664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The quality of mind known as genius involves, in connection with 

 the reasoning faculties, the special exercise of imagination in its 

 higher creative or constructive forms ; and in understanding this 

 faculty we have an insight into the marvelous nature of genius. 



It may be said that imagination is that faculty which, in its lower 

 or constructive form, works within the limits of recollection, and 

 transforms the materials of sense-experience into pictures of thought, 

 and recombines them into forms of greater beauty and usefulness, 

 while in its higher or creative form it distills therefrom truths which 

 reason has not yet discerned, and idealizes beauties and excellences 

 which excite our admiration and exalt our emotions. 



When thought symbolizes to the mind " the forms of things un- 

 known," it is because the imagination — leaping beyond the bounds of 

 sensory perception — gathers from the infinitudes of unrevealed reali- 

 ties new truths, and thereby " gives to airy nothing, a local habitation 

 and a name." It is thus that the intellect is able to extend the horizon 

 of knowledge, and obtain material for the workshops of the br.°in. 



Imagination, however bold may be its flight, is, nevertheless, 

 under the restraining influence of reason, and performs its wondrous 

 work along true parallels of thought. Its ideals are not mere symbols 

 of myths and fleeting shadows, but ideals which are the embodiments 

 of eternal truths. Thus, by its sovereignty in realms where Ariadne's 

 thread is lost from view, the imagination constructs its empire, and 

 gives by its own methods new revelations of truth, thereby " convert- 

 ing all nature into the rhetoric of thought." 



This, then, is the special mind-quality — the "vision and the 

 faculty divine " — which constitutes the power of genius. 



In the attempt, not to define genius, but to explain the order of its 

 succession, Mr. Galton was led to " conclude that each generation has 

 enormous power over the natural gifts of those that follow," and that 

 native endowments of mind are of themselves quite sufficient to 

 enable an individual to become "eminent" or even "illustrious." 



That there is a profound principle of truth involved in the ques- 

 tion of heredity can not be denied, and that the factor of inheritance 

 is the most essential of any which enters into the complex equation of 

 mind as well as of body, is a well-established fact ; but it is not the 

 only factor which determines mental expression, nor can a complete 

 classification of known facts be made from it alone. Heredity ex- 

 plains the existence of a general nervous constitution, a brain-fiber, 

 having definite aptitudes or "organic dispositions," which are trans- 

 mitted from parent to offspring, securing thereby not only a con- 

 tinuity, but a conservation of psychical as well as of physical proper- 

 ties ; but the special way in which this mental aptitude shall show 

 itself is largely dependent upon external influences or an unexplained 

 spontaneity. 



Organization limits the influence exerted by environment, while 



