528 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Most of the men we call " cranks " are of this type. They are 

 essentially lacking in judgment, and the popular estimate of them 

 is exactly right. 



It is evident, therefore, from this last explanation, that there 

 is a second direction of variation among men — a variation in their 

 sense of the truth and value of their own thoughts, and with them 

 of the thoughts of others. This is the second limitation which 

 the man of genius shares with men generally — the limitation in 

 the amount of variation which he may show in his social judg- 

 ments, especially as these variations affect the claim which he 

 makes upon society for recognition. It is evident that this must 

 be an interesting and important factor in our estimate of the 

 claims of the hero to our worship, especially since it is the more 

 obscure side of his temperament, and the side generally over- 

 looked altogether. I shall therefore devote the rest of my space 

 to the attempt to illustrate this matter of what I shall call the 

 " social sanity " of the man of genius. 



IV. 



The first indication of the kind of social variation which over- 

 steps even the degree of indulgence society is willing to accord to 

 the great thinker, is to be found in the effect which education has 

 upon character. The discipline of social development is, as we have 

 seen, mainly conducive to the reduction of eccentricities, the lev- 

 eling off of personal peculiarities. All who come into the social 

 heritage learn the same great series of lessons derived from the 

 past, and all get the sort of judgment required in social life from 

 the common exercises of the home and school in the formative 

 years of their education. So we should expect that the greater 

 singularities of disposition which represent insuperable difficulty 

 in the process of social assimilation would show themselves early. 

 Here it is that the actual conflict comes — the struggle between 

 impulse and social restraint. Many a genius owes the redemp- 

 tion of his intellectual gifts to legitimate social uses to the victory 

 gained by a teacher and the discipline learned through obedience. 

 And thus it is, also, that so many who give promise of great dis- 

 tinction in early life fail to achieve it. They run off after a phan- 

 tom, and society pronounces them mad. In their case the per- 

 sonal factor has overcome the social factor ; they have failed in 

 the lessons they should have learned, their own self-criticism is 

 undisciplined, and they miss the mark. 



These two extremes of variation, however, do not exhaust the 

 case. One of them tends in a measure to the blurring of the light 

 of genius, and the other to the rejection of social restraint to a 

 degree which makes the potential genius over into a crank. The 

 average man is the mean. But the greatest reach of human at- 



