In this way their true nature is
disclosed. What is here demanded cannot, perhaps, be said to be
difficult; it is not in our power at all, but is just the province of
genius.
By itself, genius can produce original thoughts just as little as a
woman by herself can bear children. Outward circumstances must come to
fructify genius, and be, as it were, a father to its progeny.
The mind of genius is among other minds what the carbuncle is among
precious stones: it sends forth light of its own, while the others
reflect only that which they have received. The relation of the
genius to the ordinary mind may also be described as that of
an idio-electrical body to one which merely is a conductor of
electricity.
The mere man of learning, who spends his life in teaching what he
has learned, is not strictly to be called a man of genius; just as
idio-electrical bodies are not conductors. Nay, genius stands to mere
learning as the words to the music in a song. A man of learning is a
man who has learned a great deal; a man of genius, one from whom we
learn something which the genius has learned from nobody. Great minds,
of which there is scarcely one in a hundred millions, are thus the
lighthouses of humanity; and without them mankind would lose itself in
the boundless sea of monstrous error and bewilderment.
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