142 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



the knowledge that he can cultivate and improve those 

 powers. It was pure automatism that led Mozart, when 

 four years old, to compose a piece of music far too diffi- 

 cult to be played, but perfectly correct in harmony.^ 



While, therefore, I should lay less stress on man's 

 genius than M. Janet does as implying great intelligence, I 

 would see in it the highest concrete manifestation of the 

 infinite genius of the Immanent Worker of Nature, so that 

 whereas different forms and varieties of genius are ex- 

 hibited in different men, I would regard them collectively 

 as the common characteristics of the Power which under- 

 lies Nature itself, and which thus shines through those 

 favoured human beings whom we call geniuses. 



"Then, what of Intelligence? This is not identical 

 with genius. Perhaps one definition of intelligence is the 

 power to distinguish means from ends, and thus to pre- 

 pare the means with the view of accomplishing the ends. 

 Thus, intelligence is distinct from tendencies. Hunger, 

 for instance, is a tendency. It is not the same thing as 

 the industry that finds food."" But both are really 

 equally automatic, and I do not see that our author clears 

 up the difficulty when he asks finally : " Is there not 

 something that represents what we should call foresight, 

 if the divine act were translated into human language ? 

 This is the question." •'' After discussing the nature of 

 human foresight trammelled by accident, M. Janet com- 

 pares it with God's " foresight," which means complete 

 vision of present and future at once, as " the act that 

 perceives the end, and the act that distinguishes the 

 means ". 



" Thus, the doctrine of the Novs, or of intentional 

 finality, has for us no other meaning than this — that intelli- 



^ I quote the story from memory, not remembering where I read it. 

 2 P. 408. •■'P. 410. 



