You do not make a child get on at school by calling him a little idiot and telling him he will never do anything in his life; you do not impart bravery into the heart of a timid soldier by treating him as if he were a coward.
If a horse is afraid of anything lying on the road, don't whip him, don't use the spurs; pat him gently on the neck and lead him near the object to make him acquainted with it. Like that you will cure him of his shyness.
Help men with encouragement, praise, and admiration.
CHAPTER XVII
WHAT IS GENIUS?
Genius is a form of madness. Early in the Christian era, St. Augustine declared that there was no genius without a touch of insanity. The human being who is born without a grain of folly will never be a great poet, a great novelist, a great painter or sculptor, a great musician, or a great anything.
Unless you are erratic, irritable, full of fads, you need not aspire to attain sublime heights. Homer, Shakespeare, Raphael, Shelley, Wagner were lunatics. That is why, to my mind, nothing is more absurd, preposterous, than to go and poke one's nose into the private life of geniuses. Let us admire the work that their genius has left to us, without inquiring whether they regularly came home to tea, and were attentive fathers and faithful husbands. Do we not love Burns and Shelley?
Certainly, if I had lived in their times and had a marriageable daughter, I would have been careful to see that she did not fall in love with either of them; but what has that to do with their poetry and the enjoyment of it?