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Some children, adversely situated as to poverty and health, become geniuses, and their reverse is in the poor child whom heredity, early disease, or some freak of nature dooms to feeble-mindedness. The heart of the mother is in her child; she glories in its progress, and she refuses to see its defects until they glare too brightly to be overlooked.
If all geniuses had a prerogative right to rank and wealth, and all the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, could we be sure that none but genuine geniuses would claim them, and that there would be no margin for disputation with "solemn shams"? Milton's fifteen pounds are often referred to by him who finds how hard it is to climb, &c.; but we have no "return," as the blue-books call it, of all the good opportunities afforded to intellects ambitious of arising as meteors but only showing themselves as farthing rush-lights.
There are men so naturally born to take the lead in social reform, in executive matters, in organization, in planning our social campaigns for us, that we turn to them as by instinct. They have a kind of insight to which we can only bow. They gain the confidence of men, win the support of women, and excite the acclamations of children. These people are the social geniuses.
Certainly, Sir, the editors of the public journals are not to be disfranchised. Certainly they are fair candidates, either for popular elections, or a just participation in office. Certainly they reckon in their number some of the first geniuses, the best scholars, and the most honest and well-principled men in the country.
When great geniuses arise above the social mass, impelled by vocation, they are nearly always rounded into completeness; the man is then not merely a specialist, he has the gift of universality.
I do not know exactly what Christina expected, but I should imagine it was something like this: "My children ought to be all geniuses, because they are mine and Theobald's, and it is naughty of them not to be; but, of course, they cannot be so good and clever as Theobald and I were, and if they show signs of being so it will be naughty of them.
A philosopher must be more than a philosopher. Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and so their house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them. Plato, especially, has no external biography.
It is natural and pardonable that we should like to know the details of the daily life which the men whom we admire have shared with common mortals, ourselves among the rest. But Emerson has said truly "Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and so their home and street life was trivial and commonplace."
I was the giant with the feet of clay the lot of many youths. But now, my small, small friend, look about you: there has appeared, within even your field of vision, a figure here and a figure there, a shining crest, lavish with its bounty, geniuses beneath the open sky you and I should bid them welcome.
It's a `Je ne sais quoi, don't you know. One could tell at a glance that you were not a literary man." The Chieftain chuckled, bent down to gather a handful of stones, and raised a red smiling face to hers. "Well, well, we can't all be geniuses, you know! One in a glen is about as much as you can expect to meet in these hard times. But I can chuck stones with the best of 'em.
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