It is absurd
to distinguish as differing in nature that which really differs
only in age, and then to convert into privilege and exclusion the
various degrees of a development or the fortunes of a spontaneity
which must gradually disappear through labor and education.
The psychological rhetoricians who have classified human souls
into dynasties, noble races, bourgeois families, and the
proletariat observed nevertheless that genius was not universal,
and that it had its specialty; consequently Homer, Plato,
Phidias, Archimedes, Caesar, etc., all of whom seemed to them
first in their sort, were declared by them equals and sovereigns
of distinct realms. How irrational! As if the specialty of
genius did not itself reveal the law of the equality of minds!
As if, looking at it in another light, the steadiness of success
in the product of genius were not a proof that it works according
to principles outside of itself, which are the guarantee of the
perfection of its work, as long as it follows them with fidelity
and certainty! This apotheosis of genius, dreamed of with open
eyes by men whose chatter will remain forever barren, would
warrant a belief in the innate stupidity of the majority of
mortals, if it were not a striking proof of their perfectibility.
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