The fine minds of the eighteenth century went into extended
disputations about what constitutes GENIUS, wherein it differs
from TALENT, what we should understand by MIND, etc. They had
transported into the intellectual sphere the same distinctions
that, in society, separate persons. To them there were kings and
rulers of genius, princes of genius, ministers of genius; and
then there were also noble minds and bourgeois minds, city
talents and country talents. Clear at the foot of the ladder lay
the gross industrial population, souls imperfectly outlined,
excluded from the glory of the elect. All rhetorics are still
filled with these impertinences, which monarchical interests,
literary vanity, and socialistic hypocrisy strain themselves to
sanction, for the perpetual slavery of nations and the
maintenance of the existing order.
But, if it is demonstrated that all the operations of the mind
are reducible to two, analysis and synthesis, which are
necessarily inseparable, although distinct; if, by a forced
consequence, in spite of the infinite variety of tasks and
studies, the mind never does more than begin the same canvas over
again,--the man of genius is simply a man with a good
constitution, who has worked a great deal, thought a great deal,
analyzed, compared, classified, summarized, and concluded a great
deal; while the limited being, who stagnates in an endemic
routine, instead of developing his faculties, has killed his
intelligence through inertia and automatism.
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