TALENT AND GENIUS
There has been so much written about the nature of genius that, to avoid
misunderstanding, it will be better to make a few general remarks before
going into the subject.
And the first thing to do is to settle the question of talent. Genius
and talent are nearly always connected in the popular idea, as if the
first were a higher, or the highest, grade of the latter, and as if a
man of very high and varied talents might be a sort of intermediate
between the two. This view is entirely erroneous. Even if there were
different degrees or grades of genius, they would have absolutely
nothing to do with so-called “talent.” A talent, for instance the
mathematical talent, may be possessed by some one in a very high degree
from birth; and he will be able to master the most difficult problems of
that science with ease; but for this he will require no genius, which is
the same as originality, individuality, and a condition of general
productiveness.
On the other hand, there are men of great genius who have shown no
special talent in any marked degree; for instance, men like Novalis or
Jean Paul. Genius is distinctly not the superlative of talent; there is
a world-wide difference between the two; they are of absolutely unlike
nature; they can neither be measured by one another or compared to each
other.
Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family
(_e.g._, the Bach family); genius is not transmitted; it is never
diffused, but is strictly individual.
Many ill-balanced people, and in particular women, regard genius and
talent as identical. Women, indeed, have not the faculty of appreciating
genius, although this is not the common view. Any extravagance that
distinguishes a man from other men appeals equally to their sexual
ambition; they confuse the dramatist with the actor, and make no
distinction between the virtuoso and the artist. For them the talented
man is the man of genius, and Nietzsche is the type of what they
consider genius. What has been called the French type of thought, which
so strongly appeals to them, has nothing to do with the highest
possibilities of the mind. Great men take themselves and the world too
seriously to become what is called merely intellectual. Men who are
merely intellectual are insincere; they are people who have never really
been deeply engrossed by things and who do not feel an overpowering
desire for production. All that they care about is that their work
should glitter and sparkle like a well-cut stone, not that it should
illuminate anything. They are more occupied with what will be said of
what they think than by the thoughts themselves. There are men who are
willing to marry a woman they do not care about merely because she is
admired by other men. Such a relation exists between many men and their
thoughts. I cannot help thinking of one particular living author, a
blaring, outrageous person, who fancies that he is roaring when he is
only snarling. Unfortunately, Nietzsche (however superior he is to the
man I have in mind) seems to have devoted himself chiefly to what he
thought would shock the public. He is at his best when he is most
unmindful of effect. His was the vanity of the mirror, saying to what it
reflects, “See how faithfully I show you your image.” In youth when a
man is not yet certain of himself he may try to secure his own position
by jostling others. Great men, however, are painfully aggressive only
from necessity. They are not like a girl who is most pleased about a new
dress because she knows that it will annoy her friends.
Genius! genius! how much mental disturbance and discomfort, hatred and
envy, jealousy and pettiness, has it not aroused in the majority of
men, and how much counterfeit and tinsel has the desire for it not
occasioned?
I turn gladly from the imitations of genius to the thing itself and its
true embodiment. But where can I begin? All the qualities that go to
make genius are in so intimate connection that to begin with any one of
them seems to lead to premature conclusions.
All discussions on the nature of genius are either biological-clinical,
and serve only to show the absurd presumption of present knowledge of
this kind in its hope to solve a problem so difficult; or they descend
from the heights of a metaphysical system for the sole purpose of
including genius in their purview. If the road that I am about to take
does not lead to every goal at once, it is only because that is the
nature of roads.
Consider how much deeper a great poet can reach into the nature of man
than an average person. Think of the extraordinary number of characters
depicted by Shakespeare or Euripides, or the marvellous assortment of
human beings that fill the pages of Zola. After the Penthesilea,
Heinrich von Kleist created Kätchen von Heilbronn, and Michael Angelo
embodied from his imagination the Delphic Sibyls and the Leda. There
have been few men so little devoted to art as Kant and Schelling, and
yet these have written most profoundly and truly about it. In order to
depict a man one must understand him, and to understand him one must be
like him; in order to portray his psychological activities one must be
able to reproduce them in oneself. To understand a man one must have his
nature in oneself. One must be like the mind one tries to grasp. It
takes a thief to know a thief, and only an innocent man can understand
another innocent man. The poseur only understands other poseurs, and
sees nothing but pose in the actions of others; whilst the simple-minded
fails to understand the most flagrant pose. To understand a man is
really to be that man.
It would seem to follow that a man can best understand himself--a
conclusion plainly absurd. No one can understand himself, for to do
that he would have to get outside himself; the subject of the knowing
and willing activity would have to become its own object. To grasp the
universe it would be necessary to get a standpoint outside the universe,
and the possibility of such a standpoint is incompatible with the idea
of a universe. He who could understand himself could understand the
world. I do not make the statement merely as an explanation: it contains
an important truth, to the significance of which I shall recur. For the
present I am content to assert that no one can understand his deepest,
most intimate nature. This happens in actual practice; when one wishes
to understand in a general way, it is always from other persons, never
from oneself, that one gets one’s materials. The other person chosen
must be similar in some respect, however different as a whole; and,
making use of this similarity, he can recognise, represent, comprehend.
So far as one understands a man, one is that man.
The man of genius takes his place in the above argument as he who
understands incomparably more other beings than the average man. Goethe
is said to have said of himself that there was no vice or crime of which
he could not trace the tendency in himself, and that at some period of
his life he could not have understood fully. The genius, therefore, is a
more complicated, more richly endowed, more varied man; and a man is the
closer to being a genius the more men he has in his personality, and the
more really and strongly he has these others within him. If
comprehension of those about him only flickers in him like a poor
candle, then he is unable, like the great poet, to kindle a mighty flame
in his heroes, to give distinction and character to his creations. The
ideal of an artistic genius is to live in all men, to lose himself in
all men, to reveal himself in multitudes; and so also the aim of the
philosopher is to discover all others in himself, to fuse them into a
unit which is his own unit.
This protean character of genius is no more simultaneous than the
bi-sexuality of which I have spoken. Even the greatest genius cannot
understand the nature of all men at the same time, on one and the same
day. The comprehensive and manifold rudiments which a man possesses in
his mind can develop only slowly and by degrees with the gradual
unfolding of his whole life. It appears almost as if there were a
definite periodicity in his development. These periods, when they recur,
however, are not exactly alike; they are not mere repetitions, but are
intensifications of their predecessors, on a higher plane. No two
moments in the life of an individual are exactly alike; there is between
the later and the earlier periods only the similarity of the higher and
lower parts of a spiral ascent. Thus it has frequently happened that
famous men have conceived a piece of work in their early youth, laid it
aside during manhood, and resumed and completed it in old age. Periods
exist in every man, but in different degrees and with varying
“amplitude.” Just as the genius is the man who contains in himself the
greatest number of others in the most active way, so the amplitude of a
man’s periods will be the greater the wider his mental relations may be.
Illustrious men have often been told, by their teachers, in their youth
“that they were always in one extreme or another.” As if they could be
anything else! These transitions in the case of unusual men often assume
the character of a crisis. Goethe once spoke of the “recurrence of
puberty” in an artist. The idea is obviously to be associated with the
matter under discussion.
It results from their periodicity that, in men of genius, sterile years
precede productive years, these again to be followed by sterility, the
barren periods being marked by psychological self-depreciation, by the
feeling that they are less than other men; times in which the
remembrance of the creative periods is a torment, and when they envy
those who go about undisturbed by such penalties. Just as his moments of
ecstasy are more poignant, so are the periods of depression of a man of
genius more intense than those of other men. Every great man has such
periods, of longer or shorter duration, times in which he loses
self-confidence, in which he thinks of suicide; times in which, indeed,
he may be sowing the seeds of a future harvest, but which are devoid of
the stimulus to production; times which call forth the blind criticisms
“How such a genius is degenerating!” “How he has played himself out!”
“How he repeats himself!” and so forth.
It is just the same with other characteristics of the man of genius. Not
only the material, but also the spirit, of his work is subject to
periodic change. At one time he is inclined to a philosophical and
scientific view; at another time the artistic influence is strongest; at
one time his intervals are altogether in the direction of history and
the growth of civilisation; later on it is “nature” (compare Nietzsche’s
“Studies in Infinity” with his “Zarathustra”); at another time he is a
mystic, at yet another simplicity itself! (Björnson and Maurice
Maeterlinck are good modern examples.) In fact, the “amplitude” of the
periods of famous men is so great, the different revelations of their
nature so various, so many different individuals appear in them, that
the periodicity of their mental life may be taken almost as diagnostic.
I must make a remark sufficiently obvious from all this, as to the
existence of almost incredibly great changes in the personal appearance
of men of genius from time to time. Comparison of the portraits at
different times of Goethe, Beethoven, Kant, or Schopenhauer are enough
to establish this. The number of different aspects that the face of a
man has assumed may be taken almost as a physiognomical measure of his
talent.[9]
[9] I cannot help using the word “talent” from time to time when I
really mean genius; but I wish it to be remembered that I am convinced
of the existence of a fundamental distinction between “talent,” or
“giftedness,” and “genius.”
People with an unchanging expression are low in the intellectual scale.
Physiognomists, therefore, must not be surprised that men of genius, in
whose faces a new side of their minds is continually being revealed, are
difficult to classify, and that their individualities leave little
permanent mark on their features.
It is possible that my introductory description of genius will be
repudiated indignantly, because it would imply that a Shakespeare has
the vulgarity of his Falstaff, the rascality of his Iago, the
boorishness of his Caliban, and because it identifies great men with all
the low and contemptible things that they have described. As a matter of
fact, men of genius do conform to my description, and as their
biographies show, are liable to the strangest passions and the most
repulsive instincts. And yet the objection is invalid, as the fuller
exposition of the thesis will reveal. Only the most superficial survey
of the argument could support it, whilst the exactly opposite conclusion
is a much more likely inference. Zola, who has so faithfully described
the impulse to commit murder, did not himself commit a murder, because
there were so many other characters in him. The actual murderer is in
the grasp of his own disposition: the author describing the murder is
swayed by a whole kingdom of impulses. Zola would know the desire for
murder much better than the actual murderer would know it, he would
recognise it in himself, if it really came to the surface in him, and he
would be prepared for it. In such ways the criminal instincts in great
men are intellectualised and turned to artistic purposes as in the case
of Zola, or to philosophic purposes as with Kant, but not to actual
crime.
The presence of a multitude of possibilities in great men has important
consequences connected with the theory of henids that I elaborated in
the last chapter. A man understands what he already has within himself
much more quickly than what is foreign to him (were it otherwise there
would be no intercourse possible: as it is we do not realise how often
we fail to understand one another). To the genius, who understands so
much more than the average man, much more will be apparent.
The schemer will readily recognise his fellow; an impassioned player
easily reads the same power in another person; whilst those with no
special powers will observe nothing. Art discerns itself best, as Wagner
said. In the case of complex personalities the matter stands thus: one
of these can understand other men better than they can understand
themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is
grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation
and comprehension; if we inquire from psychology what is the most
necessary condition for becoming conscious of a thing, for grasping it,
we shall find the answer in “contrast.” If everything were a uniform
grey we should have no idea of colour; absolute unison of sound would
soon produce sleep in all mankind; duality, the power which can
differentiate, is the origin of the alert consciousness. Thus it happens
that no one can understand himself were he to think of nothing else all
his life, but he can understand another to whom he is partly alike, and
from whom he is also partly quite different. Such a distribution of
qualities is the condition most favourable for understanding. In short,
to understand a man means to have equal parts of himself and of his
opposite in one.
That things must be present in pairs of contrasts if we are to be
conscious of one member of the pair is shown by the facts of
colour-vision. Colour-blindness always extends to the complementary
colours. Those who are red blind are also green blind; those who are
blind to blue have no consciousness of yellow. This law holds good for
all mental phenomena; it is a fundamental condition of consciousness.
The most high-spirited people understand and experience depression much
more than those who are of level disposition. Any one with so keen a
sense of delicacy and subtilty as Shakespeare must also be capable of
extreme grossness.
The more types and their contrasts a man unites in his own mind the less
will escape him, since observation follows comprehension, and the more
he will see and understand what other men feel, think, and wish. There
has never been a genius who was not a great discerner of men. The great
man sees through the simpler man often at a glance, and would be able to
characterise him completely.
Most men have this, that, or the other faculty or sense
disproportionately developed. One man knows all the birds and tells
their different voices most accurately. Another has a love for plants
and is devoted to botany from his childhood. One man pores lovingly into
the many layered rocks of the earth, and has only the vaguest
appreciation of the skies; to another the attraction of cold, star-sown
space is supreme. One man is repelled by the mountains and seeks the
restless sea; another, like Nietzsche, gets no help from the tossing
waters and hungers for the peace of the hills. Every man, however simple
he may be, has some side of nature with which he is in special sympathy
and for which his faculties are specially alert. And so the ideal
genius, who has all men within him, has also all their preferences and
all their dislikes. There is in him not only the universality of men,
but of all nature. He is the man to whom all things tell their secrets,
to whom most happens, and whom least escapes. He understands most
things, and those most deeply, because he has the greatest number of
things to contrast and compare them with. The genius is he who is
conscious of most, and of that most acutely. And so without doubt his
sensations must be most acute; but this must not be understood as
implying, say, in the artist the keenest power of vision, in the
composer the most acute hearing; the measure of genius is not to be
taken from the acuteness of the sense organ but from that of the
perceiving brain.
The consciousness of the genius is, then, the furthest removed from the
henid stage. It has the greatest, most limpid clearness and
distinctness. In this way genius declares itself to be a kind of higher
masculinity, and thus the female cannot be possessed of genius. The
conclusion of this chapter and the last is simply that the life of the
male is a more highly conscious life than that of the female, and genius
is identical with the highest and widest consciousness. This extremely
comprehensive consciousness of the highest types of mankind is due to
the enormous number of contrasting elements in their natures.
Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such
thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or
even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who
knows everything without having learned it.
It stands to reason that this infinite knowledge does not include
theories and systems which have been formulated by science from facts,
neither the history of the Spanish war of succession nor experiments in
dia-magnetism.
The artist does not acquire his knowledge of the colours reflected on
water by cloudy or sunny skies, by a course of optics, any more than it
requires a deep study of characterology to judge other men. But the more
gifted a man is, the more he has studied on his own account, and the
more subjects he has made his own.
The theory of special genius, according to which, for instance, it is
supposed that a musical “genius” should be a fool at other subjects,
confuses genius with talent. A musician, if truly great, is just as well
able to be universal in his knowledge as a philosopher or a poet. Such
an one was Beethoven. On the other hand, a musician may be as limited in
the sphere of his activity as any average man of science. Such an one
was Johann Strauss, who, in spite of his beautiful melodies, cannot be
regarded as a genius if only because of the absence of constructive
faculty in him. To come back to the main point; there are many kinds of
talent, but only one kind of genius, and that is able to choose any kind
of talent and master it. There is something in genius common to all
those who possess it; however much difference there may seem to be
between the great philosopher, painter, musician, poet, or religious
teacher. The particular talent through the medium of which the spirit of
a man develops is of less importance than has generally been thought.
The limits of the different arts can easily be passed, and much besides
native inborn gifts have to be taken into account. The history of one
art should be studied along with the history of other arts, and in that
way many obscure events might be explained. It is outside my present
purpose, however, to go into the question of what determines a genius to
become, say, a mystic, or, say, a great delineator.
From genius itself, the common quality of all the different
manifestations of genius, woman is debarred. I will discuss later as to
whether such things are possible as pure scientific or technical genius
as well as artistic and philosophical genius. There is good reason for a
greater exactness in the use of the word. But that may come, and however
clearly we may yet be able to describe it woman will have to be excluded
from it. I am glad that the course of my inquiry has been such as to
make it impossible for me to be charged with having framed such a
definition of genius as necessarily to exclude woman from it.
I may now sum up the conclusions of this chapter. Whilst woman has no
consciousness of genius, except as manifested in one particular person,
who imposes his personality on her, man has a deep capacity for
realising it, a capacity which Carlyle, in his still little understood
book on “Hero-Worship,” has described so fully and permanently. In
“Hero-Worship,” moreover, the idea is definitely insisted on that genius
is linked with manhood, that it represents an ideal masculinity in the
highest form. Woman has no direct consciousness of it; she borrows a
kind of imperfect consciousness from man. Woman, in short, has an
unconscious life, man a conscious life, and the genius the most
conscious life.