Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/466

448 heroism, they are not so intellectually; and while they may descend to depths of folly or imbecility impossible to the individual taken by himself, elevation to the supreme display of intelligence and imagination is interdicted to them. They can, morally, fall very low or rise very high; but intellectually they can only fall very low. While there are collective crimes, of which the individual alone would be incapable—assassinations and pillages by armed bands, revolutionary fires, epidemics of venality, etc.—there are also collective achievements of heroism in which the individual rises above himself—charges of the legendary six hundred, patriotic revolts, epidemics of martyrdom, etc. But there are no collective acts of genius that can be contrasted with these. What discovery, invention, or real initiative within historical times has been due to that impersonal being, the public? Does one say revolutions? Not they; what revolutions have accomplished in pure destruction, the public may claim partly at least: but what have they founded and introduced that was novel that was not conceived and thought out before them or after them by superior men like Luther or Napoleon? Can any one cite an army, however well constituted, from which an admirable or even passable plan of campaign has sprung? Or even a council of war, which for the conception—I will not say the discussion—of a military manœuvre was worth the brain of the most ordinary general in chief? Was ever an immortal work in art, a painting, a sculpture, an architectural design, or an epic poem, imagined and wrought out by the collective inspiration of ten or a hundred poets or artists? All that is of genius is individual, even in crime.

To what is this signal contrast due? Why is the grand display of intelligence refused to social groups, while a large and strong display of will and even of virtue is within their reach? It is because the act of most heroic virtue is a very simple matter in itself, and differs from the act of ordinary morality only in degree. The power of unison in human assemblages, where emotions and opinions re-enforce one another rapidly by their multiple contact, is surely irresistible. But the work of genius or of talent is always complicated and differs in nature—not in degree only—from an act of ordinary intelligence. The question in a regular process is not, as in this, one of perceiving and recollecting at random, but of dealing with known perceptions and images in new combinations. At first sight it seems that ten, a hundred, or a thousand heads together are better fitted than one alone to embrace all the sides of a complex question. Peoples of all times, acting under this illusion, have looked to religious or political assemblages for the mitigation of their troubles. In the middle ages, councils—in modern times, states-general,