LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP 
 
 CALffORNIA 
 t SAN DIEGO 
 
 presented to the 
 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 by 
 
 Mrs. Griff ing Bancroft
 
 Study of Genius * * * * * 
 
 ****** By N. K. Royse. 
 
 Chicago and New York * * * 
 
 Rand, McNally & Company 
 
 4 *
 
 Copyright, 1890, by Rand, McNally & Cr
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 ''Another book on Genius! Why, if all 
 the works already printed on this subject 
 were collected, they would form no small 
 library in themselves." 
 
 Your point is well taken, my critic. Many 
 and divers are the books on genius. What, 
 however, is remarkable in this matter is, that 
 each of these many works treats of but a 
 single phase of this really complex subject. 
 One discusses genius in its relations to hered- 
 ity; another investigates its connection with 
 insanity; a third sets forth the self-con- 
 sciousness of genius; a fourth, the preco- 
 ciousness of genius; a fifth pictures the envi- 
 ronments of genius; while others still are 
 mere collections of anecdotes^ designed more 
 for the entertainment of readers than for 
 the elucidation of any special aspects of 
 genius. 
 
 In view, therefore, of the very special 
 nature of the works heretofore published on 
 the subject of genius, it has seemed to the 
 present writer that there was still room for 
 
 (T)
 
 8 PREFACE. 
 
 a treatise whose aim is a comprehensive 
 view of the separate divisions of the subject 
 already considered, to the end of generaliz- 
 ing therefrom a tolerably definite conception 
 of the real nature of genius, and of the con- 
 ditions of its rise and development. 
 
 What are the essential elements of genius* 
 what the relations as to cause and effect of 
 genius and its environments ? what the 
 opportunities of the present and the future 
 for the rise of geniuses, as compared with 
 those of the past '. These are the main 
 themes which it is the special province of 
 this work to consider. 
 
 The author gratefully acknowledges his 
 obligations to preceding writers on this sub- 
 ject for the abundant and carefully selected 
 data their works have supplied; and trusts 
 that his inductions from the same, while they 
 may not be unworthy of these suggestive 
 materials, may satisfactorily account for the 
 appearance of his own work among the 
 already large family of books on genius. 
 
 N. K. KOYSE. 
 CINCINNATI, OHIO.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEFINITIONS OF GENIUS. 
 
 Ancient Application of the Word Genius. Its Employ- 
 ment in this Work. Imperfect Knowledge of The 
 Parentage and Early Surroundings of Geniuses. 
 Cause of the Varying Definitions of Genius. Is 
 Genius Originality? Opinions of Dr. Johnson, 
 Emerson, Talfourd, Addison, Dryden, Crabbe, 
 Willis, Bulwer, Hazlitt, Lowell, Bain. Is Genius 
 Anticipation ? Opinions of Longfellow, Macaulay , 
 Alison. Is Genius Breadth? Opinions of Emer- 
 son, Carlyle, Longfellow, Lowell, De Quincey, 
 Grant Allen. Is Genius ComtructieenesH? Opin- 
 ions of Emerson, Matthew Arnold, Taine. Is 
 Genius Concentration? Opinions of Goethe and 
 Johnson. Is Genius Patience? Opinion of Buf- 
 fon. Is Genius Common Sense? 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 18 GENIUS MADNESS? 
 
 Affirmative Views of Plato, Aristotle, Pascal, Did- 
 erot, Lamartine, and Dryden. A Full Discussion of 
 the Question, by James Sully. Varieties of Mental 
 Unsoundness Absence of Mind, Persistence of 
 Vivid Ideas, Hallucinations, Extreme Violence of 
 Temper and Self-Insistence, Ungovernable Phys- 
 ical Appetites, Melancholy and Hypochondria, Deti- 
 (9)
 
 10 CONTENTS. 
 
 nite Mental Diseases, Whimsicalness, Inconsist 
 ency with Examples of Each. Explanation of the 
 Foregoing, . . . 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 is GENIUS MADNESS? Concluded. 9 
 
 Negative Views of Charles Lamb, Coleridge, and Dr. 
 William G. Stevenson. Opinions of Ancients of 
 no Scientific Value. All Varieties of Mental Dis- 
 order More Common among Men of Meager or no 
 Abilities than among Geniuses, ..... 5? 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IS GENIUS CHARACTER? 
 
 Affirmative Opinions of John Burroughs and De 
 Quincey. Negative Opinion of Lowell, _ . 63 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 COMMENTS ON FOREGOING DEFINITIONS OP GENIUS. 
 
 Each View Partly Right, None Wholly So. The 
 Common Element in All. Genius is Uncommon- 
 ness of Intellectual Endowment in the Ascending 
 Scale, 65 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PRECOCITY. 
 
 Is Genius Characterized by Precocity? The Affirm- 
 ative View Supported by Seventy-four Eminent 
 Examples. The Negative View Favored by about 
 Fifty Equally Weighty Examples. Tabular Ex- 
 hibit of the Merits of the Question, Derived from 
 Investigation of the Lives of Three Hundred of the 
 Foremost Geniuses of the World. Conclusion, . 81
 
 CONTENTS. 11 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR. 
 
 Do the Creations of Genius Involve Labor? Affirm- 
 ative View Favored by Longfellow, Ruskin, 
 Carlyle, Thomas Moore, James Sully, Tacitus, 
 Hogarth, Charles Sumner, Buffon. Examples of 
 the Foregoing View. Contraiy Opinions of Emer- 
 son and Carlyle. Examples in Support of Latter 
 View. The Amount of Labor Dependent upon 
 the Nature of the Sphere in Which the Genius 
 Moves. With all Geniuses Original Ideas or 
 Conceptions are Spontaneous, or Nearly so; Con- 
 scious Labor being Demanded Chiefly for Giving 
 Material Expression to those Conceptions, 99 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 
 
 Affirmative Opinions of John Burroughs, Ruskin, 
 Schopenhauer, Goethe, Lord Lytton. Examples of 
 Foregoing Opinions. Negative Views of Carlyle 
 and Hazlitt. Examples Confirming the Latter 
 View. All Geniuses are Self-Conscious, but they 
 Differ in their Control of its Manifestation to 
 Others, 123 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ACCIDENTS. 
 
 Verified by Incidents in the Lives of Cuvier, Galileo, 
 Newton, Handel, Haydn, Schubert, Shakespeare, 
 Claude Lorraine, Gibbon, Giotto, Rubens, Cow- 
 per, Milton, Burns, Mabillon, Wallenstein, Pisano, 
 Beethoven, Cromwell, Walton, Cowley, Moliere,
 
 12 CONTENTS. 
 
 Franklin, Ignatius Loyola, Rousseau, La Fontaine, 
 West, Jenny Lind, Nilsson, Linnaeus, Canova, 
 Longfellow, ___________ 145 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY? 
 
 The Popular Belief that Genius is not Hereditary. 
 Synopsis of Gallon's Work on "Hereditary 
 Genius." Grant Allen's Opinion Favoring the 
 same view. Criticism of said Opinion. The 
 Contrast between the Biases of Geniuses and 
 those of their Parents. Geniuses whose Biases 
 have been similar to those of their Parents. 
 Preponderance of the Former Instances. Only 
 Mediocre Abilities, or, at best, Talents, Trans- 
 mitted. Comparative Inferiority of the Immediate 
 Descendants of Geniuses. Emerson's Opinion of 
 Gallon's Work. Geniuses either do not Marry, or 
 else have but few Children. Opinions of Francis 
 Bacon and Charles Morris on these Points. 
 Examples of the Same. Scientific Reason for the 
 Infertility of Geniuses. Summary Favoring the 
 Soundness of the Popular Belief, . 157 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 GENIUS AND ITS ENVIRONMENT. 
 
 Varieties of Environment: () Home and School 
 Training; (b) Geographical Surroundings; (c) One's 
 Race; (d) The Age in which One Lives. Influences 
 of Early Training : First, those Favorable; 
 Examples of Such. Secondly, Unfavorable Influ- 
 ences; Examples of the Latter. Preponderance of 
 the Latter, 187
 
 CONTENTS. io 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT. 
 
 Effects upon Man and His Habitat of the Extremes 
 of Temperature, and of Configuration. A Mean 
 between these Extremes Necessary for the Best 
 Products either of the Soil or the Intellect. 
 Potency of Physical Environment as seen in the 
 Symbolism of the Earlier Religious Conceptions 
 of Mankind. All Remarkable Peoples, and there- 
 fore all Remarkable Individuals, have Flourished 
 within Hospitable Physical Bounds. The Geo- 
 graphical Lines of such Region, ..... 203 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ENVIHONMENT. INFLUENCE OF RACE. 
 
 All Great Achievements have Proceeded from either 
 the Caucasian or the Mongolian Race, ergo, all 
 Geniuses have Emerged from One or the Other of 
 these Races. Confirmatory Opinions of Grant 
 Allen and John Burroughs, . . . 211 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 
 
 That the Age forms the Man is affirmed by Ma- 
 caulay, Alison, Matthew Arnold, and Emerson. 
 Influence of Enlightenment. Opinion of Addison. 
 Macaulay regards the Creative and the Critical 
 Faculties as opposed to each other. Reasons of 
 Alison for believing Civilization an impediment 
 to the rise of Geniuses. An Enlightened Age 
 unfavorable to the rise of only one sort of 
 Genius the one whose creations involve chiefly 
 the free exercise of the imagination and the
 
 14 CONTENTS. 
 
 emotions all others being favored by increase 
 
 of knowledge, ._.______. 217 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OP THE AGE Continued. 
 
 The Great Geniuses of the Race center around the 
 Fourth and Fifth Centuries before Christ, and the 
 Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nine- 
 teenth of our own Era. The Geniuses of the 
 Ante-Christian Centuries have belonged almost 
 entirely to the Greek Nationality Reasons for 
 this Monopoly. The four Genius-attracting Cent- 
 uries of the Christian Era considered in Chrono- 
 logical Order. Preparatory Events. The discov- 
 ery of Gunpowder, invention of the Mariner's 
 Compass, rounding of Cape of Good Hope, dis- 
 covery of America, revival of Literature and of 
 the Arts and Sciences, and the Reformation. The 
 Sixteenth Century its Wars, its Scientific Prog- 
 ress, its wonderful Art and Literary develop- 
 ments. The Seventeenth Century. Rise of the 
 Spirit of Nationality. Wars of the Century, and its 
 Illustrious Military Leaders. Its Intellectual Move- 
 ments. The Golden Age of France. Literature 
 and Science in England, and Art on the Con- 
 tinent, ... . 229 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE AGE Continued. 
 
 The Eighteenth Century Its Wars and their Great 
 Generals Its Industrial and Commercial Prog- 
 ress Development of the Arts, Sciences, and Lit- 
 erature Dominancy of French Ideas England's 
 Contribution to the Literary and Scientific Tri-
 
 CONTENTS. 15 
 
 timphs of the Century. The Nineteenth Century 
 Rise and Spread of the Doctrine of Popular 
 Sovereignty The Wars of Napoleon Bonaparte 
 The American Rebellion Non-military Currents 
 of the Century The Rise of the Romantic and 
 Idealistic Schools of Writers; their Displace- 
 ment by the Realists Marvelous Development of 
 the Sciences Imprints of the Characteristic 
 Social and Political Movements of the Age upon 
 Modern Music and Art, -------- 251 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE AGE Continued. 
 
 The Relations as to Cause and Effect of the Genius 
 and His Epoch. When the Most General Interests 
 of Society or the State are to be affected, the 
 Initiative of Influence Inheres in the Mass Illus- 
 trated in such Movements as the Reformation, the 
 French Revolution, and the American Rebellion. 
 When the Immediate Effects of a Movement are 
 necessarily restricted to a few, then the Individ- 
 ual, the Genius, becomes the Initiator Illus- 
 trated iu the Rise and Propagation of Various 
 Scientific Theories, and in the Formation of the 
 Various Schools of Art, of Music, and of Letters, 269 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE AGE Concluded. 
 
 The Inter-relations of the Genius and His Environ- 
 ment Illustrated by a Well-known Fact of Vege- 
 table Physiology. This View Favored by Opin- 
 ions of Grant Allen and Herbert Spencer. Sum- 
 mary of the Whole Subject by William James, . 291
 
 f> CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ATTITUDE OF THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE TOWARD 
 GENIUSES. 
 
 The best that is possible has been already attained 
 in Architecture, in Sculpture, in Human Figure- 
 Painting, in Literature, and in Music. Possible 
 Exceptions as regards Historians, Critics, and 
 Fictionists. Inferiority of the Poetry of the Pres- 
 ent Day. Scientific Discovery and Mechanical 
 Invention the only Fields open to Future Gen 
 iuses. Science comes to the Rescue of the Non- 
 Scientific Mind from Mediocrity, by Her Promise of 
 a Future in which the Human Family will far 
 surpass all its Antecedent Experiences, in Brain- 
 power and Organization. Uncertain Nearness of 
 Such Promised Novum Organum. Relativity of 
 Greatness, 299
 
 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEFINITIONS OF GENIUS. 
 
 Ancient Application of the Woi'd Genius Its Employment in 
 this Work. Imperfect Knowledge of tJie Parentage and 
 Early Surroundings of Geniuses. Cause of tJie Varying 
 Definitions of Genius. Is Genius Originality? Opinions 
 of Dr. Johnson, Emerson, Talfourd, Addison, Dryden, 
 Crabbe, Willis, Bulwer, Hazlitt, Lowell, Bain. Is Genius 
 Anticipation? Views of Longfellow, Macaulay, Alison. 
 Is Genius Breadth? Opinions of Emerson, Carlyle, Long- 
 fellow, Lowell, De Quincey, Grant Allen. Is Genius Con- 
 structiveness? Opinions of Emerson, Matthew Arnold, 
 Taine. Is Genius Concentration? Opinions of Goetlw 
 and Johnson. Is Genius Patience? Opinion of Buff on. 
 Is Genius Common Sense? 
 
 The word genius, we are told, is a Latin 
 translation of a Tuscan term which signifies 
 generator, and the ancient Romans employed 
 it to designate the tutelary god, or demon, 
 who was supposed to preside over the birth 
 and destiny of every male; the immortal who 
 performed a similar office for females being 
 
 2 (17)
 
 18 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 called a Juno. Places, also, and inanimate 
 objects, were fabled to have their genii. 
 These, in the case of persons, were sometimes 
 supposed to accompany them in pairs a 
 white, or auspicious genius, and a black, or 
 fatal one. By others still the genius was 
 regarded as being black and white by turns. 
 To these genii, however conceived, divine 
 honors were invariably paid, and their favor- 
 able disposition was invoked, particularly 
 on birthdays, by offerings and sacrifices. 
 
 Query: Was it an induction from their 
 experience, a freak of masculine unfairness, 
 a prophetic intuition, or a mere verbal prefer- 
 ence, that caused the Roman to restrict the 
 birth-presiding genius to the male sex? 
 Whatever be the explanation, certain it is 
 that the history of mankind, both ante and 
 post Roman, has vindicated the sagacity of 
 r the ancient limitation, by discovering almost 
 every instance of genuine genius among the 
 males of the human family. 
 
 Moreover, the latest utterances of modern 
 science would have us regard the female 
 as the conservative factor in reproduction,
 
 DEFINITIONS OF GENIUS. 19 
 
 and all new variations as caused by the influ- 
 ence of the male. 
 
 Genius, according to its first its Roman 
 acceptation, became greatly changed, like 
 many other conceptions of classic mythology, 
 as paganism declined; until, finally, surren- 
 dering all its supernatural elements, it came 
 to mean any special bent or aptitude of the 
 human mind; as when we speak of a genius 
 for painting, or for poetry, or for music, or 
 for statecraft, and so forth. Somewhere 
 between the foregoing extreme conceptions, 
 we apprehend, and partaking somewhat of 
 the nature of both, is the mysterious-famil- 
 iar, the divine-human quality, genius, which 
 we purpose to make the subject of our pres- 
 ent study. 
 
 DEFINITIONS OF GENIUS. 
 
 What is genius? If we may test this 
 question in the crossing lights of the many 
 answers that have been proposed, we may 
 pronounce it a riddle worthy to have issued 
 from the stony lips of the Egyptian Sphinx, 
 or one of equal perplexity to the time-hon-
 
 20 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 ored inquiry, What is Truth? or the conun- 
 drum of modern science, What is Life? 
 
 One difficulty, perhaps the main one, that 
 lies in the way of arriving at a satisfactory 
 solution of the question, is the scantiness of 
 our knowledge concerning the parentage and 
 earliest surroundings of men of genius very 
 generally. Emerson has said that "Great 
 geniuses have the shortest biographies." 
 We can not concur in this statement; for, 
 if we have read history aright, it is but little 
 more than a compendium of the biographies 
 of the world's greatest men. If we except a 
 few comparatively a very few and those 
 the men who have flourished in the morning- 
 hours of their country' s existence or of cer- 
 tain historic epochs, such, for example, as 
 Homer, Solon, Pythagoras, Chaucer, Herod- 
 otus, Phidias, Alfred the Great, we shall 
 find that the history of the world is quite 
 satisfactory in its presentation of the leading- 
 acts of the lives of the most influential of 
 the human family. 
 
 It does, however, very frequently fail to 
 throw any light, or, at best, a very partial
 
 DEFINITIONS OF GENIUS. 21 
 
 and fitful one, upon the characteristics of 
 the parents of genuises and the environments 
 of their earlier years. And this, it can not 
 be denied, is a very grave, if not fatal, omis- 
 sion. It is one of the fundamental laws of 
 mechanics that, in order to determine the 
 direction a body will take and the momentum 
 at w'hich it will move, it is necessary to know 
 the number, direction, and velocity of the 
 bodies that impinge upon it. Just so, we 
 claim, in order to comprehend the nature of 
 genius and the laws that govern its evolution, 
 it is first necessary that we become acquainted 
 with those vital forces the physical, mental, 
 and moral peculiarities of parents that enter 
 into the constitution of the child, and also 
 that earliest environment of persons, places, 
 and things, that more or less modifies the ten- 
 dencies of original endowment. 
 
 Those, therefore, who have studied genius 
 with a view to formulating a definition of it, 
 have been obliged, for the greater part, to 
 interpret it by its more material manifesta- 
 tions, rather than by its primal characteristics 
 its most nearly spontaneous energies. They
 
 22 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 stand, as it were, upon the bank of a myste- 
 rious river, and catching up a glassful of its 
 apparently homogeneous water, endeavor to 
 discover therein the multitudinous, widely 
 different, and mutually modifying elements 
 of the several lesser streams that have con- 
 tributed to its volume. Is it any wonder 
 that there should be a great diversity of 
 opinion, seeing that each experimenter occu- 
 pies a different stand-point one being prob- 
 ably near the headwaters, another not far 
 from the mouth, and a third midway between 
 these two? It could hardly be otherwise. 
 Since, then, our knowledge of genuises can 
 not be drawn, except in a few cases, from the 
 most desirable sources, let us consider, in our 
 present study, the best information we can 
 obtain upon the subject, and extract from it 
 what satisfaction we may be able. 
 
 IS GENIUS OEIGINALITY? 
 
 In formulating a definition of genius, or, 
 presuming it to be a composite, in enumerat- 
 ing the elements that enter into its composi- 
 tion, we venture to say that originality is 
 the first that suggests itself to the mind.
 
 IS GENIUS ORIGINALITY? 23 
 
 We can not conceive of genius except as 
 something extraordinary, and of this quality 
 originality is the very essence. The mean- 
 ing of the word originality the quality of 
 being first, whether in the discovery or the 
 enunciation of a truth the quality of being 
 unlike all others of being unique of being 
 self-sufficient the distinction of being the 
 source, the spring, the archetype of all that 
 goes to make up each of the various currents 
 of thought, of feeling, and of action that 
 prevail among men this preeminence be- 
 longs most obviously to him whom we call a 
 genius. Not that this is the only belonging, 
 but, assuredly, that it is the most obtrusive, 
 startling, and dazzling facet of the human 
 diamond. 
 
 What, doubtless, makes this phase of 
 genius if it be simply a phase so readily 
 perceptible to us, is our natural yearning 
 for the novel our uncontrollable curiosity 
 our untiring quest for something unlike all 
 the ordinary happenings of experience. And 
 very probably when we have found our 
 unique, we may not like him; for he shocks
 
 24 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 our ideas, ignores our formalities, and muti- 
 lates, if he does not completely overturn, 
 our idols, whether of the hand or the mind. 
 
 In the opinions that follow, we shall en- 
 deavor to ascertain in how far this brilliant 
 quality, originality, may be accepted as the 
 synonym for genius. 
 
 Doctor Johnson says, in his essay on Mil- 
 ton, that " The highest praise of genius is 
 original invention. 1 ' In this view Emerson 
 evidently coincides, for he declares, in his 
 essay on Intellect: " To genius must always 
 go two gifts, the thought and the publication. 
 The first is revelation, always a miracle 
 which no frequency of occurrence or inces- 
 sant study can ever familiarize, but which 
 must always leave the inquirer stupid with 
 wonder. It is the advent of truth into the 
 world, a form of thought now for the first 
 time bursting into the universe, a child of 
 the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine and 
 immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the 
 time, to inherit all that has yet existed, and 
 to dictate to the unborn." 
 
 The same author, in his volume on Repre-
 
 IS GENIUS ORIGINALITY ? 25 
 
 sentative Men, asserts: "The highest merit 
 we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton, is 
 that they set at naught books and traditions, 
 and spoke not what men, but what they 
 thought. . . . He is great who is what he is 
 from nature, and who never reminds us of 
 others." And farther on he adds: "Every 
 great man is a unique." George Eliot 
 declares: "Genius itself is not en regie; it 
 comes into the world to make new rules." 
 
 Accordant with the foregoing is the opin- 
 ion of Thomas N. Talfourd, as expressed in 
 his article on The Author of Waverly. He 
 says: "On the whole, genius has privileges 
 of its own; it selects an orbit for itself." 
 
 Doubtless it is to men who possess genius 
 of the foregoing variety that Addison refers 
 in the following passage: "Those who by 
 the mere strength of natural parts, and with- 
 out any assistance of art or learning, have 
 produced works that were the delight of 
 their own times, and the wonder of posterity. 
 There appears something nobly wild and 
 extravagant in these great natural geniuses, 
 that is infinitely more beautiful than all the
 
 26 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 turn and polishing of what the French call 
 a bel esprit, by which they would express a 
 genius refined by conversation, reflection, 
 and the reading of the most polite authors." 
 Of geniuses of this class, he names Homer 
 and Shakespeare. 
 
 The poets also bear their testimony to the 
 foregoing conception of genius. Dryden 
 writes: 
 
 "Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, 
 But genius must be born, and never can be taught." 
 
 Crabbe exclaims: 
 
 " Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou light divine! " 
 
 Willis sings: 
 
 "They say that he has genius. I but see 
 
 That he gets wisdom as the flower gets hue, 
 While others hive it like the toiling bee; 
 
 That with him all things beautiful keep new." 
 
 And Bulwer chimes in: 
 
 "Genius, the Pythian of the Beautiful, 
 Leaves its large truths a riddle to the Dull 
 From eyes profane a veil the Iris screens, 
 And fools on fools still ask what Hamlet means." 
 
 Hazlitt, in his Table Talk, follows in pretty 
 much the same train of thought, except that 
 he goes a step farther, and essays to tell us
 
 IS GENIUS ORIGINALITY ? 27 
 
 what originality is. He says: " Genius, or 
 originality, is, for the most part, some strong 
 quality in the mind, answering to and bring- 
 ing out some new and striking quality in 
 Nature. . . . It is sufficiently exclusive and 
 self-willed, quaint and peculiar. It does 
 some one thing by virtue of doing nothing 
 else; it excels in some one pursuit by being 
 blind to all excellence but its own. It is just 
 the reverse of the chameleon, for it does not 
 borrow, but lends its colors to all about it; 
 or, like the glow-worm, discloses a little circle 
 of gorgeous light in the twilight of obscurity, 
 in the night of intellect, that surrounds it. 
 . . . This is the test and triumph of origi- 
 nality, not to show us what has never been, 
 and what we may, therefore, very easily 
 never have dreamt of, but to point out to 
 us what is before our eyes and under our 
 feet, though we have had no suspicion of its 
 existence, for want of sufficient strength of 
 intuition, of determined grasp of mind to 
 seize and retain it. ... Originality is the 
 seeing Nature differently from others, and 
 yet as it is in itself." He names Rembrandt
 
 28 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 and Wordsworth as being notable illustra- 
 tions of his definition of originality. 
 
 Precisely the same thought as the last 
 one is that of Lowell's, in his essay on 
 Chaucer, which runs: "To make the com- 
 mon marvelous, as it were a revelation, is 
 the test of genius." 
 
 Bain, in his work on the Study of Charac- 
 ter, after referring to two partial definitions 
 of genius, says: "The third meaning, that I 
 would especially advert to, is, I think, the 
 most appropriate of all. I refer to the 
 power of Originality, Invention, Discovery, 
 Creation, as opposed to the mere mastery 
 (no matter how skillful and effective) of 
 what has been already known. . . . The 
 principle of like recalling like, through the 
 disguises of diversity, this I count the lead- 
 ing fact of genius. ... A naturalist may 
 be original by traversing an unexplored field 
 the proof of genius is to make discoveries 
 in a well-paced track." 
 
 IS GENIUS ANTICIPATION ? 
 
 Another conception of genius is that it is 
 the power to foresee or anticipate truths or
 
 IS GENIUS ANTICIPATION? 29 
 
 the issues of passing events. Longfellow 
 evidently had this view in mind when he 
 penned the following lines in Hyperion : 
 " It has become a common saying, that men 
 of genius are always in advance of their age; 
 which is true. There is something equally 
 true, yet not so common; namely, that, of 
 these men of genius, the best and bravest 
 are in advance not only of their own age, 
 but of every age. As the German prose- 
 poet * says, every possible future is behind 
 them." 
 
 Macaulay, in writing of Dryden, illustrates 
 the above idea as follows: " The sun illumi- 
 nates the hills while it is still below the 
 horizon, and truth is discovered by the high- 
 est minds a little before it becomes manifest 
 to the multitude. This is the extent of their 
 superiority. They are the first to catch and 
 reflect a light which, without their assistance, 
 must in a short time be visible to those who 
 lie far beneath them." 
 
 Not only the same idea, but the same 
 method of presenting it, was present with 
 
 * Richter.
 
 30 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Alison when, in his essay on Bossuet, he 
 wrote: " The greatest intellect perceives only 
 the coming light; the rays of the rising sun 
 strike first upon the summits of the mount- 
 ains, but his ascending beams will soon 
 illuminate the slopes on their sides and the 
 valleys at their feet." 
 
 IS GENIUS BREADTH? 
 
 The preceding definitions have represented 
 genius as an extraordinary development of 
 human nature in some one of its many ten- 
 dencies ; the definition now presented is en- 
 tirely different from these, in that it would 
 have genius to signify extraordinary com- 
 pass universal grasp. 
 
 Emerson, in Representative Men, queries: 
 " What is a great man but one of great 
 affinities, who takes up into himself all arts, 
 sciences, all knowables, as his food." And 
 elsewhere he declares: " Great men are more 
 distinguished by range and extent than by 
 originality." 
 
 But not only in the sweep of his abilities, 
 in the jurisdiction of his influence also, is 
 the genius a universal being. Carlyle, in his
 
 IS GENIUS BKEADTH? 31 
 
 criticism on Boswell's Life of Johnson, holds: 
 "The great man does, in good truth, belong 
 to his own age; nay, more so than any other 
 man; being properly the synopsis and epit- 
 ome of such age, with its interests and influ- 
 ences: but he belongs likewise to all ages, 
 otherwise he is not great. What was tran- 
 sitory in him passes away; and an immortal 
 part remains, the significance of which is in 
 strict speech inexhaustible. Aloft, conspic- 
 uous, on his enduring basis, he stands there 
 serene, unaltering; silently addresses to every 
 new generation a new lesson and monition." 
 In his Heroes and Hero- Worship, the same 
 writer, in defining the potentiality of a genius, 
 expresses himself in these words: ' ' I confess, 
 I have no notion of a truly great man that 
 could not be all sorts of men." 
 
 The same uncommon sort of being was, 
 doubtless, in Longfellow's mind when he 
 wrote: 
 
 " The archetypal man, and what might be 
 The amplitude of Nature's first design." 
 
 Again, this same extraordinary largeness 
 and vigor of nature is cited by Lowell, in his
 
 32 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 essay on Wordsworth, when defining origi- 
 nality. He says: " What we call originality 
 seems not so much anything peculiar, much 
 less anything odd, but that quality in a man 
 which touches human nature at most points 
 of its circumference, which reinvigorates 
 the consciousness of our own powers by re- 
 calling and confirming our own unvalued 
 sensations and perceptions, gives classic shape 
 to our amorphous imaginings, and adequate 
 utterance to our own stammering conceptions 
 or emotions." 
 
 Quite different in the terms of its state- 
 ment, though quite as effectively expressive 
 of the same idea of extraordinary breadth, 
 is De Quincey's definition of genius. He 
 writes: "Genius is that mode of intellectual 
 power which moves in alliance with genial 
 nature /. <?., with the capacities of pleasure 
 and pain, whereas talent has no vestige of 
 such an alliance, and is perfectly independ- 
 ent of all human sensibilities; consequently 
 genius is a voice or breathing which repre- 
 sents the total nature of man, and there- 
 fore his enjoying and suffering nature;
 
 IS GENIUS CONSTRUCTIVENESS. 33 
 
 whilst, on the contrary, talent represents 
 only a single function of that nature." 
 
 Perhaps the most moderate statement 
 under this head, though still an emphatic 
 one, is that of Grant Allen in a recent essay. 
 He says: " The peculiarity of a genius is, 
 that he possesses in some one department a 
 few more elements of mind than most other 
 people his contemporaries; that he combines 
 in himself a certain large number of mind- 
 factors, all, or nearly all, of which are to be 
 severally found in other people, but which 
 are not to be found in any other one per- 
 son in the same combination." 
 
 IS GENIUS CONSTRUCTIVENESS t 
 
 Emerson says: "G-enius is intellect con- 
 structive." Matthew Arnold would seem, 
 from the following passage, to entertain a 
 similar opinion. He writes: "Creative lit- 
 erary genius does not principally show itself 
 in discovering new ideas; this is rather the 
 business of the philosopher. The grand work 
 of literary genius is a work of synthesis and 
 exposition, not of analysis and discovery; its 
 
 3
 
 34 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 gift lies in the faculty of being happily 
 inspired by a certain intellectual and spirit- 
 ual atmosphere, by a certain order of ideas, 
 when it finds itself in them; of dealing 
 divinely with these ideas, presenting them 
 in the most effective and attractive combina- 
 tions making beautiful works with them, in 
 short." 
 
 And in our next citation, Taine shows us 
 how completely Milton exemplified the last 
 definition of the province of genius. He 
 says: "He wrote, not by impulse, and at 
 the mere contact with things, but like a 
 man of letters, a classic, in a scholar-like 
 manner, with the assistance of books, seeing 
 objects as much through previous writings 
 as in themselves, adding to his images the 
 images of others, borrowing and recasting 
 their inventions, as an artist who unites and 
 multiplies the baser and driven gold already 
 entwined on a diadem by twenty workmen." 
 
 IS GENIUS CONCENTRATION \ 
 
 " Gtenius is concentration," says Goethe; 
 and Johnson concurs in this view.
 
 IS GENIUS COMMON SENSE. 35 
 
 IS GENIUS PATIENCE!! 
 
 Precisely this is what Buff on defines it 
 to be. 
 
 IS GENIUS COMMON SENSE? 
 
 A modern writer, in an essay in Temple 
 Bar, declares: "Genius is, after all, only 
 common sense working at a very high level."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS? 
 
 Affirmative Views of Plato, Aristotle, Pascal, Diderot, Lamar 
 tine, and Dryden. A Full Discussion of the Question, 
 by James Sully. Varieties of Mental Unsoundness 
 Absence of Mind, Persistence of Vivid Ideas, Hallucinor. 
 tions, Extreme Violence of Temper and Self -Insistence, 
 Ungovernable Physical Appetites, Melancholy and Hypo- 
 chondria, Definite Mental Diseases, Whimsicalness, Incon- 
 sistency with Examples of Each. Explanation of the 
 Foregoing. 
 
 Not a few of those who have written con- 
 cerning genius have expressed the belief that 
 it is a species of mental unsoundness, or, at 
 least, that it is not ^infrequently accompa- 
 nied by that disorder. The difference between 
 being Epiplianes (illustrious) and Epim&nes 
 (mad) is, in the popular regard, quite as 
 slight in fact as it is in print. Plato went so 
 far as to intimate that the name seer (//d*Tis) 
 was derived from the verb ^atvo^at, to rage, 
 or to be mad. Aristotle, who is allowed to 
 have been the most nearly scientific and the 
 shrewdest observer of antiquity, claimed that 
 
 3 (37)
 
 38 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 geniuses universally have been melancholic 
 and tinctured with positive madness. Pascal 
 remarks that "Extraordinary wit is the 
 neighbor of extraordinary madness." Dide- 
 rot laments, "Oh! that genius and madness 
 should so nearly touch each other! " while 
 Lamartine affirms that "Genius carries in 
 itself a principle of destruction, of death, of 
 madness, as the fruit carries the worm." 
 Dry den's oft-quoted lines will doubtless occur 
 to the reader 
 
 ' ' Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 
 And thin partitions do their bounds divide." 
 
 The fullest and fairest presentation of this 
 aspect of the present question we have ever 
 met with, is embodied in a recent article in 
 the Nineteenth Century, from the pen of 
 James Sully. As our best means of treating 
 the point before us, we shall take the lib- 
 erty of presenting a synopsis of the article, 
 together with illustrative extracts from the 
 same. 
 
 Alluding to the classic notion of genius 
 its being a supernatural possession our
 
 18 GENIUS MADNESS? 39 
 
 author remarks: "The poet was conceived of 
 as infuriated or driven mad by the god; and 
 a somewhat analogous effect of divine intox- 
 ication was recognized by Plato as consti- 
 tuting the essence of philosophic intuition. 
 Hence, Greek and Roman literature abounds 
 with statements and expressions which tend 
 to assimilate the man of genius to a mad- 
 man." But madness in those days was not 
 regarded as either a pitiable or degrading 
 affection. " So far from this, it was a com- 
 mon idea that the insane were themselves 
 inspired by the action of a deity. 
 
 1 'The influence of Christianity and of the 
 Church served at first to brand mental 
 derangement with the mark of degradation. 
 This debasement of the idea of madness had, 
 however, no appreciable effect in dissolving 
 the companionship of the two ideas in popu- 
 lar thought; for the attitude of the Church 
 was, for the most part, hostile to new ideas, 
 and so to men of original power. The transi- 
 tion to the modern period introduces us to 
 a new conception both of genius and insan- 
 ity. We have learned to see in it (genius)
 
 40 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 the highest product of Nature's organic 
 energy, the last and greatest miracle of evo- 
 lution. On the other hand, the modern 
 mind has ceased to see in insanity a super- 
 natural agency. Nevertheless, we meet in 
 modern literature with an unmistakable 
 tendency to maintain the old association of 
 ideas. Genius is now recognized as having a 
 pathological side, or a side related to mental 
 disease. 
 
 "The writers who have made the subject 
 their special study agree as to the central 
 fact, that there is a relation between high 
 intellectual endowment and mental derange- 
 ment, though they differ in the way of denn- 
 ing this relation." 
 
 Our essayist then proceeds to enumerate 
 the various grades of mental disturbance 
 that have appeared in connection with men 
 of extraordinary mental endowments. 
 
 First, there is that extreme state of ab- 
 straction known as absence of mind ; of 
 which Archimedes, so absorbed in a problem 
 as not to be aware of the approach of his 
 Roman slayer; Newton judging from the
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS? 41 
 
 plate that a prankish friend had emptied 
 that he had really eaten his dinner; Bee- 
 thoven standing in his night-clothes before 
 an open window; purblind Doctor Johnson 
 striving to read the time upon the dial of 
 the town clock; Adam Smith, the distin- 
 guished writer on political economy, walking 
 twelve miles one Sunday morning along the 
 king's highway, and presenting himself in a 
 crowded church clothed solely in his night- 
 gown, are examples. 
 
 Next in the line of mental degeneration 
 is named the persistence of vivid ideas; illus- 
 trated by such instances as Johnson's repug- 
 nance to certain alleys of London; Madame 
 de Stael's belief that she would suffer from 
 cold when buried; Pascal's fear of a gulf 
 yawning just in front of him, so overpower- 
 ing at times as to compel his being chained 
 to keep him from leaping forward; Caesar 
 Augustus almost convulsed by the sound of 
 thunder, and trying to Hee from it; Peter the 
 Great afraid to cross a bridge; Pythagoras 
 preferring death to passing through a field 
 of beans; Scott opposed to visiting Melrose
 
 42 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Abbey by moonlight for fear of bogles; Mar- 
 shal Saxe terrified at sight of a cat; Byron 
 refusing to help anyone to salt at table, or 
 to be helped himself; Luther, Baxter, and 
 Wesley each believing in witchcraft; Scali- 
 ger trembling at the sight of water-cresses; 
 Schiller keeping a drawer of rotten apples in 
 his study as a necessity of living and working; 
 Rousseau imagining a phantom continually 
 by his side; Luther seeing the devil person- 
 ally present in his study, and throwing an 
 inkstand at his head, and Mozart writing his 
 requiem at the behest of a mysterious "man 
 in black." 
 
 Hallucinations constitute the next phase 
 of mental derangement considered, exempli- 
 fied in the cases of Luther, Malebranche, 
 Descartes, Johnson, Pope, Byron, Shelley, 
 Napoleon, Schumann, and even the well- 
 balanced Goethe. 
 
 Extraordinary violence of temper and in- 
 sistence of self, a still more pronounced 
 form of intellectual unsoundness, is met with 
 in such eminent persons as Pope, Johnson, 
 Swift, Byron, Carlyle, Voltaire, Rousseau,
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS? 43 
 
 Beethoven, Herder, and Schopenhauer. Vol- 
 taire, while living in the house of the Mar- 
 quis de Villette, at Paris, became so incensed 
 one day on coming to the table and not find- 
 ing his own particular cup in its place, as, in 
 the presence of a most distinguished com- 
 pany, to exclaim in the harshest terms 
 against the domestics that waited upon him, 
 and forthwith betake himself to his own 
 apartment and shut himself up. Jeffrey 
 says, in substance, of Dean Swift, that on 
 visiting a family, even for the first time, he 
 would prescribe the hours for their meals, 
 sleep, and exercise, and rigorously insist on 
 their observance; that he was never at ease 
 unless allowed to nickname the lady of the 
 house and indiscriminately lampoon her 
 acquaintances; that at the deanery he some- 
 times even chased his domestics up and 
 down stairs with a large whip; that on first 
 visiting his curate's house he announced 
 himself as his master, took possession of 
 his fireside, and ordered his wife to take 
 charge of his shirts and stockings; and that, 
 in fine, he valued all men only in so far as
 
 44 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 they were content to submit themselves to 
 his own arrogance and tyranny. Dante 
 was wont to throw stones at his enemies in 
 his younger days. Once, walking along the 
 streets of Florence, he met an ass-driver 
 who, as he sang certain passages from the 
 poet's book, occasionally interjected an 
 "Arri" to urge on his beast. Dante, in- 
 censed beyond all control, struck the fellow 
 a severe blow, exclaiming, "That 'Arri' 
 was not put in by me." When Gorner, a 
 talented organist, struck a wrong chord at 
 rehearsal, Bach tore off his wig, and, throw- 
 ing it at the organist's head, thundered out, 
 "You ought to have been a cobbler instead 
 of an organist." Handel is said to have 
 soundly berated and sworn in several differ- 
 ent languages at certain singers, because 
 they did not properly read at first sight the 
 text of the chorus, ' ' And with His stripes 
 we are healed." 
 
 As completing the last-named class of 
 mental derangements, such positive moral 
 obliquities as an appetite for physical stim- 
 ulants and addiction to sexual excesses are
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS? 46 
 
 instanced, one or both of which have found 
 victims in such men as ^iEschylus, Ennius, 
 Eupolis, Ben Jonson, Burns, Poe, Villan, 
 De Musset, Gimther, Burger, De Quincey, 
 Coleridge, Schiller, Blackstone, Sheridan, 
 Addison, Handel, and Gluck. 
 
 A more plainly recognizable class of cases 
 than any of the foregoing, is to be met with 
 in those who have exhibited an intense mel- 
 ancholy or hypochondria. Aristotle names 
 such eminent ancients as Empedocles, Soc- 
 rates, and Plato as examples of this form of 
 abnormal development. So acute has this 
 distemper become with some as to drive 
 them to an attempt to take their own lives, 
 as instanced in the career of Goethe in the 
 Werther days; in Beethoven shut out from 
 society by deafness; in Chateaubriand and 
 George Sand in their earlier days; in Cowper 
 trying to hang himself; in Saint-Simon, who 
 attempted to blow out his brains; in Alfieri 
 tearing off the surgeon's bandage that he 
 might bleed to death; in Schumann casting 
 himself into the Rhine, and in Chatterton 
 and Kleist, poets, and in Beneke, the phil- 
 osopher, who actually did commit suicide.
 
 46 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 The next degree of madness embraces men 
 of genius who have suffered from clearly 
 developed mental disease. Sophocles, the 
 Greek tragic poet; Linnaeus, the botanist; 
 the poet Southey; Swift; Zimmerman, the 
 author of "Solitude," and Scott are named 
 as examples of senile dementia. Other 
 instances in which the disorder manifested 
 itself at intervals throughout the more act- 
 ive periods of life, necessitating a confine- 
 ment of the subject, are met with in the 
 persons of Richelieu, Charles Lamb, Cowper, 
 Handel, Comte, Tasso, Donizetti, and Schu- 
 mann. Allied to the foregoing are the num- 
 ber of those who have died from nervous 
 disorders, to wit: Pascal, Kepler, Cuvier, 
 Rousseau, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Heine. 
 Of those who suffered periodically from the 
 last-named cause, there may be mentioned 
 Moliere, Alfieri, Paganini, Schiller, and 
 George Eliot. 
 
 And lastly, come the cases of those in 
 whose families insanity or some acute nerv- 
 ous disorder has existed. Chateaubriand's 
 father died of apoplexy ; Schopenhauer's
 
 18 OENIUS MADNESS? 47 
 
 grandmother and uncle were imbecile; Rich- 
 elieu, Diderot, Hegel, and Lamb had insane 
 sisters; while one of Mendelssohn's sons 
 became insane. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing phases of 
 mental derangement obtaining among men 
 of genius, and particularized by Mr. Sully, 
 we feel warranted in noticing two others. 
 The first we would call whimsicalness, or 
 the subjection of the whole intellectual 
 nature of the man to the tyranny of some 
 petty, childish humor. Examples of this 
 are by no means rare. 
 
 Haydn had to have his hair carefully 
 dressed, his best clothes put on, and a cer- 
 tain diamond ring presented him by Fred- 
 erick II. placed upon his finger before he 
 could summon a single idea. Bacon, in 
 spring, would expose himself to the rain in 
 an open coach, to receive "the benefit of 
 irrigation," which he believed was "most 
 wholesome because of the niter in the air, 
 and the universal spirit of the world. ' ' Sarti, 
 the composer of sacred music, obliged him- 
 self to work in the dark, declaring that light
 
 48 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 of any sort disconcerted him. Dryden, when 
 about to enter on literary work, had himself 
 bled to clear his brain, and then ate raw 
 meat to stimulate his imagination. Handel 
 found the grave-yard of some village church 
 his most congenial place for composition. 
 A bath and a clean linen shirt with full- 
 frilled bosom were the indispensable condi- 
 tions upon which Buff on' s mind consented 
 to work. The eminent French writer, Mon- 
 taigne, would not sit down to write without 
 having a favorite cat at his elbow. Milton 
 would not attempt to compose except between 
 the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Frank- 
 lin had a plate of bread and cheese by his 
 side when studying, to repair mental waste, 
 as he affirmed, and also to save time. Doctor 
 Johnson had an insatiable appetite for fish- 
 sauce and veal-pie, an unquenchable thirst 
 for tea, a habit of touching posts as he walked 
 the streets, and of treasuring up bits of 
 orange-peel; kept the queerest kind of fel- 
 low-lodgers, such as blind old women, cats, 
 and negroes, and was a firm believer in 
 ghosts. Goldsmith indulged in reading abed,
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS ? 49 
 
 and would extinguish his light by throwing 
 his slipper at it. Theophile Gautiere had 
 faith in magic and in dreams, avoided crossed 
 knives, ran away from an overturned salt- 
 cellar, and grew pale with fright before three 
 lighted candles. ' ' It was one of my fancies, ' ' 
 says Audubon, "to be ridiculously fond of 
 dress; to hunt in black satin breeches, wear 
 pumps when shooting, and dress in the finest 
 ruffled shirts I could obtain from France." 
 
 The other additional phase of mental 
 unsoundness that we would call attention to 
 is what we would class as mental inconsist- 
 ency, or contradiction. We meet with 
 illustrations of this infirmity in Sir Thomas 
 More fiercely prosecuting for opinion while 
 advocating the rights of thought; Bacon 
 teaching morals while taking bribes; La 
 Fontaine writing intrigues while personally 
 avoiding a single amour; Young perpetrating 
 wretched puns and penning Night Thoughts; 
 Sterne beating his wife and permitting his 
 mother to hunger, but crying over a dead 
 ass; Cowper, feeble and despondent, conceiv- 
 ing the laughable story of John Gilpin.
 
 50 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Handel, the composer of the sublimest of 
 oratorios, was a glutton. The elder Dumas 
 would not only occasionally depose his serv- 
 ants and cook his own dinner, but actually 
 wrote a cook-book; and while at one time 
 he would spend his money with the utmost 
 recklessness, at another he would practice 
 all manner of ingenuity to avoid his credit- 
 ors. Pope, the lampooner of nearly all the 
 prominent literati of his day, was personally 
 a notorious coward. Thomas Moore, who 
 realized more than thirty thousand pounds 
 from his writings, subjected his family to 
 actual privation. Newton, the illustrious 
 mathematician and astronomer, was unable 
 to make out his own change in ordinary 
 money transactions. Oliver Goldsmith set 
 forth the joys of domestic life with great 
 fervor and simplicity, and yet his life was 
 passed in a garret, and he was practically a 
 stranger to the comforts and felicities of 
 home. Richard Steele wrote admirable 
 essays on temperance when he was not 
 drunk; and Doctor Johnson expatiated with 
 eloquence and truth upon politeness, who 
 himself was a boor and a glutton.
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS? 51 
 
 In proceeding to account for the foregoing 
 melancholy data, Mr. Sully observes that 
 " Keenness of sensibility, both to physical 
 and mental stimuli, is one of the funda- 
 mental attributes of the original mind. The 
 fine nervous organization, tremulously respon- 
 sive to every touch, constitutes in itself, in 
 this all-too-imperfect world of ours, a special 
 dispensation of sorrow. Hence the dark 
 streak of melancholy which one so often 
 detects in the early years of the great man." 
 Parenthetically, we would observe that all 
 the most famous racers have been noted for 
 their nervous energy, their high spirit and 
 courage Flora Temple, Dexter, Goldsmith 
 Maid, Rarus, Jay-Eye-See, and Maud S., for 
 example. May not the same fact be alleged 
 with equal propriety of all the men and 
 women who have made remarkable records 
 in the race of life 2 
 
 But let us attend farther to Mr. Sully. 
 
 "As the biography of the man of genius 
 often tells us, he is apt to become aware, at 
 a painfully early date, that his exceptional 
 endowments, and the ardent, consuming
 
 52 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 impulses which belong to them, collide with 
 the utilities and purposes of ordinary life. 
 The soul intent on dreaming its secret 
 dream of beauty is unfit for the business 
 which makes up the common working-life 
 of plain, prosaic men. Hence the profound 
 solitude of so many of earth's great ones, 
 which even the companionships of the home 
 have not sufficed to fill up. Such isolation 
 is distinctly unfavorable to mental health. 
 It profoundly affects the emotional nature, 
 breeding melancholy, suspicion of others, 
 misanthropy, and other unwholesome prog- 
 eny." 
 
 He remarks farther: ' ' If the rich biograph- 
 ical literature of modern times teaches us 
 anything, it is that original production is 
 the severest strain of human faculty, the 
 most violent and extraordinary form of cere- 
 bral action. At the moment of productive 
 inspiration the whole being is agitated to its 
 depths, and the latent deposits of years of 
 experience come to the surface. This full 
 spring- tide of imagination, this cerebral tur- 
 moil and clash of currents, makes the severest
 
 18 GENIUS MADNESS? 53 
 
 demand on the controlling and guiding forces 
 of volition. 
 
 ' 'Great artistic works are not always flashed 
 into the world by this swift, electric process. 
 There are others besides Carlyle to whom 
 spiritual parturition has been largely an expe- 
 rience of suffering, the pangs being but rarely 
 submerged in the large, joyous consciousness 
 that a new idea is born into the world." 
 
 Of the two sole agencies opposed to these 
 destructive tendencies namely, a robust con- 
 stitution and strength of will he writes: 
 "But such robustness of bodily health seems 
 by no means the rule. The number of puny 
 and ill-formed men who have achieved mar- 
 velous things in intellectual production is a 
 fact which has often been remarked on. So 
 common an accompaniment of great intel- 
 lectual exertion is defective digestion, that 
 an ingenious writer has tried to show that 
 the maladies of genius have their main source 
 in dyspepsia." 
 
 In speaking of the second resisting agency, 
 the force of will, he continues: "The sense 
 of a quasi exterior pressure and compulsion 
 
 4
 
 54 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 is attested by more than one child of genius. 
 In some cases, more particularly, perhaps, 
 among 'tone-poets,' we find this mastery 
 of the individual mind by the creative im- 
 pulse assuming the striking form of a sudden 
 abstraction of the thoughts from the sur- 
 roundings of the moment. And, through- 
 out the whole of the creative process, 
 the will, though, as we have seen, exercised 
 in a peculiarly severe effort, is not exercised 
 fully and in its highest form. There is 
 no deliberate choice of activity here. The 
 man does not feel free to stop or to go 
 on. On the contrary, the will is in this case 
 pressed into the service of the particular 
 emotion that strives for utterance, the par- 
 ticular artistic impulse that is irresistibly 
 bent on self-realization. 
 
 "Our conclusion is, that the possession of 
 genius carries with it special liabilities of the 
 disintegrating forces which environ us all. 
 It involves a state of delicate equipoise, of 
 unstable equilibrium, in the psycho-physical 
 organization. Paradoxical as it may seem, 
 one may venture to affirm that great original
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS? 55 
 
 power of mind is incompatible with nice 
 adjustment to surroundings, and so with 
 perfect well-being. The genius is a scout 
 who rides out well in advance of the intel- 
 lectual army, and who by this very advance 
 and isolation from the main body is exposed 
 to special perils. Thus genius, like philan- 
 thropy or conscious self-sacrifice for others, 
 is a mode of variation of human nature 
 which, though unfavorable to the conserva- 
 tion of the individual, aids in the evolution 
 of the species."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS? CONCLUDED. 
 
 Negative Views of Charles Lamb, Coleridge, Dr. William O. 
 Stevenson. Opinions of Ancients of no Scientific Value. 
 All Varieties of Mental Disorder More Common among 
 Men of Meager or no Abilities than among Geniuses. 
 
 The view presented in Chapter II. of the 
 intimate relationship existing between genius 
 and insanity, sanctioned though it is by the 
 voice of antiquity, and by influential opin- 
 ions of almost all subsequent ages, has its 
 opposers, strenuous and weighty, if not nu- 
 merous. Among them is one who, in view of 
 his sister' s well-known insanity, and his own 
 pronounced eccentricities, might very natu- 
 rally be supposed to be sensitive on the sub- 
 ject; we mean Charles Lamb. In his essay 
 on the Sanity of True Genius, he utters 
 this protest: " So far from the position hold- 
 ing true, that great wit (or genius, in our 
 modern way of speaking) has a necessary 
 alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on 
 
 (57)
 
 58 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 the contrary, will ever be found to be the 
 sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind 
 to conceive of a mad Shakespeare. The 
 greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent 
 is here chiefly to be understood, manifests 
 itself in the admirable balance of all the 
 faculties." 
 
 Coleridge, too, in his Biographia Litera- 
 ria, bears the following testimony: "The 
 men of the greatest genius, as far as we can 
 judge from their own works or from the 
 accounts of their contemporaries, appear to 
 have been of calm and tranquil temper in all 
 that related to themselves. Through all the 
 works of Chaucer there reigns a cheerful- 
 ness, a manly hilarity, which makes it almost 
 impossible to doubt a corresponding habit of 
 feeling in the author himself. Shakespeare's 
 evenness and sweetness of temper are almost 
 proverbial in his own age." Speaking of 
 Spenser, he says: " Nowhere do we find the 
 least trace of irritability, and still less of 
 quarrelsomeness or affected contempt of his 
 censurers." "The same calmness, and even 
 greater self-possession, may be affirmed of
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS? CONCLUDED. 59 
 
 Milton, as far as his poems and poetic char- 
 acter are concerned." 
 
 What, however, we regard as the best 
 defense of the sanity of genius is an article 
 by Dr. William G. Stevenson, in the Popular 
 Science Monthly for March, 1887, and which, 
 indeed, was written as a reply to the article 
 of Mr. Sully, already presented. We shall 
 aim to reproduce its main points in a few 
 brief quotations. 
 
 The opinions of the ancients regarding 
 the psychological nature of genius, Doctor 
 Stevenson summarily sets aside, upon the 
 ground of their profound ignorance concern- 
 ing the essential nature of mind. His 
 stand-point is that of modern times, and 
 the subject is treated under the restriction 
 of modern definitions. 
 
 Allowing the various examples cited by 
 Mr. Sully, wherein great geniuses have 
 revealed themselves as the victims of illu- 
 sions, hallucinations, and delusions, and as 
 subjects of the most glaring eccentricities, 
 he remarks: "But these peculiarities or 
 eccentricities are not essentially morbid,
 
 60 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 neither do they give affirmative evidence that 
 genius is related to madness. Such peculiar- 
 ities belong to all orders of mind the hum- 
 ble as well as the exalted and can not, 
 therefore, have an exclusive application." 
 
 Concerning the exhibition of violent pas- 
 sions upon the part of men of genius, he 
 says: "This I do not deny, but yet affirm 
 that the violent passion at times observed in 
 one of exalted powers of mind is no more 
 evidence in favor of the kinship between 
 these powers and mental disease, than is 
 the same passion, when displayed in a low 
 and vulgar mind, proof that stupidity is a 
 congener of madness. 
 
 "Because Goethe, Chateaubriand, George 
 Sand, and Johnson have said that at times 
 they felt an impulse to commit suicide; 
 because Beethoven, Schumann, and Cowper, 
 who were at times morbid, really made the 
 attempt; and Kleist, Beneke, and Chatter- 
 ton succeeded in self-destruction we are 
 not justified in saying that the impulse or 
 the act itself came because genius contains 
 an element of madness. Hundreds who com-
 
 IS GENIUS MADNESS ? CONCLUDED. 61 
 
 mit suicide every year do not possess genius; 
 why, then, make it the responsible agent for 
 the few? 
 
 "Since genius is itself exceedingly rare, 
 and its union with insanity still less fre- 
 quently found, it is evident that suicide, 
 although occasionally committed by those 
 of exalted minds, is altogether too infre- 
 quent among them to justify us in claiming 
 it as evidence in behalf of the insanity of 
 genius. 
 
 "Nervous and mental diseases are too 
 common among all classes of people and 
 orders of intelligence, to permit us to think 
 that genius is the special object of their 
 dominion. 
 
 "That genius 'has its roots in a nervous 
 organization of exceptional delicacy,' is un- 
 doubtedly true; but it does not necessarily 
 follow that the liability to mental disorder 
 and confusion is thereby increased, because 
 this delicacy of brain-structure and its func- 
 tions are admirably adjusted, and the very 
 perfection of the mechanism enables it to 
 work with the least possible friction or injury.
 
 62 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 "In conclusion, I hesitate not to say that 
 the most illustrious names of ancient or 
 modern times in all departments of human 
 thought or activity have been, with but 
 few exceptions, loyal to the sovereign rule of 
 sane reason; and the sweep of their imagi- 
 nations has been on curves which rounded in 
 the bright empyrean of truth and beauty."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IS GENIUS CHARACTER? 
 
 Affirmative Opinions of John Burroughs and De Quincey. 
 Negative Opinion of Lowell. 
 
 All the views heretofore had of genius 
 have treated it purely as an intellectual 
 force. The one we now present differs from 
 these in regarding genius in the light of a 
 great moral power. 
 
 John Burroughs, writing on the subject, 
 says: "Indeed, there is a strict moral or 
 ethical dependence of the capacity to con- 
 ceive or project great things, upon the capac- 
 ity to be or to do them. It is as true as any 
 law of hydraulics or statics, that the work- 
 manship of a man can never rise above the 
 level of his character. He can never ade- 
 quately say or do anything greater than he 
 himself is. There is no such thing, for 
 instance, as deep insight into the mystery of 
 Creation, without integrity and simplicity 
 of character." And De Quincey affirms: 
 
 (03)
 
 64 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 " Besides its relation to suffering and enjoy- 
 ment, genius always implies a deeper relation 
 to virtue and vice/' 
 
 Diametrically opposed to the foregoing is 
 the view that next follows. It is a passage 
 from Lowell's essay on Rousseau. He says: 
 "Genius is not a question of character. It 
 may be sordid, like the lamp of Aladdin, in 
 its externals; what care we, while the touch of 
 it builds palaces for us, makes us rich as only 
 men in dream-land are rich, and lords to the 
 utmost bound of imagination? So, when 
 people talk of the ungrateful way in which 
 the world treats its geniuses, they speak 
 unwisely. There is no work of genius which 
 has not been the delight of mankind, no 
 word of genius to which the human heart 
 and soul have not, sooner or later, responded. 
 But the man whom the genius takes posses- 
 sion of for its pen, for its trowel, for its 
 pencil, for its chisel, Mm the world treats 
 according to his deserts."
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 COMMENTS' ON FOREGOING DEFINITIONS OF 
 GENIUS. 
 
 Each View Partly Right, None Wholly So. The Common 
 Element in All. Genius is TTncommonness of Intellectual 
 Endowment in the Ascending Scale. 
 
 In reviewing the various definitions of 
 genius just presented, we are very forcibly 
 reminded of the old story of the chameleon. 
 Each beholder viewing the reptile under dif- 
 ferent circumstances or moods, concludes it 
 is of an entirely different color from that re- 
 ported by any other beholder; the truth being, 
 of course, that each is partly right, and none 
 wholly so. Again: if we sum up the defini- 
 tions of genius presented, we shall find them 
 to be nine in number, which corresponds ex- 
 actly to the number of leading evangelical 
 denominations in Christendom. Each of 
 these sects views Christianity from a slightly 
 different stand-point from all the others, and 
 hence truthfully apprehends a certain genu- 
 
 6 (65)
 
 66 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 ine phase or tint of it which escapes the 
 perception of all the rest; but it can not be 
 claimed that unto any one of them has been 
 revealed the whole spectrum of the gospel of 
 Christ. 
 
 Just so, we take it, as regards the foregoing 
 definitions of genius: each is true, but not 
 the whole truth; and genius, when fully 
 apprehended, will be found to be compounded 
 of the essence of each one of them. Let us 
 briefly criticise each of these definitions. 
 
 It is unquestionably true that there can be 
 no genius where there is no originality. 
 This, properly conceived, is a very compre- 
 hensive quality of mind. It involves not 
 only the power to perceive things first, but 
 also the faculty for discovering new phases or 
 relations of those same things, or of other 
 familiar ones. Franklin was a real discov- 
 erer when he drew lightning from the clouds; 
 but not any more original in mind than Voltai, 
 or Morse, or Locke, or Edison, or any other 
 of the numerous inventors who have, since 
 his day, successfully applied that same fiery 
 fluid to scientific and mechanical ends. The
 
 COMMENTS ON FOREGOING. 7 
 
 degree of originality which may be claimed 
 for the Darwins, for Kant, Laplace, and 
 Lamarck, as expositors of the great physical 
 law of evolution, is but little, if any, supe- 
 rior to that which belongs to Spencer, who 
 assumes to have demonstrated the prevalence 
 of the same law in the structure of the vari- 
 ous governmental, social, moral, and relig- 
 ious institutions of mankind. 
 
 We confess our inability to see any real 
 difference between originality and anticipa- 
 tion, as definitions of genius. To anticipate 
 a thing is simply to see it, or know about it, 
 or to do it, before any other person has such 
 knowledge or performs such action. But 
 what is this, if not originality the being 
 first on a scene, the being first in utterance, 
 the being first in exploit? Can one conceive 
 of an original thought, or expression, or 
 action that must not have anticipated every 
 other similar thought, or expression, or 
 action? To recur to the illustration of antici- 
 pation given by Macaulay and Alison, the 
 beholder on the mountain-top, as compared 
 with his fellow in the valley, anticipates the
 
 68 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 rising of the sun in no other sense than that 
 he is the first or original spectator of it, and 
 vice versa. The two terms, then, originality 
 and anticipation, strike us as being simply 
 synonymous mere interchangeables. 
 
 And, is either of them entirely satisfactory 
 as a definition of genius? What we have 
 already observed with regard to originality 
 may be applied with equal propriety to 
 anticipation namely, that it is an essential 
 factor of every genius. But is either origi- 
 nality or anticipation genius itself ? May we 
 not conceive of them as existing in an indi- 
 vidual nay, can we not cite individuals in 
 whom they have existed, for whom it can not 
 be claimed that they were geniuses? We 
 think so. There is another element which 
 must enter into this originality or antici- 
 pation in order to constitute it real genius, 
 and that is the element of size. In other 
 words, the originality must be pronounced, 
 intense, surprising, in order to win for itself 
 the distinction of being classed as genius. 
 Each person is, in one or more points, differ- 
 ent from his fellows. This, however, is only
 
 COMMENTS ON FOREGOING. 69 
 
 individuality, or idiosyncrasy a vulgar and 
 insignificant thing indeed, compared with 
 genius. It is only when this individual 
 endowment displays a largeness or an inten- 
 sity that is surpassing, that we are willing to 
 recognize it as akin to genius, if not genius 
 itself. 
 
 Is genius breadth? Yes, if it be a phe- 
 nomenally broad and not shallow breadth. 
 And genius of this type is, we apprehend, 
 the rarest of all. Just as in every army 
 there are thousands of privates, hundreds 
 of captains, and scores of brigade and divis- 
 ion commanders for everj' general-in-chief, 
 so in the divers bodies of intellectual work- 
 ers there are multitudes of efficient special- 
 ists, not a few of whom may also be allowed 
 to be geniuses, for every Plato, or Bacon, or 
 Shakespeare, or Alexander Hamilton men 
 whose cosmic cast of mind enables them to 
 comprehend, harmonize, and unify whole 
 systems of seemingly conflicting interests. 
 Such men have nothing to do with details; 
 they are not absorbingly interested in any 
 one department of thought, but, ranging 
 
 6
 
 70 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 over all activities with impartiality and 
 familiarity, and gathering into hand the 
 essential threads of each, they therefrom 
 weave the large and enduring patterns of 
 family, state, religion, philosophy, and liter- 
 ature. Laws and principles are the mate- 
 rials with which they deal, and systems are 
 their fabrics. However intrinsically inter- 
 esting and important a single thing, they 
 value it chiefly, if not solely, for its relative 
 worth and influence. They apprehend things, 
 not as integers, but as factors; and men, not 
 as individuals, but as communities. It is 
 the entire landscape that they sweep at a 
 glance, and not a single feature of it the 
 whole, rather than any part. They are the 
 architects of every grand enterprise, and not 
 its artisans the modelers of complete stat- 
 ues, and not the expert chiselers of parts. 
 
 Very closely related to, if not identical 
 with, breadth, is the constructiveness defined 
 as genius the power to combine, to synthe- 
 size, the results of others' labors, after a fash- 
 ion extraordinarily novel or large. For is it 
 not plain that, before there can be any intel-
 
 COMMENTS ON FOREGOING. 71 
 
 ligent combination or construction, there 
 must first be formed in the mind the scheme, 
 or design, in conformity with which the ar- 
 rangement of materials must proceed;! And 
 is it not farther apparent that, in order that 
 such scheme or design may lay any claim to 
 being a work of genius, it must discover 
 either a superior newness or an unusual 
 largeness? The very idea of being a con- 
 structor presupposes the power to grasp and 
 manipulate constituent parts; and the greater 
 the number of these parts, the ampler must 
 be the hand or the eye that would direct 
 their organization. The putter- together of a 
 mosaic must possess a breadth of view equal 
 to the combined areas of vision of each 
 maker of a bit ot the composite, and the 
 planner of a military campaign must be able 
 to focalize in himself the movements of entire 
 divisions of troops as if they were single com- 
 panies or files. This is constructiveness, but 
 it is no less breadth; and either manifested 
 in an extraordinary degree is genius. 
 
 Is concentration genius? In no sense what- 
 ever. The most remarkable exhibition to be
 
 72 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 had of concentration of mind is in the case 
 of monomaniacs; and we know of no genius 
 who was such by virtue of any mania he 
 may have contracted. At the same time, we 
 believe there can be no genius without con- 
 centration of mind; but concentration is 
 simply one of the many conditions of genius, 
 and not the thing itself. 
 
 The same may be said of patience. Indis- 
 pensable as it undoubtedly is for bringing 
 all the fruits of genius to maturity, it can 
 not cause a single stalk of genius to spring 
 up, or a single bud, leaf, or fruit of that rare 
 plant to grow, unless there first be, at the 
 root of the whole, the genuine seed of genius. 
 Patience may be allowed to be the atmos- 
 phere of genius; but it is quite as surely 
 the atmosphere also of mediocrity, and even 
 of inferiority; the essential difference be- 
 tween the three inhering exclusively in their 
 respective germs. 
 
 Then as to genius being "'common sense 
 working at a high level,-' why, the very 
 phrase is a flat contradiction of terms. Com- 
 mon sense and a high level you might as
 
 COMMENTS ON FOREGOING. 73 
 
 well associate common stock and a rare 
 breed, or common coal and a diamond. 
 Common sense, when it rises above the com- 
 mon level, ceases to be common sense, and 
 becomes uncommon sense the level in this 
 case making as much difference in the thing 
 itself as it does in the case of the atmosphere, 
 or water, or fauna, or flora. 
 
 But may it not be possible that we are 
 misinterpreting the term common sense? 
 Let us see. Take all the synonyms of com- 
 mon furnished by the standard dictionary, 
 and put each in turn in place of the word 
 itself, in the compound under consideration, 
 and see if there is any meaning emitted differ- 
 ent from the one already attributed. Here 
 is the list: General sense, public sense, pop- 
 ular sense, national sense, universal sense, 
 frequent sense, ordinary sense, customary 
 sense, usual sense, familiar sense, habitual 
 sense, vulgar sense, mean sense, trite sense, 
 stale sense, threadbare sense, commonplace 
 sense. Does any one of these qualifiers 
 show that the sense considered is other than 
 that possessed by a large number nay, the
 
 74 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 great mass of mankind? Certainly not. 
 Then, such being the case, common sense 
 can not by any possibility rise above the 
 normal level of those who possess it the 
 mass. The sense which does so rise and 
 attain to a high level, is in no element of its 
 nature common, but, on the contrary, is 
 essentially and completely uncommon, or 
 extraordinary. Were common sense, accord- 
 ing to the literal signification of the term, 
 genius, then unquestionably would the lat- 
 ter be a much more generally diffused 
 endowment than anyone has heretofore sup- 
 posed, or existing evidences would warrant 
 us in believing it to be. 
 
 Is it not possible, however, that by com- 
 mon sense our definer would have us to 
 understand a knowledge of human nature? 
 for such it is not unfrequently understood 
 to mean. In this event, we should feel very 
 much inclined to accept his definition; for 
 anything approaching a clear and full insight 
 into human nature is an individual gift of so 
 rare an occurrence, that he who possesses it 
 may well be reckoned a genius. But if this
 
 COMMENTS ON FOREGOING. 75 
 
 be our definer's meaning, what a flagrant 
 misnomer of genius is common sense! 
 
 Again: Is genius character? In the defini- 
 tions presented, we have both an affirmative 
 and a negative reply. We think the latter 
 much the more tenable of the two. A single 
 well-defined illustration of the truth that 
 intellectual greatness can co-exist with moral 
 littleness, is proof conclusive that genius 
 and character are not necessarily correla- 
 tives. But such illustrations are numerous; 
 indeed, we fear it Avould not be impossible to 
 show that a large majority of the most emi- 
 nent geniuses of the world have been men 
 whose lives proved an unworthy setting to 
 their brilliant gems of mind. And what is 
 saddest about the matter is, that this want of 
 accord between mental endowment and moral 
 integrity seems to obtain particularly in those 
 geniuses whose special mission it is to pre- 
 side over and inspire the sentiments and to 
 inform the sesthetical tastes of mankind 
 the poets, the musicians, and the artists of 
 the human race. It must, therefore, be con- 
 ceded that it is possible for the human mind
 
 76 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 to entertain the justest, purest, sweetest, and 
 most exalted conceptions of art and of con- 
 duct, and also to give them the most fitting 
 and captivating expression, at the same time 
 that the heart is quite indifferent to their 
 noble influence, and the life quite devoid of 
 their divine companionship. There is nothing 
 necessarily incompatible between genius and 
 rectitude; but it is quite as true that either 
 of these may exist in an individual wholly 
 independent of the other. There can be no 
 question but that the giant mind and the 
 saintly heart mutually befit and aggrandize 
 each other, and that when found united 
 in the same person, they exalt him to the 
 topmost station of human attainment; but 
 quite as sure is it that, in the cases of a 
 majority of the world's greatest geniuses, no 
 such felicitous conjunction has existed. The 
 most gigantic and gorgeous of flowers the 
 Rafflesia Arnoldi has the odor of putrid 
 meat. 
 
 Lastly: Is genius madness? As has already 
 been shown, extraordinary gifts of mind 
 have frequently been associated with one or
 
 COMMENTS ON FOREGOING. 77 
 
 other form of mental or nervous derange- 
 ment; but this, in our opinion, no more 
 proves that the two are identical, or that 
 they are necessarily concomitants, than does 
 the presence of the worm in the bark of the 
 gigantea sequoia prove that the monarch of 
 the Californian forest and its contemptible 
 parasite are one and the same thing. If it 
 were indeed true that madness and genius 
 are identical, then might we expect to find 
 the greatest living geniuses within the walls 
 of lunatic asylums. If genius and madness 
 are of one substance, then must it follow 
 that the greater the madness, the greater the 
 genius, and the reverse. A man may become 
 mad by reason of the too great pressure of 
 his mind upon some weak part of his phys- 
 ical organism, but all the concentrated mad- 
 ness of the race, or any choice part of it, 
 could never generate a genius. Madness is 
 simply an occasional, an incidental attendant 
 of genius, and is no more genius than is 
 the grotesque shadow of an object the 
 object itself. Madness is one of the many 
 manifestations that genius presents an
 
 78 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 ugly one, no doubt and is no more the 
 whole of genius than is a single cat-call 
 the varied carol of the mocking-bird. Mad- 
 ness is a lapse or interregnum of genius, and 
 is as distinct from it as is the incidental 
 stumble of a horse from his habitual gait. 
 If madness be indissolubly conjoined with 
 genius, it is only as nethermost antipode or 
 hindmost extreme ; and if the two rule 
 jointly, then madness enacts the infernal 
 demon to the supernal divinity of genius. 
 
 But, as we have already shown in our quo- 
 tation from Doctor Stevenson's reply to Mr. 
 Sully, the various manifestations of madness 
 are, first, attendants not only of genius, but 
 also of every lesser degree of mental endow- 
 ment ; and, secondly, they are a more fre- 
 quent accompaniment of inferior orders of 
 intellect than of superior ones the two facts 
 proving conclusively that there is no natural 
 or necessary connection between genius and 
 any species of mental unsoundness. 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 However unlike or antagonistic the forego- 
 ing definitions of genius may be, or may seem
 
 CONCLUSION. 70 
 
 to be, no great shrewdness is required to 
 detect a common element running through 
 all and that is the element of unc&mmon- 
 ness. 
 
 Originality, or its equivalent anticipation, 
 can not claim to be genius, unless it exist 
 upon an uncommonly large scale. Breadth 
 may be genius only as it is extraordina- 
 rily generous, conspicuously comprehensive. 
 And concentration or constructiveness, if 
 they would escape the suspicion of being 
 mere talents, must take on either an unu- 
 sual intensity or an astonishing range. We 
 see, then, that uncommonness is the one 
 necessary quality which enters into every 
 conception of genius. What objection, then, 
 can there be to the selection of this quality 
 as the most expressive definition of genius 
 itself, seeing it is ample enough to embrace 
 any or all of the definitions presented, and 
 that it is the one element in each which re- 
 fuses to disappear under analysis 3 
 
 As the outcome, then, of our inquiry into 
 the real meaning of genius, we would vent- 
 ure to assert that it is uncommonness of
 
 80 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 intellectual endowment, whether as regards 
 either the kind or the scope of its activity. 
 Uncommonness of endowment in kind origi- 
 nates the specialist, while uncommonness of 
 endowment in scope originates the gener- 
 alizer or philosopher and both, by virtue 
 of their uncommonness, and by virtue of 
 that alone, are geniuses. Of course, this 
 uncommonness must be manifested in the 
 ascending and not the descending scale of 
 human endowments.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PRECOCITY. 
 
 Is Genius Characterized by Precocity ? The Affirmative View 
 Supported by Seventy-four Eminent Examples. The Neg- 
 ative View Favored by about Fifty Equally Weighty Ex- 
 amples. Tabular Exhibit of tlie Merits of the Question, 
 Derived from Investigation of the Lives of Three Hundred 
 of the Foremost Geniuses of the World. Conclusion. 
 
 Just as a day of memorable beauty is, as a 
 rule, heralded to the world by a lightsome- 
 visaged and blushing-cheeked aurora, so are 
 we prone to think the advent of a genius 
 must be prophesied to mankind in the daz- 
 zling parts of some child. And as fabled 
 Apollo, soon as he had tasted of the Olym- 
 pian nectar and ambrosia, shook off his 
 swaddling-bands, and, seizing a lyre, declared 
 himself ready for his divine mission, so 
 would we have genius exhibit its preter- 
 natural characteristics close upon the heels 
 of infancy. 
 
 Of course, it is not believed that every 
 child manifesting precocious traits will cer- 
 tainly develop into a genius; nevertheless 
 
 6 (8U
 
 82 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 are we wont to make it hold good that 
 geniuses almost universally bud forth in 
 children of transcendent brilliance. 
 
 And here are some data that undoubtedly 
 warrant this view: 
 
 Aristophanes, the great comic poet of 
 Greece, gained his first prize at nineteen 
 years of age. Cowley received the applause 
 of the great at eleven, Pope at twelve, and 
 Milton at sixteen. Byron's general informa- 
 tion as a boy was unusually large and varied, 
 and the list of works, in divers departments 
 of literature, which he had perused before 
 his fifteenth year, is something astonishing. 
 His first known poetical effusion was penned 
 at twelve, and at eighteen he published his 
 first volume of poems. Burns was a poet at 
 sixteen, his first recorded poem having been 
 written in memory of a fair girl companion 
 of the harvest-field, from whose hands he 
 was wont to remove the nettle-stings and 
 thistles. Henry Kirke White was but sev- 
 enteen when his first volume of poems was 
 given to the public; Schiller published a 
 poem on Moses when only fourteen; Klop-
 
 PRECOCITY. 83 
 
 stock began his "Messiah" at seventeen; 
 at eighteen Tasso wrote "Rinaldo;" Cal- 
 deron, the famous Spanish dramatist, penned 
 his first play at fourteen; Goethe composed 
 dialogues when only six or seven; Alfred de 
 Muset wrote poems at fourteen; Victor Hugo, 
 called the "enfant sublime," versified when 
 a school-boy, and at sixteen produced work 
 of permanent value; Beaumont composed 
 tragedies at twelve; Coleridge revealed his 
 poetic genius at sixteen; Mrs. Browning 
 began writing poetry at eight, and produced 
 an epic at twelve; and Mrs. Hemans pub- 
 lished a volume of poems at fourteen. 
 
 Leonardo Da Vinci, the most comprehen- 
 sive and versatile of all the great Italian 
 masters of art, when but a small boy, puzzled 
 his teachers by his original remarks and 
 searching inquiries. In his first effort at 
 drawing he surpassed in grace and natural- 
 ness of outline the models of his experienced 
 instructor. When Michael Angelo was 
 placed at a grammar school, preparatory to 
 his entering on one of the learned profes- 
 sions, he spent his time chiefly in drawing.
 
 84 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 much to his father's disgust. Apprenticed 
 to an eminent artist, his progress was so 
 rapid as to excite the latter* s jealousy, and 
 to compel the confession that his pupil had 
 no farther need of him. Raphael, before he 
 was sixteen, copied the illustrious Perugi- 
 no's designs so perfectly, that his copies 
 were frequently mistaken for the originals; 
 indeed, some pronounced them superior in 
 the moral earnestness and ecstatic vision 
 with which he imbued them. Giotto, the 
 earliest of the artist giants of mediaeval Italy, 
 took his first lessons directly from nature, 
 when a shepherd lad, attending his father's 
 flock. Murillo displayed artistic talent 
 when a mere child, covering the walls of 
 his house with drawings, and painting pict- 
 ures which he sold at a neighboring fair. 
 Canova carved a lion with astonishing fidel- 
 ity at twelve, and Thorwaldsen at eleven had 
 engaged in a systematic study of art. Land- 
 seer could draw well at five, and admirably 
 at eight. Gainsborough became a painter at 
 twelve, and Turner exhibited creditable work 
 at fifteen. Sir Christopher Wren at the age
 
 PRECOCITY. 8f> 
 
 of thirteen had invented an astronomical 
 apparatus, a pneumatic engine, and several 
 curious if not useful instruments. 
 
 At the age of nine years, Handel composed 
 motets and other pieces which were sung in 
 the cathedral; and when only two years 
 older, he provoked the mingled applause 
 and envy of the foremost composer and 
 organist of Berlin by his astonishing instru- 
 mentation. When but a choir-boy at St. 
 Stephen's, Haydn composed a mass, and he 
 was only twenty years old when he wrote his 
 first opera. 
 
 Mozart, when barely able to reach up to 
 the key-board of the piano, would pick out 
 thirds and other chords while his older sister 
 was taking her lesson, and began taking- 
 lessons himself when only four years old. 
 At this early age, too, he began to compose, 
 and when six actually wrote a concerto for 
 the clavier. The next two years he spent, 
 in company with his father and sister, visit- 
 ing the royal families at Vienna, Paris, Ver- 
 sailles, London, and Holland, and exhibiting 
 
 before them and the best musicians of 
 a
 
 86 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Europe his marvelous skill, both as per- 
 former upon and composer for the clavier, 
 the violin, and more especially the organ. 
 At nine he wrote six sonatas for violin, 
 viola, cello, horn, oboe, bassoon, and harp- 
 sichord, and also a small oratorio; and at 
 twelve, in presence of the whole imperial 
 family of Austria, he wielded the conduct- 
 or's baton at the performance of a mass 
 composed by himself for the consecration of 
 a new church. 
 
 Herr Neefe, a distinguished musician of 
 his day, wrote of Beethoven when he was 
 but eleven years of age: "He plays the 
 piano with wonderful execution, and reads 
 very well at sight in short, he plays almost 
 the whole of Sebastian Bach's 'Wohltem- 
 perte Clavier.' ' When, at seventeen years 
 of age, he extemporized upon a theme just 
 then laid before him, Mozart ecstatically 
 exclaimed to the assembled critics: "Take 
 care of this youth; some day he will make a 
 stir in the world." Weber was still in his 
 teens when he wrote two comic operas, and 
 was only eighteen when he was made con-
 
 PRECOCITY. 87 
 
 ductor of the Breslau Opera House. Ros- 
 sini began to compose as early as sixteen, 
 and wrote his celebrated opera "Tancredi" 
 when he was scarcely twenty-one. When 
 only seven years of age, Schubert, without 
 having had any formal instruction, played 
 surprisingly well upon the harpsichord, and 
 between his eleventh and sixteenth years, 
 while serving as a choir-boy, composed a 
 symphony in D major, a cantata, a part of 
 an opera, several string quartets and fanta- 
 sias, an octet for wind instruments, and quite 
 a number of songs among them, the well- 
 known " Hagar's Lament." Mendelssohn, 
 before he was ten years of age, had gone 
 through a complete course of musical in- 
 struction. When only twelve, he had com- 
 posed his first symphony, that in C minor, 
 and two or three one-act operas; and about 
 the same time, when attending a meeting of 
 the Cecilia Society at Frankfort, he extem- 
 porized upon one of Bach's motets in such a 
 manner as to thrill with wonder and admira- 
 tion the experienced musicians there assem- 
 bled.
 
 88 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Galileo manifested his scientific bias while 
 still a youth. Sir Isaac Newton had not yet 
 entered his teens when he had exhibited 
 extraordinary skill as a mechanical inventor 
 his windmill, water-clock, and flying kites 
 being well-known illustrations of his natural 
 deftness. James Watt, it is said, was only 
 six years old when he was caught solving a 
 geometrical problem upon the hearth with a 
 piece of chalk; at fourteen he constructed an 
 electrical machine; and he was still a lad 
 when he made his first discoveries with ref- 
 erence to steam. At four years of age 
 Cuvier could read fluently; at six was an 
 interested inquirer into physical phenomena; 
 at thirteen had read and all but memorized 
 Buffon, copying all the plates in water-col- 
 ors, and at twenty-six was a professor. 
 Laplace was a mathematical teacher when 
 still a boy; Lagrange was a professor at 
 eighteen; St. Hilaire at twenty-one; Kepler, 
 Linnaeus, and Davy at twenty-three; Coper- 
 nicus at twenty-seven, and Tycho Brahe at 
 twenty-eight. Leibnitz received his degree 
 of M. A. at fifteen, and that of LL. D. at
 
 PRECOCITY. 89 
 
 nineteen. Abelard astonished Paris, and, 
 indeed, all Europe, with his dialectics at 
 twenty. Berkeley arrived at his notion of 
 idealism when a youth of eighteen at col- 
 lege, and enunciated his "New Theory of 
 Vision " at twenty-four. Schelling had 
 written three philosophical works before he 
 was twenty. 
 
 Charles Dickens, when but a small boy, 
 became famous among his playmates as the 
 .writer of a tragedy called "Misnar," and 
 also as the relater of impromptu stories. 
 Guizot, the eminent French statesman and 
 historian, has been called " a child who had 
 no childhood." At eleven he could read 
 in the originals the works of Thucydides, 
 Demosthenes, Cicero, Tacitus, Dante, Alfieri, 
 Schiller, Goethe, Gibbon, and Shakespeare. 
 And at the same early period his mind was 
 particularly fond of and devoted to histor- 
 ical and philosophical subjects. Grotius 
 wrote good Latin verses at nine, and at 
 seventeen did work of a high scholarly char- 
 acter. Porson at nine could extract the 
 cube root of a number mentally, and at
 
 00 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 fifteen could repeat the whole of Horace, 
 Virgil, and many parts of other classical 
 authors. Macaulay indicated his historical 
 bias at eight, at which time also he had 
 written a romance and several poems. 
 Thirlwall was taught Latin at three, and 
 could read Greek at four with great fluency. 
 Hannibal as a boy accompanied his illus- 
 trious father in his military expeditions to 
 Spain, and after the latter' s death, though 
 still very young, won the admiration of the 
 army by his extraordinary courage and 
 skill. Napoleon Bonaparte evinced his love 
 for military affairs at a very early age, and 
 the unusual aptitude he exhibited at the 
 military school at Brienne elicited from one 
 of his professors the remark, " Keep an eye 
 on young Bonaparte, and promote him as 
 fast as possible, for if you do not, he will 
 make a way for himself." Scipio had 
 achieved his highest distinction before he 
 was thirty. At the same age Charlemagne 
 was master of Germany and France. Joan 
 of Arc was but eighteen when she had 
 attained the name of, in some respects, the
 
 PRECOCITY. 91 
 
 most marvelous conqueror the world has ever 
 seen. In boyhood Alexander the Great man- 
 ifested extraordinary physical prowess in 
 training Bucephalus; at sixteen he was en- 
 trusted with the regency of Macedonia during 
 his father's temporary absence; at eighteen 
 he defeated the Theban Sacred Band at 
 Chaeroneia; and was only twenty when, upon 
 Philip's death, he assumed the head of 
 government, and inaugurated his career as 
 the greatest of conquerors. Peter the Great 
 triumphed over the combined factions of his 
 older brother and sister, and became sole 
 Czar of Muscovy, at seventeen. 
 
 Did space permit, or the necessities of the 
 case warrant them, the biographies of such 
 illustrious men as Archimedes, Sir David 
 Brewster, Julius Caesar, Nelson, Bossuet, 
 Rembrandt, Salvator Rosa, Albert Durer, 
 Correggio, Guido, Shelley, Keats, and many 
 others might be made to yield additional 
 data in confirmation of the apparent rule 
 that the normal blossom of genius is pre- 
 cocity. 
 
 But against this rule, if such it be allowed
 
 92 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 to be, there may be arrayed a very for- 
 midable number of significant exceptions- 
 geniuses whose consummate flower appeared 
 as in the case of the century-plant just 
 before, and in some instances would seem to 
 have been indicative of, their dissolution. 
 We shall cite a few of them. 
 
 The world-renowned Cervantes, though 
 furnished with the education usual to gen- 
 tlemen of his time, developed no special brill- 
 iance as a student, and was fifty-eight years 
 of age when the first part of Don Quixote 
 was given to the public. Bunyan gave the 
 world no evidence whatever of possessing 
 a unique faculty before he had produced 
 "Pilgrim's Progress," at which time he 
 was probably forty years of age. Virgil 
 was already thirty years old when his first 
 poetic work of any value appeared the 
 "Bucolics;" while his ^Eneid was written 
 between his forty-third and fiftieth years. 
 JEschylus, the founder of the drama, won 
 his first prize at forty-one. Euripides, the 
 tragic Greek poet, achieved a like distinc- 
 tion at thirty-nine. Dante was thirty-five
 
 PRECOCITY. 93 
 
 when he began the composition of his 
 "Divina Commedia." One of the pioneers 
 of French poetry, Peter Rusard, did not 
 discover his poetic faculty much before his 
 fiftieth year. Chaucer's most meritorious 
 as well as most famous poems, the "Can- 
 terbury Tales," were the product of his old 
 age. Wordsworth did not attain renown 
 until after forty. 
 
 In the thirty-two years that preceded the 
 advent of the first successful American 
 novel, its author, James Fenimore Cooper, 
 was one of the obscurest and seemingly most 
 commonplace of American citizens. Char- 
 lotte Bronte and her sister, though they 
 began writing letters, stories, and plays at a 
 very early age, yet did not produce anything 
 noteworthy until they were about thirty. 
 Fielding was forty-three w r hen he wrote 
 " Tom Jones," and Sterne was forty-six 
 when "Tristram Shandy" appeared. Had 
 Shakespeare died at thirty, Bacon at thirty- 
 five, Spencer at thirty -seven, " George Eliot" 
 at thirty-eight, Addison, Dryden, and Gib- 
 bon at forty, Hallam at forty-one, Scott and
 
 94 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Hume at forty-three, Butler, Richardson, 
 and Cowper at fifty, Grote at fifty-two, 
 Locke and De Foe at fifty-eight, and Milton 
 at sixty, it is doubtful if even a very com- 
 plete history of English literature would 
 have favored them with so much as the 
 briefest mention. 
 
 Bach did not compose until after forty, 
 while Haydn did not develop his peculiar 
 merits as a composer till near sixty years of 
 age. Sir Christopher Wren did not betray 
 his qualities as an architect until about 
 thirty. At the earliest mention of the art 
 of printing, Gutenberg was about forty years 
 old. Columbus was fifty-six when he plant- 
 ed the Spanish flag on San Salvador. Frank- 
 lin was forty when he began his investiga- 
 tions in electricity, and Stephenson was 
 thirty-two when he constructed the first loco- 
 motive steam-engine. Harvey published his 
 great discovery at fifty, and Darwin his 
 "Descent of Man" at the same age. Des- 
 cartes, Hobbes, and Leibnitz did not achieve 
 philosophical distinction until after fifty, and 
 Kant at forty-six. Niebuhr's first volume
 
 PRECOCITY. 9fi 
 
 was published at thirty-nine, Thirl wall's at 
 thirty-eight, and Grote's at fifty-two. Had 
 Cromwell died at forty-three, England 
 would, in all probability, have missed one 
 of the most glorious epochs of her whole 
 history the Commonwealth. 
 
 A recent writer in the " Nineteenth Cent- 
 ury," Mr. James Sully, has given the sub- 
 ject of "Precocity" as related to genius a 
 very full and able consideration, and we 
 know of no more appropriate or effective 
 means of concluding the present chapter than 
 by transferring to these pages his tabulated 
 summary. Mr. Sully has based his observa- 
 tions and generalizations upon the recorded 
 lives of between two hundred and fifty and 
 three hundred of the. most eminent of men in 
 all the various departments of intellectual 
 pursuits men whom we would unhesitat- 
 ingly call geniuses. Of these, the numbers 
 showing distinct promise before twenty, in 
 the several classes, are represented by the 
 following fractions: 
 
 Musicians nineteen-twentieths. 
 
 Artists eight-ninths. 
 
 Scholars five-sixths.
 
 96 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Poets three-fourths. 
 
 Novelists three fourths. 
 
 Scientists three-fourths. 
 
 Philosophers two-thirds. 
 
 Assuming work before the age of thirty 
 years as representing early production, the 
 proportions in the different groups are about 
 as follows: 
 
 Musicians all. 
 
 Artists forty-one-forty-seconds. 
 
 Poets eleven-twelfths. 
 
 Scientists four-fifths. 
 
 Scholars five-sevenths. 
 
 Philosophers five-ninths. 
 
 Novelists nine-sixteenths. 
 
 As regards the age of distinction, the fol- 
 lowing proportions attained it before fort}' : 
 
 Musicians all. 
 
 Artists all. 
 
 Poets eleven-twelfths. 
 
 Scientists eleven-twelfths. 
 
 Scholars nine-tenths. 
 
 Novelists four-fifths. 
 
 Philosophers three-fifths. 
 
 Mr. Sully' s concluding remark respecting 
 the foregoing data is as follows: " We note 
 that the order in respect of precocity answers 
 roughly to the degree of abstractness of the 
 faculty employed. At the one extreme, 
 musicians and artists represent sensuous 
 faculty, or the least abstract mode of mental
 
 PRECOCITY. 97 
 
 activity; while philosophers, at the other 
 extreme, illustrate the highest degree of ab- 
 straction. Between these come the men of 
 imagination, the poets and novelists. And 
 this is the very order we should antecedently 
 expect from a consideration of the general 
 laws of intellectual development; for sense, 
 imagination, and abstract thought are the 
 three well-marked stages of intellectual prog- 
 ress." 
 
 Finally, if we strike an average of the frac- 
 tional proportions presented in each of the 
 above tables, we shall find that, of the nearly 
 three hundred geniuses considered, about 
 five-sixths of the entire number exhibited 
 extraordinary promise before twenty years 
 of age; eleven-fourteenths of them produced 
 characteristic work before thirty; and eight- 
 tenths of them achieved distinction before 
 forty. Assuredly, with this overwhelming 
 preponderance of evidence in its favor, it can 
 no longer be questioned that extraordinary 
 earliness of development and production or, 
 in a word, precocity is a usual, if not an 
 invariable, accompaniment of genius.
 
 98 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 The reason why this is not more univer- 
 sally manifest than it is, is probably due to 
 the obscurity and poverty that have beset 
 the early years of so many gifted men. Had 
 the infancy and youth of all geniuses been 
 passed alike amid appreciative, fostering, 
 and tale-bearing environments, it is not at 
 all improbable that the remarkable evidences 
 of precocity recorded of the large majority 
 of them would be equally patent of all the 
 remainder.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR. 
 
 Do the Creations of Genius Involve Labor ? Affirmative View 
 Favored by Longfellow, Ruskin, Carlyle, Thomas Moore, 
 James Sully, Tacitus, Hogarth, CluirlesSumner, Buffon. 
 Examples of tlie Foregoing View. Contrary Opinions of 
 Emerson and Carlyle. Examples in Support of Latter 
 View. The Amount of labor Dependent Upon the Nature 
 of the Sphere of the Genius. With all Geniuses Original 
 Ideas or Conceptions are Spontaneous, or Nearly so; Con- 
 scious Labor beiny Necessary Chiefly for Giving Material 
 Expression to those Conceptions. 
 
 Two very widely different views have been 
 held as regards the degree of mental labor 
 involved in the production of the works of 
 genius. Some have claimed that genius pro- 
 ceeds with a step as slow and labored as it is 
 sure and irresistible; while, on the contrary, 
 others have held that one of the most essen- 
 tial characteristics of genius is that it ac- 
 complishes its ends with phenomenal rapid- 
 ity and ease. 
 
 We shall hear the advocates of these two 
 separate views in the order just indicated. 
 
 (99)
 
 100 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Longfellow, in his " Ladder of St. Augus- 
 tine," affirms: 
 
 " The heights by great men reached and kept 
 
 Were not attained by sudden flight, 
 
 But they, while their companions slept, 
 
 Were toiling upward in the night. " 
 
 In his essay on " The True and Beautiful," 
 Ruskin remarks : "The fact is, that a man 
 of genius is always far more ready to work 
 than other people, and is often so little 
 conscious of the inherent divinity in himself, 
 that he is very apt to ascribe all his capacity 
 to his work. Genius in the arts must com- 
 monly be more self-conscious, but in what- 
 ever field, it will always be distinguished by 
 its perpetual, steady, well-directed, happy, 
 and faithful labor in accumulating and dis- 
 ciplining its powers, as well as by its gigan- 
 tic, incommunicable facility in exercising 
 them." 
 
 Carlyle, in writing of Scott, says : ' ' Great 
 writers do not write rapidly and easily." 
 
 "Nothing great and durable," observes 
 Tom Moore, "has ever been produced with 
 ease. Labor is the parent of all the lasting
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR.. 101 
 
 monuments of this world, whether in verse 
 or in stone, in poetry or in pyramids." 
 
 "All fine original work," says James 
 Sully, in his admirable article on Genius and 
 Insanity, " it may be safely said, represents 
 severe intellectual labor on the part of the 
 producer, not necessarily at the moment of 
 achievement, but at least in a preparatory 
 collection and partial elaboration of mate- 
 rial." 
 
 " Meditatio et labor" according to Taci- 
 tus, are the only passports to literary im- 
 mortality. 
 
 "I know no such thing as genius," says 
 Hogarth. "Genius is nothing but labor 
 and diligence." "Who shall say," queries 
 Charles Sumner, "that the power to work is 
 not itself genius?" And Buffon meant 
 about the same thing when he said, " Genius 
 is only great patience." 
 
 Of the almost innumerable instances that 
 may be cited in proof of the above opinions, 
 we shall present the following : 
 
 It is said to have taken Virgil three years 
 to compose his ten short Eclogues, seven
 
 102 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 years to write his G-eorgics, and twelve years 
 to elaborate the J3neid. The last he was 
 several times tempted to destroy because of 
 its fancied incompleteness. Lucretius' single 
 poem was the work of a life-time. It took 
 Thucydides twenty years to write a work 
 comprised in an octavo volume. Diodorus 
 was thirty years in composing his history. 
 Isocrates is said to have consumed ten years 
 on his Panegyric, and Giannone nearly the 
 same time on his " History of Naples." 
 
 Locke spent eighteen years upon his 
 "Essay on the Human Understanding." 
 The great French artist, Claude Lorraine, 
 painted slowly and with great labor. 
 Greece's master painter of ancient times 
 apologized for his slow work by saying, 
 "It is because I work for immortality." 
 Gray, though he may not be allowed to be- 
 long to the gallery of the poetical geniuses 
 of the world, yet wrought one of the com- 
 paratively few poems that mankind can not 
 afford to forget. The "Elegy Written in a 
 Country Church-yard ' ' was twenty years in 
 passing through its evolutionary processes.
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR. 103 
 
 The uniquest, if not the greatest, of German 
 romances, "Titan," constituted the main 
 literary output of ten of the most virile years 
 of Richter's life. The greater part of the 
 ripest seventeen years of his life Gibbon ex- 
 pended upon his "History of the Decline and 
 Fall of the Roman Empire. ' ' Grote spent ten 
 years upon his " History of Greece." Adam 
 Clarke consumed twenty-six years on his 
 "Commentary." Carlyle devoted fifteen 
 years to the writing of his "Frederick the 
 Great." "George Eliot" read one thou- 
 sand books preparatory to the writing of 
 "Daniel Deronda." Alison read two thou- 
 sand books while preparing his history. It 
 is said that Buckle gave his life to reading 
 history; that he read forty thousand vol- 
 umes, and wrote only two. 
 
 The sparkle and flow of Lamb's essays, 
 seemingly so spontaneous, were the rewards 
 of the most scrupulous painstaking upon the 
 part of their author. Days were consumed 
 in fashioning a single letter to a friend, and 
 he was never done with emending a proof- 
 sheet. Tennyson is known to have rewritten
 
 104 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 several of his most highly admired poems a 
 score or more of times before submitting 
 them to the printer. Balzac, the great 
 French novelist, would rewrite his manu- 
 scripts a half-dozen or more times before 
 sending them to press, and the proofs re- 
 turned were subjected to no end of altera- 
 tion. The artistic perfection and melodic 
 rhythm of Longfellow's poetry, so suggest- 
 ive of a natural and easy origin, are, on the 
 contrary, the fruits of very careful study 
 and devoted labor. 
 
 Moore, the most transparent and musical 
 of poets, thought fifteen or twenty lines a 
 good day's work. Buff on spent fifty years 
 upon his "Studies of Nature." Words- 
 worth was in the habit of putting aside his 
 first casting of a poem for weeks or months; 
 then taking it up, he would bestow as much 
 labor upon it as at first, if not more, before 
 finally parting with it to the public. Horace 
 was of opinion that a writer should with- 
 hold his work from the public eye for 
 nine years after its first execution. Tasso's 
 manuscripts can hardly be deciphered, be-
 
 GENIUS AND LABOK. 1()5 
 
 cause of their numerous erasures and inter- 
 lineations. 
 
 Pope says of Addison, that model of cor- 
 rectness and perspicacity of style, that "he 
 would show his verses to several friends, and 
 would alter nearly everything that any of 
 them hinted was wrong." And Pope him- 
 self usually gave his productions a year's 
 sweating before committing them to print. 
 
 "It is a very great error," says Mozart, 
 "to suppose that my art has been easily ac- 
 quired. I assure you that there is scarcely 
 anyone that has so worked at the study of 
 composition as I have. You could hardly 
 mention any former composer whose writings 
 I have not diligently and repeatedly studied 
 throughout." 
 
 The author of "Hudibras" kept n com- 
 mon-place book, in which he very industri- 
 ously penned such remarks, similitudes, al- 
 lusions, and inferences as his reading or 
 thought suggested, and his immortal bur- 
 lesque was the product of years of such pre- 
 paratory studies and premeditation. Gold- 
 smith regarded four lines a day as good
 
 106 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 work, and was seven years in constructing 
 his " Deserted Village." 
 
 Giotto, one of the most comprehensive 
 geniuses that art has ever known, was quite 
 as extraordinary for the amount and the dif- 
 ficult character of the work he executed, as 
 for the surpassing excellence of its quality. 
 Leonardo Da Vinci, the most versatile of 
 all geniuses, was yet one of the most fastid- 
 ious and indefatigable of workers. In pre- 
 paring for his world-famous cartoon, "The 
 Struggle for the Standard," he subjected 
 himself to months of study in the dissecting- 
 room, and actually wrote an original and ex- 
 haustive treatise on the anatomy of the 
 horse, before permitting his hands to touch 
 the clay for modeling his work. Michael 
 Angelo was scrupulously conscientious even 
 as to the smallest technical details; prepar- 
 ing his own grounds, mixing his own colors, 
 and inventing and constructing, with his 
 own hands, the tools with which he wrought 
 his matchless sculptures. Meissonier spent 
 the best part of his time for fifteen years 
 upon his great picture, " 1807."
 
 GENIU8 AND LABOR. 107 
 
 Haydn, after he had fairly begun his ca- 
 reer as a music student, and when still a 
 youth, declared that thereafter he did not 
 recollect to have passed a single day without 
 practicing sixteen hours, and sometimes 
 eighteen. And when at his maturity, he 
 spent two years in composing the colossal 
 oratorio of the "Creation." Beethoven be- 
 came so absorbed in his composition of the 
 mass in D major, that he did not finish it 
 until two years after the event had passed 
 by which it was designed to celebrate. 
 
 And now let us regard some of the testi- 
 mony and facts that lie upon the reverse side 
 of this question: 
 
 Emerson, in "Representative Men," de- 
 clares: "I count him a great man who 
 inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into 
 which other men rise with labor and diffi- 
 culty; he has but to open his eyes to see 
 things in a true light, and in large relations; 
 whilst they must make painful corrections, 
 and keep a vigorous eye on many sources of 
 error."
 
 108 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Having already quoted Carlyle on the 
 affirmative side of the present issue, we shall 
 equalize matters by now citing him on the 
 negative side. He says: " No great intellect- 
 ual thing was ever done by great effort; a 
 great thing can only be done by a great man, 
 and he does it without effort." 
 
 As confirmatory of the opinion just noted, 
 the following instances, which might be in- 
 definitely multiplied, if it were necessary, 
 will probably suffice : 
 
 Plutarch said of Cicero: "It was not by 
 slow and insensible degrees that he gained 
 the palm of eloquence; his fame shot forth 
 at once, and he was distinguished above all 
 the orators of Rome." It is reported that 
 Lucilius could turn off two hundred verses 
 while standing on one leg. Query: Could it 
 have been a wooden leg? And did the 
 verses turned off resemble their pivot ? Dry- 
 den produced four of his greatest works in 
 a single year, the original draught of "Alex- 
 ander' s Feast ' ' having been struck off at a 
 single sitting. "Rasselas" was written by 
 Johnson in a week, the "Life of Savage"
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR. 1U9 
 
 in thirty-six hours, and his "Hermit of 
 Teneriffe" in a single night. Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" was 
 completed in twelve hours presumably a 
 shorter time than the lady herself would 
 have consented to. Ben Jonson wrote the 
 ' ' Alchymist ' ' in six weeks. ' ' Telemaque ' ' 
 was written by Fenelon in three months. 
 A day or two sufficed for Lope de Vega to 
 write a play in; a farce was the sport of an 
 hour; and he left to posterity two thousand 
 original dramas. Is it not probable that pos- 
 terity will require about two thousand years 
 for digesting the generous Spaniard's be- 
 quest ? 
 
 Speaking of the facility with which Sir 
 Walter Scott composed, Robert Hogg, his 
 copyist and amanuensis for some time, de- 
 clares: " He sat in his chair, from which he 
 arose now and then, took a volume from the 
 book-case, consulted it, and returned it to 
 the shelf, all without intermission in the cur- 
 rent of ideas, which continued to be deliv- 
 ered with no less readiness than if his mind 
 had been wholly occupied with the words he
 
 110 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 was uttering. It soon became apparent to 
 me that he was carrying on two distinct 
 trains of thought, one of which was already 
 arranged, and was in the act of being spoken, 
 while at the same time he was in the advance 
 considering what was afterward to be said. ' ' 
 He was engaged, at the time of his great 
 financial misfortune, in writing the "Life 
 of Bonaparte," and also his new novel, 
 "Woodstock;" and, says his biographer, 
 Lockhart, "Even on the day which brought 
 him assurance of the great catastrophe, he 
 resumed, in the afternoon, the task which 
 had engaged him in the morning." Some 
 idea of the rapidity with which he produced 
 his fictions may be gained from the state- 
 ment that, beginning with "Waverly," his 
 works, during the next ensuing decade, were 
 issued at the rate of a volume and a half a 
 year. 
 
 In not a few instances, Dickens carried on 
 two of his stories at a time, and for nearly 
 thirty continuous years his annual average 
 of production was almost a volume, and a 
 large volume at that. "I had come," says
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR. Ill 
 
 Groethe, "to regard the poetic talent dwell- 
 ing in me entirely as nature; the rather that 
 I was directed to look upon external nature 
 as its proper subject. The exercise of this 
 poetic gift might be stimulated and deter- 
 mined by occasion, but it flowed forth more 
 joyfully and richly when it came involun- 
 tarily, or even against my will." 
 
 Byron was not a little vain of the facility 
 with which he shot forth his compositions; 
 and, by way of correcting the incredulity of 
 certain hostile critics upon this point, pre- 
 fixed to many of his poems a note of the 
 exact time both of his commencing and his 
 finishing them. Here are some of the most 
 pertinent of these memoranda. In the in- 
 troduction to his tragedy of " Sardana- 
 palus," he says: "The three last acts were 
 written since the 13th of May, 1821; that is 
 to say, in a fortnight." Between June llth 
 and July 10th of the same year, his five-act 
 tragedy, "The Two Foscari," was com- 
 posed; and between December 18th of the 
 same year and January 20, 1822, his trag- 
 edy of "Werner," also in five acts, was
 
 112 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 written. The time actually consumed in 
 composing the various cantos of "Don 
 Juan" scarcely exceeded the average of a 
 month for each. In one of his letters he 
 says: "'Lara' I wrote while undressing, 
 after coming home from balls and masquer- 
 ades, in the year of revelry, 1814.'- The 
 " Corsair," a tale of over two thousand lines, 
 he wrote in thirteen days. 
 
 Robert Burns, the greatest of Scotland's 
 poets, and certainly one of the most genuine 
 sons of the Muse anywhere to be met with, 
 was a notable incarnation of the spontaneity 
 of the poetic afflatus. "Death and Doctor 
 Hornbook ' ' was written while its author was 
 seated on a bridge, on his way home from 
 attending a convivial meeting, and just be- 
 fore succumbing to its effects. His touching 
 lines "To a Mouse" were composed upon 
 his bed, during the night that followed his 
 witnessing of the incidents that suggested 
 them. The church wherein the incident took 
 place, and the few moments necessary for the 
 episode, constituted the time and the place 
 of the composition of his sprightly poem,
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR. 113 
 
 "To a Louse." "The Twa Dogs" was a 
 waif of fancy, picked up while walking 
 home. That vivid medley of the ludicrous 
 and the awful, " Tarn O'Shanter," was a 
 road-side conception. The sublime and pa- 
 thetic song, "To Mary in Heaven," came 
 to our bard's mind on the anniversary of 
 his loved one's death, while he lay upon 
 the ground, with his eyes fixed upon the 
 starry sky. Indeed, all of Burns' effusions, 
 with few exceptions, were inspirations of 
 the moment unpremeditated conceptions 
 of his ever-alert poetic faculty, which, like 
 the eggs of certain birds, were deposited in 
 all manner of odd nooks upon the walls of 
 rooms, the window-panes of inns, the fly- 
 leaves of books, the pages of albums; but 
 which, in most instances, were flashed forth 
 in impromptu sentiments or songs, direct 
 from the battery of his fancy. 
 
 "Saul," the first of Handel's immortal 
 oratorios, was composed between July 3d and 
 September 27th of the year 1738. "Israel 
 in Egypt," with its twenty-eight colossal 
 choruses, its four recitatives, and its three
 
 114 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 duets, was composed within the incredible 
 limit of twenty-seven days, while his master- 
 piece, the "Messiah," the foremost compo- 
 sition of its kind ever conceived, was exe- 
 cuted in twenty-three days. 
 
 Mozart wrote his " Don Giovanni " in the 
 brief space of a few weeks, the overture 
 having been composed in two hours. His 
 grandest symphonies the E-flat major, G 
 minor, and C major were all produced 
 within the narrow compass of six weeks. 
 Some fifty compositions, including in their 
 number the grand piano -forte concerto in B 
 flat, the cantata named "Ave verum Cor- 
 pus," and the opera of the " Magic Flute," 
 were compressed within the last six months 
 of his life. That most impressive prayer, in 
 the oratorio of "Moses in Egypt," of the 
 Israelites before and after the crossing of the 
 Red Sea, was written by Rossini in his 
 night-shirt, in eight or ten minutes. Of 
 " Semiramide " he declares: "It is the only 
 one of my operas that I was able to do a 
 little at my ease; my contract gave me forty 
 days, but I was not forty days in wilting it."
 
 GENIUS AND LABOE. 115 
 
 Moreover, society, the foe with most of cre- 
 ative workers, was to him a Mend and in- 
 spirer. Schubert poured forth his musical 
 thoughts so spontaneously, and so inex- 
 haustible seemed his resources of song, that 
 Schumann once said of him, i ' In time he 
 would probably have set the whole of Ger- 
 man literature to music." Surely a noble 
 tribute to the gigantic achievements of one 
 who died at thirty-one years of age the 
 youngest of all the world's great tone poets ! 
 However many more opinions, each forti- 
 fied with appropriate examples, we might 
 adduce, we are satisfied that, like those 
 already presented, they would simply range 
 themselves on one side or the other of the 
 question before us, in about equal force, and 
 thus maintain the present equilibrium of 
 evidence. And so, on the one hand, we find 
 a large number of unquestionable geniuses, 
 whom Atlas, exerting his gigantic strength 
 to its utmost to uphold the world, may fitly 
 symbolize; while, on the other hand, we meet 
 with an equally large number of equally 
 pure and great geniuses, whose mode of pro-
 
 116 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 cedure is best typified by Phoebus Apollo 
 riding forth in his chariot of the sun to daily 
 supremacy with resplendent might and ease. 
 
 Of two persons, each of whom shall bring 
 about equally admirable results, he who 
 attains his end with the lesser effort is un- 
 doubtedly the abler man It is the glory of 
 Egyptian artisans of old, that they were 
 able, by means of mechanical powers un- 
 known to moderns, to lift into architectural 
 position enormous masses of stone; but 
 Orpheus, it is fabled, effected a like result 
 by simply striking his lyre. The powers 
 of the former, however phenomenal, were 
 simply human, while those of the latter- 
 presupposing their existence could apper- 
 tain to nothing short of the supernatural. 
 
 As to whether much or little labor is in- 
 volved, depends, in no small measure, it 
 would seem, upon the nature of the office to 
 which the genius is summoned. Is it one 
 that necessitates the discovery, the collec- 
 tion, the selection, and the arrangement of 
 materials, whether of an objective or sub- 
 jective nature ? or does it demand the mastery
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR. 117 
 
 of numerous details and their systematized 
 application in lines of original investigation ? 
 then, we apprehend that, however uncom- 
 monly endowed the individual may be, labor 
 protracted and severe is the inevitable con- 
 dition of success. But if, on the other hand, 
 the genius be devoted to such creative pur- 
 suits as art, or music, or poetry, or fiction, 
 there is reason for believing that, in many 
 instances, he may sweep to his accomplish- 
 ment with spontaneous and all but uncon- 
 scious momentum. And of the two modes 
 of manifestation, the latter the creative is 
 undeniably the greater. 
 
 But while the foregoing theory may har- 
 monize a majority of the apparent contradic- 
 tions arising under the head of the relation 
 of genius to mental effort, it utterly fails to 
 explain why, among geniuses devoted to the 
 least abstract and reason-exerting pursuits 
 to-wit : painters, poets, musicians, and fic- 
 tionists there is but little agreement in their 
 several rates of mental production. For 
 example : Among poets, Longfellow, Moore, 
 Virgil, Gray, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Tasso, 
 
 8
 
 118 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Pope, Butler, and Goldsmith are named as 
 slpw producers, while Shakespeare, Dryden, 
 Johnson, Mrs. Browning, Jonson, Lope de 
 Vega, Scott, Goethe, Byron, and Burns are 
 cited as rapid workers; of musicians, Haydn 
 and Beethoven belonged to the first class, 
 while Bach, Handel, Rossini, and Schubert 
 fell under the second, Mozart seeming to 
 fall alternately under each head ; of artists, 
 Giotto, Da Vinci, Angelo, and Claude Lor- 
 raine are classed as earning the bread of ce- 
 lebrity by the sweat of the brow, while 
 Raphael, Correggio, Rembrandt, Reynolds, 
 Turner, Vandyck's and Rubens won renown 
 by single strokes of the brush ; and of fic- 
 tionists, Richter, "George Eliot," and Balzac 
 wrought with greatest pains, while Scott, 
 Dickens, and Goethe did their best work 
 with the least cogitation. 
 
 May not a clearer understanding of these 
 seemingly irreconcilable data be had in- 
 deed, may we not secure a more satisfactory 
 explanation of the whole puzzle of the ex- 
 tent to which genius lies under the yoke of 
 mental toil by keeping this well-known
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR. 119 
 
 truth full in view, namely : that every 
 achievement involves two distinct elements 
 the idea, or the mental process of concep- 
 tion, and the giving objectivity to that idea ? 
 As between these two factors, the element of 
 labor inheres mainly in the latter. Except 
 where they depend upon a long series of 
 inductions, as in the case of certain physical 
 or social laws, all original ideas or concep- 
 tions are of instant and painless birth. 
 They seem either to spring up spontane- 
 ously in the mind, or else to be flashed into 
 it with lightning-like speed and thrill by 
 suggestive surroundings or experiences. The 
 consciousness of participation in their origin, 
 and more especially the sense of effort in 
 their production, are wholly absent from the 
 mind. They are unexpectedly and unex- 
 pensively with us guests after a new and 
 ineffable fashion, whose whole history is 
 best summed up in the very vague term 
 inspirations. These constitute the central 
 thought of a poem, the theme of a musical 
 composition, the motive of a picture or piece 
 of sculpture, the plot of a story; and these,
 
 120 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 though they are allowed to be the distin- 
 guishing characteristic, the crowning glory, 
 of their several possessors the poet, the 
 musician, the painter, the sculptor, the fic- 
 tionist are the very things whose existence 
 costs their owners the least degree of effort. 
 
 The explanation of the great differences 
 that have arisen between geniuses in the 
 amount of mental labor bestowed upon 
 their several productions must, therefore, be 
 sought for in the second of the factors which 
 constitute every achievement that of giving 
 expression or external form to conceptions. 
 
 All ideas, however extraordinary their 
 first estate, are susceptible of a greater or 
 less degree of expansion and modification, 
 and their interpretation to the public always 
 necessitates some, and frequently much, 
 elaboration. Such adaptive and develop- 
 mental work, however, does not demand the 
 same high order of intellectual equipment 
 as is indispensable for great creative achieve- 
 ments. It is a subordinate grade of work, 
 which partakes very largely of the mechan- 
 ical, and which is mostly done in conformity
 
 GENIUS AND LABOR. 121 
 
 to well-known rules and well-worn routine- 
 in a word, the proper material for the exer- 
 cise of mere talents. And it is precisely in 
 the performance of such, less than superior 
 functions, that geniuses manifest their glar- 
 ing differences of adaptability differences 
 which do not affect them as geniuses, but 
 show their disparities simply in the line of 
 their more or less commonplace faculties 
 known as talents. 
 
 Our conclusion, then, of the whole subject 
 of genius and its relation to mental effort, is 
 this : that in all that pertains to the highest 
 the characteristic excellences of any work 
 of genius there is involved but little, if any, 
 conscious exertion of mind, and therefore, 
 that all geniuses conceive with a facility 
 bordering on the spontaneous; but, on the 
 other hand, in what relates to the giving of 
 a permanent material form to their creations 
 the more or less mechanical part of their 
 work there is evident a great diversity of 
 painstaking; some shaping their conceptions 
 into graphic and eloquent expression with 
 ecstatic ease, while others attain the end 
 only through long and painful experiment.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 
 
 Affirmative Opinions of John Burroughs, Ruskin, Schopen- 
 hauer, Goetlie, Lord Lytton. Confirmation of Foregoing 
 Opinions. Negative Views of Carlyle and Hazlitt. Ex- 
 amples Confirming the Latter View. All Geniuses are 
 Self- Conscious, but tliey Differ in their Control of its Man- 
 ifestation to Others. 
 
 The world has made so many mistakes 
 concerning the possessors of genius some- 
 times having failed altogether to recognize 
 their presence, and quite as often having 
 supposed certain ones to be geniuses who 
 eventually disclosed the fact that their metal 
 was largely spurious that it is not at all 
 surprising that doubt should arise as to 
 whether men of genius have been conscious 
 of their own extraordinary endowments, or 
 of the real value of their own achievements. 
 
 Let us first inquire what grounds there 
 are for inclining to the belief that men of 
 genius are measurably, if not fully, aware of 
 their exceptional powers of mind. Some 
 weighty opinions favor this view.
 
 124 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 John Burroughs says: "The great man 
 always believes in himself, and in his own 
 opportunities and land." 
 
 Ruskin, in his essay on the "True and 
 Beautiful," uses these words: '"All great 
 men not only know their business, but 
 usually know that they know it; and are not 
 only right in their main opinions, but they 
 usually know that they are right in them; 
 only they do not think much of themselves 
 on that account. They have a curious un- 
 der-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the 
 greatness is not in them, but through them; 
 that they could not do or be anything else 
 than God made them." 
 
 Coleridge affirms : ' ' The men of the great- 
 est genius, as far as we can judge from their 
 own works or from the accounts of their 
 contemporaries, appear to have been of 
 calm and tranquil temper in all that related 
 to themselves. In the inward assurance of 
 permanent fame, they seem to have been 
 either indifferent or resigned with regard to 
 immediate reputation. Shakespeare's even- 
 ness and sweetness of temper are almost pro-
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 125 
 
 verbial in his own age. That this did not 
 arise from ignorance of his own comparative 
 greatness, we have abundant proof in his 
 sonnets." 
 One of these sonnets begins : 
 
 " Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 
 Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme." 
 
 And in another the bard felicitates him- 
 self: 
 
 " Your monument shall be my gentle verse, 
 
 Which eyes not yet created shall o'er read, 
 And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, 
 
 "When all the breathers of this world are dead; 
 You still shall live such virtue hath my pen 
 Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of 
 men." 
 
 Schopenhauer declares that no one can be 
 blind to his own merit, any more than the 
 man who is six feet high can remain igno- 
 rant of the fact that he towers above his 
 fellows. He notes the pride with which 
 Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, Dante, Shakes- 
 peare, and Bacon have spoken of themselves, 
 and quotes the Englishman who wittily ob- 
 served that merit and modesty have nothing 
 in common except the initial letter. "I
 
 126 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 have always a suspicion about modest 
 celebrities," he adds, "that they may be 
 right." 
 
 Goethe has declared: "Only good-for- 
 nothings are modest." 
 
 Lord Lytton, in "Last Days of Pompeii," 
 affirms : ' ' No one ever possessed superior 
 intellectual qualities without knowing them. 
 It is the proud consciousness of certain qual- 
 ities that it can not reveal to the every-day 
 world, that gives to genius that shy, and 
 reserved, and troubled air which puzzles 
 and flatters you when you encounter it." 
 
 In illustration of the foregoing opinions, 
 we would present the following incidents 
 and facts : 
 
 Parrhasius, the great Greek painter, was 
 not only conscious of his extraordinary abil- 
 ity, but is reported to have been conceited to 
 a remarkable degree. Buffon affirmed that 
 of great geniuses of modern times there 
 were but five " Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, 
 Montesquieu, and Buffon" When Dry den 
 was congratulated on the brilliancy of his 
 famous "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," he re-
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 127 
 
 plied: "You are right; a nobler ode was 
 never produced, and never will be." 
 
 While Salmasius, Milton's great contro- 
 versial opponent, was conversing one day, in 
 the royal library, with Gaulmin and Maussac 
 "I think," observed Gaulmin, "that we 
 three can match our heads against all that 
 there is learned in Europe." Salmasius re- 
 joined : "Add to all that there is learned in 
 Europe, yourself and M. de Maussac, and I 
 can match my single head against the whole 
 of you." 
 
 When Kepler, after seventeen years of as- 
 siduous investigation, discovered the third 
 of his laws, he ejaculated : "I will indulge 
 in my sacred fury; I will triumph over man- 
 kind by the honest confession that I have 
 stolen the golden vases of the Egyptians, to 
 build up a tabernacle for my God far away 
 from the confines of Egypt. The die is cast; 
 the book is written, to be read either now or 
 by posterity I care not which. It may well 
 wait a century for a reader, as God has 
 waited six thousand years for an observer." 
 
 Lord Bacon wrote in his will : "For my
 
 128 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 name and memory, I leave it to men's char- 
 itable speeches, and to foreign nations and 
 the next ages." 
 
 Moore relates the following of the poet 
 Wordsworth: "One day, in a large party, 
 Wordsworth, without anything having been 
 previously said that could lead to the sub- 
 ject, called out suddenly, from the top of the 
 table to the bottom, in his most epic tone, 
 " Davy, do you know the reason why I pub- 
 lished the ' White Doe ' in quarto ? " " No ; 
 what was it?" "To show the world my 
 opinion of it ?" 
 
 Pierre Corneille was quite devoid of all 
 external indications of his splendid mental 
 equipment, and his conversation was fre- 
 quently very tiresome. When his friends 
 taunted him with these defects, he would 
 complacently retort: " I am not the less 
 Pierre Corneille." 
 
 In answer to the Pope's messenger, sent 
 to obtain designs from the best artists of 
 the day for certain important architectural 
 works at Rome, Giotto seized a pencil, in- 
 stantly drew a perfect circle and handed it
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 129 
 
 to the messenger, saying, "Here is your 
 drawing." "Am I to have nothing but 
 this ?" the astonished envoy inquired. The 
 artist quietly replied: "That is more than 
 enough. " 
 
 In writing to a dearly beloved uncle, at 
 the time of his greatest prosperity, Kaphael 
 says: "I am doing honor to you, to all our 
 relations, and to our country." 
 
 When Cicero was questioned as to his ex- 
 traction, he proudly replied: "I commence 
 an ancestry." Being advised to change his 
 name in order to advantage his political 
 prospects, he indignantly declared: "I will 
 make my name as illustrious as the oldest in 
 Rome." To his friend Attic us he writes: 
 ' ' You know of what thunders 1 am capable. 
 I need say the less about them, since I think 
 you must have heard me there in Greece." 
 On another occasion, he confesses to the same 
 friend: " Moreover, that little strain of self- 
 conceit which is in me (it is well to know 
 one's faults) is gratified. It used to annoy 
 me to think that the services of the Grand 
 Pasha" he means Pompey "to his coun- 
 
 9
 
 130 A STUDY OP GENIUS. 
 
 try might seem greater to posterity than 
 mine; but I am relieved of all anxiety on 
 that score." In referring to Mark Antony, 
 he uses these words : ' ' Would he wish to 
 engage with me in a contest of eloquence? 
 he would then confer an obligation on me; 
 for what ampler field, what more copious 
 subject could I desire, than opportunity of 
 speaking on behalf of myself and against 
 Antony?" And, more significantly still, he 
 predicts: "For all my toils and pains I 
 have no recompense here; but hereafter, in 
 heaven, among the immortal gods, I shall 
 look back on my beloved city, and find my 
 reward in seeing her made glorious by my 
 career." 
 
 Horace appraises his own achievements in 
 the following lines : 
 
 " I have built a monument, 
 A monument more lasting than bronze, 
 Soaring more high than regal pyramids, 
 Which neither the gnawing rain-drop 
 Nor the vain rush of the Boreas shall destroy. 
 Nor shall it pass away with the unnumbered 
 Series of ages and the flight of time. 
 I shall not wholly die." 
 
 Being borne home from India, well-nigh
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 131 
 
 dead with disease, Nelson confesses : "I felt 
 impressed with a feeling that I should never 
 rise in my profession. . . . After a long 
 and gloomy reverie, in which I almost 
 wished myself overboard, a sudden glow of 
 patriotism was kindled within me. and pre- 
 sented my king and country as my patron. 
 Well, then, I exclaimed, I will be a hero! 
 and confiding in Providence, I will brave 
 every danger." Again, complaining of the 
 omission of his name from the London 
 Gazette for meritorious conduct at Toulon 
 and the siege of Calvi, he exclaimed : " They 
 have not done me justice; but never mind, 
 I'll have a gazette of my own. 1 ' And his 
 dying exclamation at the victory of Trafalgar 
 was, " Thank God, I have done my duty ! " 
 
 Correggio is said to have exclaimed, when 
 viewing for the first time a picture by 
 Raphael, " I also am a painter." 
 
 Titian expostulated against the proposi- 
 tion to destroy Correggio' s masterpiece, the 
 "Assumption of the Blessed Virgin," in the 
 words, "If I were not Titian, I should cer- 
 tainly wish to be Correggio. "
 
 132 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 One of the two portraits carved upon 
 the shield of Minerva in the Parthenon, by 
 Phidias, was that of himself. Macready, the 
 noted English tragedian, pronounced his OAvn 
 acting of Macbeth " a noble piece of art." 
 
 Carlyle wrote in his journal, upon the com- 
 pletion of his first book of the "French Rev- 
 olution:" " It has become clear to me that I 
 have honestly more force and faculty in me 
 than belongs to the most I see. It was 
 always clear that no honestly exerted force 
 can be utterly lost. Were it long years after 
 I am dead, in regions far distant from this, 
 under names far different from thine, the 
 seed thou sowest will spring." 
 
 Macaulay, comparing himself with certain 
 prominent members of the House of Com- 
 mons, writes: "I may say without vanity 
 that I have made speeches which were out of 
 the reach of any of them." Of his magazine 
 articles he wrote: " My reviews are thought 
 to be better written, and they certainly 
 live longer, than the reviews of most other 
 people; and this ought to content me." And 
 again: "If I live twelve or fifteen years, I
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 133 
 
 may perhaps produce something which I 
 may not be afraid to exhibit side by side 
 with the performances of the old masters." 
 
 Albert Durer complacently remarked, 
 when reviewing his own work, " It can not 
 be better done." 
 
 "There are only three writers of the 
 French language," said Balzac "Victor 
 Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and myself." 
 
 Pitt, afterward Lord Chatham, did not 
 blush to affirm, "I am sure that I can save 
 this country, and that nobody else can." 
 
 Enraged at the failure he made in his 
 first oratorical effort in Parliament, Sheridan 
 swore, " I have it in me, and, by God, it 
 shall come out!" 
 
 The Duke of Wellington styled Waterloo 
 "a battle of giants." 
 
 Undiscouraged by the meager apprecia- 
 tion the public extended to his "Madoc," 
 Southey predicted: " I shall be read by pos- 
 terity, if I am not read now; read with Mil- 
 ton, and Virgil, and Dante, when poets whose 
 works are now selling by thousands are 
 only known through a bibliographical dic- 
 tionary." 
 
 8
 
 134 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Prince Metternick, the great Chancellor of 
 Francis I. of Austria, wrote : "If anyone 
 wishes to write my history, let him have full 
 freedom to the judgment of posterity, which 
 alone can speak with authority of the men 
 who have contributed to make the history 
 of their time." 
 
 All are familiar with Cardinal Wolsey's 
 presumptuous utterance, "Ego et rexmeus" 
 (I and my king). 
 
 Milton, directly after his visit to Italy, 
 confessed that he began to entertain the con- 
 viction that he "might perhaps leave some- 
 thing so written to af tertimes as they should 
 not willingly let it die." 
 
 Swift, then in his decline, one day, laying 
 his hand upon his " Tale of a Tub," gasped, 
 "What a genius I had when I wrote that 
 book!" 
 
 During the siege of Paris, Victor Hugo is 
 said to have declared to his family: "To- 
 morrow I will go forth on to the ramparts; I 
 will allow myself to be killed by a bullet; 
 the Prussians will have killed Victor Hugo, 
 and the war will be at an end."
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 136 
 
 Goethe confessed: "If I were to say what 
 I had really been to the Germans in general, 
 and to the young German poets in particular, 
 I should say I had been their liberator." 
 Again: "As for what I have done as a poet, 
 I take no pride in it whatever; but that in 
 my century I am the only person who knows 
 the truth in the difficult science of colors 
 of that, I say, I am not a little proud. There 
 I have a consciousness of superiority to 
 many." And, crowning all, he claims: "All 
 I have had to do, I have done in kingly 
 fashion." 
 
 Chateaubriand graciously allowed: "Lord 
 Byron will live; whether as a child of his 
 age, like me, he has expressed, like me, and 
 like Goethe before us both, passion and 
 wretchedness; and whether my peregrina- 
 tions and the poop-lantern of my Gallic bark 
 have pointed out the track to the vessel of 
 Albion upon unexplored seas." 
 
 Metternich puts into Napoleon's mouth 
 these words: "They call me lucky because I 
 am able; it is weak men who accuse the 
 strong of good fortune." To Josephine he
 
 136 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 said, while standing in the palace of the 
 Tuileries: " Behold a place without nobles; 
 in time I intend to render it worthy of his 
 palace who is yet to become the master and 
 arbiter of the world." 
 
 When Alexander was desired by his royal 
 father to run for the foot-racer's prize in the 
 Olympian games, he proudly answered: "I 
 will, if I may run with kings." 
 
 Daniel Webster, when he was reminded by 
 the court that a certain opinion of his run 
 counter to that of the hallowed Lord Cam- 
 den, replied: "But, may it please your 
 Honor, /differ from Lord Camden." 
 
 Voltaire is reported as having declared: 
 " I am tired of hearing it repeated that twelve 
 men were sufficient to found Christianity; 
 I will show the world that one is sufficient to 
 destroy it." 
 
 . Thucydides, speaking of his own writing, 
 uses these words: "It is composed so as to 
 be regarded as a possession forever, rather 
 than as a prize declamation intended only 
 for the present." 
 
 Xenophon applied to himself the encomi-
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 137 
 
 urn, "as eminent among the Greeks for elo- 
 quence as Alexander was for arms." 
 
 In a letter written in 1881, Ruskin says: 
 " Had you ever read ten words of mine with 
 understanding, you would have known that 
 I care no more for Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Glad- 
 stone than for two old bagpipes with their 
 drones going by steam; but that I hate all 
 Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with 
 Carlyle, I stand we two alone now in Eng- 
 land for God and the Queen." When he 
 learned that Mazzini had declared that he 
 (Ruskin) had "the most analytic mind in 
 Europe," he remarked that it was "an opin- 
 ion in which, so far as I am acquainted with 
 Europe, I am myself entirely disposed to 
 concur." Again, he says: "If, in Wales, 
 my father and mother had given me but a 
 shaggy scrap of a Welsh pony, and left me 
 in charge of a good Welsh guide and his 
 wife, if I needed any coddling, they would 
 have made a man of me then and there, and 
 afterward the comfort of their own hearts, 
 and probably the first geologist of my time 
 in Europe."
 
 138 A STUDY OF 
 
 Pope, in the maturity of his fame, wrote: 
 
 11 Town I'm proud I must be proud, to see 
 Men not afraid of God afraid of me." 
 
 The testimony thus far presented will, per- 
 haps, be considered quite sufficient for set- 
 ting forth the self-conscious aspect of genius; 
 and, in absence of all evidence to the con- 
 trary, would, doubtless, incline us to the be- 
 lief that self-esteem is one of the inseparable 
 flaws of the genuine stone. We shall now 
 proceed to exhibit some specimens of genius, 
 equally as rare and pure as any that have 
 already been presented, who are quite, if not 
 entirely, free from the blemish of self -con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 But before introducing the witnesses in 
 person, we will produce a few opinions of 
 certain well-known genius experts. 
 
 Carlyle says: "On the whole, 'genius is 
 ever a secret to itself;' of this old truth we 
 have, on all sides, daily evidence. Shakes- 
 peare takes no airs for writing Hamlet and 
 the Tempest; understands not that it is any- 
 thing surprising." And again: "All great- 
 ness is unconscious, or it is little and 
 naught."
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 139 
 
 The same tone is maintained by Hazlitt in 
 his "Table Talk." He affirms: "No really 
 great man ever thought himself so. He who 
 comes up to his own idea of greatness, must 
 always have had a very low standard of it in 
 his mind. The definition of genius is that 
 it acts unconsciously; and those who have 
 produced immortal works, have done so 
 without knowing how or why. Whatever is 
 done best, is done from the natural bent and 
 disposition of the mind. It is only where 
 our incapacity begins, that we begin to feel 
 the obstacles, and to set an undue value on 
 our triumph over them. Vandyck's excel- 
 lence consisted in this, that he could paint a 
 fine portrait of anyone at sight." As ex- 
 amples of this characteristic of genius, he 
 names Rembrandt, Correggio, Cervantes, and 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 And now for our witnesses to the truth 
 that genius is unconscious of its extraordi- 
 nary powers and performances. 
 
 Wfren Newton then thirty years of age, 
 and who had already discovered the different 
 refrangibility of light, had invented the re-
 
 140 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 fleeting telescope, had deduced the law of 
 gravity, and had discovered the method of 
 fluxions was proposed as a fellow of the 
 Royal Society, he said to the secretary that 
 he hoped he would be elected, in which case 
 "he would endeavor to testify his gratitude 
 by communicating what his poor and solitary 
 endeavors could effect toward the promoting 
 of their philosophical design." And later 
 still, when near the close of his singularly 
 affluent career, he is reported as having con- 
 fessed: " I seem to myself like a child play- 
 ing on the sea-shore, and picking up here 
 and there a curious shell or a pretty pebble, 
 while the boundless ocean of Truth lies un- 
 discovered before me." 
 
 Virgil is recorded to have ordered, on his 
 death-bed, that the JSneid be burnt, because 
 he did not think it sufficiently finished for 
 publication. 
 
 Tasso remodeled, and thereby injured, his 
 " Gierusalemme Liberata," solemnly declar- 
 ing, at last: ' ' Did not the circumstances of 
 my situation compel me, I would not print 
 it, even, perhaps, during my life, I so much 
 doubt of its success."
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 141 
 
 When Cardinal Farnese found Michael 
 Angelo, then an octogenarian, alone, gazing 
 raptly upon the Coliseum, the latter ex- 
 plained: "I yet go to school that I may 
 learn something." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott was quite free from 
 vanity, and declared, in his diary, that no 
 one contemned the "pap" of praise more 
 heartily than himself. 
 
 Charles Darwin, referring in his later days 
 to the notice given him when a youth by 
 certain eminent scientists, says: " I was not 
 aware of any such superiority; and I remem- 
 ber one of my sporting friends, Turner, who 
 saw me at work with my beetles, saying that 
 I should one day be a fellow of the Royal 
 Society, and the notion seemed to me pre- 
 posterous." Alluding to his scientific labors 
 on the famous expedition of the Beagle 
 around the globe, he modestly confesses: 
 ' ' But I was also ambitious to take a fair place 
 among scientific men whether more ambi- 
 tious or less so than most of my fellow-work- 
 ers, I can form no opinion." Upon reading 
 one of the numbers of Spencer's "Principles
 
 142 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 of Biology," he observes: ' ' I feel rather mean 
 when I read him. I could bear, and rather 
 enjoy, feeling that he was twice as ingenious 
 and clever as myself; but when I feel that 
 he is about a dozen times my superior, 
 even in the master art of wriggling, I feel 
 aggrieved." 
 
 Resting here, it will doubtless appear that, 
 as respects both opinions and examples, we 
 have made a decidedly ill-balanced presenta- 
 tion of the question as to whether genius is 
 self-conscious or not. The fault, however, 
 if it be such, is due, we claim, to no par- 
 tiality of ours, but to the very one-sided 
 nature of the subject itself. For, howsoever 
 many more opinions a more industrious or 
 more wide-ranging collector than ourself 
 might adduce, each attested by its one or 
 more examples, they would, we are satisfied, 
 simply select one side or the other of the ques- 
 tion, in about the same ratio of preponderance 
 as characterizes those already presented. 
 This being so, the conclusion is unavoidable 
 that geniuses are almost, if not quite, uni- 
 versally self-conscious of their extraordinary
 
 IS GENIUS SELF-CONSCIOUS? 143 
 
 powers and of the superior quality of their 
 works. The small minority of apparent 
 exceptions to this rule owe their singularity, 
 we would suggest, not to the fact that they 
 are ignorant of their unusual endowments, 
 but rather that they are less self-assertive of 
 those rare powers, and less fond of popular 
 recognition of them, than are the majority 
 those of the pronouncedly self-conscious 
 order. 
 
 In fine, we submit, it is not a question of 
 self-consciousness at all all geniuses being 
 alike, or nearly alike, cognizant of their in- 
 trinsic superiority; but simply a matter of 
 the relative degree of personal insistance with 
 which that sense of singularity is manifested 
 to the world. The few have been content to 
 live upon the self-knowledge of their great- 
 ness and the assurance that their work was 
 of a unique and enduring quality; but the 
 many, in addition to this subjective satis- 
 faction, have demanded the meed of public 
 recognition, and rather than forego it, have 
 not hesitated to warm their own palms in 
 augmenting, if not starting the clamor of 
 their applause.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ACCIDENTS. 
 
 Verified by Incidents in tfie Lives of Cumer, Galileo, Newton, 
 Handel, Haydn, Schubert, SJiakespeare, Claude Loii-aine, 
 Gibbon, Giotto, Rubens, Cowper, Milton, Burns, Mabillon, 
 Wallenstein, Pisano, Beetfioven, Cromwell, Walton, Cow- 
 ley, Molicre, Franklin, Ignatius Loyola, Rousseau, La 
 Fontaine, West, Jenny Lind, Nilsson, Linnmis, Canova, 
 Longfellow. 
 
 It is a fairly debatable question, whether, 
 if certain apparently trivial accidents had 
 not occurred, many who now blaze as gen- 
 iuses in the world's intellectual sky, would 
 have ever appeared above the horizon. In 
 physics, we know there is what is called 
 latent energy. No one would suspect that 
 hard, dull-colored stone, familiarly known 
 as a flint, of being a natural store-house of 
 light and heat. Sudden contact, however, 
 with some other hard body, reveals the sur- 
 prising truth. What awful power this mere 
 thimbleful of harmless-looking black grains 
 develops when ignited by a blow or a 
 spark !
 
 146 A STUDY OP GENIUS. 
 
 In like manner do we find genius coiled up 
 or stored away in persons whose exteriors 
 give no intimation whatever of the fact. 
 Indeed, it is very probable that they them- 
 selves are as unaware of their dormant pos- 
 session as the flint is of its unprovoked fire. 
 Accident, however the merest accident 
 brings them one day in contact with the 
 spark of an igniting eye, or the touch of a 
 magnetic hand, and suddenly there is re- 
 vealed to the astonished world the light, the 
 heat, and the electric fervor of a genius. It 
 can not be claimed that the mere incident 
 which sprung the coil or struck out the 
 spark was also creative of the forces thus set 
 free; and yet, on the other hand, had not 
 the incident occurred, who shall say that 
 any such forces would have ever been liber- 
 ated? 
 
 It shall be the aim of this chapter to note 
 some of the seemingly trivial, but really 
 potential, incidents that have accompanied 
 the advent of genius. 
 
 The meeting with a copy of Gesner's His- 
 tory of Animals and Serpents, with colored
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AOOIDENTS. 147 
 
 plates, is said to have been the key that 
 opened the door of Cuvier's preference for 
 natural history. The presence of Guido 
 Uhaldi in the little audience that listened to 
 Galileo' s first essay, " The Hydrostatic Bal- 
 ance," proved in no small degree the mak- 
 ing of his future career as a scientist; for it 
 was alone through the powerful influence of 
 this appreciative patron that the young 
 philosopher secured the chair of mathemat- 
 ics at Pisa, and later a similar honor in the 
 University of Padua. Subsequently, a thing 
 of daily occurrence and observation the 
 swinging of the great pendant lamps of the 
 cathedral suggested to his inductive intel- 
 lect his law of oscillation. 
 
 If accounts be true, Sir Isaac Newton's 
 career affords quite a series of illustrations 
 of the point we are now considering. It is 
 said that a kick in the stomach, received 
 from an overbearing and much stronger 
 school-fellow, proved Isaac's first impetus to 
 early mental application. Later on, his un- 
 cle, a village rector, discovered Isaac seated 
 under a hedge, so completely absorbed in
 
 148 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 the solution of a mathematical problem as 
 not to notice his approach. This at once 
 decided him to intercede for his nephew's 
 return to school. He was successful, and 
 Isaac escaped from his thralldom of farm 
 labor to resume the delightful duties of a 
 student. Then, years after, happened that 
 well-known incident of the falling apple, 
 which suggested to his alert and thoughtful 
 mind the fundamental principle of his sys- 
 tem of the universe. 
 
 A voluntary upon the chapel organ, then 
 in charge of his uncle, surreptitiously played 
 by the boy George Frederick Handel, decided 
 that his future studies should conform to his 
 own taste music instead of the law, that 
 uncongenial one chosen for him by his father. 
 His cousin Frank, a school-master, noticing 
 the precision of the six-year-old's time-beat- 
 ing, gave Haydn his first opportunity to 
 study music. The persistent visits that 
 Schubert made, when seven years old, with a 
 companion, to a piano warehouse, awakened 
 himself and friends to a realization of the 
 unique faculty for music he possessed.
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ACCIDENTS. 149 
 
 Whatever the cause of Shakespeare's sud- 
 den flight from Stratford to London may have 
 been, it is very probable that English drama 
 would have lacked its crown jewels had 
 young William been an exemplary citizen of 
 his native town. And surely the petty theft 
 of a deer, if that it was, may be pardoned 
 the youthful scapegrace, in view of the 
 splendid and imperishable riches his ma- 
 turer years lavished upon mankind. 
 
 Claude Lorraine, after trying divers sorts 
 of service and finding himself suited to none, 
 accidentally hired himself to a painter, and 
 thereby hit upon the one thing that Nature 
 had designed him to do in such splendid 
 manner as no one had ever before acquired. 
 It was while musing amid the ruins of Rome 
 that Gibbon's life-work whispered itself to 
 his mind's ear. It would seem that Giotto, 
 one of the most original and comprehensive 
 of the great Italian artists, owed his entire 
 career to the simple circumstance that, when 
 a shepherd lad, he was one day found by 
 Cimabue, a discerning and philanthropic 
 
 artist, drawing the picture of a sheep upon a 
 10
 
 150 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 stone with a pointed rock. The praise that 
 Otto Van Veen, the most celebrated painter 
 of Flanders, bestowed upon one of the little 
 boy's pictures, decided Rubens' parents to 
 permit their son to follow his natural bent. 
 When Cowper asked Lady Austen to fur- 
 nish him with a subject for a poem in blank 
 verse, she pleasantly replied: "O, you can 
 never be in want of a subject; you can write 
 upon any; write upon this sofa." And thus 
 originated "The Task." 
 
 When Ell wood, a learned Quaker, was 
 asked by Milton how he liked ' ' Paradise 
 Lost," which the poet had lent him in man- 
 uscript, he replied: " I like it much. Thou 
 hast written well, and said much of ' Para- 
 dise Lost ; ' but what hast thou to say of Par- 
 adise found?" Sometime afterward, when 
 Ellwood visited the poet in London, he was 
 shown the poem of "Paradise Regained," 
 and told: " This is owing to you; for you put 
 it into my head by the question you asked 
 me at Charlfont, which before I had not 
 thought of." 
 
 Burns declared that the first stirrings of
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ACCIDENTS. 151 
 
 his enthusiasm are to be attributed to a life 
 of Hannibal which he read when a boy. 
 And it is doubtful if the name of Burns had 
 ever penetrated beyond the limits of his 
 native shire, had not a copy of his first 
 modest volume of poems caught the eye of 
 the genius-detecting Dr. Blacklock, who, 
 in lauding the poet's effort, lamented that 
 he was not then present in Edinburgh to 
 publish another such volume. A letter con- 
 taining this amiable regret fell into Burns' 
 hands on the eve of his intended departure 
 from England for Jamaica, and instantly 
 determined him to set out for Edinburgh. 
 
 Mabillon at twenty-six years of age is 
 said to have been but little removed from an 
 idiot; but at that time he chanced to fall 
 down a stone staircase, and so badly injured 
 his skull that it had to be trepanned. The 
 operation proved phenomenally successful; 
 for from that time forward he displayed the 
 characteristics of a genius. The great Bohe- 
 mian general, Wallenstein, was regarded in 
 his youth as a fool, until the day he tumbled 
 out of a window. Immediately thereupon
 
 152 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 he began to display extraordinary ability. 
 It was to the mere chance of seeing the Pisan 
 sarcophagus that Nicola Pisano owed his 
 subsequent renown as the regenerator of 
 mediaeval art in general, and of sculpture 
 in particular. 
 
 No doubt it was a great disappointment to 
 the Viennese to learn that their favorite pian- 
 ist indeed, the foremost musical virtuoso of 
 the day had, after a brief triumph of live 
 years, gone hopelessly deaf. It was a still 
 keener disappointment to Beethoven him- 
 self, who by nature was eminently fitted to 
 enjoy and also to ennoble society and his 
 art. But it is not at all certain that, had he 
 not been thus cruelly, as it seemed, banished 
 from the concert-room and the salon, human 
 ears would ever have been delighted with 
 the transcendent beauties of "Fidelio," the 
 ' ' Er oica ' ' symphony, ' ' Egmont, ' ' the ' ' Pas- 
 toral" symphony, the "Mass in C," the 
 "Seventh Symphony," and others of his 
 monumental works. 
 
 It had been well for Charles I. had the 
 order of council which prevented a certain
 
 THE INFLUENCE OP ACCIDENTS. 153 
 
 vessel leaving England in 1637, never been 
 issued; for among its passengers were both 
 Cromwell and Hampden. Sorrow at the 
 death of his wife and children, caused a 
 humble hosier of London to seek the tran- 
 quility and solace of a rural home; and so 
 English literature gathered into its net the 
 ' ' Complete Angler. ' ' Cowley affirms that it 
 was Spenser's "Faerie Queen " that ignited 
 the poetic fire in his own bosom. Moliere 
 came to find his own enviable role in life by 
 accompanying, when a boy, his grandfather 
 to the theater. The reading of DeFoe's 
 "Essay on Projects" largely shaped Frank- 
 lin's career; and the idea of instituting a 
 new religious order was first suggested to 
 Ignatius Loyola by the perusal of "Lives of 
 the Saints." The offering of a prize for an 
 essay proved the initiative impulse in the 
 life of Rousseau; while La Fontaine had his 
 own peculiar genius revealed to him while 
 gazing into the crystal depths of Malherbe's 
 poems. Surely, genius never signaled her 
 votary in a sweeter fashion than in the case 
 of Benjamin West, who declared, " A kiss 
 from my mother made me an artist."
 
 154 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 A little girl sits at the window of a miser- 
 able house on an out-of-the-way street in 
 Stockholm, singing to her kitten. A lady 
 passing by, detects an unusual sweetness in 
 the child's artless song; obtains control of 
 her, affords her instruction in music, and 
 thereby secures to the musical world its 
 supreme nightingale Jenny Lind. In the 
 midst of that motley Scandinavian crowd at 
 a fair is a slender maiden, whose singing of 
 her native melodies captivates every ear and 
 loosens not a few purse-strings. Among her 
 auditors there chances to be a certain man 
 of means and philanthropic bent, who deter- 
 mines to give the young minstrel an oppor- 
 tunity for study in her favorite art. How 
 sound his judgment was is attested by the 
 glorious outcome Christine Mlsson. 
 
 The advice and influence of a physician 
 who detected the boy's natural fondness for 
 botany, caused Linnaeus to be snatched 
 from a shoemaker's shop, where his father 
 had placed him. In the palace of a noble 
 family at Venice a banquet is being pre- 
 pared. A crowning ornament for the table
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ACCIDENTS. 155 
 
 is all that is wanting. A stone-cutter, con- 
 veniently near by, is applied to, and Ms 
 grandson a mere lad standing by his side, 
 overhears the proposition. "Give me a 
 plate of cold butter," cries the boy. Out of 
 this with astonishing rapidity and dexterity 
 he models a lion, so life-like in form and 
 posture as to thrill with pleasure the assem- 
 bled guests. This instantly wins for him 
 the favor and patronage of the noble house, 
 and eventually gives to the world of art the 
 masterful Canova. 
 
 One of the most popular and significant 
 poems of American literature owes its exist- 
 ence to the accident of its author chancing, 
 one evening, to hit upon the word "Excel- 
 sior," printed upon a bit of newspaper.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY? 
 
 The Popular Belief that Genius is not Hereditary. Synopsis 
 of Galton's Work on "Hereditary Genius." Grant Allen'* 
 Opinion Favoring t/ie Same View. Criticism of said Opin- 
 ion. TJie Contrast between the Biases of Geniuses and those 
 of their Parents. Geniuses whose Biases Jiate been Similar 
 to tJiose of their Parents. Preponderance of the Former 
 Instances. Only Mediocre Abilities, or, at best, Talents, 
 Transmitted. Comparative Inferiority of the GJiildren of 
 Geniuses. Geniuses eit/ier do not Marry, or else have but 
 few Children. Opinions of Francis Bacon and Charles 
 Morris on these Points. Examples of the Foregoing Scien- 
 tific Reason for tJie Infertility of Geniuses. Summary 
 Favoring the Soundness of the Popular Belief. 
 
 If the question, Is genius hereditary f 
 were put to a popular vote, we doubt not it 
 would be decided almost unanimously in the 
 negative. It has been customary all through 
 the past to regard genius as something es- 
 sentially phenomenal, and its possessor as 
 one without either satisfactory antecedents 
 or consequents a InnncBd borealis a 
 unique, a sublimely isolated being. Of late, 
 however, some have thought that genius, no 
 less than all other manifestations of human 
 
 067)
 
 158 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 nature, must submit itself as a proper sub- 
 ject for scientific analysis and definition. 
 Just as the features of one's face, the char- 
 acteristics of his physique, his peculiar bod- 
 ily movements and intonations of voice may 
 be traced backward to more or less similar 
 physical traits in his ancestors, and also for- 
 ward to like peculiarities in his posterity, so 
 is it claimed by some that, in conformity 
 with the same inexorable law of heredity, 
 the idiosyncrasies of mind of one whom we 
 call a genius can be discovered in the mental 
 constitutions both of those who have pre- 
 ceded and those who have succeeded him in 
 the genealogical chain. Of such a belief is 
 Francis Galton, who has written an elabo- 
 rate work upon the subject of ' ' Hereditary 
 Genius." He says: "The arguments by 
 which I endeavor to prove that genius is 
 hereditary consist in showing how large is 
 the number of instances in which men who 
 are more or less illustrious have eminent 
 kinsfolk." 
 
 In selecting these instances, however, it is 
 a remarkable fact that he restricts himself
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY ? 159 
 
 mainly to such classes of distinguished men 
 as judges, statesmen, and military men, con- 
 cerning whom he makes the following ad- 
 missions: "The average ability of a judge 
 can not be rated as equal to that of the 
 lower of the two grades [extraordinary gen- 
 iuses and illustrious personages] I have de- 
 scribed;" and secondly: "Unquestionably, 
 the most illustrious statesmen and command- 
 ers belong, to say the least, to the classes 
 F and Gr [sixth and seventh grades] of abil- 
 ity." Did the first of these admissions need 
 any strengthening, we might cite the opinion 
 of one who was himself an eminent British 
 barrister and critic, T. N. Talfourd, who has 
 declared: "For the highest powers of the 
 mind which can be developed in eloquence, 
 even a superior court rarely affords room." 
 And again: "The majority of successful 
 advocates are not men of genius." 
 
 The most, we think, that Galton succeeds 
 in accomplishing, may be summed up as fol- 
 lows: Drawing his examples for the greater 
 part from men occupying, according to his 
 own classification, a third or lower rank in
 
 160 A STUDY OF GENIFS. 
 
 the scale of extraordinary abilities, he shows 
 one hundred and nine out of two hundred 
 and eighty-six judges of England, between 
 the years 1660-1865 inclusive, to have had 
 one or more eminent relatives. However, the 
 only really well-known men out of the whole 
 number do not exceed a dozen, viz.: the 
 Blackstones, the Erskines, the Jeffreys, the 
 Norths, two of each, and the Herberts, of 
 whom there were three. 
 
 Out of some seventy names of so-called 
 eminent statesmen who had one or more 
 equally eminent relatives, the following sev- 
 enteen are the most prominent: Boling- 
 broke, Canning, Disraeli, Fox, Grattan, 
 Palmerston, Peel, Pitt, Sheridan, Walpole, 
 Wilberforce, Adams, Lord Burleigh, Duke 
 of Guise, Mirabeau, Sir Thomas More, and 
 Richelieu. 
 
 Out of about thirty great commanders 
 named, not over fourteen need to claim our 
 attention, namely: Alexander the Great, 
 Napoleon I., Julius Csesar, Charlemagne, 
 Charles Martel, Cromwell, Gustavus Adol- 
 phus, Hannibal, Marlborough, Nelson, Scipio 
 Africanus, Turenne, and Wellington.
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY? 161 
 
 Out of about forty literary men, the fol- 
 lowing are the best known: Addison, 
 Thomas Arnold, Bentham, Boileau, Bossuet, 
 Chateaubriand, Fenelon, Fielding, Grotius, 
 Hallam, Irving, Lamb, Lessing, Macaulay, 
 Niebuhr, the Scaligers, Seneca, Madam De 
 Stael, Swift, Sydney. 
 
 Of nearly fifty scientific men, the follow- 
 ing are the most conspicuous: Aristotle, 
 Francis Bacon, Buffon, Cuvier, D'Alembert, 
 Davy, Franklin, Galileo, Harvey, the Her- 
 schels, Humboldt, Linnaeus, Napier, New- 
 ton, Pliny, Stephenson, Volta, Watt. 
 
 Of twenty-one poets named, these are the 
 foremost: JEschylus, Ariosto, Aristophanes, 
 Byron, Chaucer, Coleridge, Corneille, Cow- 
 per, Dryden, Goethe, Heine, Milton, Kacine, 
 Tasso, Lope de Vega, Wordsworth. 
 
 Of sixteen musicians, the most illustrious 
 are: Johann Sebastian Bach, Beethoven, 
 Haydn, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mozart, 
 and Palestrina. 
 
 Of some twenty painters, the following are 
 the best examples: Correggio, Eyck, Claude 
 Lorraine, Murillo, Raphael, Tintoretto, Ten- 
 
 iers, Titian, VanDyck, Paul Veronese. 
 li
 
 162 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Out of one hundred and ninety- six emi- 
 nent divines, only seventeen are inter-related, 
 and eight others have remarkable relation- 
 ships. 
 
 Accepting the names as they stand, we 
 find, upon summing up the foregoing lists, 
 that out of about four hundred and fifty 
 persons classed as eminent, and for the most 
 part ranging from the third class of such 
 downward, and all of whom are claimed to 
 be more or less intimately related to eminent 
 persons, not more than a quarter of the num- 
 ber will satisfactorily answer to the distinc- 
 tion of being illustrious that is, to use 
 Galton's own definition, "as one man in a 
 million." 
 
 And the following is a summary of the 
 same author's attempt to point out the in- 
 stances of two nearly equally illustrious 
 persons in the same family. Of judges, the 
 most noteworthy names are: Lord Erskine 
 and his brother Henry; Sir Edward Hyde 
 and his son Lawrence; Sir Timothy Lyttle- 
 ton and his brother Edward. Of statesmen: 
 George Grenville and his son William W. ;
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY ? 163 
 
 Sir Robert Peel and son; William Pitt 
 and son; Sir Robert and Horatio Wai- 
 pole, brothers, and the sons, Sir Edward 
 and Horace; Richard Wellesley and his 
 brother, the Duke of Wellington; William 
 Cecil and his son Robert, and John Adams 
 and his son John Quincy. Of commanders: 
 Alexander and his father Philip; Hannibal, 
 his father Hamilcar, and his brother Has- 
 drubal; Maurice of Nassau and his father, 
 William "the Silent;" the Scipios; Ves- 
 pasian and his son Titus; Henri, Due de 
 Bouillon, and son Turenne. Of literary 
 men: Thomas and Matthew Arnold, the Scal- 
 igers, the brothers Schlegel, the Coleridges, 
 and the brothers Corneille. Of scientists: 
 the Herschels and the Humboldts. Of musi- 
 cians: the Bachs; Haydn and his brother 
 Jean; Mozart and his father Leopold. Of 
 painters: the brothers Eyck, and the Teniers, 
 father and son. 
 
 Now, even allowing to these examples all 
 that is claimed for them, what a mere frac* 
 tion do they constitute of the four hundred 
 extraordinary geniuses whom our author
 
 164 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 assigns as the total of the race's contribution 
 thus far ! But when we take account of 
 only such as Galton himself ranks among 
 the very highest types of genius those 
 possessed of the creative powers of mind 
 the number of such as have been either im- 
 mediately or remotely related to others of 
 the same grade of intellect is scarcely appre- 
 ciable. 
 
 Another writer, Grant Allen, who would 
 seem to favor the foregoing view of genius 
 as being hereditary, has recently said: ' ' Ev- 
 ery individual amongst human beings is the 
 distinct product of two prior organisms, and 
 he combines elements found in both of them, 
 and sometimes also elements latent in them, 
 but existing in still earlier organisms of the 
 same species. In the main, I suppose we 
 are all agreed that what each man is, he is 
 .already potentially at birth; whatever little 
 can be added by himself is at best but an 
 infinitesimal fraction compared with what he 
 derived directly from his parents, or indi- 
 rectly from his earlier ancestry." In other 
 words, the essential substance of geniuses,
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY? 165 
 
 like that of mushrooms and other forms of 
 suddenly-appearing fungi, requires a rela- 
 tively long period, and sometimes several 
 generations, for its complete production. 
 
 The least intelligible part of Mr. Allen's 
 explanation is, we suspect, the only really 
 valuable portion of it we mean that "latent 
 element ' ' of parents, or less near ancestors, 
 which, it is surmised, enters into the trans- 
 mitted nature of offspring. In other words, 
 our scientific analyst would signify that, 
 though geniuses have, just like all other per- 
 sons, parents, of whose several natures they 
 necessarily partake, yet there also enters into 
 their composition something unperceived, 
 and only surmised as belonging to the nature 
 of one or both parents or remoter progeni- 
 tors. Now, in our own judgment, that latent, 
 that conjectured, that unaccountable ele- 
 ment is genius itself under another name. 
 When the chemist shall have demonstrated 
 to us Jiow that two invisible, untangible, im- 
 ponderable gases, oxygen and hydrogen, by 
 their union form a visible, tangible, ponder- 
 able liquid called water, then, and we ap- 
 11
 
 166 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 prehend not until then, shall we be prepared 
 to clearly comprehend the biological pro- 
 cesses involved in the genesis of a genius. 
 And until some such convincing demon- 
 stration as we have intimated shall be given, 
 people very generally will continue to hold 
 to the time -honored belief that geniuses are 
 exceptional developments inexplicable orig- 
 inals. 
 
 Perhaps the fairest way of determining in 
 how far geniuses have derived their peculiar 
 endowments from their parents, will be to 
 institute a comparison between the known 
 mental biases of the two parties, as indicated 
 by their several pursuits. In speaking of 
 the parentage of great men, Lowell, in his 
 essay on Wordsworth, observes: "It is 
 rather to be noted how little is known of 
 the parentage of men of the first magnitude, 
 and how often they seem in some sort found- 
 lings." Nevertheless, using the data avail- 
 able, much that is interesting and valuable 
 may be adduced. 
 
 Sir David Brewster's father was rector of a 
 grammar school and a teacher of the classical
 
 18 GENIUS HEREDITARY? 167 
 
 languages. Lord Nelson's father was a vil- 
 lage parson. The parents of Gutenberg, the 
 ardent devotee to industrial pursuits, were 
 mechanic - hating aristocrats. Pythagoras' 
 father was a merchant. Archimedes' father 
 was of royal extraction and high-toned pre- 
 dilections. The father of Buffon, the great 
 naturalist, was a counselor of the Parlia- 
 ment of Dijon. Baron Cuvier's father was 
 an officer in the French military service. 
 Daniel Webster's parents passed their lives 
 upon a farm, 
 
 " Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife." 
 
 The father of Laplace, the eminent mathe- 
 matician and astronomer, was a peasant. 
 Neither of Sir Isaac Newton's parents was 
 in the least degree remarkable, and had he 
 been ruled by his mother's preferences, he 
 would have died a farmer of Woolsthorpe, 
 instead of the world's supreme philosopher. 
 The father of Linnaeus was pastor of a Lu- 
 theran church, and neither appreciated nor 
 approved of his son's partiality for the study 
 of nature. Socrates' father was a sculptor, 
 and his mother a midwife. Demosthenes'
 
 168 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 father was an armorer and cabinet-maker. 
 Columbus' father was a wool-carder and 
 weaver. Napoleon Bonaparte's father was a 
 Corsican magistrate, whose profession was 
 that of making and keeping peace among 
 men. Haydn's father was a wheelwright, 
 and his mother a cook employments which, 
 neither singly nor together, would seem to 
 favor the development of "a concord of 
 sweet sounds." A drunken tenor-singer was 
 Beethoven's father. Schubert's father and 
 forefathers for several generations were 
 schoolmasters. Schumann's father was a 
 book-seller. Virgil's father was a farmer, 
 and his mother the daughter of a land- 
 holder. An illiterate innkeeper in a small 
 French town was the father of Rabelais, the 
 great satirist. Shakespeare's father was a 
 butcher, or shop-keeper of some sort, and 
 although bailiff and alderman of Stratford, 
 was yet unable to write his own name; his 
 mother was a granddaughter of a valet-de- 
 chambre to Henry VII. Were these likely 
 parental factors for forming the world's 
 foremost dramatic poet 3 France's greatest
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY? 169 
 
 comic poet of the dramatic order, Moliere, 
 had an upholsterer for father. Goethe's par- 
 ents, though scholarly and refined, did not 
 manifest, so far as is known, any leaning 
 toward poetry. 
 
 It is not easy to see by what hereditary 
 process Milton derived his surpassing poet- 
 ical imagination from his father, who fol- 
 lowed the very prosaic livelihood of a notary. 
 Michael Angelo was descended from a noble 
 family aye, one allied even to imperial 
 blood. From whence, then, his predomi- 
 nant taste and skill for what was regarded 
 by his kin as a plebeian employment art ? 
 Two pious peasants who worked in mines 
 were parents of that solar orb of reformers 
 Martin Luther. One of the most eminent of 
 theologians, Calvin, had for father a very 
 obscure notary. A family of fighting, ad- 
 venture-seeking knights were the progeni- 
 tors of one of the most retired and studious 
 of men, the world-renowned scholiast, St. 
 Thomas Aquinas. The chief of the Dutch 
 school of painters, Rembrandt, was the son 
 of a very commonplace miller. Salvator
 
 170 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Rosa's father was a mason. Had Albert 
 Durer followed in his father' s footsteps, he 
 would have been a silversmith instead of a 
 renowned artist. The father of Benvenuto 
 Cellini, the illustrious Italian artist, was a 
 musician. Diderot's father was a cutler. A 
 Lutheran clergyman gave to the world one 
 of its cleverest critics and dramatists Less- 
 ing. Galen, one of the founders of the sci- 
 ence of medicine, had an architect for father, 
 and a second Xanthippe for mother. The 
 author of "A Discourse on the Music of the 
 Ancients and Moderns," was father to Gali- 
 leo, the foremost scientist and astronomer of 
 his age. 
 
 One of the broadest-minded of Italy's 
 great master-artists, Giotto, had for father 
 one of the narrowest-lived of men a simple 
 herdsman. A mere notary was the father of 
 .the most nearly universal genius the world 
 ever beheld Leonardo Da Vinci, who was 
 civil and military engineer, inventor, histo- 
 rian, logician, antiquary, architect, painter, 
 sculptor, musician, scientist, and poet. Scot- 
 land's prince of poets, Robert Burns, was
 
 IS GENIUS HEKEDITAEY? 171 
 
 son of an austere Calvinist a gardener. A 
 wretched flute-player was father of the gifted 
 Guido. Another eminent Italian artist, 
 Zampieri, was son of a shoemaker. Rubens' 
 father, like Durer's, was a silversmith. The 
 father of England's best-known chemist, 
 Faraday, was a blacksmith. From an igno- 
 rant quarry-man was sprung Canova, the 
 transmuter of marble into flesh and spirit. 
 The father of Rollin, the noted historian, 
 was a Parisian cutler. The most famous of 
 Italian novelists, Boccaccio, was the son of 
 a Florentine tradesman, and was himself for 
 a time a merchant's clerk. The father of 
 Southey, and also that of Pope, were linen- 
 drapers. Oliver Cromwell's father was a 
 malt-brewer. The father of Richard Cobden, 
 the eminent English statesman and author, 
 was a poor farmer, whose son's youthful 
 employment was sheep-tending. Benjamin 
 Franklin's father was a tallow-chandler. 
 Hiram Powers' father was a Vermont 
 farmer. Cardinal Wolsey's father was a 
 butcher. The father of Home Tooke, the 
 English lawyer, wit, and priest, was a dealer
 
 172 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 in poultry, or, as the witty son put it to his 
 aristocratic associates at Eton, "He was a 
 Turkey merchant." The renowned German 
 astronomer, Kepler, was the son of a poor 
 innkeeper. Denmark's famous sculptor, 
 Thorwaldsen, was the son of a common fish- 
 erman of Iceland. Richard Wagner's father 
 was a police court Dogberry. The foregoing 
 instances would seem to warrant the infer- 
 ence that just as the diamond is supposed 
 to have been slowly elaborated from car- 
 bonaceous matter furnished by some dead 
 animal or rotting plant, so from antecedents 
 quite as unpromising sprung the great intel- 
 lectual "Kohinoors" or "Regents" of the 
 human family. 
 
 And now, in order to complete our com- 
 parison, and make as fair an exhibit as pos- 
 sible of both sides of the question, let us 
 next note certain instances in which the 
 mental bias of parent and offspring appears 
 to have been identical. 
 
 James Watt's early love for tools and his 
 mechanical dexterity may very readily be 
 traced to his father, who was a carpenter and
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY ? 173 
 
 builder. The father of Palissy, the noted 
 Huguenot potter and naturalist, was a tile- 
 maker and worker in clay. Edmund 
 Burke' s father was an attorney of some 
 prominence in Dublin. Alexander's father 
 was Philip, king of Macedonia, a successful 
 general and ruler, and the originator of the 
 famous Macedonian phalanx. Both the 
 father and brother of Hannibal were noted 
 generals. Solon was descended from Co- 
 drus. The father of Pericles, Xanthippus, 
 was a successful Greek general, and his 
 mother was niece of Clisthenes, an Athenian 
 statesman. Charlemagne was grandson of 
 the illustrious Charles Martel. Not only 
 were Bach' s father and brothers musicians, 
 but his ancestors for generations back were 
 of the same turn of mind. Mozart's father 
 was a professor of music. Weber's father 
 was a man of musical taste and of some 
 skill in the same direction. No little part 
 of Mendelssohn's peculiar bent, and all 
 the merit of his earlier musical training, 
 must be accredited to his highly cultured 
 mother. Raphael's father was a painter of
 
 174 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 considerable reputation in his day. John 
 Wesley's ancestors for four generations back 
 had been scholarly churchmen. Van Dyck, 
 the master of portrait painters, was particu- 
 larly fortunate in his parents, his father 
 having been a painter on glass and his 
 mother a painter of landscapes, from whom, 
 also, he received his earliest art instructions. 
 The father of Bichat, the skilled anatomist 
 and physician, was himself a physician of no 
 mean repute. Alfred the Great was grand- 
 son of the great Egbert. Plato declared 
 himself to be descended in direct line from 
 the gods. A pretty shrewd guess, we suspect. 
 Certainly there is no "monkeying" in it! 
 It is evident, not only from the foregoing 
 partial lists, but it would also be, we appre- 
 hend, from even very exhaustive ones, that 
 the instances of similar mental predilection 
 upon the part of parents and their offspring 
 are not only very much fewer than those of 
 an opposite sort, but that they are also 
 of very much less significance. The object of 
 citing instances of the latter kind is to show 
 that genius is transmitted from parent to
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY? 175 
 
 offspring; that is, is hereditary. But is this 
 object attained by instances, however numer- 
 ous, which simply show that mediocrity in 
 a certain direction in the parent sometimes 
 becomes genius in the same direction in the 
 child ? Not at all ; but, on the contrary, in 
 order to demonstrate the heredity of genius, 
 it must be shown that genius in the parent 
 begets genius in the child. The peculiar 
 endowments of both must be, not only simi- 
 lar in kind, but also nearly, if not quite, 
 equal in degree, and that degree must 
 amount to genius in both cases before any 
 transmission of genius can be allowed to 
 have taken place. 
 
 Doubtless there were hundreds of musi- 
 cians in Austria at the time whose talents 
 were equal, if not superior, to those of Mo- 
 zart's father, and doubtless, also, quite a 
 number of them had children who were 
 musically inclined and more or less talented; 
 but out of the whole goodly throng there 
 was none whom the world cared to recognize 
 as a genius. Think you Raphael was the 
 only painter of his day who was descended
 
 176 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 from an artist father? Would Alexander 
 have been called the Great had his military 
 abilities displayed themselves within the 
 same narrow lists his father's did? Where 
 are all the other sons of reputable attorneys 
 at law who started in life with Edmund 
 Burke ? Very many boys learn their father' s 
 trade of carpenter, but how few utilize it 
 for building the stately and imperishable 
 renown achieved by James Watt's work- 
 manship ! 
 
 Assuredly, the most that can be shown in 
 favor of the physical obligations of genius is, 
 that in some instances, and these a striking- 
 minority of the whole number, it derives 
 simply its bent its initiative impulse from 
 parental predilections. This is all; and in 
 those cases wherein the child develops noth- 
 ing beyond what it could fairly be said to 
 have inherited from its parents, there re- 
 sults, of course, the same mediocre or sim- 
 ply talented person its parents were that is 
 no genius at all. But just at that point 
 where parental endowments leave off does 
 genius begin. It takes the forces bequeathed
 
 IS GENIUS HEEEDITARY ? 177 
 
 it by ancestors, and by new adjustments and 
 combinations of these converts the family 
 clay or pewter mug into a goblet fit for the 
 lips of immortals. Not the ability to paint, 
 or carve, or compose, or philosophize, or cal- 
 culate, or analyze, or combine, constitutes 
 genius; but rather the power to carry on 
 these various processes after a peculiar and 
 extraordinary fashion. The former may be 
 inherited, and constitutes talent; the latter 
 must be generated and evolved in one's own 
 vital laboratory, and is genius. 
 
 In the foregoing inquiry we have consid- 
 ered in how far great men have derived their 
 genius from their parents or less near an- 
 cestors; let us now regard what may in a 
 sense be styled the reverse relation the 
 transmission by geniuses of their illustrious 
 parts to their offspring. Who are the ac- 
 knowledged geniuses who have also had 
 geniuses for children ? If from any source, 
 we shall most likely get an answer to our 
 inquiry from the same painstaking investi- 
 gator we have before had recourse to Mr. 
 
 Gfalton. 
 
 12
 
 178 A STUDY OP GENIUS. 
 
 We have already cited the best instances 
 he adduces of two nearly equally illustrious 
 persons in the same family. Let us again 
 glance at such of them as stand in the rela- 
 tion of father and son. They are of 
 judges: Sir Edward Hyde (Earl Clarendon) 
 and his son Laurence (Earl of Rochester). 
 Of statesmen: George Grenville, Premier, 
 and his son Lord William, also Premier; Sir 
 Robert Peel and his son Rt. Hon. Sir Rob- 
 ert; William Pitt (Earl of Chatham) and his 
 son William; Sir Robert Walpole and his 
 sons Sir Edward and Horace; William Cecil 
 (Lord Burleigh) and his son Robert (Earl of 
 Salisbury); John Adams and his son John 
 Quincy. Of commanders: Philip II. and 
 his son Alexander the Great; Hamilcar and 
 his son Hannibal; William the Silent and 
 Maurice of Nassau; the two Scipios; Vespa- 
 sian and his son Titus; Henri Due de Bouil- 
 lon and his son Turenne. Of literary men : 
 Dr. Thomas Arnold and Matthew Arnold; 
 the Scaligers. Of scientists: Sir William 
 Herschel and his son Sir John. Of musi- 
 cians: J. Ambrose Bach and his son John
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY? 170 
 
 Sebastian; Leopold Mozart and his son 
 Wolfgang; and of painters, the Teniers, 
 father and son. 
 
 Now, in this meager array of names, 
 which, nevertheless, is the very fullest that 
 Mr. Galton's quite exhaustive research has 
 been able to furnish, how many real geniuses 
 are represented ? If any of those classed as 
 judges and statesmen are to be so accredited 
 and remember that Galton himself places 
 such men in a rank not higher than third 
 that distinction belongs to William Pitt, the 
 Earl of Chatham; but allowing this to be a 
 correct estimate, it can not be maintained 
 that his son William was also a genius. The 
 only geniuses that appear in the list of com- 
 manders are Alexander the Great, Hannibal, 
 and Turenne, the rest being simply success- 
 ful generals of a much lower than universal 
 type. But none of these illustrious sons of 
 Mars bequeathed a military genius to the 
 world. We do not allow that any of the 
 literary men named were geniuses, or even 
 tolerable approximations. If either of the 
 two scientists named may be regarded as a
 
 180 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 genius, it was the son rather than the father. 
 Of the four musicians cited, neither the 
 elder Bach nor the elder Mozart would have 
 ever been known to any succeeding genera- 
 tion had it not been for the world-wide em- 
 blazonment of the family names wrought by 
 the genius of the sons. Of the sole illustra- 
 tion borrowed from the realm of art, it must 
 be confessed that, if in point at all, it is rel- 
 atively weak; the Teniers belonging to the 
 range, rather than among the number of iso- 
 lated and commanding peaks of artist gen- 
 iuses. And so we think we may challenge the 
 production of a single example wherein a 
 really great genius has given to the world a 
 son or daughter possessed of an equally 
 eminent endowment. This is certainly the 
 case so far as relates to the world's univers- 
 ally accepted geniuses. 
 
 Mr. Hale, writing in The New England 
 Magazine, concerning visits to Emerson, 
 says : "I remember perfectly how delicately 
 he put me down one night when I had gone 
 down there, with Galton's 'Heredity' in my 
 bag, and was full of Galton's admirable
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY ? 181 
 
 stories about the continuation of the same 
 line of life and thought in certain families 
 the stories of the Pitts, for instance, and, 
 what Galton delights in most of all, the 
 story of our house of Adams. Once and 
 again I tried to bring Mr. Emerson up to 
 take some interest in this, but he would 
 only take the civil interest of one who has a 
 persistent and fussy guest to entertain. But 
 at last he said : ' No, there is nothing in it. 
 If there were, we should have Weimar to-day 
 full of Schillers, and Goethes, and Richters; 
 and we should have had Athens in the time 
 of Paul full of another set of Socrates and 
 Plato and Pericles. And it was not so.' I 
 have taken much less stock in heredity since 
 he made that suggestion about Athens and 
 Weimar." 
 
 Indeed, a little study of this matter will 
 show that men of genius not only do not 
 propagate others of their like, but, in very 
 many instances, either do not marry at all, 
 or, in case they do, have but few, if any, 
 children. That wide-visioned English philos- 
 opher of three -hundred years ago, Francis 
 12
 
 182 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Bacon, affirmed: "Surely, a man shall see 
 the noblest works and formations have pro- 
 ceeded from childless men." And again: 
 ' ' Certainly the best works, and of greatest 
 merit for the public, have proceeded from 
 the unmarried or childless men." 
 
 A similar opinion is advanced by a scien- 
 tific writer of our own day Charles Morris, 
 in Popular Science Monthly for September, 
 1884. He says: "If we consider special 
 cases of noted men, the great generals of the 
 world, the commanding statesmen, the dis- 
 tinguished scientists, the celebrated authors 
 all, in fact, who have become distinguished 
 for superior mental ability an almost uni- 
 versal result appears : they have either left 
 no descendants, or their families were very 
 small." 
 
 With a view to testing the truth of the 
 assertions just quoted, we have carefully 
 examined a recent work ("The Hundred 
 Greatest Men," edited by Wallace Wood, 
 M. D.), containing biographical sketches of 
 a hundred and nine of the most illustrious 
 men who have ever flourished in the several
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY ? 183 
 
 domains of literature, art, religion, philos- 
 ophy, history, science, politics, and indus- 
 try. We find the following among the 
 number of those who were never married: 
 Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, 
 Handel, Beethoven, Moses, St. Paul, Eras- 
 mus, Bossuet, Plato, Newton, Locke, Kant, 
 and Voltaire, not to name certain eminent 
 ecclesiastics whose vocation enjoined celib- 
 acy. A little more than half of the remain- 
 ing number (forty-nine) were married men, 
 about a quarter of whom were childless, and 
 not more than four or five of whom had 
 families of more than two or three children. 
 More than a third of the whole number 
 (thirty-eight) were left in doubt as to marital 
 relations, nothing whatever being reported 
 concerning marriage or the birth of off- 
 spring. 
 
 Geniuses, then, as regards offspring, are 
 like the Webbe Shebeyli of Eastern Africa, 
 a deep and rapid stream that flows for hun- 
 dreds of miles, and finally loses itself in a 
 desert of sand; or they may be compared to 
 neuter insects, who are quite distinct in parts
 
 184 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 and in inclinations from either parent, and 
 are incapable of propagation. 
 
 If the preoccupation of mind, the intense 
 concentration and absorption of all the less 
 sensuous energies of one's nature, the almost 
 constant devotion to some special end of in- 
 tellectual endeavor inseparable from the life 
 of every genius, may not adequately account 
 for his comparative indifference toward 
 marital and parental relations, then, per- 
 haps, we may find a more satisfactory an- 
 swer in the declaration of modern science, 
 that mental exertion actually restricts the 
 reproductive energy. Each individual, it is 
 held, possesses a certain tolerably definite 
 measure of nervous stimulus, which, it is the 
 normal law of one's being, shall be fairly 
 apportioned among all the various organs 
 and parts of the human system. If, there- 
 fore, any one of these vital centers comes to 
 arrogate to itself more than its normal share 
 of nervous stimulus, it is plain that one or 
 more others must either suspend their nat- 
 ural functions or else diminish their activity; 
 and this is just what happens in the case of
 
 IS GENIUS HEREDITARY? 185 
 
 the genius lie whose imperial brain dom- 
 inates and tyrannizes over and practically 
 annihilates one or more of the more purely 
 material and animal centers of his mechan- 
 ism; and so it happens that the genius is 
 married to his particular, his dearly be- 
 loved ideal, and his achievements toward 
 realizing this constitute his legitimate, his 
 tenderly prized children. 
 
 Summing up, then, the various aspects of 
 the heredity of genius, we think all that can 
 be reasonably claimed in the light either of 
 history, or experience, or modern scientific 
 research, is that intelligent and talented 
 parents are almost sure to have offspring of 
 a similar mental calibre, and that parental 
 biases are not unfrequently transmitted to 
 children. But that unique, that command- 
 ing power called genius allows of neither 
 antitype nor duplicate. Though the phys- 
 ical constituents that go to its making must- 
 be allowed to have previously inhered in the 
 mental constitutions of parents, yet the out- 
 come of their combination is totally differ- 
 ent, if not in kind, then certainly in de-
 
 186 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 gree, from the elemental units. Genius, 
 then, like the air we breathe, like the 
 water we drink, like the light that vivi- 
 fies us, is a compound, not one of whose 
 factors discloses the slightest hint of the 
 glorious product, and whose laws of combi- 
 nation and evolution baffle, and, we believe, 
 must ever baffle, the keenest scientific inspec- 
 tion. Like protoplasm, though it may be 
 resolved into its physical elements, no hand 
 has yet been found cunning enough to devise 
 the formula for recombining those well- 
 known elements into the mysterious whole.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 GENIUS AND ITS ENVIRONMENT. 
 
 Varieties of Environment: (a) Home and School Training; 
 (b) Geographical Surroundings; (c) One's Race; (d) The 
 Age in which One Lives. Influences of Early Training: 
 First, Favorable Influences; Examples of tlie Same. Sec- 
 ondly, Unfavorable Influences; Examples of Such. Pre- 
 ponderance vf the Latter. 
 
 An individual' s environment may be said 
 to consist of four concentrics : First, there 
 is that which immediately and most inti- 
 mately surrounds him the influences of 
 home, of school, and of early training gen- 
 erally. Secondly, we may name the influ- 
 ences, both physical and sesthetical, of 
 climate and topography ; in other words, 
 one's geographical environment. Closely 
 circumscribing the last comes the third ele- 
 ment of influence namely, race; while the 
 fourth and last may be defined as the pecul- 
 iar intellectual atmosphere including the 
 elements of moral, social, and political forces 
 in which one lives. 
 
 (187)
 
 188 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 That each of these elements of environ- 
 ment must prove either favorable or unfa- 
 vorable for the development of one's peculiar 
 genius, is abundantly witnessed to by the 
 experiences of the world' s greatest men. 
 
 Let us notice some of these attestations, 
 and, in the same connection also, certain 
 weighty opinions regarding the interdepend- 
 ence that subsists between genius and its 
 environments. 
 
 And first we shall consider that most inti- 
 mate species of environment the influences 
 of home, of school, and of early discipline. 
 And as these influences must operate either 
 for or against the natural unfolding of the 
 child's peculiar powers, we shall begin by 
 citing examples of geniuses whose early sur- 
 roundings were propitious. 
 
 Watt had around him continually all 
 the tools of the mechanic. Palissy was 
 acquainted with the materials and utensils 
 of the potter from earliest childhood. Cice- 
 ro's natural tastes were both gratified and 
 stimulated by the rich literary viands of his 
 scholarly father's house. Law-books were
 
 GENIUS AND ITS ENVIRONMENT. 189 
 
 Burke' s playthings, and he breathed an 
 atmosphere of jurisprudence from tenderest 
 years. The spirits of Codrus and Solon, as 
 well as the muses of poetry and painting, 
 were the boy Plato' s intimates. Noble and 
 cultured were the members of Herodotus' 
 boyhood's home. Alexander's educators 
 were the foremost king and the most saga- 
 cious philosopher of his day. Hannibal's 
 nursery was the battle-field. The forum was 
 Caesar's school-room, and the camp his play- 
 ground. At one end of the table presided 
 a Greek general, and at the other the daugh- 
 ter of an Athenian statesman, between whom 
 the boy Pericles sat, imbibing teachings 
 from both. Musical instruments were more 
 familiar to Bach and to Mozart than marbles 
 or tops, and these youths could hardly have 
 been more completely surrounded and im- 
 mersed in music than they were, had their 
 cradles been the inside of a bass-viol or an 
 organ-pipe. 
 
 Leonardo Da Vinci was descended from a 
 noble family, lived in a home of refinement, 
 and was schooled in his favorite studies by a
 
 190 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 noted painter and sculptor. Raphael's first 
 teacher in painting was his father, himself a 
 very respectable artist. Bossuet belonged to 
 an honorable family, and was carefully dis- 
 ciplined in the direction of his natural 
 tastes. John Wesley was as completely 
 under clerical influences when at home as 
 when at Oxford; for his family for several 
 centuries prior to his birth had largely con- 
 sisted of scholarly ecclesiastics. Van Dyck's 
 father was a painter on glass, and his mother 
 a landscape artist; and besides these, he was 
 also instructed by the great Rubens. Phid- 
 ias is said to have been taught in his favor- 
 ite art by the best masters of his day. 
 Aristotle was thoroughly indoctrinated at 
 Athens in all the wisdom of the Socratic and 
 Platonic schools of philosophy. Lavoisier, 
 the founder of modern chemistry, was of 
 wealthy parents, who, in educating their son, 
 wisely favored and fostered his natural bent 
 toward the sciences. The father of Albert 
 Diirer was a silversmith, and was desirous 
 that his son should embrace the same art; 
 but perceiving the lad to be naturally in-
 
 GENIUS AND ITS ENVIRONMENT. 191 
 
 clined toward drawing, he very sensibly 
 placed him under congenial guidance. 
 
 Though the foregoing catalogue of gen- 
 iuses, the surroundings of whose earlier years 
 were helpful toward their natural unfolding, 
 might be considerably increased, yet must it 
 ever continue strikingly smaller than the 
 number of those who, like the Mexican cent- 
 ury-plant, have sprung up and flourished 
 under apparently the most inhospitable sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 Carlyle, in his splendid essay on Burns, 
 queries: "Is not every genius an impossi- 
 bility till he appear ? . . . Let but the 
 true poet be given us, place him where and 
 how you will, and true poetry will not be 
 wanting." 
 
 The eminent French critic, M. H. A. Taine, 
 remarks: "Of Shakespeare all came from 
 within I mean from his soul and his gen- 
 ius; external circumstances contributed but 
 slightly to his development. . . . His 
 genius is pure imagination." 
 
 Let us now cite some of those geniuses 
 who, like ivy-berries, would seem to have
 
 192 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 required the most rigorous climates to ripen 
 them; or, like electricity, revealed their 
 presence and potency only under pressure 
 or friction; or, again, were like the grape- 
 vine, which, from a soil too sterile to support 
 even weeds, extracts the choicest of wines. 
 
 Just as the coral requires for its life and 
 growth exposure to the open sea and the 
 constant beating of the surf, so certain 
 human natures would seem to demand the 
 friction of adverse circumstances to develop 
 their characteristic points of greatness. 
 
 Franklin's father was a candle and soap 
 maker a business not especially adapted, 
 one would think, for the molding of a 
 philosopher. Stephenson's father was an 
 ignorant collier, and George began life as a 
 cow-boy. He was past seventeen years of age 
 before he learned his letters. The inventor 
 of the art of printing was descended from 
 a noble family, who practically disinherited 
 him for his "vulgar" proclivity toward 
 mechanical pursuits. The boyhood home of 
 England's supreme naval commander was 
 the peaceful village parsonage. A French
 
 GENIUS AND ITS ENVIRONMENTS. 193 
 
 peasant's hut gave birth to one of the fore- 
 most mathematicians and astronomers of the 
 world Laplace. The only milky- way known 
 to the boy Isaac Newton was to be found in 
 the cow-pasture of his parents' farm. 
 
 Had Demosthenes harmonized with his 
 home surroundings and drawn his inspira- 
 tion thence, he might have made acceptable 
 armor and furniture for Philip of Macedon, 
 instead of very unacceptable orations against 
 him. Handel's father, himself a surgeon, 
 designed George Friedrich for the law, and 
 in order to subjugate the boy's unaccount- 
 able and detestable bias for music, forbade 
 him going where music could be heard, and 
 banished all musical instruments from the 
 house. Gluck's parents were too poor to 
 gratify their son's natural yearning for 
 musical instruction, and difficulties opposed 
 him at every step of his career, which noth- 
 ing but his own extraordinary combative- 
 ness and singleness of purpose could have 
 surmounted. Had the chief of song- writers, 
 Schubert, imbibed the influence of his home, 
 and yielded to the tyranny of antecedents 
 
 13
 
 194 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 for several generations, he would simply 
 have added one more to the innumerable and 
 indistinguishable company of Germany's 
 school-masters. Schumann's environments 
 were books, and an ardent intention on 
 the part of both parents that he should be- 
 come a lawyer. But not even the laws of 
 music, as then recognized, could inspire re- 
 spect in the mind of this pioneer futurist. 
 
 What congeniality may we imagine there 
 could have been between the pious, ascetic 
 practices of a monastic school and the un- 
 bridled spirit of the great satirist of the 
 Renaissance Rabelais? Precisely the re- 
 verse of the last was the case of the dis- 
 tinguished scholiast, St. Thomas Aquinas. 
 He was descended from a great feudal family, 
 whose every male member had led the stir- 
 ring, adventurous life of a knight, and who, 
 therefore, regarded with no slight disgust, 
 and opposed with no little obstinacy, his 
 natural bent and determination to enter 
 upon the studious, devotional life of the 
 cloister. 
 
 The chief ornament of the Dutch school
 
 GENIUS AND ITS ENVIRONMENT. 195 
 
 of painters, Rembrandt, had to rid his 
 young neck of two millstones one his 
 father's grain-grinding establishment, and 
 the other the University of Leyden, whither 
 he was sent to be fitted for some learned 
 profession before he could, salmon-like, 
 make headway in the element that nature 
 assigned him. Between his father's purpose 
 to make a warrior of him, and his mother's 
 antipodal design to fit him for holy orders, 
 Nicolas Poussin came very nearly being torn 
 in two, and France narrowly escaped los- 
 ing one of her noblest and most versatile 
 masters of art. The happenings of the earlier 
 years of Claude Lorraine's life were singu- 
 larly at variance with his latent genius. His 
 parents could afford him only the scantiest 
 schooling and even this went against his 
 mental grain. Out of school, he was ap- 
 prenticed to a pastry-cook, but he spoilt 
 every pie he got his fingers into. He next 
 took service as a domestic, but soon lost his 
 place through natural awkwardness and ab- 
 sent-mindedness. Finally, adopting the un- 
 conventional life of a tramp, he strolled
 
 196 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 into Italy, and there, hiring himself to a 
 painter, experienced his real birth his ad- 
 vent into the life of art, wherein in due time 
 he achieved the distinction of one of the 
 greatest of landscape painters, and one of 
 the most lovable of men. 
 
 Salvator Rosa was sent to school to qualify 
 for a learned profession, and his teacher was 
 enjoined to punish him whenever he caught 
 him drawing. The father of Benvenuto 
 Cellini tried his utmost to educate his son 
 for his own profession, that of a musician, 
 but the boy, having neither talent nor taste 
 in that direction, finally ran away from home 
 to escape parental coercion, and to give his 
 genius its necessary freedom. So also were 
 Guido 1 s early days actually wasted in prac- 
 tice on the flute to gratif y his father' s desire 
 to make a musician of him. Zampieri's 
 shoe-making father thought his son best 
 fitted for the ecclesiastical state; but the son 
 fulfilled only so much of the original inten- 
 tion as involved the portraiture of the merely 
 sensuous and external characteristics of the 
 saints and holy ones of the church.
 
 GENIUS AND ITS ENVIRONMENT. 197 
 
 Faraday spent his youth in his father's 
 blacksmith-shop, and his early manhood in 
 a book-bindery. After what formulary shall 
 we mix these two factors to make of them an 
 eminent chemist ? A certain burden-bearing 
 young porter of Athens afterward became 
 famous as Protagoras, sophist and orator, 
 whose back nay, whose very neck eventu- 
 ally proved too stiff to bend in reverence 
 even to the gods of the Parthenon. D' Alem- 
 bert, the French mathematician and author, 
 was a foundling of Paris, and was reared 
 by a poor woman who picked him up on 
 the street. Another barefooted gamin, an 
 orphan, became Beranger, a lyric critic of 
 France, whose stirring and pointed verses did 
 more than many political harangues to bring 
 about the revolution of 1830. Cervantes 
 was a Spanish soldier. The most ethereal 
 and delicate of English poets, Keats, first 
 saw the light of day in a stable. The king 
 of violinists, Paganini, was of illegiti- 
 mate birth, and very poor. The Dutch 
 national poet, Joost van den Vondel, served 
 as apprentice to a stocking-weaver. The 
 
 13
 
 198 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 most magnetic of English revivalists, White- 
 field, arose from the condition of a stable- 
 boy. Sir Richard Arkwright, the inventor 
 of the spinning-jenny, was in youth a bar- 
 ber's assistant, and had no schooling until 
 past twenty years of age. In the same trade 
 also were reared Turner and Tenterden, the 
 foremost of English landscape painters. 
 Benjamin West was a Pennsylvania farm- 
 er's boy. The trade of watch-maker was 
 that of Beaumarchais, the French dramatist. 
 Hans Christian Andersen, the charming 
 story-teller, was once a cobbler. A kitchen- 
 boy developed into Dr. Prideaux, Bishop of 
 Worcester. 
 
 Moliere, the head of the comic dramatists 
 of France, was the son of an upholsterer. 
 Though well-educated, he followed his 
 father's business for several years; then 
 .studied in turn both law and theology, 
 when, under the stress of some apparently 
 perverse, if not devilish impulse, he joined 
 a band of strolling players, and thereby 
 came into possession of his rightful role 
 upon the stage of life. Correggio was born
 
 GENIUS AND ITS ENVIRONMENT. 199 
 
 of very poor and humble parents; had no 
 teacher, and never studied the works of any 
 artist; and yet, guided by an innate love for 
 art and indefatigable devotion to it, he is 
 claimed to have surpassed even Raphael in 
 exquisite grace of delineation. Dickens' 
 education was of the meagerest sort, and 
 his early employments were of the most hu- 
 miliating character. Sir David Brewster's 
 father, who was rector of a grammar school, 
 educated his son for the ministry, although 
 his predilections even from boyhood favored 
 scientific studies. Cardinal Richelieu was 
 for a time disciplined for the army. The 
 father of Linnaeus, himself a Lutheran 
 pastor, originally designed his nature-seek- 
 ing son for the church, and later apprenticed 
 him to a shoe-maker. Euripides, one of the 
 three great tragic poets of Greece, tested his 
 abilities as an athlete, then as a painter, then 
 as a student of rhetoric and philosophy, be- 
 fore he became aware of his real fitness. 
 Calvin was educated for the law, but, un- 
 fortunately for Draco, he subsequently em- 
 braced theology. Lessing, the eminent critic
 
 200 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 and dramatist, was designed for priestly 
 orders. Galileo was schooled at first for 
 monastic orders, and afterward for the med- 
 ical profession. Michael Angelo's father in- 
 tended him for one of the learned profes- 
 sions, and strove by threats and even blows 
 to deter the boy from following his natural 
 inclinations. Tycho Brahe, the distinguished 
 astronomer, was put to reading law at six- 
 teen, but passed whole nights in pursuit of 
 his favorite study. Audubon's father in- 
 tended his son for the navy or engineering, 
 and sent him to France to be taught mathe- 
 matics, drawing, geography, fencing, and 
 music. But even in drawing, the most con- 
 genial of them, the boy's natural taste re- 
 vealed itself in his fondness for represent- 
 ing birds. Meissonier, the greatest, perhaps, 
 of living painters, never knew the date of 
 his birth, or who either of his parents was. 
 His whole youth was passed in poverty and 
 neglect, one scanty meal a day being his 
 usual allowance. He never knew how he 
 learned to paint, and was himself a master 
 when, out of deference to general usage
 
 GENIUS AND ITS ENVIRONMENT. 201 
 
 merely, he consented to study under a well- 
 known artist of his day. 
 
 From the foregoing instances and any 
 multiplication of them would not apprecia- 
 bly affect the result it would appear that 
 genius, in making its advent into the world, 
 is no respecter of either the abode or the 
 household. The mansion or the hut, the 
 city or the ranch, the philosopher or the 
 ignoramus, are alike privileged to grace its 
 birth-hour. If there be any real preference 
 in the matter, it would seem to lie where 
 Shakespeare has located Sleep's chosen cra- 
 dle, in the lines : 
 
 " Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, 
 Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, 
 And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumbers, 
 Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 
 Under the canopies of costly state, 
 And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody ? " 
 
 Just as the choicest of essences and the 
 most delicate of perfumes are extracted from 
 such coarse and malodorous substances as 
 benzine, coal-tar, and stable-offal, so genius 
 would oftenest seem to be sublimated from 
 the commonest and lowliest of social constit- 
 uents.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT. 
 
 Effects upon Man and His Habitat of the Extremes of Tem- 
 perature and of Configuration. A Mean between these 
 Extremes Necessary for the Best Products either of the 
 Soil or the Intellect. Potency of Physical Environment 
 as seen in the Symbolism of the Earlier Religious (Con- 
 ceptions of Mankind. All Remarkable Peoples, and 
 tlierefore all Remarkable Individuals, have Flourished 
 icithin Hospitable Physical Bounds. The Geographical 
 Lines of such Region. 
 
 We now come to consider those less in- 
 timate and not so obvious elements of life's 
 make-up the influences of surrounding geo- 
 graphical factors. 
 
 There can no longer be any doubt, if there 
 ever was, that the physical conditions under 
 which a people live have a great deal to do 
 with the constitutional outcome of that 
 people; and, of course, if this be true of a 
 whole community, or nation, or race, it is 
 equally true of every individual of those 
 aggregates, and therefore of the geniuses 
 comprehended therein. 
 
 In the first place, it must be conceded by 
 
 (303)
 
 204 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 all that any extreme of temperature, whether 
 frigid or torrid when the permanent and 
 normal status of a region is wholly prevent- 
 ive of any but the lowest types of human 
 development, be it physical, or intellectual, 
 or sesthetical, or moral, or industrial, or 
 governmental. Tropical, and particularly 
 equatorial, heat completely dries up the 
 mounting sap of human energy; while the 
 intense cold of polar latitudes stagnates and 
 solidifies the natural currents of human en- 
 deavor. It is therefore to countries whose 
 climates mainly lie somewhere between these 
 extreme temperatures, and where intensity of 
 heat and cold is the rare exception rather 
 than the rule, that we must look for the 
 peoples and the individuals who have made 
 their presence among mankind effective 
 historical. 
 
 The same, or very nearly the same, asser- 
 tion may be made concerning the remaining 
 physical constituents of a country. Ex- 
 tremes in configuration whether it be -the 
 monotony of a prairie or desert, or the op- 
 pressiveness of surrounding mountains are
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT. 205 
 
 alike productive of natural sterility, and 
 sterility is almost invariably accompanied 
 by poverty in the stock of the inhabitants. 
 A mean between these extremes the variety 
 which comes from a certain happy blending 
 of the two is the indispensable condition of 
 fertility in the soil; and where the latter 
 prevails, there is certain to be found the 
 presence of a prosperous and progressive 
 people. Furthermore, where the physical 
 conditions are such as to bring about a 
 prodigality of natural supply, this extreme 
 is quite as preventive of the best results of 
 human growth as the opposite one of steril- 
 ity; for both alike militate against that 
 healthful putting forth of human energy 
 without which mankind must lapse into 
 stolidity on the one hand or sensuality on 
 the other. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking exhibition of 
 the modifying effects of physical surround- 
 ings upon mankind is to be met with in the 
 history of the various religious beliefs that 
 have prevailed. And in this connection it 
 should be remembered that until recent
 
 206 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 times a people's religious creed compre- 
 hended its whole intellectual as well as its 
 emotional experiences. Though, doubtless, 
 not unfamiliar, a few illustrations of the 
 above statement may not be out of place 
 here. 
 
 In such countries as Egypt, Babylonia, 
 and Arabia, whose surfaces are monoto- 
 nously level and quite destitute of physical 
 diversity, but whose cloudless skies and 
 vaporless atmospheres display the heavenly 
 bodies in uncomparable multitude and brill- 
 iancy, it was these resplendent celestial 
 luminaries that attracted the eyes, and 
 through these dominated the entire mental 
 and spiritual activities of the people. In 
 Africa and South America, where profuse 
 and colossal forms of animal and plant con- 
 stitute the most familiar features of man's 
 physical surrounding, the native mind in- 
 carnates its deities and religious ideas in 
 trees or beasts of particularly impressive 
 types. In northern lands, where lofty and 
 rugged mountains, rain, hail, snow, and 
 boisterous and icy winds make up the normal
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT. 207 
 
 expression of his physical abode, there we 
 find man cherishing snch religious concep- 
 tions as Thor the thunderer, Woden the 
 stormful, and Loki the vengeful. 
 
 On the other hand, in a locality like 
 Greece, where land and water, heat and 
 cold, cloud and sunshine, fertility and steril- 
 ity, grandeur and beauty of landscape 
 conspired for the production of a most 
 delightfully varied physical panorama, there 
 we find the human mind symbolizing in each 
 of these numberless natural appearances 
 some conception pertaining to the supernat- 
 ural. Snow-capped and cloud-gated Olym- 
 pus suggested the inaccessible abode of the 
 gods, while any one of the many and lovely 
 valleys might serve as a type of Elysium, 
 the garden abode of the departed good. 
 Thunder and lightning were lodged in om- 
 nipotent Zeus; roseate morning was known 
 as blushing Aurora; the all-conquering light 
 and heat of the sun betokened chariot-driv- 
 ing Phoebus Apollo; the quaking, noise, and 
 eruptive destruction of the volcano were in- 
 dicative of the smithy occupations of brawny
 
 208 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Vulcan; the delights of the chase were dedi- 
 cated to virtuous Diana; conviviality, in- 
 spired by wine, claimed voluptuous Bacchus 
 for its patron; while each water-course was 
 haunted by its nymph, and each wood by 
 its dryad, with character expressive of their 
 material peculiarities. 
 
 But illustrations like the foregoing might 
 be adduced almost without limit to show 
 how that, without exception, all the relig- 
 ious conceptions which is tantamount to 
 saying all the intellectual conceptions of 
 the primary branches of the human family 
 have been signally and quite permanently 
 influenced by the physical environment of 
 the peoples cherishing them. The applica- 
 tion we would make of this clearly admis- 
 sible fact is that physical environment, so 
 potent in its modifying effects upon the 
 mental life of the past, is still, and always 
 must be, a great leavener of human concep- 
 tions, a dynamic force in the life of every 
 man, and particularly in that of the genius; 
 for the latter must be allowed to be as pre- 
 ternaturally sensitive to the touches of
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT. 209 
 
 nature around him as he is extraordinarily 
 endowed in other respects. 
 
 In harmony with the foregoing observa- 
 tions, and as a logical induction from them, 
 it may be added that just as no people of 
 more than ordinary intelligence has ever 
 flourished within inhospitable physical 
 bounds, so no genius has ever been known 
 to have sprung up in a country of pro- 
 nouncedly unfavorable physical conditions. 
 It is not the poles, with their ice-locked and 
 desolate solitudes, nor the equator, with its 
 exuberance of fauna and flora; it is not the 
 snow-wrapped mountain height, nor the low- 
 lying desert, none of these, that has chanced 
 to be the cradle of extraordinary men. 
 Rather do we find them only within climates 
 and localities which are the means of these 
 extremes, and where a certain variety of 
 natural phenomena prevails. 
 
 The extreme geographical limits, then, of 
 the possible habitat of geniuses may be de- 
 fined as the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of 
 Cancer, about midway between which lies its 
 most favorable region. 
 
 14
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF EACE. 
 
 All Great Achievements have Proceeded from either the Cau- 
 casian or the Mongolian Race; ergo, all Geniuses have 
 Emerged from One or the Other of these Races. Con- 
 firmatory Opinionx of Grant Allen and John BurrougJis. 
 
 A third element of environment is race; 
 by which we would designate all those phys- 
 ical and mental peculiarities inhering in the 
 distinctive character and constitution of the 
 people among whom one's life is cast. 
 
 If we catechise human history we shall 
 find that all the great achievements of the 
 past, whether material or intellectual, social 
 or political, have proceeded from but two of 
 the five generally recognized races the Cau- 
 casian and the Mongolian. 
 
 The but little understood and yet splendid 
 civilizations of the Orient those of China, 
 Northern India, Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, 
 and Carthage; the more recent, and in many 
 points superior, enlightenment of the classic 
 epoch; also the latest, the present, whose 
 
 (211)
 
 212 A STUDY OP" GENIUS. 
 
 theaters of display are Europe and North 
 America these all had their beginning and 
 development among one or other of the vari- 
 ous branches or families constituting the 
 two races above named. This fact, as a 
 matter of course, comprehends the minor one 
 but that in which we are especially inter- 
 ested namely : that all of the extraordinary 
 individuals the geniuses known to us 
 have emerged from one or other of the 
 branches of these same most influential 
 races. 
 
 The reason for this is so obvious that we 
 need hardly pause to indicate it. The gen- 
 ius confessedly must be made up of not 
 only such human stuff as is found alone in a 
 superior race, but also only of the best of 
 such stuff; for he must be a superior among 
 superiors the consummate flower, the sur- 
 passing fruit of his people else is he no 
 genius at all, but one at best only a little 
 above the undistinguished average. 
 
 Race, then, we must admit to be an indis- 
 pensable factor indeed, the most funda- 
 mental physical condition of genius. But
 
 INFLUENCE OF RACE. 213 
 
 race itself, as we have already tried to show, 
 is in great part the natural outcome of geo- 
 graphical environment; and so the influence 
 of race upon genius resolves itself ultimately 
 into the prior consideration of the influence 
 of geographical condition upon genius. 
 
 Grant Allen, in a recent essay, also indi- 
 cates the power of race and national char- 
 acteristics upon individual development. 
 He says: "Except in a generally mechan- 
 ical race, you will not find a Watt or an 
 Edison; except in a generally literary race, 
 you will not find a Shakespeare or a Goethe; 
 except in a generally aesthetic race, you will 
 not find a Leonardo or a Beethoven. 
 
 "Every race possesses a certain mean of 
 character intellectual, emotional, moral, 
 and aesthetic. From this mean variations 
 arise in every particular on either side, and 
 the variations always bear a certain general 
 proportion to the mean; they seldom very 
 largely deflect from it in either direction, 
 and never very largely in the direction of 
 higher or increased powers. If fortuitous 
 geniuses were to spring up independent of 
 
 14
 
 214 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 function, we might find an occasional philos- 
 opher among the naked Australians, or a 
 stray Cimabue among the half -human Ved- 
 dahs. If you can account for the average, 
 you have accounted for the exceptions, 
 which must, as a mathematical necessity, 
 arise from the constant blending of vari- 
 ously constituted stocks. And when we ask, 
 What accounts for the average ? there is 
 only one answer possible the geographical 
 environment. 
 
 "There could have been no Shakespeare 
 if the Elizabethan audiences of the globe 
 had not been prepared to appreciate the del- 
 icate fancy of ' Midsummer Night's Dream' 
 and the vulgar badinage of the 'Merry 
 Wives of Windsor.' Athens had a Par- 
 thenon, not because there was a Phidias 
 there ready to build one, but because there 
 was a large body of citizens who wanted a 
 Parthenon built. The geographical condi- 
 tions had set most Athenians on the artistic 
 groove, and thus many of them took to art 
 as their most natural career." 
 
 Following in the same train of thought
 
 INFLUENCE OF RACE. 215 
 
 come the opinions of John Burroughs upon 
 the subject. He writes: "Does anyone 
 doubt that the great poets and artists are 
 made up mainly of the most common uni- 
 versal human characteristics ? that in them, 
 though working to other ends, is all that 
 makes the soldier, the sailor, the farmer, the 
 discoverer, the bringer-to-pass in any field, 
 and that their work is good and enduring in 
 proportion as it is saturated and fertilized 
 by the qualities of these? Good human 
 stock is the main dependence. No great 
 poet ever appeared except from a race of 
 good fighters, good eaters, good sleepers, 
 good breeders. Literature dies with the de- 
 cay of the unliterary element. It is not in 
 the spirit of something far away in the 
 clouds, or under the moon something ethe- 
 real, visionary, and anti-mundane that An- 
 gelo, Dante, and Shakespeare work, but in 
 the spirit of the common nature and the 
 homeliest of facts ; through these, and not 
 away from them, the path of the creator 
 lies."
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 
 
 TJutt the Age forms the Man is affirmed by Macaulay, Alison, 
 Mattliew Arnold, and Emerson. Influence of Enlighten- 
 ment. Opinion of Addison. Macaulay regards tJie Cre- 
 ative and tlie Critical Faculties as opposed to each oilier. 
 Reasons of Alison for believing Civilization an impediment 
 to the rise of Oeniuses. An Enlightened Age unfavor- 
 able to tlie riac of only one sort of Genius the one w/iose 
 creations involve chiefly tlie free exercise of tlie imagina- 
 tion and tlie emotions all others being favored by increase 
 of knowledge. 
 
 Let us now consider the fourth and last- 
 named factor of human environment the 
 influence upon him of the peculiar civiliza- 
 tion of the age in which the genius lives. 
 
 Macaulay, in his essay on Dryden, de- 
 clares : "In fact, it is the age that forms 
 the man, not the man that forms the age. 
 Great minds do indeed react upon the so- 
 ciety which has made them what they are; 
 but they only pay with interest what they 
 have received. We extol Bacon, and sneer 
 at Aquinas; but if their situations had -been 
 changed, Bacon might have been the Angel-
 
 218 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 ical Doctor, the most subtle Aristotelian of 
 the schools ; the Dominican might have led 
 out the sciences from their house of bond- 
 age. If Luther had been born in the tenth 
 century, he would have effected no reforma- 
 tion." 
 
 The very same thought is expressed by 
 Alison in his essay on Bossuet, when he 
 says : " How much soever we may ascribe 
 and sometimes with justice ascribe to the 
 force and ascendant of individual genius, 
 nothing is more certain than that, in the 
 general case, it is external events and cir- 
 cumstances which give a certain bent to hu- 
 man speculation, and that the most original 
 thought is rarely able to do much more than 
 anticipate by a few years the simultaneous 
 efforts of inferior intellects." 
 
 Matthew Arnold also recognizes the weight 
 of circumstances. He writes : ' ' For the 
 creation of a master-work of literature two 
 powers must concur, the power of the man 
 and the power of the moment, and the man 
 is not enough without the moment." 
 
 And the foregoing opinions are substan-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 219 
 
 tially indorsed in the following pithy utter- 
 ance from Emerson : "The greatest genius 
 is the most indebted man." 
 
 Is an enlightened age favorable to the 
 development of genius? Addison locates 
 one of his two kinds of great men in such 
 an age, and says of such: "This class of 
 great geniuses are those that have formed 
 themselves by rules, and submitted the 
 greatness of their natural talents to the cor- 
 rections and restraints of art. Such among 
 the Greeks were Plato and Aristotle; among 
 the Romans, Virgil and Tully; among the 
 English, Milton and Sir Francis Bacon. The 
 genius in both these classes of authors [the 
 first class being men who have sprung to 
 celebrity without educational aids] may be 
 equally great, but shows itself after a differ- 
 ent manner. In the first it is like a rich soil 
 in a happy climate, that produces a whole 
 wilderness of noble plants, rising in a thou- 
 sand beautiful landscapes, without any cer- 
 tain order or regularity. In the other it is 
 the same rich soil, under the same happy cli- 
 mate, that has been laid out in walks and
 
 220 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 parterres, and cut into shape and beauty by 
 the skill of the gardener." 
 
 It seems to be the general opinion, how- 
 ever, that genius and that power which 
 comes from intellectual discipline, and is 
 ministered to by a high degree of surround- 
 ing culture, are incompatible, or at least un- 
 neighborly. 
 
 Just as the highest degree of homoge- 
 neousness, thickness, and evenness in glass 
 detracts from its susceptibility to the most 
 brilliant color effects, so extraordinary cult- 
 ure, it is thought, tends to interfere with 
 the finest displays of genius. 
 
 In his essay on Dryden, Macaulay uses 
 these expressions : "It seems that the cre- 
 ative faculty and the critical faculty can not 
 exist together in their highest perfection. 
 While he [referring to Shakespeare] aban- 
 dons himself to the impulse of his imagina- 
 tion, his compositions are not only the sweet- 
 est and the most sublime, but also the most 
 faultless that the world has ever seen; but 
 as soon as his critical powers come into play 
 he sinks to the level of Cowley, or rather he
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 221 
 
 does ill what Cowley did well. The only 
 thing wanting to make his works perfect was 
 that he should never have troubled himself 
 with thinking whether they were good or not. 
 
 "The few great works of imagination 
 which appear in a critical age are, almost 
 without exception, the works of uneducated 
 men. Thus, at a time when persons of qual- 
 ity translated French romances, and when 
 the universities celebrated royal deaths in 
 verses about Tritons and Fauns, a preaching 
 tinker produced the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 And thus a ploughman startled a genera- 
 tion, which had thought Hayley and Beattie 
 great poets, with the adventures of Tarn 
 O'Shanter." 
 
 In one of his astute, graceful, and eloquent 
 essays, Alison declares: "Genius sinks in 
 the progress of society, as much as science 
 and the arts rise. Originality perishes 
 amidst acquisition. Freshness of concep- 
 tion is its life; like the flame, it burns fierce 
 and pure in the first gales of a pure atmos- 
 phere, but languishes and dies in that pol- 
 luted by many breaths."
 
 222 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 And the same author proceeds to account 
 for this incompatibility between creative 
 genius and enlightened environments in the 
 following passage : 
 
 "There is a most grievous impediment 
 to genius in later, or, as we term them, 
 more civilized times, from which, in earlier 
 ages, it is wholly exempt. Criticism, public 
 opinion, the dread of ridicule, too often 
 crush the strongest minds. The weight of 
 former examples, the influence of early hab- 
 its, the halo of long-established reputation, 
 force original genius from the untrodden 
 path of invention into the beaten one of imi- 
 tation. Early genius feels itself overawed 
 by the colossus which all the world adores; 
 it falls down and worships instead of con- 
 ceiving. The dread of ridicule extinguishes 
 originality in its birth. Immense is the in- 
 cubus thus laid upon the efforts of genius. 
 It is the chief cause of the degradation of 
 taste, the artificial style, the want of original 
 conception, by which the literature of old 
 nations is invariably distinguished. The 
 early poet or painter who portrays what he
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 223 
 
 feels or has seen, with no anxiety but to do 
 so powerfully and truly, is relieved of a load 
 which crushes his subsequent compeers to 
 the earth. Mediocrity is ever envious of gen- 
 ius ordinary capacity of original thought. 
 Such envy in early times is innocuous, or 
 does not exist, at least to the extent which is 
 felt so baneful in subsequent periods; but in 
 a refined and enlightened age its influence 
 becomes incalculable. Whoever strikes out 
 a new region of thought or composition, 
 whoever opens a fresh vein of imagery or 
 excellence, is persecuted by the critics. He 
 disturbs settled ideas, endangers established 
 reputation, brings forward rivals to domi- 
 nant fame. That is sufficient to render him 
 the enemy of all existing rulers in the world 
 of taste. Racine's tragedies were received 
 with such a storm of criticism as well-nigh 
 cost the sensitive author his life; and Rous- 
 seau was so rudely handled by contemporary 
 writers on his first appearance that it con- 
 firmed him in his morbid hatred of civiliza- 
 tion. The vigor of this great man, indeed, 
 overcame the obstacles created by contem-
 
 224 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 porary envy; but how seldom, especially in 
 a refined age, can genius effect such a prod- 
 igy ! how often is it crushed in the outset of 
 its career, or turned aside into the humble 
 and unobtrusive path of imitation, to shun 
 the danger with which that of originality is 
 beset!" 
 
 It will be noticed that in the foregoing 
 criticism the influence 'of learning is repre- 
 sented to be inimical to but one sort of gen- 
 ius that in which imagination constitutes 
 the preponderating element. We think it 
 can not be doubted that the chief works of 
 the most nearly pure imagination among 
 every people have originated either in the 
 earliest the least lettered years of their 
 national existence, or else with authors who 
 themselves were unschooled, or else, if edu- 
 cated, have proudly chosen to rely upon 
 their own intellectual birth-dower. Such 
 surely is the history of such works as the 
 Iliad and the Odyssey, the Arabian Nights 
 Entertainments, the Nibelungen Lied, Don 
 Quixote, the Arthurian Legends, the Canter- 
 bury Tales, the Robin Hood Ballads, the
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 225 
 
 Faerie Queen, Pilgrim's Progress, and others 
 of a like prevailingly imaginative order of 
 composition. 
 
 The case is different, however, with all 
 other orders of genius. Every known ma- 
 chine and mechanical principle aids the in- 
 ventor in devising improved methods or in 
 hitting out new processes. Every additional 
 fact and law in science only the more com- 
 pletely equips the investigator for detecting 
 new phenomena or new functions of well- 
 known agents. No past period in the his- 
 tory of science or of mechanical invention 
 has been so luxuriant in increase of knowl- 
 edge or so affluent in its accumulated stores 
 of specific intelligence as has the last half- 
 century; and yet within this very period of 
 noontide illumination have been discovered 
 some of the grandest scientific truths ever 
 known to man, and some of the most ingen- 
 ious, useful, and wonderful inventions ever 
 contrived by the human mind. Genius, 
 then, of the scientific and inventive order, 
 would seem to thrive upon multiplication of 
 facts; and the more brilliant and numerous 
 
 16
 
 226 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 the lights of knowledge turned upon it, the 
 intenser its own reflections and the more 
 dazzling its native coruscations. 
 
 But what we have claimed for these two 
 particular orders of genius the scientific 
 and the inventive is equally applicable to 
 all sorts of constructive, synthetic, and gen- 
 eralizing geniuses. Facts, truths, principles, 
 these are the raw materials upon which they 
 work, and out of which they weave their fine- 
 textured systems, or smelt their golden laws. 
 The more prolific, then, the age in these essen- 
 tial knowledges, the greater the opportuni- 
 ties and incentives of the geniuses of that 
 age for distinguished achievements. An en- 
 lightened age, therefore, must be regarded as 
 not only favorable for the rise and maturity 
 of geniuses generally, but as absolutely 
 essential to such a consummation. 
 
 One variety only can claim exemption from 
 this general rule, and that, as we have already 
 seen, the kind that either spins its marvelous 
 fabrics quite exclusively out of the imma- 
 terial essences of imagination pure and sim- 
 ple, or else restricts its activity to those
 
 INFLUP:NCE OF THE AGE. 227 
 
 fundamental sentiments and emotions of 
 mankind which, in every clime and age of 
 the world, have remained, and always will 
 remain, substantially unchanged. The phi- 
 losopher in physics, in mechanics, in politics, 
 in religion, in sociology, in morals, in aesthet- 
 ics, must predicate his own original triumphs 
 upon a knowledge, if not of all that has pre- 
 ceded him in his special field of inquiry, 
 then certainly of the best of such, and the 
 broader and more exact such knowledge, the 
 surer his chances of original exploit and the 
 more lustrous such exploit; but the poet and 
 the romancist may, in a great measure, dis- 
 pense with the officious services of learning, 
 though there is no necessity for their so 
 doing; and the instances of such independ- 
 ence are comparatively few.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE AGE 
 CONTINUED. 
 
 The Great Geniuses of tlie Race center around the Fourth and 
 Fifth Centuries before Christ, and the Sixteenth, Seven- 
 teenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth of our own Era. The 
 Geniuses of the Ante- Christian Centuries liave belonged 
 almost entirely to tlie Greek Nationality. Reasons for 
 this Monopoly. The four Genius-attracting Centuries of 
 the Christian Era considered in Chronological Order. 
 Preparatory Events. The discovery of Gunpowder, inven- 
 tion of the Mariner's Compass, rounding of Cape of Good 
 Hope, discovery of America, revival of Literature and of 
 the Arts and Sciences, and tlie Reformation. The Six- 
 teenth Century its Wars, its Scientific Progress, its 
 wonderful Art and Literary developments. The Seven- 
 teenth Century. Rise of tlie Spirit of Nationality. Wars 
 of the Century, and its Illustrious Military Leaders. Its 
 Intellectual Movements. Tlie Golden Age of France. 
 Literature and Science in England, and Art on the Con- 
 tinent. 
 
 If we arrange the names of acknowledged 
 geniuses tinder the various centuries in which 
 they have severally nourished, we shall find 
 them grouped around certain chronological 
 nodes, which we can not fail to notice are 
 both few in number and peculiar as to 
 location. Of those who lived before the 
 
 15
 
 230 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Christian era, by far the greater number will 
 be met with in the fourth and fifth centuries; 
 while the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, 
 and nineteenth centuries quite monopolize 
 those who have flourished since the time of 
 Christ. The latter number, too, is quite 
 equally divided between the four centuries 
 named. 
 
 The query very naturally arises, Why this 
 peculiar and very irregular distribution of 
 geniuses? What extraordinary and spe- 
 cially propitious influences belonged to these 
 above-named centuries, that caused them to 
 act like mighty intellectual magnets, attract- 
 ing to themselves the finest tempered and 
 most sterling metal of the human race ? Let 
 us consider briefly the social, political, and 
 intellectual characteristics of these excep- 
 tionally fruitful centuries, and see, if we can 
 discover any necessary connection between 
 them and the illustrious minds that adorned 
 them. 
 
 Let us attend, first, to the two centuries 
 that lie before the Christian era. Of course, 
 in the civilizations that preceded these peri-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 231 
 
 ods there are to be found, at intervals, 
 isolated names of illustrious men, such as 
 Confucius, Nebuchadnezzar, Sesostris, Moses, 
 David, Solomon, Zoroaster, Cyrus; but it 
 must be owned that our knowledge of those 
 early ages and Oriental peoples is so scanty 
 and unsatisfactory, that we are precluded 
 from forming any definite notions of the 
 social and intellectual environments of the 
 few extraordinary men whose names have 
 survived, but who themselves are hardly 
 more than mythic. Excepting from this 
 remark the names of Moses, David, and Sol- 
 omon, still must we exclude them from our 
 present consideration, upon the ground of 
 the accredited supernatural influences by 
 which they were actuated. Well-authenti- 
 cated and purely human factors are the only 
 ones we feel warranted in dealing with in 
 our present inquiry. And so we come to 
 the two centuries before Christ the fourth 
 and fifth within which we find gathered a 
 remarkable number of illustrious men, and 
 concerning which we have sufficient data to 
 enable us to judge intelligently of their 
 peculiar social and political institutions.
 
 232 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 A fact still more surprising than that 
 which restricts the geniuses of the ante- 
 Christian era to two consecutive centuries is 
 this: these geniuses, almost without excep- 
 tion, belonged to one and the same nation- 
 ality the Greek. 
 
 This people, the most remarkable that has 
 ever arisen, had been forming for an indefi- 
 nite period anterior to the times now referred 
 to. Originally of a strong, active, aggressive 
 stock, they, by the mountainous character 
 of their country and its extraordinary expos- 
 ure to the sea, had been developed into a 
 courageous, independent, freedom - loving 
 people at home, while abroad they were 
 bold, enterprising, commercial, and colony- 
 planting. Domestic rivalries discovered their 
 governmental talents, as well as their mili- 
 tary energies, to the utmost, while contact 
 with the older Eastern civilizations enabled 
 them to cull thence the choicest products of 
 those riper experiences. Then the mild and 
 equable climate of their peninsular home 
 its all but cloudless sky, its endless variety 
 of valley, mountain, and water-margin these
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 233 
 
 physical environments, through the agency 
 of poet and philosopher, had wrought in the 
 preternaturally susceptible Greek mind a 
 fabric of cosmogonical and theogonical con- 
 ceptions more elaborate, significant, and 
 ideally beautiful than anything before 
 known of among men. 
 
 Up to the fifth century before Christ, if 
 we may discard the great event of her mythic 
 cycle the Trojan War Greece had achieved 
 no foreign military exploit, neither were any 
 of her internal struggles of national impor- 
 tance. But just at this time occurred the 
 event which called forth into their fullest 
 action all those teachings of liberty, of patri- 
 otism, of personal, local, and national prow- 
 ess, of poetic fervor, of oratory, and of 
 national piety, that the five or six centuries 
 of previous domestic training had engen- 
 dered and stored up in this remarkable 
 people. Her whole preceding history may 
 be regarded as her childhood and youth, and 
 the domestic contentions of that period as 
 the athletic exercises of the gymnasium, 
 while the present event the Persian War
 
 234 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 marks the commencement of her full-grown, 
 her Amazonian maturity. And what a ma- 
 turity that proved to be that could maintain 
 itself against, nay, overcome, such tremen- 
 dous odds as were hurled against it in those 
 two Persian invasions odds in numbers, in 
 military equipment and supplies, and in the 
 experience of arms and prestige of conquest ! 
 And what a salutary effect the disclosure of 
 the innate military genius of the people had 
 upon their whole subsequent development ! 
 It was devoted, not, as with the Romans, to 
 foreign aggressions, but, as in the case of 
 the Spartans, to perfecting a complete do- 
 mestic military establishment, and, as with 
 the Athenians, in evolving a form of govern- 
 ment that secured to every citizen fullest 
 liberty of action, and stimulated him to 
 most ambitious endeavor. 
 
 Is it any wonder, then, that events which 
 called forth, as their inevitable results, the 
 extremest exercise of such qualities as patri- 
 otism, physical and moral courage, and 
 piety, and, as their remoter consequences, 
 the privilege of and incitement to the fullest
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 235 
 
 display of the human faculties in the direc- 
 tion of art, poetry, philosophy, statecraft, 
 commerce is it any wonder that such events 
 should have discovered, in all departments 
 of human endeavor, men endowed with 
 extraordinary powers of mind? And so, 
 immediately following, if not attending, 
 these great social and political disturbances, 
 we find coming to light the greatest number 
 of the greatest geniuses that flourished in 
 any one or two centuries anterior to the 
 Christian era, of which we have reliable data. 
 The lives of the three greatest dramatic 
 poets of Greece were, in a truly remarkable 
 manner, connected with the battle of Sala- 
 mis; for ^schylus fought in the ranks upon 
 that occasion, Sophocles was one of the 
 chorus of youths that aided in celebrating 
 the victory, and Euripides was born on the 
 day of the engagement. Moreover, the 
 events of the Persian War, and the phenom- 
 enal development in literature and the arts 
 that shortly ensued, became the informing 
 themes of the writings of these dramatists. 
 Contemporary with the last-named of the
 
 236 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 three was Aristophanes also, who brought 
 comedy to perfection. Within this same 
 period, also, the prose literature of Greece 
 was ushered into richest bloom : philosophy, 
 under the undying touch of Socrates, Plato, 
 and Aristotle; history, by the indelible pens 
 of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; 
 rhetoric and oratory, by the still audible 
 tongues of Isocrates, Demosthenes, and JEs- 
 chines: Architecture and sculpture, too, the 
 most virile and enduring of all the rich be- 
 quests of Greece' s classic days, arose to their 
 highest perfection under the speaking chis- 
 els of Phidias, Scopas, Praxitiles, and Ly- 
 sippus; while painting achieved its first 
 great triumph under the cunning hands of 
 Parrhasius, Zeuxis, Timanthes, and Apelles. 
 Leaving now the two centuries preceding 
 the Christian era which drew to themselves 
 the greatest number indeed, the only sur- 
 prising number of extraordinary men, let 
 us next come to the genius-attracting cent- 
 uries of our own era. These, as we have 
 already indicated, are four consecutive cent- 
 uries the sixteenth, the seventeenth, the
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 237 
 
 eighteenth, and the nineteenth. Out of 
 about one hundred and twelve men of con- 
 fessed genius who have flourished in the 
 nineteen centuries of our era, the seventeenth 
 and nineteenth may claim a little less than 
 one-quarter each of the entire number, the 
 sixteenth about a fifth, while the eighteenth 
 comprises nearly a third. Inasmuch as our 
 inquiry concerning the unusual richness in 
 geniuses of the fourth and fifth centuries B. 
 C. would seem to have been rewarded by 
 something like a satisfactory answer, let us 
 next scrutinize to the same end the sixteenth, 
 seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth cent- 
 uries A. D. , taking them in their chronolog- 
 ical order. 
 
 For a century or more preceding the six- 
 teenth, events were happening which were 
 destined to bring about the most potent and 
 perpetually wholesome results. The discov- 
 ery of gunpowder wrought the rapid disin- 
 tegration of chivalry, and the substitution 
 of entirely new methods and appliances in 
 the art of war. The invention of the mari- 
 ner's compass imparted an impulse to navi-
 
 238 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 gation which was paralleled in the domain 
 of letters by the mighty influence attending 
 the introduction of the printing-press. 
 Guided by the compass, we find the Portu- 
 guese, during the latter part of the fifteenth 
 century, extending their explorations along 
 the western coast of Africa, including its 
 outlying islands, rounding the Cape of Good 
 Hope, and mastering a passage to the East 
 Indies, wherein with great perseverance and 
 courage they succeeded in planting commer- 
 cial stations, and thereby opened a new and 
 highly advantageous door-way to the rich 
 merchandise of the Orient. A like zeal in 
 other quarters brought about the still more 
 hazardous, as well as more noteworthy, voy- 
 age of discovery to the New World, and the 
 shortly succeeding conquest by Spaniards of 
 its most civilized portions. 
 
 A little anterior to, as well as contempo- 
 rary with, the foregoing commercial develop- 
 ments, there arose and flourished in Italy a 
 season of extraordinary mental activity. 
 Splendid courts and opulent cities contended 
 with one another as patrons of the arts and
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 239 
 
 sciences. Reigning families and several of 
 the popes set about collecting manuscripts 
 and founding libraries and schools, while 
 printing establishments sprung up in numer- 
 ous localities. The old Latin tongue was 
 sedulously cultivated, and refugees from 
 Byzantium introduced the study of the 
 ancient Greek literature. From Italy this 
 intellectual ferment spread into Germany, 
 where universities, gymnasiums, and educa- 
 tional institutions of all sorts speedily arose. 
 But mightier and, if possible, wider than 
 the material influences of vast and valuable 
 discoveries, than the intellectual influences 
 of, perhaps, the most useful of inventions 
 and of a revival of literature, art, and sci- 
 ence, was the spiritual force of a movement 
 which had its inception in the latter part of 
 the fifteenth century we mean the Reforma- 
 tion. The great wave of intellectual melior- 
 ation of the century, to which we have 
 just referred, produced no perceptible effect 
 upon the sacerdotal orders of the so-called 
 Christian church of the period. The lower 
 clergy were sunk in ignorance and immoral
 
 240 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 sloth, and the higher were largely given up 
 to sensual indulgence and princely extrava- 
 gance both alike quite indifferent to the 
 spiritual and holy interests of their sacred 
 stations. The laity very generally perceived 
 this spiritual declension, and in a more or 
 less aimless way sought to remedy it; but 
 not only were their protests not heeded, the 
 truly devout both of the laity and clergy 
 were at last stung into open revolt by the 
 alarming abuses of the head and of the lead- 
 ing members of the church. Thus, in brief, 
 originated the Reformation, with the Au- 
 gustine monk, Martin Luther, as its master 
 spirit. 
 
 From Germany, its cradle, this regenerat- 
 ing movement swept over the whole of 
 Christianized Europe and Great Britain, di- 
 viding all Christendom into two uncompro- 
 mising parties those who sustained tlie 
 time -honored authority of the Roman 
 church, and those who believed a thorough 
 purification of religious faith and practice 
 necessitated a complete separation from such 
 church. Church and state in those days
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 241 
 
 were too intimately interwoven not to be 
 mutually and radically affected when either 
 member was assailed; consequently, domes- 
 tic, civil, and national disturbances of the 
 most sanguinary nature and most vital con- 
 sequences arose out of this difference of view 
 regarding spiritual affairs, and shook to its 
 very foundations the fabric of society dur- 
 ing the two or three centuries that followed. 
 Now, taking into account these mighty 
 happenings of the latter part of the fifteenth 
 and the whole of the sixteenth century, is it 
 not evident that the material, the intellect- 
 ual, the social, the political, and the spirit- 
 ual interests of mankind in those days ex- 
 isted in a state of phenomenal ebullition ? Is 
 it any wonder, then, that men of capacities 
 and abilities equal to the extraordinary 
 demands of the day should have arisen? 
 With such battles to be fought as those 
 involved in the struggle between the House 
 of Hapsburg and France, the War of Relig- 
 ion in Germany, and the achievement of the 
 independence of the Netherlands, is it not 
 reasonable that we should expect to en-
 
 242 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 counter such, military leaders as Charles V. 
 of Germany, Francis I. of France, Prince 
 Maurice of Saxony, William of Orange and 
 his son Maurice, and the Spanish generals 
 Alba and Parma ? 
 
 In like manner, the religious disturbances 
 preparatory to, and consequent upon, the 
 Reformation furnished abundant material 
 and propitious conditions for the production 
 of such fervent, fearless, and pious cham- 
 pions as Luther and Melancthon, in Ger- 
 many; Zwingle and Calvin, in Switzerland ; 
 Arminius, in the Netherlands ; Knox, in 
 Scotland ; and Cranmer, in England. 
 
 Science, too, during the sixteenth century 
 experienced several of the mightiest im- 
 pulses it has ever known. In Germany, 
 Nicholas Copernicus exposed the utter fals- 
 ity of the Ptolemaic system of the universe, 
 which had been the accepted belief for fif- 
 teen hundred years, and demonstrated the 
 truth of a theory his own which, it is 
 very safe to predict, will last as long as the 
 planets whose motions it defines. Kepler, 
 also a German, discovered his three great
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 243 
 
 laws respecting the orbits and motions of 
 the planets ; and the Italian, Galileo, made 
 his valuable observations concerning oscillat- 
 ing and falling bodies, and just across the 
 border of the century invented the telescope 
 and microscope. 
 
 In this century, and in Italy, we also meet 
 vith the most gifted artists the world has 
 3ver known, in the persons of Michael An- 
 gelo, Raphael, Titian, Leonardo Da Vinci, 
 and Correggio, who marked the culmination 
 of that art movement of the age known as the 
 Renaissance the new birth of the antique, 
 and the abandonment of the traditional and 
 conventional for what was natural. 
 
 Literature also met with a mighty awaken- 
 ing in this century, and gave to the world 
 not a few of its foremost poets and prose 
 writers. Such in England were Shakes- 
 peare, Spenser, Jonson; in Italy, Macchia- 
 velli, Ariosto, and Tasso; in the Spanish 
 peninsula, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and 
 Camoens ; in Germany, Hans Sachs, Brandt, 
 and Fischart; and in France, Rabelais and 
 Montaigne.
 
 244 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The great intellectual and religious forces 
 so active and efficient in the sixteenth cent- 
 ury, far from exhausting themselves in that 
 compass, continued to operate, certainly with 
 unabated, if not increased, vehemence dur- 
 ing the century immediately following. Par- 
 ticularly was this the case with the religious 
 movement that took its rise in the Reforma- 
 tion ; for, though the conflicting interests oi 
 Catholicism and Protestantism may not be 
 alleged as the primary cause of the many 
 wars that characterized the seventeenth cent- 
 ury, yet did they constitute a very promi- 
 nent feature in each. Perhaps the new and 
 distinctive phase of the century was the 
 spirit of nationality that arose in almost 
 every quarter. The Protestant states of the 
 German Empire, in forming a union and 
 arraying themselves in opposition to the 
 tyranny and intolerance of Austria and the 
 Catholic League, took the initial step toward 
 German unification. France and Switzer- 
 land undertook the hazardous task of enlarg- 
 ing their respective territories, and thereby
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 245 
 
 augmenting their national importance; while 
 England not only achieved her rank as mis- 
 tress of the seas, but also began to regard 
 continental nations with magisterial con- 
 cern. 
 
 What a seething caldron the whole of 
 Western Europe and also the British Isles 
 became during this century ! In Germany 
 there arose the Thirty Years' War, dividing 
 the empire into two religious (?) camps the 
 Protestant Union, assisted by France and the 
 Dutch, and the Catholic League, supported 
 by Austria and Spain. When, after twelve 
 years of carnage, the latter party seemed to 
 be gaining the advantage, Sweden, moved 
 not only by her Protestant sympathies, but 
 also by the belief that it was an opportune 
 moment for enlarging her own borders, 
 entered the fray. Then, some five or six 
 years later, when the supremacy seemed 
 again to be about to rest with the imperial 
 party, France eagerly embraced the oppor- 
 tunity for humiliating her rival, Austria, 
 and for adding to her own possessions, by 
 vigorously aiding the Protestant powers, 
 
 16
 
 246 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 until a peace advantageous to the latter and 
 herself was finally conquered. Later still, 
 the efforts of Sweden to conquer Poland and 
 Denmark constitute a brilliant figure in the 
 century. In England, the subversion of the 
 monarchy, the establishment of the common- 
 wealth, and the final restoration of the 
 house of the Stuarts, whereby English so- 
 ciety and institutions were stirred to their 
 prof oundest depths, quite filled up the entire 
 century. France, also, was agitated in every 
 member of her body politic by the most 
 bloody conflicts between Catholics and Hu- 
 guenots. Reference has already been made 
 to the part she bore in the Thirty Years' 
 War. In the latter half of the century, she 
 waged no less than three wars for the acqui- 
 sition of territory that against the Spanish 
 Netherlands, the one against Holland, and 
 a third against Austria, called the War of 
 Orleans. Austria, too, in addition to the 
 internal struggles with her Protestant mem- 
 bers in the Thirty Years' War and her con- 
 flicts with France and Sweden, was called 
 upon in the last quarter of the century to
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 247 
 
 quell a most formidable rebellion upon the 
 part of Hungary, assisted by the Turks. 
 
 What admirable opportunities these nu- 
 merous struggles between the leading powers 
 of Europe afforded for the rise of men of 
 superior administrative and military abili- 
 ties ; nay, what necessity did they lay upon 
 the century for the production of such per- 
 sonages ! And the history of the times 
 assures us that the supply was fully equal 
 to the demand. Of the illustrious military 
 leaders of the age, the Netherlands furnished 
 Tilly, William III. of Orange, and Admiral 
 Tromp ; Bohemia, Wallenstein ; Sweden, 
 Gustavus Adolphus and Charles Gustavus ; 
 France, Turenne and Conde; Germany, 
 Frederick William, Elector of Brandenberg ; 
 Austria, Charles of Lorraine ; and England, 
 Cromwell and Admiral Blake. Though 
 diplomacy and statecraft played a compara- 
 tively inconspicuous part in the great na- 
 tional games of the century, their functions, 
 as in Cromwell's case, being very generally 
 swallowed up in the prerogatives of the ruler, 
 yet did they give rise to a Buckingham and
 
 248 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Hampden in England, and a Richelieu and 
 Mazarin in France. 
 
 But religious and political contentions of 
 the widest and fiercest character not only 
 did not consume the mental resources of the 
 seventeenth century, but seemed rather to 
 incite and augment intellectual movements 
 of every description. Especially was this 
 the case in France. So unprecedented was 
 the development which took place in the 
 reign of Louis XIV. , in foreign and domestic 
 commerce, in home industries, in divers 
 schemes of colonization, in the erection of 
 splendid buildings, both public and private, 
 in the creation and adornment of parks, and 
 in the public patronage of the arts, the sci- 
 ences, and literature, that it has well been 
 styled the Golden Age of France. Dramatic 
 poetry attained its crowning excellence in 
 Corneille and Racine, and comedy in Moliere; 
 while Boileau, LaFontaine, Fenelon, and 
 Bossuet won distinction each in his peculiar 
 literary vein. The fine arts had such illus- 
 trious representatives as Nicholas Poussin 
 and Claude Lorraine, while French philoso-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 249 
 
 phy realized its founder in the eminent 
 Descartes. 
 
 Not alone in Prance, however, was there 
 manifested this spirit of universal aggress- 
 iveness. In all her neighboring states of 
 Western Europe it was also displayed, 
 though not with such prevailing and aston- 
 ishing brilliance. In England it experienced 
 two widely different but quite equally glori- 
 ous manifestations the one a literary flow- 
 ering, with Milton, the sublimest of poets, 
 Bunyan, the most ingenious of allegorists, 
 and Butler, the bitterest of satirists, as its 
 consummate types. The other was a move- 
 ment in which England figured as the 
 monopolist of the scientific progress of the 
 century, as proven by the works of the great 
 expounder and propagandist of inductive 
 philosophy, Francis Bacon ; by the discover- 
 ies of the fundamental properties of light 
 and the law of gravitation by Newton ; and 
 by the demonstration of the true theory of 
 the circulation of the blood by Harvey. 
 
 On the continent, outside France, its chief 
 display was in the direction of art, to which
 
 250 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 it supplied such noted names as Van Dyck 
 and Rubens, of the Flemish school ; Rem- 
 brandt, of the Dutch; Rosa, Guido, Zam- 
 pieri, of the Italian ; and Ribera, Velasquez, 
 and Murillo, of the Spanish.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE AGE 
 CONTINUED. 
 
 The Eighteenth Century Its Wars find their Great Generals 
 Its Industrial and Commercial Progress Development 
 of the Arts, Sciences, and Literature Dominancy of 
 French Ideas England's Contribution to tJie Literary 
 and Scientific Triumphs of the Century. The NineteentJi 
 Century Rise and Spread of tlie Doctrine of Popular 
 Sovereignty The Wars of Napoleon Bonaparte The 
 American Rebellion Non-military Currents of the Cent- 
 ury The Rise of the Romantic and Idealistic Schools of 
 Writers; their Displacement by the Realists Marvelous 
 Development of the Sciences Imprints of the Characteristic 
 Social and Political Movements of the Age upon Modern 
 Music and Art. 
 
 It would be difficult to conceive of times 
 of intenser national commotion than those 
 constituting the eighteenth century. One 
 unbroken succession of wars throughout 
 Europe quite filled up the whole period. 
 First in order of time was the War of the 
 Spanish Succession, which took place be- 
 tween France and a part of Spain on one 
 side, and Austria, Prussia, England, arid 
 Holland on the other. Then, partly con- 
 
 (251)
 
 252 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 temporary with the foregoing, occurred the 
 remarkable engagements, known as the 
 Northern War, between Charles XII. of 
 Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia, as- 
 sisted by Poland and Denmark. In the 
 second quarter of the century we encounter 
 the War of the Austrian Succession, in which 
 Austria and England supported the claims 
 of Maria Theresa against Prussia, France, 
 and Bavaria. The third quarter was signal- 
 ized by the bloody and ruinous Seven Years' 
 War, with Austria, France, and Russia 
 leagued against Prussia, aided by England 
 and a few of the German states ; while into 
 the last and most sanguinary quarter of all 
 were crowded the several wars between Rus- 
 sia and Turkey, the struggle resulting in the 
 partition of Poland, and the appalling 
 French Revolution. England experienced 
 during the century, at home, two several 
 attempts to restore the house of the Stuarts 
 to the throne, and, abroad, the irretrievable 
 loss of her American colonies. 
 
 As has been already observed several 
 times, so again did it happen that the large
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 253 
 
 demands of the century for men qualified to 
 direct its numerous and gigantic military 
 operations were productive of an adequate 
 supply ; for on its battle-fields we meet 
 with such soldier geniuses as Charles XII. of 
 Sweden, Peter the Great of Russia, Prince 
 Eugene of Savoy, the Duke of Marlborough 
 and Lord Nelson of England, Frederick I. 
 and Frederick II. of Prussia, Kosciuszko ot 
 Poland, and Washington of America. 
 
 So sulphurous an atmosphere and so crim- 
 son a soil as those of the eighteenth century 
 would, at first sight, seem wholly hostile 
 conditions for the growth of agriculture, 
 trade, the industries, art, science, and litera- 
 ture, which are generally supposed to be the 
 natural products of peaceful times. But so 
 it came to pass that the mighty military and 
 political convulsions of the century agitated 
 also the more distinctively intellectual cen- 
 ters, and set them in a state of extreme flux 
 and reflux. Accordingly we find such fore- 
 most generals as Peter the Great and the two 
 Fredericks of Prussia quite as zealous, cou- 
 rageous, and effective in developing the
 
 254 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 industrial, commercial, and civilizing inter- 
 ests of their several nations as they were in 
 promoting their military and political wel- 
 fare. The arts, sciences, and literature were 
 fostered not only by the leading potentates 
 of the age, but also by petty princes, who 
 severally sought to make their courts and 
 capitals attractive to men of celebrity, and 
 who stimulated the efforts of poets and lit- 
 erati by rewards and distinctions. And so 
 in Germany especially, during the second 
 half of the century, literature, science, and 
 music realized a development and exercised 
 a refining influence such as modern history 
 can hardly parallel. Letters, in one or other 
 form, had such worthy cultivators as Klop- 
 stock, Lessing, Herder, Wieland, Goethe, 
 Schiller, and Bichter, while the various 
 phases of philosophic thought found exposi- 
 tors in such men as Lavater, Mcolai, Jacobi, 
 and Kant. A hitherto insignificant species 
 of refinement received a phenomenal impulse 
 in the eighteenth century we mean music, 
 intoned by such incomparable masters as 
 Bach, Handel, Grluck, Haydn, Mozart, and 
 Beethoven.
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 255 
 
 In France, also, all varieties of intellectual 
 endeavor found many and worthy votaries; 
 indeed, French ideas, sentiment, style, and 
 language quite dominated the intellectual 
 and governing circles of all Europe during 
 this century. Particularly was this true of 
 the literature of France during the latter 
 part of the century. In it, all existing and 
 hitherto reverenced institutions, whether 
 civil, ecclesiastical, or social, were ruthlessly 
 assailed, and because they were found to 
 contain not a few real blemishes and abuses, 
 the whole fabric of existing society, it was 
 proposed, should be dashed in pieces, and an 
 entirely new order of things substituted. 
 Foremost among the disseminators of these 
 iconoclastic ideas were the satirical Voltaire, 
 the earnest Montesquieu, and the romantic 
 Rousseau. France's contribution to the 
 eminent scientists of the age was also very 
 considerable, D'Alembert, Buff on, Laplace, 
 Linnaeus, Lavoisier, and Bichat being of the 
 number. 
 
 England, too, paraded her full quota of 
 intellectual conquerors. In literature, the
 
 256 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 taste for the ancient classical writings, which 
 sprung up in the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century, grew and extended itself quite 
 over the first half of the eighteenth, bring- 
 ing about such representatives of a symmet- 
 rical, delicate, and polished style of compo- 
 sition as the poets Pope and Swift, and the 
 prose writers Addison, Johnson, and Burke. 
 Later, however, this formal and highly arti- 
 ficial style gave place to a freer, more natural 
 method, as seen in the poems of Thomson, 
 Gray, Goldsmith, Burns, and Cowper. Two 
 new literary forms appeared during the cent- 
 ury the essay, initiated by Steele, Addison, 
 and Swift, and a little later revived by 
 Johnson ; and the novel, or prose fiction, 
 with Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, 
 Goldsmith, and Sterne as its preeminent 
 creators. History, though not originating 
 in the century, experienced its most splendid 
 fulfillment in the writings of Hume, Robert- 
 son, and Gibbon. In science, there appeared 
 one of the most gifted of investigators in 
 Newton, and one of the most renowned of 
 inventors in Watt. Of statesmen and ora-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 257 
 
 tors, we meet with such brilliant examples 
 as Pitt, Fox, Walpole, Burke, and Sheridan. 
 Of divines, there were the world-renowned 
 Wesley and Whitefield. And of artists: 
 Hogarth, the satirist and moralizer; the 
 founder of English landscape painting, Wil- 
 son; the celebrated portrait painters, Rey- 
 nolds and Gainsborough; and the historical 
 artists, West, Barry, and Copley. 
 
 Even youthful America may claim to have 
 furnished the century several perennial 
 names, such as the Adamses, Hamilton, 
 Franklin, and Jefferson. 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The most characteristic feature of the 
 nineteenth century was the rise and triumph 
 of the principle of popular partnership, if 
 not sovereignty, in the affairs of government. 
 The reign of monarchical absolutism, except 
 in Russia and Turkey, was forever termi- 
 nated, and the participation of the masses 
 in the making of the laws by which they 
 were to be governed, and also in the admin- 
 istration of the same, was assured. As tro- 
 
 17
 
 258 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 phies of this popular victory, we witness the 
 achievement of the national integrity and 
 independence of Greece, of Italy, and of Bel- 
 gium, the unification and autonomy of Ger- 
 many, and the oscillation of France between 
 communism and absolutism, finally subsid- 
 ing in a republican form of government. 
 
 Estimable indeed must we regard these 
 national results, if we but consider the enor- 
 mous price in blood and treasure that was 
 paid for them. The whole continent of 
 Europe, from the frozen heart of Russia to 
 the flinty pillars of Hercules, and from the 
 shores of the North Sea to those of the Black 
 Sea, was marched over and battled upon by 
 armies, some of which in numbers and equip- 
 ment had not been equaled since the days of 
 .Alexander and Xerxes; and, responsive to 
 the exigencies of the time, there also arose a 
 captain whose genius for military exploits 
 was certainly not surpassed, if indeed 
 matched, by that of any commander either 
 of ancient or modern days we mean, of 
 course, Napoleon Bonaparte. Other lesser, 
 though still great, commanders were the
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 259 
 
 English Wellington, Nelson, Raglan ; the 
 Austrian Archduke Charles ; the German 
 Bliicher and Von Moltke, and the French 
 Ney, Murat, and MacMahon. 
 
 But not alone in Europe were momentous 
 political and martial events transpiring. 
 Half-way between the third and fourth 
 quarters of the century, there occurred the 
 supreme event of interest on the Western 
 Continent the testing of the ability of the 
 Republic of the United States to maintain 
 its integrity. And when we consider the 
 magnitude of the ensuing struggle the vast 
 number of men marshaled on each side, the 
 treasure expended, the number and ferocity 
 of the battles fought, the extent of the field 
 of operations, and the length of the contest 
 the American Rebellion must be recognized 
 as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, sin- 
 gle war of the century. Of the numerous 
 generals of more than ordinary ability that 
 this civil struggle brought to view, Ulysses 
 S. Grant and Robert E. Lee must be regarded 
 as the most conspicuous representatives of 
 their respective sides.
 
 260 A STUDY OF GENIUS*. 
 
 Surpassing in magnitude and brilliance as 
 the military operations of the present cent- 
 ury must be allowed to be, when compared 
 with those of preceding centuries, it can 
 hardly be claimed that they hold as high a 
 degree of relative preeminence as do the non- 
 military achievements of the century. Ab- 
 solutism, not only in its political form, but 
 in every form, was irreparably burst in 
 pieces by the internal ferments and expan- 
 sions of the age. The paralyzing reverence 
 for existing trammels, whether in religion, 
 science, art, literature, or politics, was sud- 
 denly thrown off, and men everywhere shook 
 themselves as if recovering from a stupor, 
 and suddenly caught glimpses of a day of 
 better things. 
 
 This tendency of the nineteenth century 
 toward growth, expansion, and largest lib- 
 erty of thought and action, has left the 
 foot-prints of its remarkable progress very 
 plainly upon modern literature. It first 
 stormed and demolished what remained of 
 that stronghold of literary despotism 
 eighteenth-century classicism numbering
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 261 
 
 in its ranks such valiant yeomen as Byron, 
 Shelley, Scott, Richter, Tieck, Schlegel, 
 Novalis, Manzoni, and Heine. Then, as the 
 icy control of the hitherto privileged classes 
 gradually melted away before the hot breath 
 of the uprising masses, these romantic and 
 idealistic writers in their turn gave place to 
 a school of realists, whose mission it was to 
 depict the various classes of society, but 
 especially the middle and lower classes 
 the hitherto ignored elements with all pos- 
 sible fidelity. Conspicuous among these 
 portrayers of living persons and contempo- 
 rary scenes, we notice such writers as Dick- 
 ens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Victor Hugo, 
 Balzac, George Sand, Dumas, and Uhland. 
 
 But the most notable, and doubtless the 
 most immediately serviceable, departures 
 from eighteenth-century traditions are to be 
 met with in the domain of science. Except- 
 ing the law of gravitation, the most funda- 
 mental and comprehensive truths ever known 
 to science have been brought to light during 
 the present century a very natural, nay, 
 an all but inevitable result. Scientists never 
 
 17
 
 262 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 have been wanting in the spirit of investiga- 
 tion ; but in days gone by this spirit has 
 been so obstructed in its natural activity, 
 both by private and by public narrowness, 
 as to jeopardize its very existence. But the 
 political cyclones of the early years of the 
 present century swept away, with civil des- 
 potism, all priestly interference with the 
 obviously non-priestly concerns of science. 
 The scientist might now bring nature face to 
 face with mankind, and bid her speak in her 
 own clear, cogent, and fascinating objectiv- 
 ity to the human understanding. And the 
 natural result has been that in the last fifty 
 years men have become acquainted with 
 more and greater truths concerning the ma- 
 terial universe, and have thereby possessed 
 themselves of more and greater appliances 
 for ministering to their material well-being, 
 than in all past ages combined. Such grand 
 physical truths as the conservation and cor- 
 relation of all forms of energy, the glacial 
 theory, the undulatory theory of light, heat, 
 and sound, and the doctrine of evolution, 
 have been revealed and demonstrated
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 263 
 
 through the labors, directly or indirectly, of 
 such investigators as Lyell, Darwin, Agassiz, 
 Spencer, Huxley, Lubbock, Bain, Romanes, 
 Helmholtz, Clerk Maxwell, Morse, Tyndall, 
 Edison, Bunsen, Kirchoff, Marsh, Wallace, 
 Von Baer, and Pasteur, resulting in the 
 present advanced condition of the sciences 
 of astronomy, geology, psychology, chemis- 
 try, and electricity, and in the origination of 
 such others as biology, archaeology, sociol- 
 ogy, philology, and photography. 
 
 The fierce political and social storms of 
 the century produced some unique and ad- 
 mirable effects in the musical culture of the 
 period. We have already referred to the 
 great creative work accomplished by the six 
 master composers of all time, in the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century. They won 
 for music what the ancient Greeks did for 
 architecture the establishment of certain 
 grand orders of composition, which in har- 
 mony of proportion and exquisite finish of 
 parts have come to be acknowledged as 
 classical. Their less gifted successors of the 
 nineteenth century, realizing the impossi-
 
 264 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 bility of remodeling or adding to the glories 
 of these Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian tem- 
 ples of harmony, and yet feeling unwilling 
 any longer to worship exclusively therein, 
 wisely betook themselves to the construction 
 of humbler and more familiar forms of com- 
 position. They seized upon the folk-sagas of 
 the day, upon popular Christian sentiments, 
 upon enthusiastic conceptions of woman, and 
 upon the exploits and sentiments of chivalry, 
 and while treating these themes with becom- 
 ing warmth and freedom of style, imparted 
 also to their compositions much of national 
 feeling. And thus was ushered into being 
 the lyrical the romantic period of musical 
 composition, illustrated, in one or other of 
 its ramifications, by such writers as Schubert, 
 Weber, Spohr, Mendelssohn, Schumann, 
 Meyerbeer, Cherubini, Auber, Rossini, Boiel- 
 dieu, Verdi, Callcott, Balfe, Wallace. 
 
 With all of the foregoing composers, to a 
 greater or less degree, melody, simple and 
 sensuous, became the breath of life of their 
 songs and operatic creations. Beginning a 
 little later in the century, however, and com-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 265 
 
 ing down to our own day, this last-named 
 element of vocal and instrumental composi- 
 tion would seem almost wholly to have 
 disappeared, giving place to a speaking, 
 declamatory method in voice music, and to 
 what is alleged to be a highly descriptive 
 and minutely picturesque style in instru- 
 mental pieces. The foremost exemplifier of 
 this latest school the futurists, as they are 
 called is Wagner, with such illustrious 
 associates as Berlioz, Liszt, and Rubinstein. 
 The various epochs already noted in the 
 history of the literature and music of the 
 nineteenth century are also discernible in 
 that of art. Early in the century we meet 
 with what is called a classical school. This 
 was a decided departure from the affectation 
 and indecency characteristic of the art of the 
 latter half of the eighteenth century, and 
 was brought about by a renewed attention to 
 Greek art, consequent in part upon the exca- 
 vations made at Pompeii. As a result of 
 this study of the works of classical antiq- 
 uity, properer conceptions of the symmetry 
 of the human form and greater skill in por-
 
 266 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 traying the same were attained by artists, 
 prominent among whom we may name such 
 French painters as David, Gerard, J. P. 
 Regnault, Gros, and Pradhon. 
 
 But against the severe restrictions of this 
 classical school there speedily followed a 
 reaction, in keeping with the political and 
 literary currents of the times, in favor of 
 greater freedom, both as regards subject and 
 treatment a freedom that drew its inspira- 
 tion directly from nature and the social 
 happenings of every-day life. This move- 
 ment, which had its inception among David's 
 own pupils, was styled the romantic, Ingres 
 and Delacroix being its leading French 
 exponents. In Germany the same reaction 
 was called the preraphaelite, its chief repre- 
 sentatives, Overbeck, Cornelius, and Kaul- 
 bach, believing that the decadence of art 
 dated from Raphael, and that therefore a 
 return to pure motives and correct methods 
 could only be secured by a study of the pred- 
 ecessors of that great artist. 
 
 Another of the pronounced phases of art 
 in the present century was the vigorous re-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 267 
 
 vival we might almost say creation of 
 landscape painting, properly so considered, 
 indicative, no doubt, of the growing interest 
 of the age in its physical surroundings. Its 
 most meritorious interpreters were Rousseau, 
 Corot, Millet, Decamps, Turner, Constable, 
 and Crome. 
 
 Two diametrically opposite tendencies in 
 painting, whether of figures or of landscapes, 
 have marked its later manifestations the 
 one, called for a second time preraphaelite, 
 which lays extraordinary emphasis on 
 minuteness and truthfulness of details, and 
 is represented by Rossetti, Hunt, and Millais ; 
 and the other called the impressionist, which 
 stakes its all of merit upon broad and gen - 
 eral effects, the same being exemplified by 
 the works of a number of well-known living 
 painters, particularly of the French school.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE AGE 
 CONTINUED. 
 
 The Belatiom as to Cause and Effect of the Oenius and His 
 Epoch. When the Most General Interests of Society or 
 the State are to be affected, the Initiative of Influence 
 Inlieres in the Mass Illustrated in such Movements as 
 the Reformation, tlie French Revolution, and tlie Ameri- 
 can Rebellion. When the Immediate Effects of a Move- 
 ment are necessarily restricted to a few, then tJie Individ- 
 ual, the Oenius, becomes the Initiator Illustrated in t?te 
 Rise and Propagation of Various Scientific Theories, and 
 in the Formation of the Various Softools of Art, of Music, 
 and of Letters. 
 
 In considering, then, somewhat particu- 
 larly, the centuries which have been most 
 prolific in geniuses, we find them to be the 
 very ones that have given birth to and ma- 
 tured the widest, intensest, and most radi- 
 cally revolutionizing of movements, whether 
 of a political, religious, industrial, intellect- 
 ual, or sesthetical nature, that have hap- 
 pened in the history of mankind. This fact 
 would seem to prove that great geniuses and 
 great epochs go together that where grand 
 sociological dramas are enacting, there is 
 
 (269)
 
 270 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 always present an adequate company of 
 superior actors in fine, that where a general 
 need is felt, there must forthwith arise an 
 all-sufficient supplier. The co-existence of 
 the two is undeniable; but do they stand 
 related to each other as cause and effect? 
 And if so, which of the two is the cause? 
 This is almost, if not quite, as puzzling a 
 problem as that biological one which is 
 primordial, the egg or the chicken ? So far 
 as human experience can inform one, neither 
 is possible without the antecedent existence 
 of the other. Is it equally true concerning 
 the genius and his epoch? Does the latter 
 hatch the former, or is the genius the creator 
 of his age ? 
 
 A somewhat careful consideration of the 
 question convinces us that neither of these 
 factors is uniformly antecedent, and that 
 each takes its turn as the initiator. And this 
 is the rule, it would appear, for determining 
 the order of their precedence : When the 
 interests to be affected are of a very general 
 character such as those of society, of state, 
 and of church then the initiative of change
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 271 
 
 inheres in the mass in the social, political, 
 or religious atmosphere, as it were, of the 
 times, rather than in the preponderating 
 influence of any individual. On the con- 
 trary, when the immediate effect of a move- 
 ment is by its very nature restricted to the 
 few, as is primarily the case with all changes 
 that appertain to the scientific or sesthetical 
 status of an epoch, then the primary impulse 
 is found to proceed from an individual of 
 extraordinary force the genius. Let us see 
 if this theory is sustained by well-known 
 facts. 
 
 First, let us test it in relation to those 
 great events of history that have interested, 
 aroused, and transformed whole nations and 
 peoples. The Reformation was such an 
 event, and Martin Luther its most conspic- 
 uous figure. Did Luther originate the Ref- 
 ormation, or was he merely a product of it ? 
 This is readily determined by the fact that, 
 fully one hundred years before Luther's day, 
 Wickliffe, in England, and Huss and Jerome, 
 in Germany, decried and combated the very 
 same abuses that Luther afterward attacked.
 
 272 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 But even these earlier reformers were simply 
 the heralds and van-guard of a large and 
 daily increasing number of the general body 
 of professing Christians, who had long be- 
 fore discovered for themselves the corrup- 
 tions, both in doctrine and in practice, that 
 had crept into the church, and who were 
 desirous of, and at times not a little clamor- 
 ous for, their removal. And it was this same 
 general clamor, sounding down the whole 
 preceding century, and gathering volume 
 with every decade of its progress, that aided 
 in arousing Luther' s indignation, and finally 
 emboldened him to strike to the ground the 
 brimming cup of the church' s iniquity. 
 
 The French Revolution was another event 
 not only of national but even of conti- 
 nental importance. Are we to infer that 
 this great political and social upheaval was 
 the immediate effect of the revolutionary 
 doctrines sown by the writings of such men 
 as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, or, 
 later, the direct fruits of such inflammatory 
 leadership as that of Mirabeau and Robes- 
 pierre? Doubtless the influence of the
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGkE. 273 
 
 French illuminative philosophy and the 
 Parisian spirit of the age upon the more 
 scholarly classes throughout all Europe was 
 great ; and we know that substantial reforms, 
 such as the abolition of the order of the 
 Jesuits, of the Inquisition, of serfdom and 
 feudal duties, the observance of religious 
 toleration, and divers amendments in legisla- 
 tive and judicial affairs, were in large part to 
 be attributed to the almost direct influence 
 of the above-named writers. But the Revo- 
 lution itself, which was the vortex into 
 which every liberalizing tendency of the 
 whole century was drawn, and there raised 
 to the extremest tension, was for the greater 
 part a movement of the illiterate and desti- 
 tute masses the very class upon which 
 printed ideas and book-politics must of 
 necessity gain but little, if any, hold. Cer- 
 tainly, if any commotion ever deserved to be 
 called popular, it was the French Revolution 
 the uprising of the poor, the ignorant, the 
 unprivileged masses against the rich, the 
 schooled, and the privileged few. It was not 
 a movement instigated by one trenchant pen, 
 
 18
 
 274 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 inspired by one eloquent voice, or led by one 
 skillful sword ; but it was the vox populi 
 itself, emphasized by a hurricane of unsol- 
 dierly weapons. 
 
 The late American Rebellion was another 
 event of wide-reaching interest. Can it be 
 alleged that this fratricidal struggle was 
 brought about by the writings and speeches 
 of certain abolitionists of the North and 
 other certain pro- slavery advocates of the 
 South? It would be idle indeed to deny that 
 the persistent efforts of these agitators in 
 both sections quickened the popular compre- 
 hension of the national evils involved, on the 
 one hand, in the spread of slavery, and on 
 the other, of the perils to the institution 
 itself inevitable upon its limitation, and on 
 both sides, added kindling and draught to 
 very inflammable prejudices. But the nat- 
 ural and irrepressible antagonism that exists 
 between free and enforced labor, especially 
 in a government professing to be republican, 
 the unquestionable superiority of the former 
 in all material and practical respects to say 
 nothing of the relative humaneness and
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 275 
 
 moral justice of the two these convictions 
 and perceptions were realized to no small 
 extent from the very beginning of the na- 
 tional experiment, and every year grew 
 clearer, more general, and more influential. 
 The utterances, therefore, of Northern aboli- 
 tionists and Southern "fire-eaters" did not 
 originate the popular conscience regarding 
 slavery, but rather voiced it did not inau- 
 gurate the War of the Rebellion, but simply 
 prefigured it. 
 
 Let us now turn to the history of inno- 
 vations of a less general scope than the fore- 
 going, to such as arise in the development 
 of science, of literature, and of the arts. 
 Are these the outcome of popular foresight 
 and insistence, or do they not rather origi- 
 nate with individuals of transcendent force 
 the geniuses of the race ? 
 
 Had anything like a general dissatisfac- 
 tion been expressed nay, had even the then 
 limited circle of scientists themselves mani- 
 fested any disagreement with the prevalent 
 notions of the Ptolemaic system of the uni- 
 verse before the obscure astronomer of
 
 276 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Thorn, Nikolaus Copernicus, announced and 
 demonstrated a totally different scheme of 
 planetary arrangement the scheme which 
 now forms the basis of all astronomical sci- 
 ence? Did Kepler, a hundred years later, 
 promulge his three great laws respecting the 
 orbits and motions of the planets, and did 
 Galileo, about the same time, accomplish his 
 discoveries and inventions in obedience to a 
 popular demand, or stimulated by any sym- 
 pathetic spirit of the age ? Can it even be 
 alleged of the great scientific truths that 
 have come to light during the present cent- 
 ury, to-wit : the conservation and correlation 
 of all energy, the undulatory theory of heat 
 and of light, the glacial theory, evolution, 
 or of the great inventions of the century the 
 steamboat, the locomotive, the telegraph, the 
 telephone, the phonograph, the sewing-ma- 
 chine, electric light, electric and hot-air mo- 
 tors that these are the natural outgrowth 
 of the general scientific sap-flow of the age ? 
 Not at all. Columbus, Copernicus, Kepler, 
 Galileo, Newton, Watt, Stephenson, Fulton, 
 Morse, Darwin, Agassiz, Edison these are
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 277 
 
 not the passive reflectors of the concentrated 
 scientific glimmerings of their respective 
 ages, but, on the contrary, are they the 
 active, the unique, the isolated generators 
 the solar and stellar emanators of hitherto 
 unconceived physical ideas; and far from 
 being encouraged, urged on, and cheered by 
 contemporary popular sentiment, their 
 strange notions and inventions have been 
 almost invariably regarded as so many 
 anarchistic bombs and infernal machines, 
 stealthily placed under the foundations of 
 legitimate science, for its immediate and 
 complete destruction; while they themselves 
 have been publicly denounced as crack- 
 brained, impious, malevolent, and have been 
 subjected to physical tenures, and even to 
 death, at the hands of civil, ecclesiastical, 
 and so-called scientific authorities. Indeed, 
 we doubt if out of the whole bulk of the 
 world's scientific treasures, past and present, 
 a single idea or invention can be named to 
 which the scientific spirit of any age, or the 
 popular acumen of any locality, may lay the 
 claim of paternity ; nay, we feel authorized 
 
 18
 
 278 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 in affirming that every scientific novelty the 
 world has ever known has had to battle its 
 way to public acceptance against the breast- 
 works of popular prejudice, the bayonets of 
 popular ridicule, and the red-hot shot-and- 
 shell storm of popular persecution, and that 
 their final triumph was due alone to the 
 indomitable tenacity and inexhaustible pug- 
 nacity of their initiators the scientific gen- 
 iuses. 
 
 Next let us consider the history of the 
 best known literatures of mankind and 
 first, as regards their most meritorious pro- 
 ductions. Can it be said of the Canterbury 
 Tales, the Faerie Queen, Paradise Lost, the 
 Divine Comedy, Jerusalem Delivered, the 
 Decameron, Don Quixote, Hudibras, Shakes- 
 peare' s Dramas, Faust, Don Juan, Les 
 Miserables, that they were the consummate 
 bloom of seeds previously sown by the pop- 
 ular hand, and that their authors were 
 therefore only the mouth-pieces, the amanu- 
 enses of the general intellectual dictation of 
 their respective epochs ? Do the receptions 
 accorded these and kindred works by the
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 279 
 
 publics that witnessed their birth incline us 
 to such an opinion ? What past period of lit- 
 erary history can be named that proved a 
 tenth part as appreciative of these master- 
 works as is the present, removed though it is 
 in some instances by hundreds of years from 
 their natal day ? Can it be said, then, that the 
 authors of these greatest of literary works 
 were schooled and incited to their achieve- 
 ments by the intellectual ferment of their sev- 
 eral times ? On the contrary, do not the facts 
 compel us to affirm that these greatest 
 authors owed but little, if any, of their 
 inspiration to the literary atmosphere of their 
 own day, and in their creative intentions 
 were as little concerned about popular favor 
 as the latter proved regardful of them ? As 
 the result shows, their labors, whether so 
 aimed or not, were better adapted for post- 
 humous than contemporary appreciation, 
 and whatever they may have borrowed of 
 fact, thought, sentiment, or style from their 
 own or past centuries, they repaid the obli- 
 gation with compounded interest, and in a 
 coin whose image and superscription were as
 
 280 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 surprisingly superior as they were immedi- 
 ately uncurrent. 
 
 Secondly, let us view the question of pop- 
 ular influence upon literary production as 
 respects the various schools or fashions of 
 literature the classic, the romantic, the 
 realistic. Have these fashions arisen at the 
 bidding of public taste, were they con- 
 cessions to popular demands, or, on the 
 other hand, were they the joint fabrics of 
 individual authors, whose tastes, more par- 
 ticularly as to style, chanced to run for a 
 time in the same general direction ? 
 
 On preceding pages we have endeavored to 
 point out how that each of these literary 
 periods conformed in its general spirit to the 
 national humor then dominant. This fact 
 can not be denied the power of affairs of 
 state, of church, and of social life to impart 
 a characteristic tinge, at least, to intellectual 
 productions. But this admitted, how in- 
 scrutable the modus operand! of such general 
 influences, and how unsatisfactory the at- 
 tempt to measure such with any exactness ! 
 It can not be likened unto the impact of cur-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 281 
 
 rents of air upon aeolian harp-strings, for in 
 this case the latter which would symbolize 
 the author are too completely passive 
 agents. Rather let us say it is like the 
 power of vernal breezes and sunshine upon 
 song-birds it provokes, invites, nay compels 
 the exercise of a talent already existing and 
 previously operative, though not so effectively 
 so as now. Doubtless the bird could sing 
 and would sing, whatever its physical en- 
 vironment ; but the sweetness, gush, and 
 duration of the song are not these largely 
 dependent upon atmosphere, sunlight, and 
 sylvan quietude ? Yes. But then is it not also 
 true that the same physical conditions co-ex- 
 ist with very unequal expressions of song 
 upon the part of different birds ? These dif- 
 fering results must be accounted for, then, 
 not by physical environments, but by the 
 peculiarity of vocal organization in the 
 songster. 
 
 Just so we believe it is with the character- 
 istic expression of any particular literary 
 epoch. All general influences, extraneous 
 to purely literary ones, act as atmospheric
 
 282 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 modifiers, which, by nitrogenizing obnoxious 
 elements and oxygenizing agreeable ones, at 
 length select into full flower the peculiar lit- 
 erary flora of the period. But the puissant 
 seeds of that dominant flora reside alone in 
 certain few heroic authors ; they are not the 
 product of any community or period, but 
 simply its fittest survival. And so, when we 
 come to indicate the most potent, the essen- 
 tial of the causes that conspire for the 
 production of any particular literary epoch, 
 we must fix upon such unique literary gen- 
 iuses as Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, 
 Goethe, Richter, Burns, Scott, Byron, Hugo, 
 Dumas, Dickens, Hawthorne, and the liter- 
 ary contemporaries who worked in sympathy 
 with them. 
 
 Carrying now our inquiry into the realm 
 of art, we shall not take our stand-point 
 further back than the Renaissance of the 
 middle ages. Why? Because our knowl- 
 edge of the only deservedly noticeable art 
 period prior to this the Greek is too 
 scanty and inaccurate to enable us to decide 
 with any satisfaction the question of the rel-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 283 
 
 ative importance of the influence of the 
 art-seeking community and the art-producing 
 individual. We know fairly well that the 
 centers of Greek population were very gen- 
 erally permeated, during the fourth and fifth 
 centuries B. C., with a love, if not a passion, 
 for the beautiful in form as relates to archi- 
 tecture and statuary ; and we also know 
 that in such sculptors as Phidias, Scopas, 
 Praxitiles, and Lysippus they found pre- 
 sumably sufficient interpreters of their lofti- 
 est conceptions ; but to which of the two 
 factors belongs the preponderance of merit 
 for bequeathing to all posterity architectural 
 orders and sculptured representations of the 
 human form that absolutely preclude either 
 criticism or improvement, is a matter fitter 
 for speculation than demonstration. We 
 shall therefore move our point of observation 
 some two thousand years nearer to our own 
 times, and thus secure a field of vision com- 
 paratively clear. And so we find ourself 
 transported from the midst of Greece's most 
 flourishing art era into the field of the most 
 wonderful florescence of all modern art a
 
 !284 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 period eminently worthy of its illustrious 
 predecessor of classic times. 
 
 Take the first period of Christian art, that 
 which, originating in the catacombs of Rome 
 in the second century, maintained its indi- 
 viduality almost to the fourteenth. Whence 
 the inception of that general breaking away 
 from the narrow, stiff, lifeless, unnatural, and 
 prevailingly ecclesiastical conventionalism of 
 this theologic period, which resulted in the 
 adoption for the next three or four centuries 
 of a method that drew its inspiration, as re- 
 gards form, color, and accessories generally, 
 directly from nature? Shall we credit the 
 happy revolution to a sudden and compelling 
 perception of the Italian people, or shall we 
 not more likely find it in the influence that 
 a certain Grecian sarcophagus exerted upon 
 Niccola Pisano, and through him, more or 
 less directly, upon all contemporary and 
 subsequent sculpture and painting ? 
 
 And the growth and final triumph of this 
 naturalistic tendency of religious art were 
 they the outcome of the general interest 
 taken in art productions and the munificent
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 285 
 
 patronage proffered them during the Re- 
 naissance, or were they not more immedi- 
 ately attributable to the bold, original, na- 
 ture-loving, but God-fearing efforts of such 
 representative artists as Giotto, Masaccio, 
 Fra Angelico, Da Vinci, Angelo, and Ra- 
 phael? 
 
 We may concede that people generally 
 had grown weary of the crudities of design 
 the long, near -placed, half -shut eyes ; the 
 flat figures, heavy outlines, badly-drawn 
 extremities, and lack of perspective, upon 
 which their eyes had been obliged to gaze 
 for ten or more centuries past, and were anx- 
 iously casting about for something more sat- 
 isfying ; but is it at all probable that they gen- 
 erally realized in just what particulars their 
 art was deficient, and just what heroic treat- 
 ment would set it right \ However that may 
 have been, we are certain of this that the 
 master-artists last named did discover the 
 defects, discovered also their remedy, and 
 were courageous enough to act up to the 
 fullest dictates of their intelligent percep- 
 tions. It was they who stripped art of its
 
 286 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 ill-fitting externals, and preserving all that 
 was genuinely immortal of it its spiritual- 
 ity rehabilitated this in the lovely vesture 
 of the art of ancient Greece and still more 
 ancient Nature. The public simply approved 
 the regeneration, and heartily promoted it. 
 
 Why, the fact that the history of art is 
 the history of schools, each with its one or 
 two master-spirits, whose peculiarities were 
 sedulously imitated and multiplied by all 
 the disciples of that school, would of itself 
 be decisive of the point that the individual, 
 rather than the mass, is the dynamic agent 
 in the production of the various aspects of 
 art development. Da Vinci, Angelo, Ra- 
 phael, and Titian were contemporaries, and 
 Fra Angelico lived but a generation or two 
 earlier, and all were therefore subjected to 
 the same general political, religious, literary, 
 and social influences; and yet how radically 
 distinct was not only each one's style of 
 work, but also each one' s art motif ! No one 
 of them was conventional ; but, contrariwise, 
 they were all preeminently unique, aggress- 
 ive, iconoclastic.
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 287 
 
 What influence, or influences, of a general 
 nature may account for the invention of oil- 
 painting by the brothers Van Eyck, and the 
 ensuing rise of that army of painters which, 
 under the lead of such artist-generals as 
 Diirer, Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyck, Teniers, 
 Rembrandt, and Kaulbach, spread all over 
 Europe north and northwest of the Alps, 
 and whose distinguishing characteristics 
 were elaboration and truth of detail, deli- 
 cacy of execution, richness of color and 
 ornament, accessories copied from ordinary 
 life-scenes and highly finished, figures pre- 
 eminently realistic, and backgrounds of nat- 
 ural scenery? Moreover, if it were social 
 environments rather than the initiative tal- 
 ents of the individuals just named that 
 begot the Flemish, German, and Dutch 
 schools of art, how did it happen that the 
 art tendencies came to be so numerous and 
 so heterogeneous ; producing at one and the 
 same time portrait painters, genre painters, 
 painters of landscape, of animals, of water, 
 of interiors, of architecture, and of still life ? 
 The influence of a whole people, the impulse
 
 288 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 of an age, the weight of a century, ought, it 
 would seem, to have produced results of a 
 more consistent and homogeneous character. 
 But what shall we say of the art of Eng- 
 land, which of all modern nations is, per- 
 haps, the foremost in this line of aesthetical 
 production ? Though not as directly exposed 
 to the great tidal waves of public opinion 
 and action, that have surged back and forth 
 over the continent, as her neighboring coun- 
 tries, yet is she too near the latter not to 
 have felt in a very perceptible manner the 
 shock of such mighty movements. Her 
 political institutions and her literature 
 clearly attest to the modifying effects of 
 these influences from across the Channel ; but 
 her art, so preeminent, is yet wholly modern 
 indeed, almost entirely of nineteenth-cent- 
 ury growth. It knows nothing of the eccle- 
 siastical, the classical, the Renaissance, the 
 preraphaelite, the naturalistic, the idealistic, 
 or any other of the epoch-making terms of 
 painting as applied to the history of art on 
 the continent. It is unquestionably the art 
 of individuals, and is as varied and idiosyn-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 289 
 
 cratic as were the peculiar gifts of its cre- 
 ators. 
 
 In music, too, which, like English paint- 
 ing, is also of comparatively modern date, it 
 is not easy to trace the effects of any very 
 general influences. Even during so tumult- 
 uous a time as the Thirty Years' War, music 
 seemed to have lived in a cloister sacred 
 from every rude touch. Particularly is this 
 the case so far as regards the works of the 
 foremost masters of the art. So different 
 were they from all which had preceded them 
 so superior to all precedents that they 
 have been recognized as constituting a Re- 
 naissance in the history of music. What in 
 the atmosphere of his day suggested to Bach 
 his profound studies in polyphony and 
 fugue composition ? What popular demand 
 incited Handel to the conception of his sub- 
 lime tone-heroics his oratorios an art form 
 never before known ? Hardly less inexplica- 
 ble was the impulse that led Haydn to the 
 creation of his symphonies, Mozart to the 
 production of opera, and Beethoven to the 
 composition of works whose artistic com- 
 
 19
 
 290 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 pleteness, depth, and exaltation of feeling 
 no musician, either before him or since, has 
 ever attained. The productions of the more 
 immediate successors of these great tone 
 poets, it must be allowed, do partake of a 
 palpably popular, social, and national char- 
 acter ; but when we arrive at the latest, the 
 present phase of musical development in the 
 compositions of such artists as Berlioz, Wag- 
 ner, Liszt, and Rubinstein, we again find 
 ourself puzzled to assign any cause for its 
 existence, outside the all-sufficient one of the 
 unique and splendid endowments of the 
 composers themselves.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE AGE 
 CONCLUDED. 
 
 The Inter-relations of the Oenins and His Environment. 
 Illustrated by a Well-known Fact of Vegetable Physiology. 
 This View Favored by Opinions of Grant Allen and 
 Herbert Spencer. Summary of tlie Whole Subject by 
 William James. 
 
 In preceding chapters we have considered, 
 somewhat at length, the four varieties of 
 human surroundings the home and school, 
 the physical or geographical habitat, race, 
 and the various characteristic influences of 
 the age, in their bearings, severally, upon 
 geniuses. Let us now attempt, briefly, a 
 comprehensive view of the entire subject of 
 genius and its environment, to the end of 
 determining the actual participation of the 
 latter in the production of the former. 
 
 It is a fact well known to vegetable physi- 
 ologists, that, when the natural forest growth 
 in any locality has been destroyed, an en- 
 tirely new species of tree will often appear 
 in its place. This new growth, too, will be 
 
 (291)
 
 292 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 found to be indigenous to a locality so remote 
 from the place of its appearance that all the 
 known theories of the dissemination of seed 
 are wholly inadequate for accounting for the 
 phenomenon. A recent writer* tenders this 
 solution of the long-standing puzzle : The 
 earth, he claims, is everywhere transfused 
 with vegetable germs not seed which 
 spring into palpable life-forms whenever the 
 necessary physical conditions obtain. Every 
 foot of soil is therefore capable of producing 
 any vegetable growth that the physical en- 
 vironment of the time may favor, and as 
 changes in the latter are brought about from 
 time to time, either by artificial or natural 
 agencies, there will result a correspondingly 
 obvious change in the vegetable growths that 
 appear. 
 
 Whether this theory be accounted scien- 
 tifically sound or not, it may be made to 
 serve as an illustration of a possible solution 
 of our present inquiry, if we concede that 
 genius is a sort of primordial germ, im- 
 planted in the human family much more 
 
 * R. W. Wright, in " Life Its True Genesis."
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 293 
 
 widely than has generally been supposed, 
 and which, whenever it meets with certain 
 felicitous surroundings of time, place, and 
 opportunity, bourgeons forth into extraordi- 
 nary flower. In this case it is evident that 
 the environment must count for at least half, 
 if not more, of the joint product. 
 
 This last conclusion harmonizes with the 
 opinion entertained by Grant Allen if we 
 may be allowed to apply his remarks con- 
 cerning communities to individuals also. 
 He says: "The differences between one 
 nation and another, whether in intellect, 
 commerce, art, morals, or general tempera- 
 ment, ultimately depend, not upon any mys- 
 terious properties of race, nationality, or 
 any other unknown and unintelligible ab- 
 straction, but simply and solely upon the 
 physical circumstances to which they are 
 exposed. We can not regard any nation as 
 an active agent in differentiating itself; 
 only the surrounding circumstances can 
 have any effect in such a direction. There 
 is no caprice, no spontaneous impulse in 
 human endeavors. Even tastes and inclina- 
 
 19
 
 294 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 tions must themselves be the result of sur- 
 rounding causes." 
 
 Herbert Spencer, too, in his ' ' Study of 
 Sociology," affirms: "Before he [the gen- 
 ius] can remake his society, his society must 
 make him. All those changes of which he 
 is the proximate initiator have their chief 
 cause in the generations he descended 
 from." 
 
 This last view, however, is, we think, very 
 ably combated by a recent critic, William 
 James, in the following passage : "If any- 
 thing is humanly certain, it is that the great 
 man's society, properly so called, does not 
 make him before he can remake it. Phys- 
 iological forces, with which the social, polit- 
 ical, geographical, and, to a great extent, 
 anthropological, conditions have just as much 
 and just as little to do as the condition of 
 the crater of Vesuvius has to do with the 
 flickering of this gas by which I write, are 
 what make him. Surely, Mr. Spencer does 
 not hold that the convergence of sociological 
 pressures so impinged on Stratford-upon- 
 Avon about the 26th of April, 1564, that a
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 295 
 
 William Shakespeare, with all his mental 
 peculiarities, had to be born there, as the 
 pressure of water outside a certain boat will 
 cause a stream of a certain form to ooze into 
 a particular leak ? And does he mean to say 
 that if the aforesaid William Shakespeare 
 had died of cholera infantum, another mother 
 at Stratford-upon-Avon would needs have 
 engendered a duplicate copy of him, to re- 
 store the sociological equilibrium, just as 
 the same stream of water will reappear, no 
 matter how often you pass a sponge over the 
 leak, so long as the outside level remains 
 unchanged?" 
 
 Confirmatory of the last view, Charles 
 Darwin declares: "The immense majority 
 of changes wrought in organisms are pro- 
 duced by internal molecular accidents, of 
 which we know nothing." 
 
 Speaking of the same changes and their 
 causes, Mr. James, above quoted, remarks : 
 "In the first place, they are molecular and 
 invisible ; inaccessible, therefore, to direct 
 observation of any kind. Secondly, their 
 operations are compatible with any social,
 
 296 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 political, and physical conditions of environ- 
 ment. The same parents, living in the same 
 environing conditions, may at one birth pro- 
 duce a genius, at the next an idiot or a 
 monster. The visible external conditions 
 are therefore not direct determinants of this 
 cycle ; and the more we consider the matter, 
 the more we are forced to believe that two 
 children of the same parents are made to 
 differ from one another by a cause which 
 bears the same remote and infinitesimal pro- 
 portion to its ultimate effects as the famous 
 pebble on the Rocky Mountain crest, whose 
 angle separates the course of two rain-drops, 
 itself bears to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and 
 to the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 "The causes of the production of great 
 men lie in a sphere wholly inaccessible to 
 the social philosopher. He must simply ac- 
 cept geniuses as data, just as Darwin accepts 
 his spontaneous variations. For him, as for 
 Darwin, the only problem is, these data 
 being given, how does the environment affect 
 them, and how do they affect the environ- 
 ment ? Now, I affirm that the relation of the
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE AGE. 297 
 
 visible environment to the great man is in 
 the main exactly what it is to the variation 
 in the Darwinian philosophy. It chiefly 
 adopts or rejects, preserves or destroys in 
 short, selects him. And whenever it adopts 
 and preserves the great man, it becomes 
 modified by his influence in an entirely orig- 
 inal and peculiar way. He acts as a ferment, 
 and changes its constitution, just as the ad- 
 vent of a new zoological species changes the 
 faunal and floral equilibrium of the region 
 in which it appears. 
 
 "The mutations of societies, then, from 
 generation to generation, are in the main due, 
 directly or indirectly, to the acts or the 
 example of individuals whose genius was so 
 adapted to the receptivities of the moment, 
 or whose accidental position of authority was 
 so critical, that they became ferments, 
 initiators of movements, setters of precedent 
 or fashion, centers of corruption, or destroy- 
 ers of other persons, whose gifts, had they 
 had free play, would have led society in 
 another direction. 
 
 "The fermentive influence of geniuses
 
 298 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 must be admitted as, at any rate, one factor 
 in the changes that constitute social evolu- 
 tion. And thus social evolution is a result- 
 ant of the interaction of two wholly distinct 
 factors : the individual, deriving his peculiar 
 gifts from the play of physiological and 
 infra- social forces, but bearing all the power 
 of initiative and origination in his hands ; 
 and, second, the social environment, with its 
 power of adopting or rejecting both him and 
 his gifts. Both factors are essential to 
 change. The community stagnates without 
 the impulse of the individual. The impulse 
 dies away without the sympathy of the com- 
 munity." 
 
 This, as it seems to us, is a frank, clear, and 
 plenary statement of the real inter-relations 
 that subsist between the genius and his 
 environment, and as such shall constitute 
 our final word upon this part of the subject.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ATTITUDE OP THE PRESENT AND THE FUTtTBE 
 TOWARD GENIUSES. 
 
 The best that is possible has been already attained in 
 Architecture, in Sculpture, in Human Figure- Painting, 
 in Literature, and in Music. Possible Exceptions as re- 
 gards Historians, Critics, and Fictionists. Inferiority of 
 the Poetry of the Present Day. Scientific Discovery and 
 Mechanical Invention the only Fields open to Future 
 Geniuses. Science comes to the Rescue of the Non-Scien- 
 tific Mind from Mediocrity, by Her Promise of a Future 
 in which the Human Family will far surpass att its 
 Antecedent Experiences, in Brain-power and Organiza- 
 tion. Uncertain Nearness of Such Promised Novum 
 Organum. Relativity of Oreatness. 
 
 It has been said that the age of pyramids, 
 pantheons, and cathedrals has forever passed 
 by. May it not be affirmed with equal prob- 
 ability that the world shall never again 
 behold a pyramidal Angelo, a pantheonian 
 Shakespeare, a cathedral Milton? The hu- 
 man mind is finite, and therefore is not 
 susceptible of infinite expansion. In not a 
 few directions, it would appear the utmost 
 limit of human achievement has long ago 
 been reached ; and what the race has since 
 
 (299)
 
 300 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 been able to accomplish in these directions 
 has fallen, and most probably ever will fall, 
 more or less below the high- tide marks of 
 by-gone days. One of those unsurpassable 
 attainments is architecture. 
 
 If massiveness and grandeur be sought, 
 the architect of to-day must go back four 
 thousand years to the cities and monuments 
 of the Nile and of Northern India, where, 
 among the ruins of those ancient civilizations, 
 he will find them in unapproachable perfec- 
 tion. If symmetry of outline and proportion 
 and chaste beauty of ornamentation be in re- 
 quest, the very essence and soul of these he 
 will find incarnated in the still flourishing 
 orders of ancient Greece. But if poetic or 
 religious effect be in demand, nowhere will 
 he realize these so completely as in that 
 petrified duplicate of Nature' s own vital archi- 
 tecture the Gothic. May a man ignore these 
 venerated sources and yet dare to call him- 
 self an architect ? or may he essay to rival 
 any one of them and not end his days in a 
 mad-house ? 
 
 Closely related to architecture is sculpture ;
 
 PRESENT AND FUTURE ATTITUDE. 301 
 
 and in this art also all modern efforts are 
 invariably regarded as successful only in so 
 far as they approximate the models set up 
 by Greece more than twenty-five centuries 
 ago. In painting, too, in so far as its object 
 be the delineation of the human form, its 
 cultivators must have recourse to the antique 
 studio last named. 
 
 Of all the various branches of literature, 
 there are but two whose present status is 
 that of growth and improvement as com- 
 pared with former conditions ; these are 
 history and criticism. And yet, even in 
 these, for what is gained in accuracy, thor- 
 oughness, and fairness, there is perceptible a 
 sad diminution of old-time picturesqueness, 
 eloquence, boldness, and those rhetorical 
 strokes which always so fascinate and im- 
 press the student. Not to speak of such 
 literary potentates as Spenser, Milton, 
 Shakespeare, Dante, Ariosto, Boccaccio, 
 Johnson, Burke, Pope, Goldsmith, Cowper, 
 Burns, Goethe, Schiller, Richter, Cervantes, 
 Moliere, and Voltaire, who will name among 
 living authors the peer of each of these more
 
 302 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 modern literati: Sir Walter Scott, Dick- 
 ens, Thackeray, "George Eliot," "Georges 
 Sand," Victor Hugo, Balzac, Byron, Ma- 
 caulay, Carlyle, Lamb, John Wilson, De 
 Quincey, Shelley, Hood, Moore, Longfellow, 
 Hawthorne, Irving, Prescott ? In the line of 
 fiction there are undoubtedly at present a 
 large number of very able contributors, and 
 every now and then a volume is brought out 
 which, like "Ben Hur," or "Yittoria," or 
 "Paul Patoff," proves a crown of aromatic 
 evergreen upon its author 1 s brow. 
 
 In the poetry of the present day, however, 
 a wonderful contrast is presented with all 
 that has preceded it. When one regards the 
 painful, frantic efforts made by living poets 
 in their verse-bearing, he is very much in- 
 clined to suspect the seasonableness of the 
 product. In a large majority of instances it 
 does not conform even to the outward 
 semblance of poetry, the greatest possible 
 inequalities existing between the quantities 
 of its lines and stanzas, and its paces falling 
 upon the ear as though every foot of its 
 centipedal body were shod in the newest and
 
 PRESENT AND FUTURE ATTITUDE. 303 
 
 clumsiest of wooden shoes. But not only is 
 its rhythmic structure frightfully unique 
 and fantastical ; its sense, if any there be, is 
 so involved in unusual phrases, and so 
 masked by subtle allusion, that one is dis- 
 posed to regard the whole product as so 
 much versified mysticism or rhymed meta- 
 physics. For poetry simple, sensuous, so- 
 norous ; for poetry that takes possession of 
 the whole being the eye by its form, the 
 ear by its music, the mind by its symbolism, 
 and the soul by its emotion for this 
 supremest of human products, one must have 
 recourse to days gone by. The last fifty 
 years have not witnessed the birth of a single 
 great poem ; while of poems of a minor rank, 
 though still of a hardy if not perennial 
 nature like, for example, "The Deserted 
 Village," "Childe Harold," Gray's "Elegy 
 in a Country Church-yard," "The Cotter's 
 Saturday Night," "Evangeline," "In Me- 
 moriam, " " Thanatopsis, " " Snow-Bound, ' ' 
 "Marco Bozzaris," the same half -century is 
 singularly and lamentably destitute. 
 Since penning the last paragraph indeed,
 
 304 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 just before going to press an anonymous 
 article from the Boston Herald came to hand, 
 which reiterates in substance what we have 
 just alleged concerning the unpromising as- 
 pects of the poetry of the present day. Here 
 are a few of its most significant utterances : 
 
 "The important question asked at this 
 moment is whether we have any poets who 
 can take the place of Browning and Tenny- 
 son in England, or of Whittier and Lowell 
 and Whitman, who now have lead in Amer- 
 ica. It is not easy to answer this question. 
 The indications in both countries are that no 
 writers of equal strength have yet appeared. 
 The fact is slowly coming home to us that 
 we are at the close of a great age of poetry, 
 and the unexpected and sudden death of 
 Browning will do much to impress this fact 
 more strongly upon us. 
 
 " We are entering upon a new poetical age, 
 in which there is a more immediate response 
 to the spirit of the hour and less range for 
 originality in subject or in its treatment. It 
 is not likely that in the next quarter of a 
 century any poet will come forward to take
 
 PRESENT AND FUTURE ATTITUDE. 305 
 
 the place occupied by men like Browning or 
 Tennyson. In their cases, the devotion to 
 poetry has included a rare consecration of 
 all their gifts, and nothing in the way of 
 discipline or painstaking was beneath their 
 effort. There is not the same consecration 
 of gifts among the poets of to-day to this 
 end, and it would be hard to point out in 
 Europe or America a single writer of poetry 
 who is doing really great work." 
 
 In music, when we take into account the 
 llussia-like extent of the empire already 
 won by such autocrats of tone composition as 
 Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Handel, 
 Rossini, Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn, 
 Schumann, Berlioz, and Wagner, what terri- 
 tory is there left, it may well be asked, of 
 the conceivably desirable, for future aspir- 
 ants to occupy '( 
 
 On only two lines of intellectual endeavor, 
 as it appears to us, does the future hold open 
 the gate of opportunity to the ambitious ; 
 and those are scientific discovery and me- 
 chanical invention. So remarkably fruitful 
 
 have the past fifty years been in the number 
 20
 
 306 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 and importance of their scientific triumphs, 
 and so many and so highly advantageous has 
 been their yield of mechanical contrivances, 
 that one is bound to regard the careers of 
 these branches of human exploit as on the 
 ascendant. And this impression is deep 
 ened when we consider the field that is open 
 in these directions the physical universe, 
 no square inch of whose vast extent has as 
 yet been worked to exhaustion, and innu- 
 merable of whose forces have as yet been 
 wholly unsubjected to economic ends. 
 Though jealous of her esoteric truths it may 
 be uncompromisingly so yet has nature ever 
 shown herself to be ready of speech, intelli- 
 gible, and richly informing to all who 
 importunately interrogate her. 
 
 What is life ? Which is first in order of 
 time, protoplasm or the organism ? How 
 do purely immaterial volitions become trans- 
 mitted into purely material movements, and 
 mce versa \ How do merely physical sensa- 
 tions become changed into strictly psycho- 
 logical phenomena \ What the origin, nature, 
 and pathology of such dread maladies as
 
 PRESENT AND FUTURE ATTITUDE. 307 
 
 leprosy, cholera, and hydrophobia ? What 
 the utilization of such waste natural power 
 as that of water-falls? What the further 
 application to mechanical ends of electricity, 
 hot air, and solar heat ? What a more cer- 
 tain knowledge of the coming and course of 
 storms and the discovery of controlling or 
 dissipating agencies ? These are a few of the 
 more than twelve labors imposed by that 
 modern Eurystheus, Science, upon living and 
 future investigators of natural phenomena. 
 And what an opportunity they afford nay, 
 what a necessity would they seem to create 
 for the uprising of numerous Herculean and 
 Samsonian physicists ! 
 
 Satisfactory as this outlook may prove to 
 the two favored classes of workers, the sci- 
 entists and their practical coadjutors the 
 inventors, it is wholly discouraging to all 
 other classes of intellectual toilers that vast 
 multitude of men of letters and of aesthet- 
 ics. Is it a settled matter that the possible 
 achievements of these latter aspirants are to 
 become more and more circumscribed with 
 each oncoming decade, until, within a half-
 
 308 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 century or so from the present, the re- 
 searches and contrivances of science shall 
 engross the intelligent attention and brain- 
 power of the world \ 
 
 Just at this sorry juncture, science herself 
 comes to our relief, and projects a jet of won- 
 derful light upon our dark misgivings. One 
 of her latest interpreters, M. Fouillee, affirms 
 that the brain of future races will be, not 
 only in volume, but also in organization, as 
 superior to the brain of existing races as the 
 latter is to the brain of simple vertebrge. 
 This being the case and who will dare to 
 doubt the ipse dixits of modern scientists \ 
 it is certainly not improbable that the 
 melioration predicted will affect impartially 
 all human minds the non-scientific equally 
 with the scientific ! In which event, is it 
 not also probable that the literary and the 
 aesthetic, as well as the scientific, attainments 
 of the future will excel those heretofore 
 made, by as prodigious a remove as the lat- 
 ter exceed the achievements of the prehis- 
 toric man? Of course, in this case, it will 
 follow that the geniuses of the future will
 
 PRESENT AND FUTURE ATTITUDE. 309 
 
 be as superior in capacity and ability to 
 those of the present and the past as these 
 were superior to their now forgotten contem- 
 poraries. Does not the mere contemplation 
 of so surpassingly brilliant an epoch cause 
 one to experience premonitory symptoms of 
 that predicted cerebral enlargement and 
 refinement 2 
 
 Evidently the satisfaction derivable from 
 this promised novum organum very much 
 depends upon its possible proximity. Shall 
 we who now live, or shall our near progeny, 
 experience its advent and partake in its 
 transcendent felicities ? The scientists have 
 announced a golden age, but they have, 
 strangely enough, forgotten to advise us of 
 the time of its arrival. Are we to infer, 
 therefore, that its approach proceeds at the 
 same leisurely pace as marks most other 
 great physical evolutions for example, the 
 formation of the successive strata of the 
 earth' s crust, or the development of distinct 
 celestial spheres out of chaotic star-dust ? 
 If so, then may we well forego all interest in 
 
 the announcement, and fall back upon our 
 20
 
 312 A STUDY OF GENIUS. 
 
 so measured, the later investigator, though 
 working in much higher strata of knowledge, 
 may not rank himself above his predecessors 
 the developers of lower-level phenomena. 
 
 [THE END.]
 
 A onn 7 "''''