This palaeolithic psychology, of course,
is now quite discredited, yet the term "genius" is still (perhaps
superstitiously) applied to the rare persons whose intellectual
faculties lightly outrun those of ordinary mortals, and who do
marvels with means apparently inadequate.
In recent times some philosophers, like Mr. F. W. H. Myers, put--in
place of the Muses or the Boilyas, or the Genius--what they call the
"Subliminal Self," something "far more deeply interfused than the
everyday intellect." This subconscious self, capable of far more
than the conscious intelligence, is genius.
On the other side, genius may fairly be regarded as faculty, only
higher in degree, and not at all different in kind, from the everyday
intellect which, for example, pens this page.
Thus as soon as we begin to speak of "genius," we are involved in
speculations, psychological, psychical, physical, and metaphysical;
in difficulties of all sorts not at present to be solved either by
physiological science or experimental psychology, or by psychical
research, or by the study of heredity. When I speak of "the genius
of Shakespeare," of Jeanne d'Arc, of Bacon, even of Wellington, I
possibly have a meaning which is not in all respects the meaning of
Mr. Greenwood, when he uses the term "genius"; so we are apt to
misunderstand each other. Yet we all glibly use the term "genius,"
without definition and without discussion.
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