the mountain's side, has been used to elucidate the connection of events in our bodily perceptions-to explain the accumulation and operation of the nervous susceptibility.

The very same ideas, therefore, which Science finds. appropriate to the life of the physical organic kingdom are found appropriate to the life of the mind. From some aspects, the phenomena of both are capable of expression in the same terms, and a point of unity is grasped between them, the reality of which is vouched for by the instinctive division which is made of our mental operations under the terms "talent" and "genius." It is, in truth, an organic world on which we look within us, and in which our own poor thoughts are included and built up.

It would be easy to multiply instances of a similar relation of true and false thoughts in respect to almost every branch of knowledge. The establishment of the circulation of the blood, of the chemical doctrine of combustion, of the main facts of geology, among others, would afford striking examples. But there are few other cases in which the facts are equally familiar, and therefore equally appropriate for illustration. It is enough to refer to the general proof which is furnished by that almost universal occurrence of false ideas before true ones, which is evident upon the face of human history. The one instance given may suffice, if not to prove the doctrine, at least to render it intelligible, and to place it fairly before the reader's judgment.

And is not the idea beautiful? Is genius made any the less glorious or attractive by being regarded, not as a mysterious power, but as a necessary resultant of preceding energies? See how the very imperfection of our powers, the disabilities under which a creature limited as man is inevitably labours, are thus turned to account, and

made to minister in a chain of mutual services. Out of our very shortcomings a life is made to spring.

Surely,

no better law for our mental structure could be planned than this, which, from so small a starting-point of partial apprehension and mistaken view, educes results so grand, and from a basis necessarily so limited gives to knowledge so wide a sweep. Of wonderful performance in the past,

is it not of still richer promise for the future? And in its simplicity, too, not less admirable than in its results? Two different orders of mind must co-operate in man's progress, to carry out respectively the two stages of which it consists. Power, activity, exertion, laboriously employed skill, are needed, on the one hand, to make the observations, to construct the artificial system, and bring out the hidden insufficiency of the native thought; on the other hand, there is needed-not power, nor skill, nor energy, nor toil-but sensibility; a special organisation, a capacity not of acting, but of feeling. In the one case we want power, in the other a channel; for the work of talent is a doing; of genius a suffering to be done.

Seeing the recessity of this twofold process in human progress, we cannot but admire the persistency with which the distinction between these two modes of mental operation has been maintained in the common opinion and language of men, and this in spite of the difficulty there has been found in defining it, and the frequent attempts that have been made to deny it, and to resolve genius into a special form or special application of talent. Here, as is so frequently the case, men's words have many times been truer than their thoughts, and the unreasoning assertion of a natural conviction has preceded a rational comprehension of its basis. But we can understand also, how, without a perception of the true relation of talent to genius, there have come doubt and obscurity over the

whole subject. The mind is naturally intolerant, and rightly so, of special and unaccountable entities, whether in the shape of things or faculties, and seeks irrepressibly to reduce the unfamiliar to forms of the better known. Thus it has come, for instance, that the term “genius' has been applied sometimes to the more imaginative and artistic minds has been made synonymous with the gift of poetry, or music, or painting, with which it has no more special relation than with any other branch or human activity. These display the mutually subservient operation of talent and genius as clearly and as decisively as Science itself. There are poets, and painters, and musicians, and these among the greatest, who, we feel, are men of talent, as well as others, in whom, as soon as we look on them or listen to them, we recognise what is called the magic fire of genius. It is not in the direction of men's faculties, but in the mode in which they operate, that the characters of genius are to be sought. But on these characters, as displayed in other fields than that of intellectual progress, the present writer, lest he betray his ignorance (not being learned in art), will not venture here to speak. If the idea be once fairly grasped, no difficulty can arise in testing it on every field.

Genius has been confounded, too, with simple greatness; every man of remarkable power being called a man of genius merely to indicate his eminence. This error,

though it is accounted for by the fact that the work which is done through men of genius is incomparably the greatest that is done at all, involves, notwithstanding, the very utmost falsity. So far from genius being greatness, and indicating power, it is emphatically the reverse. The men of talent are the men of power; they are the strong. The affinities of genius are with weakness. His faculty is that he opposes no obstacles; that his strength is taken out

of the way, and Nature operates through him. The truth is "loosened" in his mind, and falls; but it falls by its own weight, not by his energy. He may have great powers; if he does a great work most probably he has, but they are of subordinate place. What distinguishes a man of genius is rather the absence of certain tendencies and powers, than the presence of peculiar ones. He is without that strong power of sensuous perception, and that consequent rule and control of the sense-faculty, which is so common among men, and thus his more properly intellectual powers can work freely, and assert their full authority. Thus he is the first to see or do that which all men can easily do or see after him; the difficulty being not in the doing, but in being the first. For which prerogative there is demanded not a stronger power, but a weaker impression from accustomed views, a loosening of the grasp which appearances lay upon the soul. As colour-blind men (it is said) make the best engravers, because to them, being non-percipient of colour, the relations of light and shade are unobscured, so it is with the “insight" of genius. There is a special vision by virtue of a special blindness.

We can easily see, for example, what sort of a man Copernicus must have been; what mental characteristics determined him to be the person in whose mind astronomy righted itself. He must have been a man in whom the sensuous impressions were weak, in whom the natural impressions, which gave birth to irremovable convictions in most other men, weighed very little in comparison with the demands of the intellect for order and simplicity. If a moving body had been pointed out to him, and it had been said, "See how fast it moves!" we can imagine him replying, "It seems so." Copernicus might have beenI do not doubt he was a man of strong reasoning

powers; but the mere fact of his achievement does not prove him to have been so. What distinguished him from other men was not the strength of his reason, but the weakness of his sense impressions, which left his reason free to play; as, thanks to him, all men's has become on this subject since his day. He destroyed for us the bondage of sense, because he himself was free from it; for our very faculties also are our prisons. It is ever So. The genius of one age is the common sense of the next.

But though genius is neither greatness nor strength, but has its root in weakness rather, yet we see quite well why it is that it bears the fruits-the chief fruits-of greatness. It must do so for the very reason that it is a weakness, and not a strength; an emptiness, and not a fulness; a channel, and not a force. It is a channel through which the concentrated energies of mankind are poured; an emptiness which Nature's self condescends to fill; a weakness that enlists on its behalf the power on which the world reposes. Well is its work called an "inspiration;" humanity speaks in its voice; humanity, and therefore Deity. The truth of that commonly false saying, "Vox populi, vox Dei," is found here. It is the voice of man that genius utters, the strength of man it wields. The power which is embodied in its achievements is the accumulated power of long generations, it may be of long centuries, of workers; they have laboured, genius enters in and reaps.

And thus the work of genius seems often to be of even superhuman power, to bear no relation to the capacities of the individual worker, or to any capacities, indeed, that can be conceived as dwelling in a man. This it is, in part, that gives to genius its mysterious character; the unaccountable, almost abnormal force which it displays.