There are probably very few people who have not at some time of their lives had some quality of genius. If they have not had such, it is probable that they have also been without great sorrow or great pain. They would have needed only to live sufficiently intently for a time for some quality to reveal itself. The poems of first love are a case in point, and certainly such love is a sufficient stimulus.
It must not be forgotten that quite ordinary men in moments of excitement, in anger at some underhanded deed, have found words with which they never would have been credited. The greater part of what is called expression in art as in language depends (if the reader will remember what I have said about the process of "clarification") on the fact that some individual more richly endowed clarifies, organises, and exhibits some idea almost instantaneouly, an idea which to a less endowed person was still in the henid form. The course of clarification is much shortened in the mind of the second person.
If it really were the case, as popular opinion has tried to establish, that the genius were separated from ordinary men by a thick wall through which no sound could penetrate, then all understanding of the efforts of genius would be denied to ordinary men, and their works would fail to make any impression on them. All hopes of progress depend on this being untrue. And it is untrue. The difference between men of genius and the others is quantitative not qualitative, of degree not of kind.
There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the. pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning.
Because the life of the genius is more intense even in his earliest years than that of other children, his memory can go further back. In extreme cases the memory may be complete and vivid back to the third year of life, whereas
