GENIUS, jen'yiis (Lat., tutelary godling, from gignere, Gk. 717vecr0at, gignesthat, Skt. fan, to be born). The name given by the ancients to the lesser divinities, good and bad, to whose charge are committed the destinies of the indi vidual human being. This usage is still retained, metaphorically, in such phrases as 'his good (or evil) genius prompted him.' Hence arises, fur ther, the employment of the term for a special aptitude or characteristic; as when we speak of the bent of a man's genius, or of the genius of nineteenth-century thought. The current mean ing of the word, however, which naturally sug gests itself in the absence of a limiting context, is that of 'an ability that is exceptionally high, and at the same time inborn' (Galton). That man is possessed of genius—or is a genius—whose natural abilities are of an unusually high order and display themselves in creation or construc tion; while that man is talented whose natural abilities, though far above the average, depend for their realization upon education and train ing, and whose superiority is displayed rather in acquisition or in artistic execution than in invention. "The man of talent," says Galton, "is one in four thousand; the man of genius is one in a million." Many attempts have been made to define genius. Carlyle remarks that it means, first of all, "the transcendent capacity of taking trouble'; and when we think of the leaders in science, or of great military geniuses, we shall admit the meas ure of truth in his statement. Lowell, on the contrary, declares that 'talent is that which is in a man's power ; genius is that in whose power a man is'—an account that seems to contradict Car lyle's definition outright, but one whose justice we shall concede when we think e.g. of a poet like
Shelley. This contrariety of description shows how foolish is the attempt to put a technical in terpretation upon the word 'genius,' or to char acterize a 'typical' genius. There is a popular belief that the man of genius is a puny and un healthy being, all brain and no muscle; and the work of Lombroso has given new vogue to the old idea that genius is closely related to insanity.
Now, there can be no doubt that men of ex traordinary gifts have often had poor constitu tions; we have only to think of the philosopher Kant as an example. But the rule is to the reverse effect: a "collection of living magnets in various branches of intellectual achievement" is good to see, writes Galton, for the reason that they are "such massive, vigorous, capable-looking individuals." For the second belief there seems, unfortunately, tp he better evidence. We are not called upon to•suspect insanity wherever we find an unusually high intelligence: this position is negatived by the remark, just quoted. But high intelligence implies a finely wrought and pecul iarly excitable brain ; and these characteristics of the nervous system, balanced in the case of the genius by preservative conditions, may appear in his near relatives, without the required checks and preservatives, as some form of eccentricity, if not of mental derangement. Consult: Galion, Hereditary Genius (London. 1892) ; Lombroso, The Man of Genius (New York, 1891) ; Baldwin, Mental Development (New York, 1897) ; Nordau, Degeneration (New York, 1895).