and not of genius. Know what you will of it, the understanding still
moves in certain tracks in which others have trod it before, quicker or
slower, with more or less comprehension and presence of mind. The
greatest skill strikes out nothing for itself, from its own peculiar
resources; the nature of the game is a thing determinate and fixed:
there is no royal or poetical road to checkmate your adversary. There
is no place for genius but in the indefinite and unknown. The discovery
of the binomial theorem was an effort of genius; but there was none
shown in Jedediah Buxton's being able to multiply 9 figures by 9 in his
head. If he could have multiplied 90 figures by 90 instead of 9, it
would have been equally useless toil and trouble.[3] He is a man of
capacity who possesses considerable intellectual riches: he is a man of
genius who finds out a vein of new ore. Originality is the seeing
nature differently from others, and yet as it is in itself. It is not
singularity or affectation, but the discovery of new and valuable truth.
All the world do not see the whole meaning of any object they have been
looking at. Habit blinds them to some things; short-sightedness to
others. Every mind is not a gauge and measure of truth. Nature has her
surface and her dark recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It
is only minds on whom she makes her fullest impressions that can
penetrate her shrine or unveil her _Holy of Holies_. It is only those
whom she has filled with her spirit that have the boldness or the power
to reveal her mysteries to others. But Nature has a thousand aspects,
and one man can only draw out one of them. Whoever does this is a man
of genius. One displays her force, another her refinement; one her
power of harmony, another her suddenness of contrast; one her beauty of
form, another her splendour of colour. Each does that for which he is
bast fitted by his particular genius, that is to say, by some quality of
mind into which the quality of the object sinks deepest, where it finds
the most cordial welcome, is perceived to its utmost extent, and where