64 GENIUS AND MENTAL DISEASE. 
much the same as to say—-what every one knows—that 
the unconscious or reflex action of some highly endowed 
minds, evolves intellectual products—of which we are 
conscious—-which outrank the effects emanating from 
the conscious effort of less gifted minds. 
Yet what avails either conscious or unconscious men- 
tality unless it utilizes the rich legacies of the past, and, 
to the experience, knowledge, and culture of other 
minds, adds that which will enlarge our conceptions of 
truth and beauty. Herein is genius—that conscious or 
unconscious ‘‘ mastery which,’’ as Mr. Howells says, 
‘‘comes to any man according to his powers and dili- 
gence in any direction.”’ This does not affirm equality of 
all minds, nor allege that diligence or discipline can 
enable all to reach the same level of intellectuality, but 
it implies that the intellect is a unity, and that its 
varied expressions—whether known as ‘‘ability,” ‘‘tal- 
ent’ or ‘‘genius’’—differ not in kind but in degree. 
Genius, as the superlative expression of imaginative 
thought, often acts in an orbit of great eccentricity, and 
may be accompanied with a temperament so keenly 
sensitive that its tides of emotional life are ever at the 
highest flood or at the lowest ebb. ‘‘It is not happi- 
ness, but. ecstasy ; not grief, but anguish; hope be- 
comes enthusiasm, and despondency leads to despair.” 
In this glow of thought—this fierce consuming fervor 
of emotional life—it were not strange if the mind-ten- 
sion, thus intensified by the restless energy of ‘‘ spiritual 
generation,’ should at times ‘‘ disturb the harmony of 
cerebral action and thereby weaken volitional control.” 
In the attempt, not to define genius, but to explain 
the order of its succession, Mr. Galton was led to ‘‘ con- 
clude that each generation has enormous power over the 
natural gifts of those that follow,’’? and that native en- 
dowments of mind are of themselves quite sufficient to 
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