The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

we have already said. But merits other than moral
should equally not be overestimated. The
playwright whose plays never succeed should
consider calmly the hypothesis that they are bad
plays; he should not reject this out of hand as
obviously untenable. If he finds that it fits the facts,
he should, as an inductive philosopher, adopt it. It
is true that there are in history cases of
unrecognised merit, but they are far less numerous
than the cases of recognised demerit. If a man is a
genius whom the age will not recognise, he is quite
right to persist in his course in spite of lack of
recognition. If, on the other hand, he is an
untalented person puffed up with vanity, he will do
well not to persist. There is no way of knowing to
which of these two categories one belongs if one is
afflicted with the impulse to produce unrecognised
masterpieces. If you belong to the one category,
your persistence is heroic; if to the other,
ludicrous. When you have been dead a hundred
years, it will be possible to guess to which
category you belonged. In the meantime, there is a
test, not perhaps infallible, if you suspect that you