Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION I THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GENIUS CHAPTER I CONSCIOUSNESS: SOME OF ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND IMPLICATIONS It has been said that there are three factors in every original conception or work: first, the material already in existence, and out of which the new product is made; next, the original mind in action; and finally, the new product itself. In the last resort, however, there is only one factor to be considered, and that is the second one: the operations of a highly individualised intelligence, covering the period of impregnation, gestation, and birth of the new idea. There are many types of original minds, but with minor differences they all obey the same laws. The experimental chemist who is using vast knowledge and far-seeing ability to discover a secret that will be of great service to humanity; the mechanical inventor on the eve of a fine achievement; the novelist approaching, with an emotion akin to fear, the creation of a striking plot; the poet in the ecstasy of reducing a noble conception to words?these men possess one type of intellect, however different its manifestations; and that intellect may be studied in its action quite apart from the material with which it is most intimately concerned, or the result, in whatever form it may be embodied. That which distinguishes the mind of unusual powers from the mind that is conventional or commonplace is its greater range of consciousness1; hence many of our words used to describe 1 Bosanquet would seem to be thinking of this idea of range when he says: If a man has more power of comprehension and inclusionthe qualities of talent and genius are spatial. Deep thinking, lofty contemplation, and breadth of comprehension are cases in point; and we have also the inspiration from above, the power of mental p...
Synopsis
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