GENIUS AND INDUSTRY. CHAPTER I. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GENIUS, Two notions have captivated all ordinary minds, both erroneous, both dangerous, both having reference to the main subject of this little volume; one, that Genius is and ever has been a very rare and extraordinary endowment, a sort of gift conferred upon man, only for Pyrotechnic display-a commodity parcelled out among some twenty or thirty persons at most of all the whole past or present of the human family. Here is one mistake, and the second is like unto it—the notion that Genius may dispense with labour-that it is the companion of idleness and luxury; that its inspirations come unsought; that it disdains all yoke, and contemns all labour. We repeat that both these ideas are phantoms, but like many other phantoms and fantasies of the mind, they very often leave behind them serious and oppressive evidences of their power. This volume will not have been penned in vain if it shall assist in the dismissal of these notions as idle prejudices from the reader's mind. But what then is Genius? There is at this moment residing in one of the large B manufacturing districts, near Manchester, one of the most eminent living mathematicians; he fills a very humble office in the counting house of one of the large mill-owners, and treads along in all, save his passion for the great abstractions of Geometry, a well-beaten, humble, and frequently trodden path. The other day, a Professor from the University of Cambridge, staying at a mansion in the neighbourhood, expressed a desire to see him; and calling at the counting house, as if upon some casual visit, introduced the studies so much loved, as if by accident, from Geometry to Logarithms, and to the Differential and Integral Calculus; and thence again to questions the most foreign and profound at last, a question was proposed to the poor clerk, seldom put-a question which weeks had been required to solve. Upon a simple slip of paper it was answered immediately. "But how," said the Professor, "do you work this? show me the rule! The answer is correct, but you have reached it by a different way." "I have worked it," said the clerk, "from a rule in my own mind. I cannot show you the law-I never saw it myself; the law is in my mind." "Ah!" said the Professor, "if you talk of a law within your mind, I have done; I cannot follow you there." This humble, but illustrious spirit, is a Genius, and is an illustration of what Genius is in every age,-a power that derives its light from within; as John Foster truly said, "Genius is the power of lighting its own fire;" it is a law to itself; it is the channel through which divine truth and beauty came down to men; it is in the highest sense percipient and recipient of Truth; it is the window through which the soul looks out over the broad field of life, and from its higher and wider intelligence, conceives more, invents more, designs more than other minds; it is the bold, but steady wing, bearing up the soul to higher regions than are prescribed to it in the tame and dull present, and enabling it to live and luxuriate in the pure free heaven of the future. Industry is ever laying the powers of Genius under contribution. There is no tool used by Industry; there is no work achieved by Industry, there is no improvement attempted by Industry, but the hint was first given by Genius. Genius is a combination of Perception and Reflection; Industry of Necessity and Self-preservation. Very frequently in the history of mankind, the two have been found in beautiful union. The contemplative mind has found a lodging in a very active body. The soul has found it work to do, and has done it; and where this is the case, body and spirit will be usually found to act in unison; and this is a combination which ought not to be rare. The im perfection of education preaches up the idea of a monopoly of powers, of the unequal distribution of talents; nor is it intended by this to affirm, that all minds are alike equal in stature, but then the disproportion is very far from being so marked and decided in reality as it seems to be. The lazy habitude has led to the placing boundless faith in brilliant and magnificent minds-in fact, in mind as Mind-the worship of Genius-hero worship. Who does not know. that this is carried to a painful extreme, this idolatry of human intellect, this homage to the shrine of gifted intelligence? and in our own time, this is especially the case. One of the artificial methods of escaping from all the responsibilities of personal earnestness is, by bowing before the obviously earnest of some other time. Not that in truth the spirit of true worship is there certain names lead up the fashion, and it is indispensable to join in the hum and buzz around the popular idol. A more unhealthy mental process can. : |