Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/17

GENIUS would be a willing promulgator of sophistry. That his myth-theory can be, like Bishop Whateley's Napoleon and Mr. Lang's Gladstone, a lively and pleasant bit of by-play, is equally out of the question. Assuming, then, that the popular belief in genius is a superstition, we scarcely can do better than to look into its origin; to inquire whether, like the sun-myth, it is a genuine folk-lore common to all times and races, or something begotten in the romantic passion of the latter-day world. On the whole, I think its adherents may claim for it a respectable antiquity. There are reasons for belief that the Asiatics, with their notions of divination, inspiration, and incarnation, were the progenitors of this tradition, as of so many other fads and fables. But it will suffice to go back to Athens, the distributing reservoir out of which flowed our own stream of thought. From the prince of Grecian idealists we inherit teachings that in the end brought about the use and meaning of our word Genius. With his master, Socrates, he conceived distinctive greatness to be the result of superhuman guidance. To these heathen in their blindness the special power of certain men seemed inexplicable otherwise than as a gift, bestowed by the daimon. Plato gossips concerning the etymology of this word, saying that Hesiod uses the title "demons" to denote the "golden race of men who came first," and who, now that fate has closed over the race, are "holy daimones upon the earth,—beneficent, averters of ill, guardians of mortal men." In the primitive dialect the word means those who are knowing or wise, and the philosopher avers [3]