650 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and action and thought. But the main characteristic of joy is its 

 diversity, the wide range of its expression. To the lover — I am told 

 — earth and air, sea and sky, reflect his happiness, and out of the 

 quickening power of the greater sentiment have come the greater 

 works. To fancied pain we owe the morbid and sickly pictures of 

 our literature, but to satisfied love such delights as the Spring 

 Symphony. 



And so I believe in happiness, not alone as the only defensible 

 ethical end, but also I believe in it organically, educationally, as 

 an element essential to the best educational training, for out of it 

 spring life and performance, and the fullness of life. In an age of 

 too great pain and suffering, we do not want the gospel of endurance. 

 We want the gospel of joy and health, the gospel of good tidings. 

 It seems to me a ghastly thing, psychologically, morally, emotionally, 

 to offer the deadening ideals of renunciation in place of the quick- 

 ening ideals of a noble self-realization; in place of life, paltry ex- 

 cuses, buried talents wrapped up in the napkins of resignation. 



But to return to our genius, who has been wondering, I am afraid, 

 what was to become of him. I have wanted to point out that monot- 

 ony and unhappiness do not make for that brain structure which is 

 the tool of genius. In the genius we have the other extreme, a highly 

 sensitive and highly organized brain tissue, and along with this com- 

 plete organism, as an essential part of it, a marvelous power of move- 

 ment. I doubt if there is such a thing as dormant genius. It is 

 bound to express itself, to do something. This expression has to be 

 in terms of the outer world, has to be through the medium of the 

 bodily faculties. Genius means, in fact, the seeing eye, the feeling 

 hand, the hearing ear. It means infinite patience exerted through 

 action. Genius expresses itself through art, whether it be the art of 

 action, in engineering, exploration, statesmanship, or the art of crea- 

 tive work, in painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature. 

 This requires a high degree of activity on the part of the senses, and a 

 very true and sound activity. Even the most immaterial of these 

 expression forms of genius, literature, is dependent for its triumphs 

 very largely upon the accurate report of the senses. Think of the 

 alertness and the power of observation shown by Homer and Shake- 

 speare. Nature has by no one been so accurately reported as by the 

 poet and the litterateur. Do you remember that touching little scene 

 in Cranford, where the old ladies go to see the yeoman farmer, and 

 he shows them his garden, and tells them that he never knew the ash 

 bud was black until it was pointed out to him by a young poet, a 

 certain Mr. Tennyson? And here in our midst, Thoreau and Bur- 

 roughs and John Muir have brought Nature nearer home than all 

 the microscopes imported from Germany. 



