Thus a man's
character, or, what is more profound, his temperament, acting in
conjunction with the memory it has built up for itself, is a controlling
force in artistic work, and modifies it in the sense that it presents
the universal truth only as it exists in his personality, in his
apprehension of it and its meaning.
Genius is this power of personality, and exists in proportion as the man
differs from the average in ways that find significant expression. This
difference may proceed along two lines. It may be aberration from normal
human nature, due to circumstances or to inherent defect or to a
thousand causes, but existing always in the form of an inward perversion
approaching disease of our nature; such types of genius are pathological
and may be neglected. It may, on the other hand, be development of
normal human nature in high power, and it then exists in the form of
inward energy, showing itself in great sensitiveness to outward things,
in mental power of comprehension, in creative force of recombination
and expression. Of genius of this last sort the leaders of the human
spirit are made.
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