6 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



profitable illusion during its season of growth 

 and vigour. When mankind cease to create 

 seasonable illusions and to take illusions for 

 realities it may go hard with them in their 

 pilgrimage through time : to them as to the in- 

 dividual mortal when desire fails and hope dies 

 the grasshopper be a burden. 



Certain it is that there is in organic nature a 

 strain or nisus to a more complex and special be- 

 coming of things, a conatus fiendi or progrediendi, 

 which has wrought steadily through the ages and 

 discovers its working alike in the innumerable 

 variational outbursts ; in the countless multitudes 

 of seeds, buds and germs that mostly perish time- 

 lessly ; in the now settled types of the various 

 organic species ; in the eager aspirations of human 

 imagination, futile or fruitful. It is as if the 

 mighty stream of organic plasm as it flows slowly 

 onwards in its countless channels from age to age 

 were intent to make new channels on the least 

 occasion and only seldom succeeded. That it 

 seldom succeeds now may be because its upward 



creative emotion : the accomplished liar feels it in launching 

 his lies ; the fantastic novelist in the silly and grotesque de- 

 formities of an undisciplined imagination ; the soaring meta- 

 physician in the ventosities which he proudly christens entities ; 

 the poet or humbler author who in the zest and fervour of 

 composition is immensely delighted with work which, if he 

 dares to read it over twenty years afterwards looks common- 

 place, perhaps makes his ears tingle or his cheeks glow — that is 

 to say, if he has had the capacity to grow in insight and judg- 

 ment as he has grown in years and detachment. 



