[Illustration:  Signature:  Geroge E. Woodberry]

INTELLIGENCE AND GENIUS

From ‘Essays in Criticism’

What are the essential characteristics of the spirit of our nation?  Not, certainly, an open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible intelligence.  Our greatest admirers would not claim for us that we have these in a pre-eminent degree; they might say that we had more of them than our detractors gave us credit for, but they would not assert them to be our essential characteristics.  They would rather allege, as our chief spiritual characteristics, energy and honesty; and if we are judged favorably and positively, not invidiously and negatively, our chief characteristics are no doubt these:  energy and honesty, not an open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible intelligence.  Openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence were very signal characteristics of the Athenian people in ancient times; everybody will feel that.  Openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence are remarkable characteristics of the French people in modern times,—­at any rate, they strikingly characterize them as compared with us; I think everybody, or almost everybody, will feel that.  I will not now ask what more the Athenian or the French spirit has than this, nor what shortcomings either of them may have as a set-off against this; all I want now to point out is that they have this, and that we have it in a much lesser degree.

Let me remark, however, that not only in the moral sphere, but also in the intellectual and spiritual sphere, energy and honesty are most important and fruitful qualities; that for instance, of what we call genius, energy is the most essential part.  So, by assigning to a nation energy and honesty as its chief spiritual characteristics,—­by refusing to it, as at all eminent characteristics, openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence,—­we do not by any means, as some people might at first suppose, relegate its importance and its power of manifesting itself with effect from the intellectual to the moral sphere.  We only indicate its probable special line of successful activity in the intellectual sphere, and, it is true, certain imperfections and failings to which in this sphere it will always be subject.  Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an affair of genius; therefore a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be eminent in poetry;—­and we have Shakespeare.  Again, the highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a faculty of divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry; therefore a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be eminent in science;—­and we have Newton.  Shakespeare and Newton:  in the intellectual sphere there can be no higher names.  And what that energy, which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon, is freedom; entire independence