I have no faith in the contention of the Lombrosians that genius is akin
to insanity, neither do I think that genius is an infinite capacity for
taking pains. Lombroso, for that matter, is as old-fashioned today as a
hoop skirt.
Genius partakes of the miraculous. If some one should tell me that a
stick had been transformed into a snake by a miracle, naturally I should
not believe it; but if I should be asked whether there was not something
miraculous in the very existence of a stick or of a snake, I should be
constrained to acknowledge the miracle.
When I read the lives of the philosophers in Diogenes Laertius, I arrive
at the conclusion that Epicurus, Zeno, Diogenes, Protagoras and the
others were nothing more than men who had common sense. Clearly, as a
corollary, I am obliged to conclude that the people we meet nowadays
upon the street, whether they wear gowns, uniforms or blouses, are mere
animals masquerading in human shape.
Contradicting the assumption that the great men of antiquity were only
ordinary normal beings, we must concede the fact that most extraordinary
conditions must have existed and, indeed, have been pre-exquisite,
before a Greece could have arisen in antiquity, or an Athens in Greece,
or a man such as Plato in Athens.
By very nature, the sources of admiration are as mysterious to my mind
as the roots of genius. Do we admire what we understand, or what we do
not understand? Admiration is of two kinds, of which the more common
proceeds from wonder at something which we do not understand. There is,
however, an admiration which goes with understanding.
Edgar Poe composed several stories, of which _The Goldbug_ is one,
in which an impenetrable enigma is first presented, to be solved
afterwards as by a talisman; but, then, a lesson in cryptography ensues,
wherein the talisman is explained away, and the miraculous gives place
to the reasoning faculties of a mind of unusual power.
He has done something very similar in his poem, _The Raven_, where
the poem is followed by an analysis of its gestation, which is called
_The Philosophy of Composition_. Would it be more remarkable to
write _The Raven_ by inspiration, or to write it through conscious
skill? To find the hidden treasure through the talisman of _The
Goldbug_, or through the possession of analytical faculties such as
those of the protagonist of Poe's tale?
Much consideration will lead to the conclusion that one process is as
marvellous as the other.
It may be said that there is nothing miraculous in nature, and it may be
said that it is all miraculous.