So7ne Theories of Genius. 21 



all," of whom Charles Darwin was a marked example, but they had 

 an innate and original gift beyond what might be cultivated by 

 education and study — just that something which distinguished the 

 orator from the most polished of speakers. It was such a gift that 

 enabled Burns to associate with a part of Scotland the realistic 

 creations of his poetic fancy ; that was shown in "A Midsummer 

 Night's Dream," that marvellous fairy-drama of Shakespeare ; that 

 was exhibited in Rembrandt's famous " Landscape with a Wind- 

 mill ;" that enabled Sir Isaac Newton to discover the law of 

 gravitation ; and that made Napoleon for a time the terror of 

 Europe. It was said by a certain modern school, of which 

 Lombroso was the chief exponent, that genius was a form of 

 mental derangement, but would anyone say that Burns, Shake- 

 speare, Rembrant, Newton, or Napoleon showed any form of 

 insanity ? He (Sir John) feared that their views as to what genius 

 was due to were still mere speculations or theories, but, considering 

 the tremendous advances that the science of medicine was making, 

 the anatomists and physiologists of the future might in time be 

 able to tell them in what respect the brains of men of genius 

 differed — in regard to structure and function — from those of their 

 less gifted fellow-beings, and then they would have some physical 

 basis as a characteristic underlying what they styled genius. 



Dr. Stewart, in the course of his lecture, said there was some- 

 thing paradoxical in proposing to theorise about genius. To 

 explain was to bring in rules, but a genius would not be a genius if 

 he could be accounted for. Talent was a thing they could under- 

 stand, and the difference between less and more was one of degree. 

 Another way to put it was that the gulf between talent and genius 

 was one that could in no way whatever be bridged, or even 

 reduced. What right had they to assume that genius was a 

 generic thing ? He suspected that their distrust of anything that 

 purported to explain genius was the feeling that the explanation of 

 genius was as impossible as the manufacture of the philosopher's 

 stone. Let them therefore look on the unique fact of the existence 

 of genius as a challenge to the pyschologist. Genius seemed to fall 



