Part 25

“Oh, my,” said Virginia, “how nice! I wish I were.”

I said: “What we usually call genius is but a larger power of understanding, a sense of unity, of the relations of things. And we all have that, in some degree. So we all have genius. It is not a matter of quality but of quantity. We are all the same stuff, only some more and some less.”

Henry said I might use the word in that sense, but he didn’t think it was the true meaning. He said: “What definition is in the dictionary?” We had no dictionary at hand, so I tried to prove my definition true without a dictionary, and I succeeded.

I said: “There is no gulf between the genius and the stupid looker-on. Don’t you see why there could not be?”

“I see,” said Marian; “it is because the looker-on would have to have some genius, or else——” She could not finish.

“Just so, Marian,” I went on; “or else he could not appreciate the artist’s work. It is the genius in the onlooker that appreciates the genius in the artist. And in so far as you can appreciate the genius of Shakespeare, in so far you have the same sort of genius.”

“Then,” said she, “art makes us recognize ourselves.”

“Yes,” I answered, “our bigger selves.”

“So one might speak,” she said, “of a person developing his genius for music, or his genius for painting, and so on?”

“Yes,” I answered; “and you see how easily and well one can use the word in that sense.”

Ruth asked: “If the great genius is really one who understands better than the rest of us, and has a more harmonious vision, how is it that so many geniuses are incomplete and very imperfect in their personal lives?”

“I think it is,” I said, “for the same reason that I gave you for disease in highly developed beings.”

“I see,” said Marian; “it is one part developed at the expense of another.”

They wanted to know why so many artists were peculiar, erratic, “Bohemian”—Marian used that word. Virginia spoke again of the happy-go-lucky people down at the art league.

I said I thought one reason for this manner among artists was that, as they were always looking for the new, the beautiful—which is ever new—they had no patience with so-called respectable people, who clung to old things because they were old, and so these artists often purposely went to the other extreme.

I said: “You must see that there is the tendency in all of us to make of life a work of art, to live a complete, beautiful life.”

“I know some people,” said Virginia, “whose lives do not seem to me in the least artistic.”

“That may be,” I answered, “but the tendency is there to make of life a complete expression.”

“That isn’t all I mean,” said Marian. “I want to know what is meant by the artistic temperament.”

“It is in great part,” I said, “a fiction and a false generalization. Many experts have not the artistic temperament, and many not-artists have it. As for artists going astray more often than others, if that be true—which I doubt—there’s a good reason for it. Artists are always very sensitive—naturally—and so, unless they are very strong-willed, too, they will be more easily swayed by outside events and their impressions.”

“I don’t believe every one has genius,” Virginia said. “I know some people who are perfectly stupid, and don’t understand anything.”

“That is scarcely possible,” I answered, “if they are human beings.”

“Do you mean to say,” asked Henry, “that you know any utterly selfish person?”

“Yes,” she answered; “or, at least, people who are not interested in anything worth while outside themselves; people who can walk through an art gallery and not look at the pictures; who love nothing beautiful.”

“I may be one of those,” said Ruth, “for I do not care for pictures.”

“One’s genius might not be developed in that particular direction,” I said; “none of us are developed in all directions. But grant, at least, Virginia, that your most stupid people have undeveloped genius which might be awakened.”

“All right,” she said.

“Because if you don’t,” I answered, “I shall think your understanding of those people is very limited. Genius does not necessarily show itself in relation to art, to the sense of beauty. Genius is in the understanding a man must have to be a man. How could he have any relations with his fellows, any intercourse without some understanding?