Genius

Certainly we have no right after this to attribute to Swe- denborg an obscure or mystical conception of nature. Nature bears the same servile relation to the spiritual creation that a man's body bears to his soul, that the material of a house bears to the house itself, or that the substance of a statue bears to its form, namely, a merely quantifying, by no means a qualifving, relation. It fills out the spiritual creation, substantiates it, gives it subjective anchorage, fixity, or identification, incorpo- rates it, in a word, just as the marble incorporates the statue. For the statue is primarily an ideal form, affiliating itself to the artist's genius exclusively, and is only derivatively thence f a material existence. So I primarily am a spiritual form, that is to say, a form of affection and thought, directly affiliated to the creative love and wisdom; and what my body does is 26 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOKG.

If, now, leaving the empirical combination of objects, we ask how the mind proceeds rationally to connect them we find selection again to be omnipotent. In an article on "Brute and Human Intellect " in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, July 1878, p. 236 I have tried to show that all Reasoning depends on the ability of the mind to break up the totality of the phenomenon reasoned about into partial factors or elements, and to pick out from among these the particular one which, in our given theoretical or practical emergency, may lead to the proper conclusion. Another predicament will need another conclusion, and require another element to be picked out. The man of genius is he who will always stick-in his bill, as it were, at the right point, and bring it out with the right element -- "reason" if the emergency be theoretical, "means" if it be practical-transfixed upon it? Association by similarity I have shown to be an important help to this breaking-up of represented things into their elements. But this association is only the minimum of that same selection of which picking out the right reason is a maximum. I here confine myself to this brief statement, but it may suffice to show that Reasoning is but another form of that selective activity which appears to be the true sphere of mental spontaneity.

of their own, and so disqualify science. But because miracle is disowned by science as an answer to her physical interrogations, we are not justified, nor ever shall be, in excluding it from philosophic recognition, as in truth the most efficient factor in the history of human nature. For philosophy unlike science has no interest in physics as a literal fact, but only as a spirit ual symbol, and is no way disconcerted therefore when you deny miracle a place and function in physical order. She has never been disposed to assign it such place and function, but on the contrary has expressly relegated it to spiritual or metaphysical uses. No man of philosophic genius, that is, no lover of truth for truth's own sake, has ever dreamt of finding a place or function for miracle in reference to physics, or the fixed statics of the mind, and has allowed it at most in reference to history, or its living dynamics and outcome. Every such man unfeignedly reverences miracle under this reserve, because in the long spir itual night of the mind when all knowledge of Divine things was obscured under the pall of men's mental and material penury, it alone shone as a feeble but prophetic day-star from on high to lift men's faith and hope out of an every way lifeless and ignominious present, and fix them on a living and radiant future big with God's unimaginable mercy. Thus miracle has always spoken to the free or spontaneous mind of

descendants of the church, thus styled Adam or Man, as inclining to selfhood: that is, desiring to become instead of an internal man an external one. But he does not fail to characterize this change of genius in it, though relatively unfortunate of course, since everything deteriorates in proportion as it becomes remote from its source, yet as by no means absolutely so; inasmuch as selfhood, though regarded in itself or absolutely it is unmixed evil, is yet the indis pensable condition of man's natural development, or race-evolution, and consequently of that redemptive achievement in our nature which constitutes God's true or eternal spiritual glory in creation. This rising inclination to selfhood is the inevitable dawn of the natural or race-mind in us, and as such of course is noway evil, though viewed apart from that subordination it is the fountain of all the evil known to the universe. We don't get angry with the infant, although we feel bound in the interests of his own maturity to correct him, when we see him instinc tively exhibiting the traits of his future natural man hood; on the contrary we are secretly diverted by his arch and graceful ways of self-assertion, because as yet they are full of innocence or innocuous. Ex actly so we may say there is no ground for moral disapprobation in these nascent or unconscious ego tistic inclinations on the part of the early church,

" We laugh, as I said awhile ago, at an inventor who should ask us to take his genius on trust, or without any evidence of its reality. And there can be no more offensive tribute to the divine name than to show him a deference we deny to the rankest charlatan. How infinitely unworthy of God it would be to exact or expect of the absolute and unintelligent creatures of his power av belief out of all proportion to their sensible knowl- 1 edge, or unbacked by anything but tradition!... I am free to confess for my own part that I have no belief in God's absolute or irrelative and un- j -^ conditional perfection. I have not the least sentiment of worship for his name, the least sentiment of awe or reverence towards him, considered as a perfect person sufficient unto himself. That, style of deity exerts no attraction either upon my | heart or understanding. Any mother who suckles her babe upon her own breast, any bitch in fact who litters her periodical brood of pups, presents to my imagination a vastly nearer and sweeter

The man of genius is he who will always stick in his bill at the right point, and bring it out with the right element — ‘reason’ if the emergency be theoretical, ‘means’ if it be practical — transfixed upon it. I here confine myself to this brief statement, but it may suffice to show that Reasoning is but another form of the selective activity of the mind. If now we pass to its æsthetic department, our law is still more obvious. The artist notoriously selects his items, rejecting all tones, colors, shapes, which do not harmonize with each other and with the main purpose of his work. That unity, harmony, ‘convergence of characters,’ as M. Taine calls it, which gives to works of art their superiority over works of nature, is wholly due to elimination. Any natural subject will do, if the artist has wit enough to pounce upon some one feature of it as characteristic, and suppress all merely accidental items which do not harmonize with this.

And now we can see why it is that what is called sustained attention is the easier, the richer in acquisitions and the fresher and more original the mind. In such minds, subjects bud and sprout and grow At every moment, they please by a new consequence and rivet the attention afresh. But an intellect unfurnished with materials, stagnant, unoriginal, will hardly be likely to consider any subject long. A glance exhausts its possibilities of interest. Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention.23 In most of them, it is to be feared, the so-called ‘power’ is of the passive sort. Their ideas coruscate, every subject branches infinitely before their fertile minds, and so for hours they may be rapt. But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them. And, when we come down to the root of the matter, we see that they differ from ordinary men less in the character of their attention than in the nature of the objects upon which it is successively bestowed. In the genius, these form a concatenated series, suggesting each other mutually by some rational law. Therefore we call the attention ‘sustained’ and the topic of meditation for hours ‘the same.’ In the common man the series is for the most part incoherent, the objects have no rational bond, and we call the attention wandering and unfixed.

mean much more than actually is present to the thought of which he is reporter. Thus, for example, suppose you should go on to think: 'He was a daring genius!' An ordinary psychologist would not hesitate to say that the object of your thought was still 'Columbus.' True, your thought is _about_ Columbus. It

leads from and to the direct idea of Columbus. But for the moment it is not fully and immediately Columbus, it is only 'he,' or rather 'he-was-a-daring-genius;' which, though it may be an unimportant difference for conversational purposes, is, for introspective psychology, as great a difference as there can

If now, leaving the empirical combination of objects, we ask how the mind proceeds rationally to connect them, we find selection again to be omnipotent. In a future chapter we shall see that all Reasoning depends on the ability of the mind to break up the totality of the phenomenon reasoned about, into parts, and to pick out from among these the particular one which, in the given emergency, may lead to the proper conclusion. The man of genius is he who will always stick in his bill at the right point, and bring it out with the right element— ‘reason’ if the emergency be theoretical, ‘means’ if it be practical — transfixed upon it. If now we pass to the æsthetic department, our law is still more obvious. The artist notoriously selects his items, rejecting all tones, colors, shapes, which do not harmonize with each other and with the main purpose of his work. That unity, harmony, ‘convergence of characters,’ as M.