Page:B20442294.djvu/165

Rh moment in which each occurred; his birth is independent of his age, and his work never dies.

Here is the best place to consider a question which, strangely enough, appears to have received no attention. The question is, if there be anything akin to genius in the world of animals and plants? Although it must be admitted that exceptional forms occur amongst animals and plants, these cannot be regarded as coming under our definition of genius. Talent may exist amongst them as amongst men below the standard of genius. But the special gift, what Moreau, Lombroso, and others have called the "divine spark," we must deny to animals. This limitation is not jealousy nor the anxious guarding of a privilege, but is founded on good grounds.

Is there anything unexplained by the assumption that the first appearance of genius was in man ! In the first place, it is because of this that the human race has an objective mind; in other words, that man is the only organism with a history.

The history of the human race (naturally I mean the history of its mind and not merely of its wars) is readily intelligible on the theory of the appearance of genius, and of the imitation by the more monkey-like individuals of the conduct of those with genius. The chief stages, no doubt, were house-building, agriculture, and, above all, speech. Every single word has been the invention of a single man, as, indeed, we still see, if we leave out of consideration the merely technical terms. How else could language have arisen? The earliest words were "onomatopoetic"; a sound similar to the exciting cause was evolved almost without the will of the speaker, in direct response to the sensuous stimulation. All the other words were originally metaphors, or comparisons, a kind of primitive poetry, for all prose has come from poetry. Many, perhaps the majority of the greatest geniuses, have remained unknown. Think of the proverbs, now almost commonplaces, such as "one good turn deserves another." These were said for the first time by some great man. How many quotations