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Untitled Article
Whosoever does this same thing systematically—whosoever , to the extent of his opportunity , gets at his convictions by his own faculties , and not by reliance on any other person whatever—that man , in proportion as his conclusions have truth in them , is an original thinker ^ and is , as much as anybody ever was , a man of
genius ; nor matters it though he should never chance to find out anything * which somebody had not found out before him . There may be no hidden truths left for him to find , or he may accidentally miss them ; but if he have courage and opportunity he can find hidden truths ; for he has found all those which he Knows , many of which were as hidden to him as those which are still unknown .
If the genius which discovers is no peculiar faculty , neither is the genius which creates . It was genius which produced the Prometheus Vinctus , the Oration on the Crown , the Minerva , or the Transfiguration ; and is it not genius which comprehends them ? Without genius , a work of genius may be felt , but it cannot possibly be understood .
The property which distinguishes every work of genius in poetry and art from incoherency and vain caprice is , that it is one , harmoniouSy and a whole : that its parts are connected together as standing in a common relation to some leading and central idea or purpose . This idea or purpose it is not possible to extract from the work by any mechanical rules . To transport ourselves from the point of view of a spectator or reader , to that of the poet or
artist himself , and from that central point to look round and see how the details of the work all conspire to the same end , all contribute to body forth the same general conception , is an exercise of the same powers of imagination , abstraction , and discrimination ( though in an inferior degree ) which would have enabled ourselves to produce the selfsame work . Do we not accordingly see that as much genius is often displayed in explaining the design and
bringing out the hidden significance of a work of art , as in creating it ? I have sometimes thought that conceptive genius is , in certain cases , even a higher faculty than creative . From the data afforded by a person ' s conversation and life , to frame a connected outline of the inward structure of that person ' s mind , so as to know and feel what the man is , and how life and the world paint themselves to his conceptions ; still more to decipher in that same manner the mind of
an age or a nation , and gain from history or travelling a vivid conception of the mind of a Greek or Roman , a Spanish peasant , ' American , or a Hindu , is an effort of genius , superior , I must needs believe , to any which was ever shown in the creation of a fictitious character , inasmuch as the imagination is limited by a particular set of conditions , instead of ranging at pleasure within the bounds of human nature .
If there be truth in the principle which the foregoing remarks are intended to illustrate , there is ground for considerable objection to the course of argument which you have adopted in the
Untitled Article
On Genius . 653
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 653, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/5/
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