The difference in degree of mental power which sets so wide a gulf between the genius and the ordinary mortal rests, it is true, upon nothing else than a more or less perfect development of the cerebral system.  But it is this very difference which is so important, because the whole of the real world in which we live and move possesses an existence only in relation to this cerebral system.  Accordingly, the difference between a genius and an ordinary man is a total diversity of world and existence.  The difference between man and the lower animals may be similarly explained.

When Momus was said to ask for a window in the breast, it was an allegorical joke, and we cannot even imagine such a contrivance to be a possibility; but it would be quite possible to imagine that the skull and its integuments were transparent, and then, good heavens! what differences should we see in the size, the form, the quality, the movement of the brain! what degrees of value!  A great mind would inspire as much respect at first sight as three stars on a man’s breast, and what a miserable figure would be cut by many a one who wore them!

Men of genius and intellect, and all those whose mental and theoretical qualities are far more developed than their moral and practical qualities—­men, in a word, who have more mind than character—­are often not only awkward and ridiculous in matters of daily life, as has been observed by Plato in the seventh book of the Republic, and portrayed by Goethe in his Tasso; but they are often, from a moral point of view, weak and contemptible creatures as well; nay, they might almost be called bad men.  Of this Rousseau has given us genuine examples.  Nevertheless, that better consciousness which is the source of all virtue is often stronger in them than in many of those whose actions are nobler than their thoughts; nay, it may be said that those who think nobly have a better acquaintance with virtue, while the others make a better practice of it.  Full of zeal for the good and for the beautiful, they would fain fly up to heaven in a straight line; but the grosser elements of this earth oppose their flight, and they sink back again.  They are like born artists, who have no knowledge of technique, or find that the marble is too hard for their fingers.  Many a man who has much less enthusiasm for the good, and a far shallower acquaintance with its depths, makes a better thing of it in practice; he looks down upon the noble thinkers with contempt, and he has a right to do it; nevertheless, he does not understand them, and they despise him in their turn, and not unjustly.  They are to blame; for every living man has, by the fact of his living, signed the conditions of life; but they are still more to be pitied.  They achieve their redemption, not on the way of virtue, but on a path of their own; and they are saved, not by works, but by faith.