Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/41

GENIUS If genius has its fountain in the soul, its impulse must be toward Ideality. It seeks that ideal which is the truest truth, the absolute realism. The poet and novelist do not withdraw themselves from constant study of the world,—that is for the abstract philosopher, as in Phaedo:

 "I thought as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul. . . . I was afraid my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes, or tried to apprehend them by the help of the senses. And I thought I had better have recourse to the world of mind and seek there the truth of existence."

Yet Hartmann is sound in his belief that genius always beholds a different world from the apparent, "though only by gazing deeper into the one lying before him as well, because the world is represented in his mind more objective, consequently, purer and clearer." True realism, then, is the basis of creative idealism, and it is narrowness to exclude either from an artist's method, which needs the one for its ground and the other for its glory. Bacon writes of "a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things." He finds that to be "the best part of beauty which a picture cannot express." The picture or poem that expresses this most nearly is closest to the ideal, and conveys to us, I think, a vivid impression of the gift under discussion. Get down to popular instinct, and you will find a current belief that it is the privilege [27]