Page:The art of controversy and other posthumous papers (IA artofcontroversy00schouoft).pdf/127

 of the word, so the average man is not exposed to folly in the same degree as the genius.

The average man is wholly relegated to the sphere of being; the genius, on the other hand, lives and moves chiefly in the sphere of knowledge. This gives rise to a twofold distinction. In the first place, a man can be one thing only, but he may know countless things, and thereby, to some extent, identify himself with them, by participating in what Spinoza calls their esse objectivum. In the second place, the world, as I have elsewhere observed, is fine enough in appearance, but in reality dreadful; for torment is the condition of all life.

It follows from the first of these distinctions that the life of the average man is essentially one of the greatest boredom; and thus we see the rich warring against boredom with as much effort and as little respite as fall to the poor in their struggle with need and adversity. And from the second of them it follows that the life of the average man is overspread with a dull, turbid, uniform gravity; whilst the brow of genius glows with mirth of a unique character, which, although he has sorrows of his own more poignant than those of the average man, nevertheless breaks out afresh, like the sun through clouds. It is when the genius is overtaken by an affliction which affects others as well as himself, that this quality in him is most in evidence; for then he is seen to be like man, who alone can laugh, in comparison with the beast of the field, which lives out its life grave and dull.

It is the curse of the genius that in the same