How far the greatest writers are from being perfect in themselves, and how much they are indebted to other aids, let one say who is entitled to speak with authority on such a subject. The great German writer Goethe thus speaks: “How little are we by ourselves, and how little can we call our own! We must all accept and learn from those that went before us, and from those that live with us. Even the greatest genius would make but little way if he were to create and construct everything out of his own mind. The world influences us at each step. The artist who merely walks through a room and casts a glance at the pictures, goes away a wiser man, and has learnt something from others. My works spring not from my own wisdom alone, but from hundreds of things and persons that gave the matter for them. There were fools and sages, long-headed men and narrow-minded men, children, and young and old men and women, that told me how they felt and what they thought. I had but to hold out my hands and reap a harvest which others had sown for me.... Many a time I am told that such and such an artist owes all to himself. Sometimes I put up with it; but sometimes, too, I tell them that he has little reason to be proud of his master.”
But though the slightest reflection suffices to show that there can be no inborn genius which accomplishes its ends in full perfection without education or training of any kind, there will still remain among most of us a vague belief to the contrary. It is more congenial to the popular taste to imagine that genius is an immediate gift from heaven, owing all to its divine source, than that it requires in any degree to be aided and supplemented by less sublime means.
On the other hand, many contend that genius is wholly an acquired power, using such arguments as the following: It is constantly found that the habit of taking pains ever accompanies what we call genius. In actual fact the two are ever found united. Where the one is present the other is present also. Where the one is absent the other also is absent. May not the one be the cause of the other? Then look at the effect of education in improving our intellectual powers. Look at the effect of education and constant practice in making the mind alert, and capable of doing well whatever it does often! Nor must it be forgotten that it is not one part only of man’s education that is to be considered, but every part. Everything that happens to us, everything that affects us, from the first dawn of our existence, is part of our education. When the Queen and Prince Albert were taking counsel together about the education of their children, a sagacious friend whom they consulted, to their surprise insisted strongly on this point, that a child’s education begins “the first day of his life.” Impressions are made on the infant mind going farther back than we can trace them. All these impressions, all the influences that surround us, from our first entrance into life, are a part of our education.
All this may be true; but there is perhaps some danger of our attributing too much importance to education. There are natural differences of intellectual power among men altogether apart from the education they receive. Some minds are strong by nature and in their very organization, while others are uncommonly weak.
Some are naturally so stupid and weak in the head that nothing can be made of them, let their education be continued ever so long. One day, when calling at the Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh, I stood beside a man, who was depositing some money, whose intellect was of this low type. The teller asked him if he wished to lift the interest of the money lying to his credit for the past year. He just answered, “Let it lie.” Then the teller handed him a paper to sign. He said, “I canna do’t.” Feeling interested in the man, I advised him to go to a night school, at least to learn to sign his name. He replied, “I hae been at it four years, and I canna do’t.” Of course, of such a man nothing could be made. No amount of education could ever make him a genius, or even raise him above mediocrity in any branch of learning.
But if we take minds of a higher order, is it not possible that education acting upon them may be attended with happier results, and may ultimately produce that beautiful, that rich and rare type of mind which we call genius? Such was the opinion of Dr. Johnson. In his “Life of Cowley,” and with reference to the boyhood of the poet, Dr. Johnson says: “In the window of his mother’s apartment lay Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen,’ in which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten, produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction.”
Nor was this a mere passing thought with the great moralist; it was his confirmed belief. More than once we find the same idea repeated in his conversations. Thus, on one occasion, he is reported to have said: “No, sir, people are not born with a particular genius for particular employments or studies, for it would be like saying that a man could see a great way east, but could not west. It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called by the generality of mankind a particular genius.”
If Dr. Johnson’s view is correct, we ought surely to meet with far more men of genius in the world than we do! There is no want of such as possess “large general powers,” and yet men of genius are rare. They are like angel’s visits, few and far between.
Dr. Johnson’s argument has been repeated in every variety of form. One says genius is untiring patience. Another says it is a great capacity for taking trouble. Another says it is simply hard work. But again we may ask, If genius is what such writers represent it to be, why are not men of genius more frequently met with?
Nor can it be said their lot forbids or that opportunities are wanting. What with the multiplication of books, and the general extension of education among all classes, knowledge now unrolls her “ample page” to every eye, and yet our embryo Miltons remain mute and inglorious, and the fairest flowers of genius, with rare exceptions, are still born to blush unseen, and waste their sweetness on the desert air.