[Footnote B: This very Scotch metaphysician, at the instant he lays down
this postulate, acknowledges that "Dr. Beattie had talents for a _poet_,
but apparently not for a _philosopher_." It is amusing to learn another
result of his ungenial metaphysics. This sage demonstrates and concludes
in these words, "It will therefore be found, with little exception, that
_a great poet is but an ordinary genius_." Let this sturdy Scotch
metaphysician never approach Pegasus--he has to fear, not his wings, but
his heels. If some have written on genius with a great deal too much,
others have written without any.]

Not that we are bound to demonstrate what our adversaries have failed
in proving; we may still remain ignorant of the nature of genius, and
yet be convinced that they have not revealed it. The phenomena of
_predisposition_ in the mind are not more obscure and ambiguous than
those which have been assigned as the sources of genius in certain
individuals. For is it more difficult to conceive that a person bears in
his constitutional disposition a germ of native aptitude which is
developing itself to a predominant character of genius, which breaks forth
in the temperament and moulds the habits, than to conjecture that these
men of genius could not have been such but from _accident_, or that they
differ only in their _capacity_?

Every class of men of genius has distinct habits; all poets resemble one
another, as all painters and all mathematicians. There is a conformity in
the cast of their minds, and the quality of each is distinct from the
other, and the very faculty which fits them for one particular pursuit, is
just the reverse required for another. If these are truisms, as they may
appear, we need not demonstrate that from which we only wish to draw our
conclusion. Why does this remarkable similarity prevail through the