These conversations led me somewhat later to the knowledge of similar cases, existing elsewhere, and to the discovery that they are not of very infrequent occurrence.  Few substances are found pure in nature.  Those constitutions which can bear in open day the rough dealing of the world must be of that mean and average structure,—­such as iron and salt, atmospheric air, and water.  But there are metals, like potassium and sodium, which, to be kept pure, must be kept under naphtha.  Such are the talents determined on some specialty, which a culminating civilization fosters in the heart of great cities and in royal chambers.  Nature protects her own work.  To the culture of the world, an Archimedes, a Newton is indispensable; so she guards them by a certain aridity.  If these had been good fellows, fond of dancing, Port, and clubs, we should have had no “Theory of the Sphere,” and no “Principia.”  They had that necessity of isolation which genius feels.  Each must stand on his glass tripod, if he would keep his electricity.  Even Swedenborg, whose theory of the universe is based on affection, and who reprobates to weariness the danger and vice of pure intellect, is constrained to make an extraordinary exception:  “There are also angels who do not live consociated, but separate, house and house; these dwell in the midst of heaven, because they are the best of angels.”

We have known many fine geniuses have that imperfection that they cannot do anything useful, not so much as write one clean sentence.  ’Tis worse, and tragic, that no man is fit for society who has fine traits.  At a distance, he is admired; but bring him hand to hand, he is a cripple.  One protects himself by solitude, and one by courtesy, and one by an acid, worldly manner,—­each concealing how he can the thinness of his skin and his incapacity for strict association.  But there is no remedy that can reach the heart of the disease, but either habits of self-reliance that should go in practice to making the man independent of the human race, or else a religion of love.  Now he hardly seems entitled to marry; for how can he protect a woman, who cannot protect himself?

We pray to be conventional.  But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you.  Dante was very bad company, and was never invited to dinner.  Michel Angelo had a sad, sour time of it.  The ministers of beauty are rarely beautiful in coaches and saloons.  Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.  Yet each of these potentates saw well the reason of his exclusion.  Solitary was he?  Why, yes; but his society was limited only by the amount of brain Nature appropriated in that age to carry on the government of the world.  “If I stay,” said Dante, when there was question of going to Rome, “who will go? and if I go, who will stay?”