356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



peak of solitary grandeur. Here and tliere individuals rise a little 

 above the mass, and form as a whole the body of thinkers. Here 

 and there individuals rise a little above the body, and form as a 

 whole the smaller group of men of talent. Here and there indi- 

 viduals rise a little above the group, often in the merest details of 

 their personal idiosyncrasy, and attain more or less distinctly to 

 the level which most of us recognize as genius. But from first to 

 last the various stages of intellect or of special faculty rise gradu- 

 ally one above the other ; the differences between the men them- 

 selves are minute ; it is the differences between the effects pro- 

 duced upon others that elevate some on so high an imaginary 

 pedestal above their fellows. 



I know that to say all this may look invidious. I know that 

 the polite crowd of clubs and drawing-rooms, which can not 

 see the importance of a psychological question for its own sake, 

 apart from personalities, will read in it throughout nothing but 

 envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. However, on that 

 point I am not afraid. I don't think any man living has a pro- 

 founder respect than I have for the genius of Matthew Arnold, 

 and William Morris, and Herbert Spencer, and George Meredith. 

 I'm sure no man living has a more generous appreciation than I 

 have for the genius of Andrew Lang and Austin Dobson, of James 

 and Howells, of Robert Louis Stevenson and Walter Besant, I 

 know that genius simply swarms among us ; that in this age one 

 may see such men as Croll wasting, like spendthrifts, upon a soli- 

 tary problem of the glacial epoch, vast constructive and organ- 

 izing powers which in any other age would have secured them 

 world-wide fame and reputation ; such men as Beddoe, working 

 for pure love, with inexhaustible industry, through a whole life- 

 time, at questions which everybody else ignores and neglects ; 

 such men as Galton, filled to the brim with ingenuity, acuteness, 

 and insight, till it oozes out at their finger-ends, pouring forth in 

 abundance upon an unheeding world the suggestive results of 

 their piercing, keen, and all-sided thinking. I know that genius 

 is choking and strangling itself in the keen struggle for recog- 

 nition and consequent usefulness. But I know also that if genius 

 is a drug, talent is a weed in modern London ; and that talent too 

 deserves its due honor. Men of ability throng thick around us — 

 men of ability so exceptionally high that in any less richly gifted 

 age than ours it would be universally recognized and crowned as 

 genius. The commoner such talent becomes in the world the 

 more supereminent must be the powers, or the more peculiar the 

 twist, or the more marked the originality which will suffice to 

 raise it into the higher category. In other words, what is talent 

 to-day would have been genius yesterday ; what is genius to-day 

 will be but talent as men reckon to-morrow. — Fortnightly Review. 



