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What is genius?
RQSICRUeiAN PHILOSOPHY
QUESTION No. 13.
Answer: From the ordinary standpoint, genius seems
to hi;an accident. The theory of heredity will not account
lor it, for sometimes the most commonplace people bring
a child into the world which is a genius, and the most
highly educated and intellectual people have idiots for their
children. At other times we find both idiots and geniuses
in. the same family. In fact, insanity and genius may be
said to be the two extremes where the mental qualities of
humanity meet.
....
If we try to account for genius by heredity, we cannot
help asking ourselves why there is not a long line of
mechanical ancestors before Thomas Edison, who might
then be regarded as the flower of a family. But we find
that in all cases the appearance of genius is not possible of
deduction to any law when viewed from the mere material
standpoint.
When we bring the law of causation and its companion
law, the law of rebirth, to bear upon the problem, the mat-
ter is very different. This theory asserts that earth life is
a school of experience; that at each new birth we are born
with the accumulated experiences of all our past lives as
our stock in trade, our capital; that some of us have
attended this school of experience during many lives, and
have gathered much store. Perhaps we have developed one
particular faculty more than others, so that we have become
extremely expert in one special
line of endeavor. That is
genius.
In order to express some of our faculties, for instance,
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