There seemed to have been some reconciliation between him and Helene as he lay dying, but he never forgave his aged mother who was also present at his side. In 1923 when his father died his hatred for him was so intense that he refused to attend the funeral.

THE INFANT PRODIGY  Opinions vary on the talents Sidis possessed as an infant, but all agreed that his talents were prodigious and broad. He enjoyed the exuberance that came with his ability to think clearly and clarify obtuse philosophies and scientific writings to older people in clear and concise terms. This mental faculty he maintained to the end. No one who would come into intimate contact with him could say that his mental powers were waning. On the other hand, few could meet him without coming away with the feeling that he lacked some of the ordinary niceties that is expected of everyone in society. He was interesting to those who could overlook his bitterness and his personal habits, he could talk well on almost any topic and with an interest that could hold his listeners spell-bound.6 Sidis seemed to have blossomed

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out intellectually at the age of two, for it was then that he was accredited with speaking four languages, and having some familiarity with most of the sciences. This faculty to master anything he was interested in never forsook him. Even after he was popularly supposed to have given up thinking, he could master a system of shorthand overnight, teach himself a new language by the cryptogram method, talk learnedly on mathematics, biology, astronomy, geology, topography, etc.

INTEREST IN RAPID TRANSIT  Sidis was interested in transit before he could toddle. One Harvard graduate, a number of years his senior remembers with what astonishment he and two other classmates (today one is a Supreme Court judge and the other a well known retired professor of logic) came away after a visit to the Sidis home. Sidis hardly more than two years old was on the floor of his room looking over some maps of Greater Boston and calling to his mother, who had just brought him home from a shopping tour. He called her attention to the maps and pointed out how she could get to the shopping center of the city by a much shorter route. He never lost his interest in transit, and up to the time of his death he was constantly studying city transit problems, and solving some quite elegantly, and that without ever having set foot in some of the cities. Those of our readers who remember VUSP (Volunteer Urban Self-Supporting Projects) will remember he was offering his labors gratis if only he could be instrumental in getting a volunteer cooperative started along the lines he planned. The sting that interfered with stirring up interest for the plan was the preconceived notions of most people that similar city guides were already in existence. Nothing could be further from the truth. With painstaking thought and logic he had evolved a system whereby anybody could by looking at the part of the city he wanted to reach, see at a glance what transit facilities to use towards that end.

SIDIS AT HARVARD  At the age of six he raced through grammar school in six months. At eight he finished a four-year course at the Brookline High School in six months. He passed the Harvard entrance

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exams at nine. He was not admitted immediately so he went to Tufts College for a year.4 It was two years before Harvard broke down its reserve to admit so young a scholar. He was eleven years old when he entered Harvard. At twelve he suffered a nervous breakdown, and he was taken from school to his father's sanitarium at Portsmouth, N. H.5 Sidis would insist that it was not his mental activities that it was not his mental activities that brought on his breakdown, but the social life he was compelled top lead. His proud parents were anxious to show off their prodigy, and insisted on directing his activities long after he had achieved an intellectual superiority over them. His mother would make appointments for him to meet people in whom he had no interest. He would complain about such appointments, and his mother would say, I promised to bring you"—and that settled it her way.

SIDIS AND THE YOUNG LADIES  When he returned to Harvard to resume his studies, he was still mentally alert, but very much more reserved. One of his classmates describes him as very studious, indifferent to his personal appearance, presumably happy, and not at all bitter. The ladies began coming into his life, and being the celebrity he was, some of them would coo over him. His bragging about their attentions led some of the practical jokers among his schoolmates to write love letters to him, until he gained the impression that all the young ladies were after him as the prize catch. To his dying day he would brag about the number of proposals he received. We believe he counted them into the hundreds. Throughout his existence he continued to receive proposals from facetious maidens who knew in advance he was certain to turn them down—but he would count them in. He tried to be secretive, but he was really very communicative. Any moon-eyed girl, for that matter any man who could appear sympathetic could worm out of him the innermost secrets of his life. In many ways he was naive, ingenuous, and trusting, and while he was sophisticated enough on must worldly matters, individuals could impose on him. It was from some such inveigler that The New Yorker got the story of his life in 1937 which led to the lawsuit for invasion of privacy.

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TEACHING AND FURTHER STUDY  About this time young Sidis was becoming disgusted with his academic surroundings, and becoming better towards the end of his stay at Harvard, and was becoming more careless in his personal dress and habits. At the age of sixteen he graduated from Harvard. In 1915 he was invited to Rice Institute, Houston, Texas, to teach mathematics. In June 1916 he resigned. After this resignation Sidis decided to go back to Harvard and study law. Lack of funds prevented him from continuing his studies in law, and from then on he had to face the world and shift for himself.

RADICALISM AND GOVERNMENT  It was after leaving law school that some of his real troubles began. One had but to know the political views of his father, Dr. Boris Sidis, to realize that the political and economic phase of his education would not be neglected. William James Sidis understood our traditions, was very familiar with our institutions, and had a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the political realities in the United States. He knew that the most sacred positions of trust in the country were at the disposal of the political manipulators who would stoop to the lowest depths to gain and retain power. When one considers that a political convention called upon to nominate a President can be influenced by the low tricks of politicians rigging up loud speakers in a cellar of that convention, and delegates can be lined up for the candidate by the evil machinations of a Tammany Hall, or a low down political corrupt machine in Jersey City, or at this late date by labor politicians who are bribed by the government by some share in this evil power over their fellow men, then he can see that the government is run by gangs and not by the good men that vote. Sidis knew that, but he was too busy devoting his life to science. Now came a change. He desired to do with politics and economics what he already accomplished in science—master its intricacies and instruct people in the truth. To his dismay and disappointment he discovered whereas he was free to discuss his scientific convictions, he was not free to question political and economic practices within the United States. Certainly he was not free to instruct others on the solution to those evils. His professors discouraged any

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such activities and so did his parents. His father had come here from Russia to escape exile to Siberia for his revolutionary activities under the Tsar. He was not going to permit his son to make the same mistake of opposing the operations of a powerful and corrupt government. He discouraged any activities along such lines. But young Sidis became only the more interested, and continued his researches and activities. It was not long before he found that very few would join him in the search for truth. His professors, the editors, the ministers, and especially the politicians had no objection to the truth in scientific matters, but they made every effort to suppress or dodge the truth in economic and political matters. He found these groups praising institutions and individuals that should be receiving their condemnation.

POLITICS AND PARTIES  Many of those acquainted with the actions of young Sidis were quite at a loss to understand why he would shift his allegiance from one party to another. Back in the early days of the war he had joined the Socialist Party, and when the left wing split off to become the Communist Party he joined that group, but soon after dropped from that group. Some said he was too radical. The fact is that he only had a scientist's interest in those parties. He was interested in economic and political freedom. The Socialists seemed to promise that and he joined up to help them. He soon came to the conclusion that Socialist politicians were hardly better than any other kind. They, too, attempted to enslave others in order to free them. He joined the Communist branch of the split because he saw the entrenched Socialist politicians stoop to low practices and slander that disqualified them as champions of freedom as far as he could judge. The Socialist Party was being disrupted by a struggle for power, and the group that he had hoped had some ideals and was devoted to the truth, chucked such ideals overboard to gain its ends. He left the Communist Party for the same reason. He did not have to wait a score of years to discover that Communism was a religion with the State as its God, and that individual freedom was the least of Communist concerns. He saw that Lenin and Trotsky were laying the foundations of a totalitarian Stalin. Sidis was

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interested in individual freedom, and he severed his connections with all groups that opposed such freedom.

AN AMERICAN PARTY NECESSARY  It was through this experience with political parties that led Sidis to the conviction that international affiliations were a hindrance rather than an aid in gaining such freedom. In Russia the people had exchanged the despotism of the Tsar for that of the Communist Party. It was his conviction that the Russian people were chained to despotism by their traditions and knew no better. He saw, too, that the American branch of the Communist Party was more loyal to the central power in Russia than it was to the American people. As a matter of fact the party was willing to betray the American people in deference to Russia's aims. He decided, after due consideration, that only an American party with no direct international ties, with an economic program that would renounce politics completely, that would have as its program the democratic cooperative ownership by the workers in each industry of the tools of production, such enterprise to be free from all government direction and especially free from government bureaucracy, could be the only practical alternative to corrupt politics and he evils of the present economic system.

REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES  The father of young Sidis, Dr. Boris Sidis, was a student of psychology, and was well acquainted with the psychosis engendered by a national war, and the more he would study the phenomenon the more he was disgusted with the patriotic devotion that would impel people to mutual suicide and slaughter. Some day when we can spare the space we will review some of Dr. Boris Sidis' views on war and the masses. His views were definitely opposed to the hysteria of war. It was small wonder then that young Sidis should be a pacifist almost from the cradle. Sidis was only twenty in 1917 when the United States entered the war, and he was too young to register in the first draft. In another registration in 1918 he protested war and conscription as a conscientious objector. It was at about this time that he joined the Socialist Party. On May 1, 1919, he led a May Day

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demonstration and parade which was organized by the Socialist Party. He was arrested together with about a dozen others. In court, among other items, he was charged with being a conscientious objector, an atheist, and with carrying a red flag—none of which charges he denied. There is quite a story connected with that arrest with many interesting angles. For one thing the arrest proved his point that the authorities could not tolerate free speech nor criticism, and that most public officials were ignorant of American history, elements necessary for such freedom. He was bitter but exultant. In court he matched wits with the prosecution, and proved that the officers of the law were not familiar with our traditions, but had a great respect for power and arbitrary force. They had no regard for the meaning and demands of freedom. The red flag he proved had been used in the War for Independence, slightly altered to be sure, but it made the flag respectable—it was the old pine tree banner, a red background with a green pine tree.

TRUE LOVE  It was in the course of this experience that he formed an attachment for a young lady which if reciprocated might have changed the course of his entire life. Among those arrested in that May Day parade was a young girl, since become famous as a writer, whom he adored. Shortly after his arrest he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to eighteen months in the reformatory. He appealed, and before he could get a hearing in court, he was whisked away to his father's Portsmouth, N. H. sanitarium, and later to California. For details of this episode we must again refer our readers to the article "RAILROADING" IN THE PAST, where Sidis describes the ordeal he was put to. Upon his return from California, he sought out this new flame and carried on a romance on Central Park benches. Sidis was very naive when he would tell this story of his love making. The first time he had her to himself in Central Park he kissed her with a great deal of ardor. "Why you kiss like an experienced lover," she said. "Where did you get that experience, pray." And he naively answered, as he later told us, "Why, cant you believe it comes as natural to me as any other man." This affair proved to be one-sided, for while the lady was amused at this love making, it struck no

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deeper root than that. Soon after she left the country and married someone else abroad. She returned to this country with a baby, and Sidis asked permission to visit her. He received that permission, and found he still loved her and he loved the baby, and Sidis told us all about that visit. And in spite of all rumors to the contrary, that is all that ever came from that affair. It was a case of unrequited love. Sidis admitted that her love might have achieved wonders with him, for whereas he might be stubborn with others, there is nothing he would not have done to please her. He carried her photograph with him from 1920 until the day he died, and was always anxious to be asked about it, and would flourish it in the face of any newcomer to arouse a curiosity which he was fast to satisfy on demand. That was the only lady he ever loved, and would admit it, just as readily as he would admit that she did not love him.

SIDIS DENIES HIS UNUSUAL ABILITIES  The young lad that had lectured to college professors on the fourth dimension was now a man, and he had more important problems than showing off his scholastic abilities. It was not only distasteful, he wanted to forget it, but society would not permit him to shake off the reputation of his youth. It was this attempt to deny his own genius and ability that probably forced him to seek jobs where thinking was unnecessary. He would minimize his personal attainments and abilities and insist that he was merely mediocre, just to change the subject. Once, while denying his precocious childhood that led to his entrance at Harvard at the age of eleven, we asked: "But how could people say such things about you if they are not true?" His reply to that was: "Well, I was at college at a time when a number of my young classmates had distinguished themselves in one subject or another—the authorities conjured up a composite picture of the lot and named it Sidis."

NATURAL ABILITIES  Be that as it may, Sidis could be counted on to solve difficult mathematical problems if anyone could get him to concentrate on them. And we have seen him compete with another able mathematician in solving such problems. He did that to his distaste he

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later said, but, nevertheless, he retained the ability to do so after he had gained the reputation that he had stopped thinking. In 1927 he wrote a book, Notes on the Collection of Transfers, which, considering the meager material he had to work with, proved his ingenuity, his ability to gather the material and arrange it attractively, and make a most interesting story of a rather dry subject. The book, too, illustrates his sense of humor, and that he could enjoy a joke, and also gives some indication of the habits and character of the author. He was scrupulously, and his opinion could be depended upon to be the truth. It was only when he would permit personal dislikes to color his thoughts that he could be unreasonable in his attitude. In 1929 he patented a "perpetual" calendar, which was a marvel of simplicity, depending only on the turn of a disc to give information that similar contraptions would give through a number of intricate devices that might disclose some ingenuity, but not the direct and clear thinking that characterized the works of Sidis. He never gave up thinking, but he had come to the conclusion that science and all of its achievements were secondary in a world geared to war and periodical destruction. He had a great concern for his fellow man, and he was determined to help change the economic and political structure of society so that man might be freed from his enslavers. These were the problems upon which he was anxious to concentrate, and he was proud of whatever achievements he could make in that field.

SHORTCOMINGS AND IDIOSYNCRACIES  William James Sidis was born on April 1, and from the day we met him until The New Yorker put emphasis on that point, we remember him saying whenever he had occasion to give the date of his birth: "It was April fool to my parents." The New Yorker sort of soured that joke, and he never repeated it thereafter. Sidis was born in Brookline, Mass., and he died not far from his birthplace. That was no mere coincidence—he could think of no better place in the world, although he had seen much of the United States. Brookline is part of Greater Boston, and he was proud of Boston "the cradle of democracy," and he would ascribe the origin of most

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democratic thought to Boston. He credited Boston with a number of firsts, too numerous to mention here and many of which escape our memory at the moment. Boston had the first cafeteria in the United States, the first subway, etc., and he always insisted that the Boston transit system was the most efficient. He was a loyal son of Boston, and one of his last acts was to submit a plan to the authorities to prevent post-war unemployment in Boston embodying his underlying faith that non-profit, self-supporting projects are the only democratic solution to the misery of unemployment. Boston can still honor one of her most distinguished sons by the adoption of some plan like that. Sidis insisted that he had very little sense of beauty, did not understand or appreciate poetry or music, and was altogether bereft of any esthetic sense. That was hardly true. He could hammer out a tune on the piano. He would revert to poetry whenever he was strongly moved by sentiments connected with liberty. He had memorized almost all of the good rhymes on liberty, and he would recite them with enthusiasm and ardor like a cheer leader. He had a keen sense of smell and all the essentials that could make him an aesthete. He was very observant. Perhaps he did not think these acquirements important enough and so disowned them.

HISTORICAL INFLUENCES  Sidis had a great love for the American Indians especially those who lived in and around the New England States. He could read their wampum and talk their language. He believed that a continuity existed between their institutions and our own. Federation, for instance, was an old idea from the five Indian tribes living in the northern section of New York, and Sidis was convinced that they influenced us in that direction. There were two events in American History for which he had a special fondness. They both dealt with revolts of the common people against their American oppressors. One concerned Sir Edmond Andros, governor of a large section of New England whose rule as a royal dictator was terminated in the colonies by a spontaneous uprising of New Englanders who disarmed his guard and imprisoned him on April 18, 1689. Sidis was particularly impressed with the fact that the uprising was spontaneous, very restrained, and effective.

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He was convinced that it could serve as a pattern for uprisings against out present-day despots. The other was Shay's Rebellion, which was another spontaneous uprising of the common people, many of whom fought in the War for Independence, only to return to civil life to find themselves the victims of excessive taxation, and subject to imprisonment for debt and facing foreclosures of their property. That uprising, too, was a model of constraint considering the great provocation, and it helped to wring many concessions from the tyrants in control of the government in those days. Debtors prisons were abolished, foreclosures were suspended, and many of the planks in our Bill of Rights can be traced to those rumblings of rebellion that spread throughout the country at that time. Sidis admired the spirit and aims of both rebellions, and he tried to found societies in commemorations of those events with the hope that similar rebellions against the tyrants of our own day could be stimulated by such examples. Sidis saw no hope for freedom in the politics of our day, and warned his friends to shun the ballot. Instead he would stress the workers cooperatives free from government participation and the bureaucrats.

PERSONALITY AND JOBS  The first job Sidis was compelled to give up was that of instructor at Rice Institute in 1916. He did not give it up from choice—he was compelled to quit by the directors of the college. His work was always excellent, he taught with painstaking care. The students were pleased with his lectures. But his slovenly personal appearance, his annoying habits, and his bitterness towards his critics made him poor company. All of the jobs he managed to get were either gotten him by friends or were the result of his passing civil service examinations. Civil service examinations were easy for him; in almost every instance he would head the lists. But his main trouble was holding on to jobs. He would be asked to quit or the jobs would be voted out of existence. A belief had grown up the Sidis objected to working for a decent salary. It is true that his salary would range from $15 to $25 a week, but that was not from choice. He took what was offered. His principles would prevent him from living extravagantly, but he had plans

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for using surplus earnings for his pet scheme of cooperatives. After his father died in 1923 (Sidis, by the way, would not attend the funeral, he detested his father so heartily) Sidis inherited about $50,0003 as his share of the estate. He would not touch a penny of that for his own use. Instead he invested the money in Bus stocks, which to all appearances seemed sound enough, looking forward to the day when he could use that nest-egg to start the cooperatives he was always planning. Financial manipulations carried on by the parent bus company resulted in him being squeezed out of his holdings, and he suffered a complete loss of his inheritance. He had not enjoyed a penny of it. His salary was too meager for any saving, and when he would lose a job he would suffer from hunger. He could live on very little. He sought out the cheapest boarding houses for his shelter. For the last five years of his life he lived in an attic which was extremely hot in summer and very cold in winter. In the summer of 1942 his sister Helene had visited him and presented him with an electric fan which made the conditions in the attic a bit more bearable. In the winter of 1943 he contracted a cold which he did not thro off, and it continued to plague him into the summer when on July 17, 1944 the newspapers reported his death. He had estranged most of his friends, we among them. His sister, to whom he was attached, had given him some financial help the year before, and with it went some advice which he resented. He had a falling out with her for the first time in his life, and until he was dying in the hospital he had no contact with her. We had quarreled over some trivial matters of policy; he insisted on judging each pacifist by his acceptance of the principles of VUSP, which we thought was a poor measure of a pacifist's sincerity. Ordinarily such a difference would not be enough to cause a rift, but Sidis, though very calm and collected in ordinary matters, would become exceedingly bitter and lose his head in personal matters. With that understanding of the situation we stopped collaborating with him, although we wrote him we respected his ideas, and we would be willing to cooperate on most matters where there could be no personal friction.

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PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND HABITS  Sidis was as indifferent to his personal appearance and habits as was Samuel Johnson in an earlier age. But he suffered more than Johnson for this, for whereas Johnson was the literary leader of the groups then congregating in coffee-houses, Sidis had no such admirers, and few could overlook his careless appearance and uncouth manners. The result was that first appearances would shut out his [word illegible] to those who met him casually. Sidis was about five feet, eight inches tall, stocky and broad boned, and weighed about 220 pounds. In appearance and habits he could have passed for a longshoreman rather than a white-collar worker, yet he insisted that the only work he was fitted for was operating a comptometer or in an office. That incongruity made it difficult for him to get such office work, and that was at the root of his financial troubles. No one could complain about his work; it was accurate and efficient, and he would be asked to locate mistakes that others would make. If only he had paid more attention to his cleanliness and his distasteful habits. But in spite of friendly advice, he could not overcome such weaknesses. He wore a dirty old cap, musty with age. He always seemed to need a shave, although he did not cultivate a beard. His trousers were unpressed and dirty, his shoes always remained unshined when he wore shoes. In later years he wore ordinary gray sneakers, with socks in winter, and without socks in summer. His coat was ragged with the lining usually showing where the stitches or wear had loosened it from the cloth. His tie was usually cut six inches from the knot, and usually dirty. In an age when dress and appearances count for so much, his carelessness was an obvious handicap.

LACKED APPEAL  William James Sidis was a difficult man to have in company for he demanded attention which few would accord him. His experience with society had made him bitter and distrustful, and this bitterness would be directed with very little discrimination against anyone who would slight him. That does not mean his bitterness would overcome his good sense when people would disagree with him. But in personal matters he could be very abusive. It was such personal

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shortcomings that made it difficult for him to influence people. He had no desire for power over them, but he did hope to show people how they could attain a democratic system which would strip leaders of despotic power. He did not believe that the ends could justify the means, or that any leader had the moral right to enslave his followers in order to save them. He was opposed to all forms of coercion, just as much by parents from which he had suffered, as from the government which had also added to his suffering. Industrial democracy and true representative government was his passion, and he evolved systems which he hoped could bring the solution to our political and economic evils that all lovers of freedom desired. But his secretive nature, his fear of government interference and oppression, and his peculiar personality all operated to separate him from the people he wished to influence. He would not take more than a few people into his confidence on the type of government necessary before we can have democracy, but how could he with the best system in the world get it into operation unless people know his aim? His plans had to be kept secret because he knew the government could oppress people who opposed its evil rule, but how can any opposition to the government succeed unless some sympathizers know your plans? He could hate people most heartily for merely misunderstanding, but how can ideas be thrashed out unless one can endure misunderstanding and criticism without taking it too personally? And then there was the matter of his dress and habits, and in this age when it means so much, how can anyone expect to influence people who is careless in that respect? These were the faults for which he suffered much, and which were probably more responsible for his frustrated existence than the popular notion that he had stopped thinking. Sidis could not stop thinking. He wanted work where thinking was unnecessary so that he could be free to think about problems that concerned humanity. We close this biography by a word from Sidis written long before our involvement in this war tying up his conscientious objections to war with his love for democracy.

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SIDIS WAS CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR TO WAR  "The promotion of the individual rights of the people of America necessarily involves resistance to war in any form, as war inevitably must destroy these rights and clamp additional government rule on people. This applies to any war between nations or established governments. Anyone who supports such hostilities, or governments participating in them (whether or not the hostilities are actually called war) cannot be considered as doing anything else but fighting against democracy and the rights of the people; only those who resist war to the utmost, and with their last breath and last ounce of energy, can be considered as truly fighting to save this country for democracy."

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This sheet is distributed to our President, each senator, officials, newspapers, friends, and subscribers.

 

 

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Some Footnotes by Dan MahonyEichel gives us valuable information about Sidis's thought and habits in his last years. Especially the information about his abvility to read wampum belts and his knowledge of Native-American languages. But Eichel's  information about Sidis's life in general is not accurate, possibly because Eichel's information came from The New Yorker article and other newspaper sources. Sidis is highly unlikely to have talked to Eichel about his personal life.Cases in point:1.  Sidis was born in New York City, not Brookline.2.  He died in Boston, not Brookline.

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3. His inheritance was $4000, not $50,000 (see Financial Documents). Eichel's knowledge of Sidis's past could have been informed only by newspaper accounts.

4. The Tufts misconception is a clue that The New Yorker article was the source of at least some of Eichel's beliefs about Sidis's childhood―he certainly never heard it from Sidis.

5. Sidis's Harvard College transcript shows no interruption of his studies. The Sidis Psychotherapeutic Institute in Portsmouth, NH, was the Sidis family home.

6. Eichel's wrote: "That does not mean his bitterness would overcome his good sense when people would disagree with him." Huh? This would seem to contradict much of the claims that follow about Sidis's "bitterness." Sidis's long-time friends in the Boston area, Issac Rabinowitz, and "Rab's" daughter Anne Feinzig, never mentioned any bitterness to me in many hours of conversation.

Nevertheless, Eichel gives us very valuable information about Sidis's thought , habits, and lifestyle during the years after 1940.

 

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A Story of Genius

Abraham Sperling, Ph.D.

In Psychology for the Millions, F. Fell, 1946, 332-339.

 

        William James Sidis was a genius. He was by far the most precocious intellectual child of his generation. His death in 1944 as an undistinguished figure was made the occasion for reawakening the old wives tales about nervous breakdowns, burned out prodigies and insanity among geniuses.

        Young Sidis was truly an intellectual phenomenon. His childhood achievements ranked with those of John Stuart Mill, Thomas Macaulay, and Johann Goethe. By the time William Sidis was two he could read English and, at four he was typing original work in French. At the age of five he had devised a formula whereby he could name the day of the week for any given historical date. At eight he projected a new logarithms table based on the number twelve. He entered Harvard at the age of twelve and graduated cum laude before he was sixteen. Mathematics was not his only forte. At this age he could speak and read fluently French, German, Russian, Greek, Latin, Armenian and Turkish. During his first year at Harvard University the boy astounded students and scientists with his theories on "Fourth Dimensional Bodies."

        The "man behind the gun" in this boy's amazing intellectual attainments is supposed to have been his father, a graduate in psychology at Harvard and a close friend of William James, after whom the boy was named. Dr. Boris Sidis believed in awakening in the child of two an interest in intellectual activity and love of knowledge. If you

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started early enough and worked intensively, Dr. Sidis claimed that by ten a child would acquire a knowledge equal to that of a college graduate. The boy’s father published articles urging other parents to follow his methods. He castigated the school authorities for their "cramming, routine and rote methods," which he said, "tend to nervous degeneracy and mental breakdown."

        Sidis pointed to his son, William, as a successful example of his methods. He wrote: "At the age of twelve the boy had a fair understanding of comparative philology and mythology. He is well versed in logic, ancient history, American history and has a general insight into our politics and into the ground-work of our constitution. At the same time he is of extremely happy disposition, brimming over with humor and fun?"

        Whether or not his childhood life was psychologically normal, William's life after Harvard was a series of unhappy incidents. He engaged in obscure mechanical jobs because, it was reported, "he did not want to think." At the age of twenty-four he estranged himself from his parents and to his last days the gap between parents and son remained unreconciled, though toward his sister he always felt a brotherly love which was expressed by a bond of friendship and mutual interests. Toward the press, William Sidis bore an everlastingly strong hatred.

        From this story the newspapers and the general public drew some ill-formed conclusions about William Sidis and genius in general. Newspaper writers pointed out that his "genius had burned out," that he was "tired of thinking." By comparison it was stated that musical geniuses are less likely to burn out. The father’s system was held responsible for making the boy a prodigy. The parental pushing was blamed for the mental breakdown and antisocial attitude. From his desire to keep out of the limelight and taking obscure jobs that would pay for his subsistence, William Sidis, the boy prodigy, was made out to be at the time of his death a lonely, eccentric, prodigious failure" whose intellect had deteriorated.

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        According to several newspaper reports, William' Sidis was supposed to have had a brief mental breakdown at the age of twelve, after which it was said, "he returned to school brilliant as ever, but moody, and distrustful." Let us examine some of the true facts the background of this case of genius.

        I first checked on the occurrence of the supposed brief mental breakdown. Students of abnormal psychology know that "brief mental breakdowns" in children of twelve are extremely rare. Both William's mother and his sister Helena, informed me that "he did not have a nervous breakdown." Replies to correspondence from many persons who knew William Sidis have convinced me that the idea of his having had a mental breakdown either early or late in life is erroneous. It seems that during the summer vacation when as a youngster the newspapers reported him to have suffered his mental illness he was at his father's sanitarium at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. But, as his sister explained, "this was their home." Dr. Boris Sidis ran a sanitarium for the cure of psychopathic cases and the Sidis family, including William, lived there.

        It is true that the father's concentration on academics to the complete neglect of play and friends for the boy was wrong and unhealthy by any standards. However, the boy had a prodigious capacity to begin with. At five he had a mathematical ability that surpassed his father's. And it is doubtful whether the parents could have curbed it. Consider little Joel Kupperman, the "wonda child" of the Quiz Kids. At the age of five he did algebra and geometry problems mentally that few college professors could imitate. The Kuppermans are above average in intelligence, the mother is a former teacher, and the father, an engineer. They have used no system with Joel. His mother says: "Where he learns these things is more than I know," but they keep him supplied with all the books he wants.

        An older youngster, whose history appears to approximate more closely that of young Sidis, is Master Merrill Kenneth Wolf, enrolled as a sophomore at Yale University at the age of twelve. The boy's parents,

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both attorneys, insist that they are average persons in such matters as intelligence and attainments. Yet, the father. Morris H. Wolf, never attended school but like his son studied law at home; formerly a reporter for the London Daily Mail, he has published three books and is an accomplished musician. Mrs. Wolf had informed reporters that the education of their son began when he amazed them by starting to talk at the age of four months. By the time he was two, Kenneth Wolf had finished all juveniles and showed an interest in adult works of science, history, and philosophy. In addition to his grasp of French, English grammar, zoology, and chemistry, the boy is a musical prodigy with that rare gift of absolute pitch.

        Regardless of their zeal, neither the Kuppermans, the Wolfs, nor the Sidises could have given their children the stupendous intellectual capacities that these youngsters manifested at so tender an age. Their giving was primarily in the nature of the germ plasm, followed to some extent by educational nurture.

        Returning to William Sidis, the facts in his background are more convincing as concerns family heritage. His mother schooled herself at home through elementary and high school, and then was accepted at the Boston University School of Medicine where she received her M.D. degree. Boris Sidis, William's father, earned three degrees from Harvard before he was thirty, though he arrived from Russia at the age of twenty. Moreover, on both parental sides, the family, from grandparents to cousins, includes many whose prodigious intellect is a matter of world renown.

        In any case, we can be quite certain that genius is not made by parents' actions. No, William Sidis was not made a prodigy by his father, he was born to be one.

        That Sidis was socially maladjusted as an adult cannot be attributed to any simple set of circumstances. That he had not been taught to play in childhood may be considered a definite parental lack of foresight

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contributing to this maladjustment. However, we must recognize that it is not easy to find playmates or childish games to amuse or interest an adult mind in a young body. The parents of any precocious child will testify to that.

        That William Sidis, as a youngster, had been unwholesomely placed in the public eye by association with his father's psychological fame, is a fact of record. Out of this probably grew the eventual separation between patents and son when the youth reached adulthood. As long as he lived, the thought of being considered a public spectacle was positive poison to the soul of Bill Sidis. He refused to have his name attached to any of his later writings and turned down offers of large sums from publishers who would not agree to his use of a pen-name. He won a successful suit against the New Yorker Magazine for placing him in a ridiculous light in the public eye in 1937 in one of their "profiles." Sarah Sidis gave a partial explanation for her son's lifelong animosity toward the press. She related that as a child, returning home from school, a couple of newspapermen would descend upon the boy. While one held him, the other would take his picture. As a youth and as a man, Bill Sidis wanted to be left alone to live as an average individual, and said so, many times. He object bitterly to the idea of being stamped a "genius" and treated as side-show with the connotation of "queerness" that he knew to be associated with genius in the uninformed public mind. After his death, one friend of Bill Sidis wrote a letter which appeared in the Contributor's Column of the Boston Traveler in objection to false impressions given in the many newspaper obituary accounts. With her permission I am reprinting it.

People's Editor:

This is about Bill Sidis, who died Monday. His numerous friends do not like the false newspaper picture of him as a pauper and anti-social recluse. Bill Sidis held a clerical position until two weeks ago. For two weeks he had received unemployment compensation. the first time in his life. Today he was to start on a new job for which he had already been hired. Bill Sidis

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paid his way; he was no burden on society.

Sidis had plenty of loyal friends. All of them found his ideas stimulating and his personality likeable. Very few people know as much about the Indian background of our social customs as he. His manuscript study of it is worthy textbook material and very readable. He knew dozens of stories from Boston's history and told them with relish. He recently submitted a plan for post-war Boston.

But William Sidis had one great cause—the right of an individual in this country to follow his chosen way of life. He had never been able to do this for himself, first because his father made him an example for psychological theories; then because the public, through newspaper articles, insisted that he was a "genius," abnormal and erratic.

Whenever Sidis saw interference by individuals or governments, with anyone's "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," he fought it any way he could. He won a long legal fight against a nationally known publication on the ground that it had invaded his privacy. Bill Sidis was a quiet man who enjoyed the normal things of life. His friends respected him and enjoyed his company. I am glad to have been one of his friends.

        It is quite obvious from this evidence of Bill Sidis' enjoyment of wholesome friendships to his very last days that his genius did make of him the "queer, friendless personality" that is too often erroneously thought to be characteristic of geniuses.

        The intellect of William Sidis did not "burn out." What the journalists did not report, and perhaps did not know, was that during all the years of his obscure employments he was writing original treatises on history, government, economics and political affairs. In a visit to his mother's home I was permitted to see the contents of a trunkful of original manuscript material that Bill Sidis composed during the time he was supposed to be "reluctant to think." And in his obscure mechanical

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jobs, the "adding machines" that the newspapers described him to be working in later life were comptometers. Moreover, he would work two of them at a time, one with his left hand and one with his right, using his elbows for the space bar. That's not all. Supplied with a full share work that was supposed to consume an eight hour day, he would finish all of it within one hour. If that's an example of "burned out genius, then I'll. . .

        Nor was Bill Sidis lacking in a sense of humor Many pungent witticisms are to be found in his manuscripts. In book form they will draw many a chuckle from the reader when published. This is a characteristic sample: "Famous author, foreign correspondent and noted commentator: a fellow with a sponsor."

        There was no lessening of William Sidis' mental acuity. Helena Sidis told me that a few years before his death, her brother Bill took an intelligence test with a psychologist. His score was the very highest that had ever been obtained. In terms of I.Q., the psychologist related that the figure would be between 250 and 300. Late in life William Sidis took general intelligence tests for Civil Service positions in New York and Boston. His phenomenal ratings are matter of record.

        In the interest of scientific truth and the benefits to be derived from its application, I have tried to offer a truer story of an intellectual genius. To mothers of intellectual prodigies, I say, fear not that the youngster's brain power will be dissipated with age. Feed it, and it will grow like that of any precocious musical or artistic genius. True, there are reports of extremely precocious children whose brilliance flared like a torch and burned out before the age of twelve as a result of the brain tumor which can be diagnosed by a medical specialist.

        The life of William James Sidis vividly portrays what psychology teaches about intellectual genius. It is first born and then developed. The prowess appears at an early age. It does not expire any sooner than musical or artistic talent. Mental derangement is not characteristic of genius. Unrealistic publicity in connection with a youthful person of very

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superior capacity should be avoided. The feeling of being different or queer should be guarded against. The precocious child it neither to be squelched in his thirst for learning nor to be zealously prodded. Allow the child to be the guide of his guardian. To develop normally, a youthful prodigy should hare opportunities for wholesome emotional and social contacts with a friendly world.

        We have seen the necessity for the rational nurture of the intellectual side of life regardless of what the original nature may be.

 

The Rebirthing of American Independence

by Tracy Ann Robinson

Essex (MA) Life, Summer, 1984, 75 - 79.

        IPSWICH, this year celebrating its 350th anniversary, distinguishes itself as the "Birthplace of American & Independence." This proud tradition derives from the town's 1687 vote to withhold payment of a new tax levied by the unpopular regime of Governor Andros―a tax, these colonists insisted, that infringed upon their rights as Englishmen.

        While praising the spirit of liberty demonstrated by his High Street predecessors, one Ipswich resident, Dan Mahony, challenges the motto their actions inspired. "The fact that there is no 're' in front of 'birthplace'," alleges Mahony, points to a widespread misconception about the roots of American history. "The fact is," says Mahony, "the only truly democratic government in the history of the world already existed in this part of New England when the Pilgrims landed."

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        Five years ago, when Mahony started researching Harvard's youngest graduate―William James Sidis, who was admitted to that Institution in 1909 at the age of eleven―he had no idea he would end up in Ipswich advocating for the Indians of the Penacook federation: "But that's where Sidis led me. After locating and reading a 600-page manuscript he compiled called 'The Tribes and the States' I became personally convinced that American histories and encyclopedias aren't giving credit where credit is due."

        In that manuscript (copyrighted in 1981 by the Wampanoag Nation and scheduled for publication by the Penacook Press, Scituate, Massachusetts), Sidis presents a startling view of this country's political development. This view is based on a theory that Sidis calls "the continuity of history." Sidis," clarifies Mahony, "says that the consciousness is in the space." As Sidis himself explains:

The history is. . . not a history from the point of view of ancestry, but rather of locality. The idea developed is that in each locality there is a certain continuity of traditions that persists in spite of the changing character of its population―not that the geographical characteristics compel this, as some have supposed, but rather that each successive wave of invasion or immigration acquires the traditions from the previous inhabitants of the region.

        According to this theory then, what happened subsequently in United States political history was due to a concept of federation developed over a period of ten thousand years among the native inhabitants of New England. Those nations, Sidis writes, attained a degree of liberty and democracy such as no other people have ever reached, and which was most irreconcilably opposed to the monarchical and aristocratic institutions brought from Europe by the white invaders. This was especially characteristic of the group of , Algonquin nations

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living in the coastal region protected by the high barrier of the Agiochook (now White Mountains) and Quinnitucket (Connecticut) River. These nations were fairly well isolated from attack by others who might endanger their liberties, but not so isolated that they did not have many occasions to defend their liberty. They were excellently located for developing in a militant form that spirit of liberty, equality, and democracy, as well as concerted national endeavor, for which that part of the country has always been prominent.

        Although several northeastern nations, including the Iroquois, the Lenape and Wabanake, federated, Sidis attributes democratic federation only to the Penacooks, whose leaders, elected by the men and women of their tribes, served not as rulers but as the "trusted advisors and councillors of the people":

Among the Penacook peoples, there was nothing known which could even remotely correspond to, or give inkling of, any division of caste, class, or rank―probably the only completely democratic governments that ever existed in the history of the world. This was a true democracy and equality which might well prepare their country (now known as New England) for being, at all times down to the present. the cradle of the spirit of liberty.

        Because the area was long imbued with the traditions of liberty and democracy, the Europeans who settled in Penacook territory were bound to inherit those strong values, Thus, rather than bringing the seeds of independence with them from Europe the Puritans and Pilgrims, "well-meaning but slow-witted pupils of the Indians," reaped their destiny here.

        Certainly, if the consciousness of liberty was always in this space, the original inhabitants of Essex County and the surrounding area had

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ample opportunity to tune in. Carbon dating of artifacts from over four hundred sites throughout the county establishes habitation here from about 8000 B.C. (see Essex Life, Summer 1983). The tribes that populated this part of New England during European exploration and settlement―Sidis groups them into v the Saugus nation―were the Naumkeags, of what is now Salem (prosperous, numerous and powerful before the 1617 small pox epidemic that decimated seventy-five percent of the entire region's population); the Squamscotts, from which both Swampscott and Annisquam get their name; the Agawams, who ranged from the tidewater on the Merrimack around to Cape Ann; and the Wamesits, or Pawtuckets, whose land included the lower valley of the Merrimack east to the Atlantic.

        Sidis lists three main meeting places for the Penacook councils: Penacook (in New Hampshire, adjacent to Concord), Pawtucket (at the mouth of the Pawtucket River, now on the boundary between Connecticut and Rhode Island) and the site on the Shawmut peninsula now known as Boston. Colonial Indian magistrate Daniel Gookin reported Pawtucket Falls to be another important gathering place; for the Merrimack Valley Indians, it was the "ancient and capital seat" of the area. Each spring, after wintering in relative isolation in woods that broke the force of New England's bitter winds, tribes of the surrounding area would gather at the falls for fishing and other activities. There, according to a Lowell history, "they caught the salmon, sturgeon, alewives and eels which then filled the river. These they cleaned, smoked, and cured. In the evenings they attended to tribal business: treaties, declarations of war, religious ceremonies, and the arrangement of marriages."

        Their waterside villages and encampments (many of which subsequently developed as European settlement towns) were strategically located; the river provided the Indians with a moderate climate, easy access to fish and game, and a convenient system of transportation. Although regular brush burning kept woods cleared for

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easier foot passage, the native Americans here often used birchbark and dugout canoes for long distance travel.

        According to Dracut's historian Joseph M. Wilson, however, the fact that the natives needed these rivers for transportation proved a flaw in their character: "They located near a river which was a natural highway for journeying in their canoes," Wilson claimed, ''as their natural indolence caused them to be adverse to the labor of walking."

        That judgment illustrates a serious problem with local white historical records. It is not difficult for us to gain a sense of how Essex County's Indians lived from the documentation provided by their European successors in the area: most town histories contain a chapter or two on the original inhabitants, describing their villages (frequently stockaded), housing (wigwams and longhouses), foods (seasonal but well-balanced diets), tools, household appliances, and sports. It is another matter, however, to construct from these sources an accurate picture of the Indian character. Our forebears were burdened by prejudice against a culture they neither admired nor accepted, and certainly did not understand. One particularly glaring misconstruction was that of the native inhabitants' work style: frequently applied descriptives include "idle," "slothful," "indolent" and "lazy." Clearly, such assessment cannot hold up against more recent evaluations of Indian society, such as Howard Russell's description of it, in Indian New England before the Mayflower as "well ordered, socialistic. . . depending on cooperative labor."     

        Apparently,  their approach toward a day's work was just too foreign for those early Puritans. 'You have to understand," explains Mahony, "the Indians didn't believe in a forty-hour work week for the sake of a forty-hour work week. If it took them two hours to do what needed to be done that day, they took two hours to do it." Indeed, such an approach might better be appraised as intelligent, rather than slothful.

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        Another local history, that of Haverhill, exemplifies the heavy-handed and misinformed judgments white settlers typically dealt their predecessors:

The aboriginal inhabitants of New England held a low place in the scale of humanity. They had no civil government, no religion, no letters, no history, no music, no poetry. The French rightly named them Les Hommes des Bois―"Men Brutes of the Forest." Except a power of enduring hunger and weather acquired by their hunting habits, they were tender and not long-lived; and though supple and agile, they always sank under continuous labor. In them, the lymphatic temperament predominated. They scarcely ever wept or smiled. Their slender appetites required small indulgence, though at times a gormandizing rage seemed to possess them. Though no instance is recorded of their offering insult to a female captive, it must be credited wholly to their natural coldness of constitution, Their grave demeanor, which has so often been interpreted as an indication of self-respect, was rather an indication of mere stolid vacuity of emotion and thought, in constitution of body and mind, they were far below the negro race.

         Perhaps the most effective counteraction of those misconceptions is the documented words of one of Essex County's most prominent leaders: Masconomet, sagamore of Agawam, His replies to white questioners, probing the extent of his commitment to Christian beliefs, in which he had agreed to be instructed, significantly clarify the philosophy on which his and his people's lives were based:

1st. Will you worship the only true God, who made heaven and earth, and not blaspheme? Ans. 'We do desire to reverence the God of the English and to speak well of Him, because we see He doth better to the English, than other gods do to others.' 2d. Will you cease from swearing falsely? Ans.

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'We know not what swearing is.' 3d. Will you refrain from working on the Sabbath, especially within the bounds of Christian towns? Ans. "It is easy to us,―we have not much to do any day, and we can well rest on that day." 4th. Will you honor your parents and all your superiors? Ans. "It is our custom to do so,―for inferiors to honor superiors." 5th. Will you refrain from killing any man without just cause and just authority? Ans, "This is good, and we desire so to do.' 6th. Will you deny yourselves fornication, adultery, incest, rape, sodomy, buggery, or bestiality? Ans. "Though some of our people do these things occasionally, yet we count them naught and do not allow them." 7th. Will you deny yourselves stealing? Ans. 'We say the same to this as to the 6th question.' 8th. Will you allow your children to learn to read the word of God, so that they may know God aright and worship him in his own way? Ans, 'We will allow this as opportunity will permit, and, as the English live among us, we desire so to do.' 9th. Will you refrain from idleness? Ans. 'We will'.

 

        Sixteen hundred forty-four, the year Masconomet made those statements, is a landmark in the history of Penacook country. In that year, as historian C. E. Potter explains, Passaconaway, the "acknowledged head of the most powerful Indian confederation east of the Mohawks," signed a document drawn up by the English that "voluntarily & without any constraint or persuasion, but of our own free motion put ourselves our subjects Lands and estates under the Government and protected by them according to their just laws."

        Strange as this action―which effectively terminated the independent Indian federation―seems for the inspired leader of a freedom-loving people, it arose from that leader's singular depth of wisdom and perception. As Mahony points out, "The history of the

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relations between the whites and the reds in New England is not a series of massacres and wars at all; it was one of many good-faith deeds and treaties and good relations between the people. This," he claims," is probably the direct result of Passaconaway's politics of pacifism." In the early 1620s, that visionary―who reputedly stood seven feet tall and was able to "make the trees dance and the rocks move, turn water into ice or flame, bring dead serpents to life and make himself a burning fire-had an insight about the ultimate European domination over Penacook territory. For the next forty years, this president labored steadily to convince his people to avoid self-destructive resistance to that inevitability. When in 1660, believing himself close to death (actually, he lived about twenty years more), he abdicated the presidency in favor of his son Wonnalancet, he gave the assembled Penacook tribes the following farewell advice:

Take heed how you quarrel with the English The white men are the sons of the morning. Never make war with them. Sure as you light the fires the breath of heaven will turn the flame upon you and destroy you. Listen to my advice. It is the last I shall be allowed to give you. Remember it and live.

        The federation over which Passaconaway presided, states Sidis, formed in response to an invasion threatened in early 1621 by the neighboring Iroquois league. (Sidis also notes that individual Iroquois tribes had presented a threat to Penacook tribes since the 1400s and in fact were "the sort of enemies from whom much could be learned that could be used for the development of the ideas of liberty.") As a coalition, the twelve Penacook tribes succeeded in discouraging the Iroquois from attacking; and so―fortunately for us―it was the democratic Wampanoags under Massasoit, rather than the oligarchic Iroquois, who greeted the Pilgrims at Plymouth and taught them not only

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the basics of surviving New England winters but also the rudiments of the future United States government.

        One of Massasoit's most-renowned students, alleges Sidis, was the Salem minister and founder of the "First Church Born in America" (as commemorated on a plaque attached to the Daniel Low & Company on Essex Street). When Puritan leaders threw Roger Williams out of town for advocating freedom of worship, it was to Massasoit that he turned; it was also Massasoit who persuaded a band of Narragansets to move off their most fertile land in order to give Williams a place to continue preaching liberty―the land Williams named Providence. And when another dissenter, Anne Hutchinson, was similarly run out of Boston, Massasoit allegedly performed the same service for her. 

        In the foreword to The Tribes and the States, Sidis introduces his account as "a sort of story. . . in which verified historical facts and dates are merely used to weld the whole together." He also writes, "But let us hope that the new point of view will make the reader 'think it over'―that it will excite his interest, and make him reconsider much that he has taken for granted about his country."

        That may be a lot to ask of the skeptical descendants of the Puritans. But Mahony, following his own excursions to the libraries, gravesites, and historical repositories of this area―"and listening to the knowledge that already existed inside me"―has become convinced of the significance of that "story." His objective now is to spread the word.

        And spreading it is. "The oral tradition is alive and well," affirms Mahony, whose own enthusiastic advocacy is certainly sustaining that tradition. This individual would like nothing better than for us to put aside genealogy charts for a time and cultivate instead our understanding of the people whose land and tradition of independence we inherited; as an active member of the Committee to Found the Penacook Museum, he is working to facilitate such endeavors.

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        Mahony may have a long road ahead to set us straight in our understanding of American history―but, nonetheless, given the state of the planet two and a half centuries after our ancestors landed on these consciousness-laden shores, it might not be a bad idea to tune into the spirit that gave birth to our independence. With due respect to the patriots of Ipswich, we could certainly give it a try.

Did the Indians Teach the Pilgrims Democracy?

Yes, says manuscript uncovered by local man―and therein lies a tale

by Cathy Spence

Ipswich (MA) Chronicle, Sept. 5, 1984, 14b - 16b.

 

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WILLIAM JAMES SIDIS was a 'boy wonder who could speak five languages at age five and who graduated from Harvard at sixteen. But he went on to live a seemingly obscure life, working at menial jobs, and when he died in 1944 Time magazine called him a "prodigious failure." But now Ipswich resident Dan Mahony has discovered a book by Sidis that shows the opposite was true―and also puts forth a startling theory about the influence of the New England Indians on the early colonists. This is the only known photo of Sidis as an adult.

 

        At the age of 5, William Sidis could speak five languages and read Plato in the original Greek. At the age of 8, he passed the entrance exam into Harvard but had to wait three years to be admitted, whiling away

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the time by taking mathematics courses at Tufts. In 1909, at age 11, he was finally admitted as Harvard's youngest scholar, and graduated cum laude at the age of 16. But when he died 30 years later, Time magazine ran a full-page obituary of Sidis that called him "a prodigious failure," and for all his adult life he was hounded by a media that called him "a burnt-out genius."

        Nearly four decades later, an Ipswich man, Dan Mahony, has found the most conclusive evidence to date that William Sidis was not as the press portrayed him. In a battered suitcase in a Brookline attic, Mahony uncovered a manuscript that he says "should revolutionize New England history."

        Sidis wrote a 600-page manuscript that talks mainly about "what is missing from New England history: an account of what was already here when the White Man got here," according to Mahony.

        What was here in New England was a federation of 200,000 Indians. Sidis says that not only were they here, but that they were an important influence, and that "the characteristics of the various parts or the country (can be) treated as directly traceable to the varying characteristics and customs of the early tribes of the same regions."

A Classless Society

        In contrast to many other Indian cultures, among the dozen tribes that made up the local Penacook federation "there was nothing known which could remotely correspond to, or give any inkling of, any division of caste, class, or rank―probably the only completely democratic governments that ever existed in the history of the world." This was a true democracy and equality which might well prepare their country (now known as New England) for being, "at all times down to the present, the cradle of the spirit or liberty," wrote Sidis. What he calls Sidis' "Continuity Theory" has been "transforming my life," according to Mahony. But if what he found in the manuscript was startling, his search

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for it came from the feeling that "no matter what the press said, Sidis was a man that had changed minds, would change minds, with the force or his intellect."

        "I guess I'm what you could call a Sidis enthusiast," he says, grinning broadly. His search for Sidis' work goes back seven years to when Mahony had a research grant in child development from Columbia University. In the card catalogue, he found 17 books by a Harvard physician named Boris Sidis. "He was the first one in this country to advocate strong pre-school education and he believed the ages of two to five were crucial, almost a heresy back around the turn of the century when he wrote."

        By chance, Mahony came across a mention of Boris Sidis' son in The New York Times. When he followed it up, he found "an astonishing amount of material. There were more than 150 articles on William Sidis. He was in 'Ripley's Believe It or Not' many times. He made the front page of The New York Times 19 times."

'Boy Wonder'

        There were basically two kinds of articles. As a child, William Sidis made good copy as a Boy Wonder. "Reporters used to go in teams to corner him on his way back and forth to school: Some would grab him while others got his picture." But when he graduated from Harvard, there was a change in the media coverage. "The New York Times ran a piece saying it would be interesting to see if Sidis lived up to his early promise, or 'whether he would go the way of so many like him.'"

        From then on, everything Sidis did seemed to confirm the media's gloomy expectations of him. Sidis took a series of low-paying jobs, and with each one, the press was on the scene to report his "failure." When he published a book on trolley-car transfers, a hobby he named "peridromophilly," he was ridiculed as trivial-minded. When he died of a

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brain hemorrhage at 46, public opinion seemed unanimous: He was a washout.

        "But the more I read about him, the more I felt something was missing," says Mahony. "I finally realized it was Sidis himself who was missing. What was he thinking all this time? What was he doing when he wasn't at his part-time jobs?" To Mahony, reports like the one in the Times that Sidis was earning $23 a week as a clerk in 1924 did not mean much: "Einstein did his best work while he was working at a routine job in a patent office. The great poet Wallace Stevens worked for an insurance company. The question to me was, what was he doing with the rest of his time?"

Undiscovered Manuscripts

       Then, in a book by Abraham Sperling titled "Psychology for the Millions," Mahony found what he was looking for. In a chapter on Sidis, Sperling said that Sidis was not a burnt-out genius, but a great thinker, and that he himself had seen a dozen manuscripts in a trunk that Sidis had written.

        By this time, Mahony had found out more about Sidis, accomplishments: He'd perfected the perpetual calendar, taught study groups on the Okamakammesset Indians, and had a book called "The Animate and the Inanimate" privately printed; a theory of the universe that predicted black holes 30 years before they were discovered. Under a pseudonym, he even wrote a weekly column called "Meet Boston," containing little-known facts about the city.

        When he searched out people who  had known Sidis before he died in 1944, Mahony found "they all remembered  the same man―not the media's 'failure,' but a brilliant man with a natural dignity, actively studying and writing until the end of his life." When Mahony met Sidis' sister, Helena, she knew about the trunk Sperling had mentioned in his book. But when they tracked it down, it was empty.   

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        Months later, following a lead from Helena Sidis, Mahony found "The Tribes and the States" in a distant cousin's attic. In 1981, Mahony turned the copyright over to the Wampanoag Nation, although Helena Sidis retains royalties of authorship. A shortened version will be published later this year by Penacook Press of Scituate.

Iroquois Ideas

        According to Sidis, white men in New England picked up politics from the Penacook Federation in the same way the Penacooks had learned from their neighbors, the Iroquois. Five separate Iroquois tribes banded  together to attempt "a permanent peace conference." Sidis says, "It is the Iroquois Federation that started all this train of ideas―federation of nations, disarmament of borders, written constitutions (wampums), limitations of the powers of government―in short, it was this which laid the foundation for most of the modem advances in the art of government." So successful was this political union that the New England Indians had to band together as protection from the combined strength of the more aggressive Iroquois, But while the Iroquois Federation had drawn together the separate councils of the five nations, "the Penacook federal council was an independent body composed of representatives selected by the members of the tribes, both men and women voting, and both men and women being eligible to the council, without regard to heredity―the first time such a form of federation had ever been attempted anywhere in the world." One of the tribes, the Penacook, gave its name to the entire federation, which also included the Wampanoags of Cape Cod, the Saugus and Agawam from the North Shore, the Naumkeag from Salem, and seven other tribes. Collectively, they were known as The Pine Tree People.

    "The emblem of the Penacook Federation was the Pine Tree, the totem which was sacred to the Penacook people, and which represented and symbolized the federation. This emblem, in later American history, reappears repeatedly in the Penacook country as denoting liberty," according to Sidis.

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Pine Tree Symbolism

        Dan Mahony points out that the Massachusetts Bay Colony flag shows two pine trees and an Indian. The flag flown at Bunker Hill was a pine tree flag, as was the first U. S. Navy flag. For many years the Massachusetts state flag had a pine tree on the back of it.

        Within the federation, the council of the Pine Tree people controlled the dams built as fishing weirs which later supplied the power for New England's mill towns. They were also overseers for what Sidis calls "the system of public and neutral couriers" along regular routes. The couriers were used by the white men, even in times of war with the Indians because of their neutrality, and the routes became roads like the local Route 1A, one of the first paved roads in the Western hemisphere.

        Sidis also says that the New England Indians of each town also met not merely to keep check on their representatives, but to settle important public questions directly, and over the representatives' heads; this furnished a prototype for the 'town meeting' which was and still is the chief form of local government among the white settlers in the same part of America." As the capital of the Saugus nation, Agawam, which later became Ipswich, must have been the site of many such meetings.

        Sidis knew he was presenting many things which "will doubtless be difficult for the average reader to swallow." But he offers them openly, honestly: "But let us also hope that the new point of view will make the reader 'think it over'―that it will excite his interest, and make him reconsider much that he has taken for granted about his country."   

        Says Mahony, "I think you can admire the resourcefulness and adaptability of the first settlers more in " Sidis' version than you can in some glossy picture book that pretends the white man always bad it all together."

Founding of Plymouth

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        In fact, says Sidis, the Pilgrims were equipped with a map from "The Plymouth Company. . . printed in a style similar to the modern 'sucker' real estate literature, showing a town every few miles along the coast, all named after English communities." The towns never materialized, except for "Plymouth," which the settlers themselves founded. And an agreement was drawn up "whereby all the passengers on the ship agreed to abide by whatever government should be established among them as soon as they should settle down. This 'Mayflower Compact,' as it is commonly called, is generally given as one of the original instances of a democratically written constitution; but it was actually hardly more than a recorded oath of allegiance to the future rulers of the colony."

        But the first ruler they chose didn't last out the rough winter. And the next they chose in the Spring, John Carver, had no experience with government, "So the church had to handle the government of the colony for the time being. . . but it was reorganized and democratized under Wampanoag influence."

        If that first winter was hard on the Pilgrims, it was harder on the Indians, who were not immune to the white men's diseases. Sidis estimates that of over 200,000 Indians in the Penacook Federation, fewer than 50,000 survived that first winter.

        According to John Grimes, curator at Salem 's Peabody Museum, lndians are not usually considered as an influence in New England because "so many of them were wiped out so quickly by diseases, and the ones that were left became scattered."

        What seems surprising is that the Indians who were left were friendly to the white men despite the many deaths. Dan Mahony points to early deeds and treaties as evidence or the New England Indians' interest in democratic government among the white men.

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        "Here is a copy of the Penacook deed for Rockingham County," he says, producing an ornate document. "It specifies that all allotments be granted 'by vote of a major part of the inhabitants.' The word 'lot' is said to have originated with the Indian leader Massasoit who, when asked by the English about how to apportion the land they'd been given, recommended that they draw lots to be fair"

Absorption of Values

       Mahony interprets Sidis "not as saying the white men deliberately copied the red, but as saying there was an absorption of the values around them. Sidis is showing that the American political system is a blend of two influences, the European. with an emphasis on hierarchy and property, and the New England Indian culture, which was one of great political insight and democratization. It 's only been in the '80s with books like Howard Russell's 'Indian New England Before the Mayflower,' that we're beginning to realize politics was an art form to New England Indians."

        Sidis even claims that the members of the Penacook Federation in what is now Middlesex County, the Okamakammessets, although nearly extinct by the time of the American Revolution, passed on many of their principles to the Sons or Liberty, including their idea of "leaderless rebellions," and their preference for tactics that did not involve loss of life. Typical of several early skirmishes was "The Boston Tea Party." The identity of of the white men was a well-kept secret, but they were dressed as Mohawks, enemies of the Penacooks, in a dig at the British, who were their allies. Sidis surmises that the regalia may "have come from the supply captured by some Penacook tribe during the last war."

        The legacy of the Indians lives on in sometimes strange ways in the names of places and things all around us. The tribe that Sidis claims was influential in the early days of the Revolution, the Okamakammessetts, supplied the name for a fire engine in Marlborough. When the fire engine was bought by the town of Marblehead in 1800, the firemen

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thought it might be bad luck to change the name, like changing the name of a ship. There is still a group of "Okoes" in Marblehead who look after the old hand-drawn pump fire engine and take it out on parade.

A Private Man

        But if Indian names are a reminder of the Indians who once lived here, another example of Penacook influence might be the life of William Sidis himself, who, according to Mahony, came to absorb many of their values as he studied them. "One of the reasons Sidis didn't take issue with the press was that he came to value his independence, his privacy, above all else," Mahony says. "He didn't care if he was ridiculed for his plain lifestyle, for not earning more money. Many white men treated the Indians with contempt for living simply. The Penacooks genuinely did not understand the white man's idea of 'owning' property and this was really exploited,"

        Sidis also learned a lot about detachment and tolerance from the Indians, according to Mahony, "The Indians came up with the idea of incorporating dissent within a system The Indian enlightenment was eclecticism: include everything. Accept all the tribes in a federation, have respect for each other's ways."

        As proof, Mahony cites the record of an interview with Masconomet, sagamore of Agawam (Ipswich), who is buried in Hamilton Cemetery. Asked  by white questioners in 1644, "1st. Will you worship the only true God, who made heaven and earth, and not blaspheme?" Masconomet replied, "We do desire to reverence the God of the English and to speak well of Him, because we see He doth better to the English, than other gods do to others." Asked, "Will you allow your children to learn to read the word of God?" he replied, "We will allow this as opportunity will permit, and, as the English live among us, we desire so to do."

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        Like Passaconaway, the chief of the Penacook Federation, Masconomet seems to have agreed to all the English asked of him, not under threat of force, but with a gentle reasonableness.

Tolerance of Dissent

        Even conservative history books record the influence of Massasoit on Roger Williams, a friendship which may have led to Williams' ejection from his colony for what Sidis calls "the heresy of freedom of belief in religious tolerance." Massasoit gave land to Williams and to another dissenter, Anne Hutchinson, to found what are now Providence and Newport.

        "The Indians never thought controversy was bad. They had a great tolerance for dissent, for beliefs that were different from their own, Sidis really identified with this. People who knew him said he would never argue with anyone who disagreed with him. He automatically accepted their right to think differently about things. He calls 'The Tribes and the States' "an interesting alternative version of history," saying he hopes 'the truth will move you,' but that "I attempt to explain rather than advocate,'" according to Mahony.

        It was typical of Sidis, Mahony says, not to quote sources in his manuscript other than the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier (an Amesbury resident) and that or the Okamakammessetts, but Mahony has found some clues about other sources: "We know, for instance, that Sidis himself spoke 32 Algonquin languages, those of the Penacooks. He also read virtually every known early newspaper. And we have the testimony of friends that Sidis could read wampum belts. Sidis talks about these as important 'written' records, but he never says that he could read them. That's typical of Sidis, who would hate to be treated as an authority on anything."   

        Mahony bears out Sidis' Continuity Theory of people absorbing the characteristics of others they become involved with. Reluctant to have

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his photo taken or reveal much about himself, he asked. "Do I have to be in this at all? Shouldn't this just be about Sidis?" Like Sidis, he supports his research by taking diverse part-time jobs: He works half a week with alcoholic derelicts In Boston, something he began to do on the Bowery when he was in graduate school in New York.

        He gives computer lessons, specializing in working with children, and is currently tutoring several handicapped children on the computer.

        "This might be a very good time to reconsider the legacy of the local Indians," Mahony says. "We might learn some things from them that could really help us now."

 

Sidis chose for pseudonyms names of persons who had contributed to society but who were mostly unknown.

        His sister, Helena, told me of  "Barry Mulligan," and "Parker Greene." I learned of a fourth, John W. Shattuck, the "author" of The Tribes and the States, from its unpublished manuscript which I found in a suitcase in the attic a distant Sidis relative. (The suitcase, which Helena had directed me to, had her name-tag attached.) In the same suitcase were WJ's "Meet Boston" articles written under the pen name of "Jacob Marmor."

        Sidis may have invented one too. In the case of Notes on the Collection of Transfers, I wonder if "Frank Folupa" was derived from: Frank (=French), and fallu-pas (French for wasn't practical or necessary).

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        The Library of Congress Online Catalog now acknowledges five Sidis pseudonyms:

DATABASE: Library of Congress Online Catalog

INFORMATION FOR: Sidis, William James, 1898-1944

Scope Note:

Search also For works of this author entered under other names, search also under:  Folupa, Frank, 1898-1944.  Greene, Parker, 1898-1944.  Marmor, Jacob, 1898-1944.  Mulligan, Barry, 1898-1944.  Shattuck, John W., 1898-1944.

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