Early Ripe, Early Rot

Background

The truism is not new; it is common in ancient occidental and oriental proverbs and in print at least as early as the 14th century. It is alluded to in the Hebrew bible. Fig trees produce two or more crops of fruit if weather conditions are right. In ancient Israel and Palestine, the first fruit was the bikkurah, or early-ripe fig. This early ripening and early rotting fruit is mentioned in Micah 7:1, Isaiah 28:4, Hosea 9:10, and Nahum 3:12. An ancient Thai proverb

is translated as, “Don't hasten to ripen before being nearly ripe first.” Various authors note Chinese, Japanese, or Zen versions of the same idea, but do not give specific sources.

In literature from the late 1300s, several mentions are made of the pere-ionettes, the early-ripe pear. Chaucer wrote about them in the Reeves Tale from his Canterbury Tales. William Langland's Piers Plowman says that the pere-ionettes were very sweet and very early ripe, and therefore very soon rotten. The Latin phrase, Praecocia non diu-turna, “The fruicte that soonest ripes, doth soonest fade aw aie,” appears as a warning in Geoffry Whitney's 1586 catalog of emblematic sayings.

In Shakespeare's Richard III (circa 1590), Richard says about his nephew, whom he will soon murder, “So wise so young, they say do never live long” (III, i, 79). A similar saying appears in print in Scotland by 1882 as “ripe fruit is soonest rotten.” Other European versions include the following: “soon old, soon with God” (England), “bald reif hält nicht steif” (German), “vroeg rijp, vroeg rot” (Dutch), “ce qui croît soudain, périt le lendemain” (French), “sol que mucho madruga, poco dura” (Spanish), and “presto matura, presto marcio” (Italian).

In 1875, a British tract on good health noted, “It is a recognized fact in physiology that the longer a child is in getting its full growth the longer it will live. ‘Early ripe, early rot’ is almost a proverb. Children who grow rapidly are always weakly.” The 19th-century American journalist, critic, and women's rights activist Margaret Fuller said, “For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life.”

William Sidis, perhaps the smartest child ever with an estimated IQ of 200 to 300, became the rallying cry for those who believed the truth of early ripe, early rot in the 20th century. He could read and spell by age 2, type English and French by 4, and entered Harvard at 11 where he gave a lecture on his intuitive understanding of “four-dimensional [Page 276]bodies.” Soon after he had a breakdown, and although he graduated with honors at 20, he spent the rest of his life avoiding intellectual activities. A 1924 New York Times editorial about how gifted children, and especially Sidis, fizzled out as adults was entitled, “Precocity Doesn't Wear Well.” In the 1930s and 1940s, early ripe, early rot was a common educator mantra and early readers were generally thought of in the negative.

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