Why Paul Morphy was actually good

Why Paul Morphy(and other players of the past) was/were actually good

People commonly say that players from romantic era and even steinitiz/lasker era were a bunch of slouches who would struggle to get on the 2000 rating range today. There are two arguments for that:

1. The illiterate population and the social inequality were much higher and chess was a very elitist game, so the pool of players was low

2. They didn't have much theory to study and what they studied was wrong

Here is why the first point is not that relevant. There's only so much time and effort you can invest on a certain task. Picking random numbers, imagining there are 1 million players currently and 1 thousand players in the past, if the top players make a similar amount of effort, their levels is not going to be far off. That's why individuals from places with no chess tradition at all can become world class or world champions, the effort one puts is not going to the general pool of players' skill, but to his own, his individual skill, and to an lesser extent, to the pool of top players who only go against each other.

Most people were clueless and illiterate, but the literate ones studied HARD. The aristocracies from the past would go to the university at 14, they would speak greek, latin and some other languages by that age, they were well versed in philosophy, classical literature, mathematics to the point that the average educated man today is nowhere near. Of course they studied loads of bullshit too, but things people study nowadays will also be confirmed bullshit in the future.

The point is, it's not hard to imagine that players from the past would practice hard when there was a high effort culture among the elite. So I don't think the pool of players matters as much as people say.

The theory part on the second point is relevant, yes, but you can become good without that much theory. When you play, you are reconstructing the chess theory in your head. It is said that Capablanca didn't study much and Alekhine studied like few in history, but their levels were about the same, if Capablanca wasn't better. The best player is not the one who studies the most, but the one who "gets it".

So that's my opinion on the skill level of players from the past, I would like to see if this changes how any of you observe it.

"... [Morphy's] real abilities were hardly able to be tested. ... We do not see sustained masterpieces; rather flashes of genius. The titanic struggles of the kind we see today [Morphy] could not produce because he lacked the opposition. … Morphy remains one of the giants of chess history. ..." - GM Reuben Fine