THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 



3!3 



te thus elevates the traditions of man, inspires the literature that 

 :he people read. He sows the seeds of effort in the fertile soil of 

 the newborn of his own kind, while he leads those who do not 

 Lave the same gifts to rear and tend the growing plant in their 

 >wn social gardens. This is true: and a philosophy of society 

 mould not overlook either of the facts the actual deeds and the 



jculiar influence of the great man upon their own time or his 



i,sting place in the more inspiring social tradition which is em- 

 >odied in literature and art. 



But it is not my aim to add to the literature of hero-worship. 



'he considerations on that side are so patent that he who runs 



Lay read. My aim is to present just the opposite aspect of these 



apparent exceptions to the canons of our ordinary social life, and 



so to oppose the extreme claim made by the writers who attempt, 



the name of social philosophy and science, to blur the lines of 



me thought on these topics. For it only needs a moment's 

 consideration to see that if the genius has no reasonable place in 

 the movement of social progress in the world, then there can be 

 lo possible doctrine or philosophy of such progress. To the 

 tero- worshiper his hero comes in simply to " knock out," so to 

 speak, all the regular movement of the society which is so fortu- 

 late, or so unfortunate, as to have given him birth : and by his 



dtiative the aspirations, beliefs, struggles of the community or 

 state get a push in a new direction a tangent to the former 



Lovement or a reversal of it. If this be true, and it be further 

 :rue that no genius who is likely to appear can be discounted by 

 my human device before his abrupt appearance upon the stage of 

 listory, then the history of facts takes the place of the science or 

 milosophy of them, and the chronicler is the only historian with 



right to be. 

 Our genius, then, is a very critical factor in human thought. 



Tot only is he the man from whom we expect the thought ; he 



also the man who, if the hero-worshiper is right, traduces 



thought. For of what value can we hold the contribution 



mich he makes to thought if this contribution runs so across 

 the acquisitions of the earlier time, and the contributions of 

 earlier genius, that no line of common truth can be discovered 

 >etween him and them ? Then each society would have its 

 >wn explanation of itself, and that only so long as it pro- 

 luced no new genius. It may be, of course, that society is so 



instituted or, rather, so lacking in constitution that simple 

 variations in brain physiology are the sufficient reason for its 

 cataclysms; but a great many efforts will be made by the 

 geniuses themselves to prove the contrary before this highest of 

 ill spheres of human activity is declared to have no meaning 

 thread which runs from age to age and links mankind, the 



VOL. XLIX. 26 



