Contrary to our advice, N.J.F. persisted in his editorial ambitions and in time managed to persuade the owner of a certain publication to entrust him with its editorial management. Almost immediately the periodical began to lose subscribers. Down, down, down went its circulation until it almost reached the vanishing point. Finally, it expired. The trouble was not that its pages contained anything bad, harmful or illiterate, but simply that there was page after page of
dry, discursive, uninteresting, valueless material. It was a pity, because, under a competent editor, the periodical in question had occupied an important and useful place in the current literature of the period, and also because, as a dealer in coal, lumber, lime, and building materials, N.J. F. would have been a useful and successful member of the community.
THE INSANITY OF GENIUS
The greatest artists, musicians, writers, and thinkers are men of genius and are, therefore, in a sense, abnormal. Lombroso, in his work, "The Man of Genius," produces a great deal of interesting evidence showing the similarity between the manifestations of genius and those of insanity. Lombroso's conclusions have been more or less discredited, but later investigations and practically all students agree that the true genius is more or less an abnormality. In his case, some one or two faculties are developed out of all reasonable proportion to the others. Naturally enough, in such cases there is no need for a vocational counsellor. The genius devotes himself to his music, or his painting, or his writing, because there is nothing else he can do, nothing else in which he takes any interest, and because the inner urge is so powerful as to be irresistible.
But grossly deceived are those who imagine that the fire of genius burns away any necessity for drudgery. On the other hand, genius seems to consist very largely of a capacity for almost infinite drudgery. A prominent engineer once said to us that all great inventions which become commercially practicable are the joint product of a genius and a drudge, or rather, of a genius and a corps of drudges. The genius, in a flash of inspiration, conceives a new idea. Having conceived it, he can only sit down and wait for a new inspiration, while the drudges take his idea, work out its details, modify and conform it to conditions, and, finally, harness it to the commercial wagon. This sounded well and has a great deal of truth in it. Yet the most slavish drudge in the Edison laboratories and factories is Edison himself. The hardest
worker in all the Westinghouse plant was Westinghouse. And who but the Wright brothers themselves made a commercial success of the aeroplane? Sometimes, it is true, one man conceives an idea which he is unable to work out and which must be made practical by others, but more often than not he stumbles on the idea more by accident than because he is looking for it. So the young man or the young woman who has hopes of winning fame in the world of art, music, or literature should assay himself or herself first of all for a willingness to work, to work hard, and to work endlessly.
INDICATIONS OF ENERGY
Such energy is indicated by the large nose, high in the bridge, which admits large quantities of oxygen into the lungs; by high cheek bones, oftentimes by a head wide just above the ears, by square hands and square-tipped fingers, by hard or elastic consistency of fibre. Persistence and patience are indicated by brunette coloring and plodding by a well-developed and rather prominent jaw and chin. Havelock Ellis and other anthropologists have noted the fact that dark coloring is more frequently found in artists and actors than light hair, eyes, and skin.
Artistic, musical, and literary ability are as various in their indications as they are in their manifestations. One man is a painter, another a sculptor, another an architect. One man paints flowers, another landscapes, another portraits, another allegorical scenes, and still another the rough, virile, vigorous, or even horrible and gruesome aspects of life. One musician sings, another plays the violin, still another the piano, and another the pipe organ. One conducts a grand opera, another conducts a choir. One musician composes lyrics, another oratorios, another ragtime, and still another symphonies. One man writes poetry, another stories, another essays, another history, another philosophy, and still another the hard, dry, mathematical facts of science. Obviously, it would only confuse the reader were we to attempt to describe the physical appearance of all these different classes.