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    come to the same conclusion . If life were aught but a straggle to overcome difficulties ; if the multifarious labours af the durum genus hominum were performed for us by supernatural agency , and there were no demand for either wisdom or virtue , but barely for stretching out our hands and enjoying , small would be our enjoyment , for there would be nothing which man could any longer

    prize in man . Even men of pleasure know that the means are often more than the end : the delight of fox-hunting does not consist in catching a fox . Whether , according to the ethical theory we adopt , wisdom and virtue be precious in themselves , or there be nothing precious save happiness , it matters little ; while we know that where these higher endowments are not , happiness can never be , even although the purposes for which they might seem

    to have been given , could , through any mechanical contrivance , be accomplished without them . To one who believes these truths , and has obtained thus much of insight into what the writer to whom I have already alluded would call " the significance of man ' s life , " it was a fitting inquiry what are really the intellectual characteristics of this age ; whether our mental light—let us account for the fact as we

    may—has not lost in intensity , at least a part of what it has gained in diffusion ; whether our 6 C march of intellect" be not rather a march towards doing without intellect , and supplying our deficiency of giants by the united efforts of a constantly increasing multitude of dwarfs . Such , too , is actually the problem which you have proposed . Suffer , then , one who has also much meditated thereon , to represent to you in what points he considers you to have failed in completely solving , and even in adequately conceiving the question .

    Have you not misplaced the gist of the inquiry , and confined the discussion within too narrow bounds , by countenancing the opinion which limits the province of genius to the discovery of truths never before known , or the formation of combinations never before imagined ? Is not this confounding the mere accidents of Genius with its essentials , and determining the order

    of precedence among minds , not by their powers , but by their opportunities and chances ? Is genius any distinct faculty ? Is it not rather the very faculty of thought itself ? And is not the act of knotuing anything not directly within the cognizance of our senses ( provided we really know it , and do not take it upon trust ) , as truly an exertion of genius , though of a less degree of genius , as if the thing had never been known by any one else ?

    Philosophic genius is said to be the discovery of new truth . But what is new truth ? That which has been known a thousand years may be new truth to you or me . There are born into the world every day several hundred thousand human beings , to whom all truth whatever is new truth . What is it to him who ^« # born yesterday , that somebody who was born fifty years ago

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    650 On Genius .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 650, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/2/