St. Landry democrat., 1888-03-17
GENIUS is INDUSTRY.
Success in Life Due to Hard Work, Patiencs
and Research.

ana ReSeAFCn
| There is no respect of classes with
genius. 1t enters the cottage of the
poor and the mansion of the rich.
| Unlike what we call talents, it is in
herited by no one; like virtue. it is a
possession of the individual and not
of the family.
DIR. Smiles, in his Life and Labor"
prints list of eighty-one names of il
lustrous scientific men, philosophers,
| poets, novelists, dramatists, historians,
reformers, statesmen and generals.
| Twenty-seven names belong to the
aristocratic class, twenty-seven to the
middle-class and twenty-seven to the
working class, from which fact it seems
| to be true'that great men come from all
ranks and classes.
A great genius resembles Melchize-
dek, in that, intellectually, he is with
out father, without mother,n without
eenealogy. He is his own ancestors
and posterity, for he begins and ends
with himself.
The Adams family, the Bayard
family, the Breckenridge family and
the Beecher family are illustrations of
the fact that great talent may descend
to the third and fourth generations;
but from these four illustrious Ameri-
| can families there has risen but one
genius-Henry Ward Beecher. Six of
The leading representative statesmen OF
the formative period of the Republic
Hamilton, Sam Adams, Jefferson, Clay
and Webster-have no ''genealogy."
1t is hard to define the word genius,
by which we express the subtle, elusive
something that makes man great.
The word itself, coming from the Latin,
emphasizes mans belief in the super
natural origin of the something which
dies with him. For the genius of the
Latins was guardian deity, which was
born and which died with the person
whose actions it directed.
Ruskin says that genius IS the power
of penetrating into "the root and deep
places of the subject" This definition
recalls Newton's explanation Of his
achievements in science - always
thinking of itN-meaning his ability to
concentrate his intellect on the subject
of his search. But then Newton, it
may be observed, was very modest
man. He was more. Hewas uncon-
scious of his great mind, and illustrated
the remark of the Psychologist who said
'No man was ever great man who
wanted to be one"
But John Dalton, the great chemist
who developed the atomic theory, held
with Newton that his genius was
nothing but the power of patient in
dustry laboring continuously at SUBJ
ject until he saw through it. We COM
mend his words, when complimented at
public meeting, on his discoveries:
"f have succeeded better than many
it has been chiefly, nay, l may say al
most solely, from unwearied assiduity.
1t is not so much from any superior
genius that one man possesses over an
other, but more from attention to study
and perseverance in the objects before
them, that some men rise to greater
eminence than others. This it is, in
my opinion, that makes one man sue
ceed better than another"
Dalton's "unwearied assiduity" inn
PEELED him to observe and compare un-
til his death, in his seventy-eighth year.
On the last night of his earthly life,
he wrote the days record in his book
of meteorological observations, OF
which he had made more than two hun
dred thousand during half century.
One can not promise himself, and
keep his word, that he will be a genius.
but he can be industrious, and he can
train his mind to concentrate itself.
IF it pleases God to take any OF my
children, I hope it will be Isaac" said
father Isaac was very dull boy.
But when the "dull boy died at the
early age of forty-seven, he was known
as the great DR.. Isaac Barrow. He
had filed the Greek and the mathe-
matieal chairs at Cambridge, had writ
ten several books on geometry and
mathematics, and composed series OF
sermons, which are still read because
they are storehouses of thought, and
enforce lessons of industry, godliness,
prayerfulness and trnthfulness. He,
too. aseribed his success to his indus
try, and not to his natural parts