in his mind, and surmises Deity in wood and stone. I have more sympathy with him than with the scientist who can find no Deity anywhere, but only molecules and blind force. All fetichism is interesting; for in all fetichism there is precisely that refusal to rest in the visible object, that faculty of seeing something more in it than the senses cognize, which differences the spiritual man from the sensual. It is not the block as such that makes the fetich, but the block plus the unknown behind it. There are those to whom the things they converse with are final. A rose is a rose, a brook is a brook. There are others for whom these things are informed with ideal import. There are those to whom sunrise and sunset, with their crimson draperies, are material phenomena, whose significance is quite exhausted when science has explained their cause. There are others to whom sunrise and sunset are the greetings and farewells of a coming and departing God. There are those who see in amethyst and emerald bits of quartz or silex stained with chromium or peroxide of iron, worth so much a carat as they come from the hands of the lapidary. There are others to whom these gems are hints and foregleams of the New Jerusalem.

The secret of fetichism is that, as Mr. Longfellow naively says, "things are not what they seem." In

all fetichism there is idealism, in all there is piety; not indeed of the highest type, but still piety that deserves our respect. "Things are in the saddle." Some of them have a right to their saddle by virtue of the faith which placed them there, and the strong prescription of the ages gone that have kept them there. Venerable to me are the great worldfetiches which for centuries have ridden, and still ride, so large a portion of mankind. Venerable is the Kaaba with its stone, the oldest visible object of worship, in which Islam adores the heirloom of an elder faith. Venerable is the house of the Virgin, which angels transported from Nazareth and delivered at Loretto. Venerable are the lip-worn bronzes of Rome. Venerable are the sacred bones of the Three Kings which have wandered so far, and find rest at last in the city of Cologne. What care I that historically these things are not what their votaries claim? They have a history of their own, which is quite authentic and commands my homage. Where devotion has knelt for ages I do not care to criticise. Criticism has its rights; but if criticism had full sway, the world would be shorn of half its sanctities. If criticism had full sway, no epic would ever have been sung, no gospel written, and no religion have established itself on the earth.

It should move our admiration to see what awfulness faith can impart to dead matter, or what the

senses esteem as such. In the view of the higher philosophy there is no dead matter, but only forces in equilibrio, - temporary arrest of motion. The penetrating eye of Leibniz saw something in bodies which Descartes, who separated matter and spirit, could not see, something beside extension and even prior to extension. Ever memorable saying, "Imo extensione prius"! Fetichism sees in bodies and gives to bodies an added something which no ontology can state and no analysis detect, — something impalpable, imponderable, inseparable, untransferable, something whose value increases with the lapse of time, something by virtue of which they are precious as rubies, and without which they are vile as the ground we tread on.

23

GENIUS.

[From the "Atlantic Monthly," February, 1868.]

HE finest spirits of all time concur in ascrib

THE

ing their best effects to a higher power. The genial flow of successful production registers itself in our consciousness, as a special grace beyond the command of the private will. The experience of every true artist, of every great poet, prophet, discoverer, of every providential leader of his time, attests the action of an alien force transcending the calculated efforts of the mind, and working the surprises of art and life.

This latent and reserved power in man the Greeks called 4aíμwv (dæmon). Plutarch, in his gossiping discourse on the dæmon of Socrates, reports the vision of one Timarchus, who descended. into the cave of Trophonius to consult the oracle on the subject. He there saw spirits which were partly immersed in human bodies and partly exterior to them, shining luminously above their heads. He was told that the part immersed in the body is called the soul, but the external part is called dæmon. Every man, says the oracle, has

his dæmon, whom he is bound to obey; those who implicitly follow that guidance are the prophetic souls, the favorites of the gods. Goethe, in his oracular way, speaks of the dæmonic in man as a power lying back of the will, and inspiring certain natures with miraculous energy. He disclaims this power for himself, yet in his Autobiography represents the poetic faculty dwelling in him as something beyond his control,- as a kind of obsession.

It is this involuntary, incalculable force that constitutes what we call genius. The word was originally synonymous with the 4aipov of the Greeks. It denoted a guardian power beyond the consciousness and above the will of the individual, — a power which determined and controlled his action, but over which he had no control. It is. comparatively a recent use to speak of genius as a quality of mind; a power possessed by, instead of a power possessing. We still make use of the phrase "good genius" in the sense of guardian spirit.

Genius is the higher self, and common to all men. What, then, distinguishes men of genius, so called, from the rest of mankind? We may suppose that the higher self is more active in some than in others, or that it finds more docile subjects. Or we may suppose that its quality differs with different individuals. I only contend that genius is not a special faculty which he who has