GENIUS AXD TALENT. 817 



between tlie dull people, the sensible people, the 

 intelligent people, the clever people, the people of 

 talent, unci the regular geniuses. From top to 

 bottom the scale of ability gr.cs on gradually by 

 infinitesimal gradations, and there is nothing, in 

 the last resort, to mark the very greatest men and 

 women from those just beneath them in the intel- 

 lectual scale, except perhaijs a rather greater 

 amount of painstaking attention. Granting this 

 — and all example shows it to be true — it is 

 quite possible for every one of us to raise our- 

 selves several grades higher in the scale by the 

 simple process of taking more trouble with every- 

 thing we do. Of course it is possible that we 

 may, some of us, have already reached the stand- 

 ard of absolute perfection in this respect ; we may 

 do with our might whatever our hand findeth to 

 do, according to the beautiful Scriptural adjunv- 

 tion ; but such models of attention must indeed 

 be few and far between, and there can be little 

 doubt that in most cases a trifle more of applica. 

 tion, no matter to what end directed, — business, 

 instruction, handicraft, the common affairs of 

 every-day life, — would sooner or later bring forth 

 good fruit, and raise us by so much in the scale 

 of being. We are all very largely what we are 

 born to be ; but we are also very largely what we 

 choose to make ourselves. People who think too 

 much of the first clause in this natural antithesis 



