The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-03-21

| and it is usually, from a worldly point of
view, disastrous But the reason of the
disaster has seldom been understood.
1t is. of course, evident that there must
be ideas beyond the present scope Of hui
man thought. hut not. necessarily, be
yond the scope of the thought Of future
generations. Suppose somebody had sug-
gested the idea of spherical trigonometry
to our arboreaI ancestors: how would the
suggestion have been made in Il form
that they could understand? What mean
ing have the terms of electrical science
to a Fiji Islander? Therefore it Is OBJ
vious that there are notions which we
cannot comprehend at present. bus which
may be unprecedented by the greatest
minds, and that these thinkers and
artists may strive to translate them into
terms of the arts, and fail. 1t would
have strained the language of the Fijian
considerably to attempt to explain the
telephone to his friends, even if he I'M
derstood it himself
The curious feature of this is. to the
average mind, that the attempts of the
genius to make his highest thoughts
comprehensive sound so much like
arrant nonsense. This may be due to one
of two things. The idea which he is try
ing to convey may be too strange and
complex for the public to understand, or
for him to convey in the terms now in
common use. He is reduced to using
terms which are inadequate. 1t may be,
on the other hand: that his genius.
though great. is not quite great enough
to express his thought even as well as it
can be expressed in the terms of the
present. The English language is iexi-
Bile enough for most things: yet the de-
scriptive poet, unused to discuss philos-
ophy. might easily find that his facility
of writing deserted him if he attempted
to express thoughts requiring ph;losophi-
cal diction. No man can work easily with
tools to which he is not accustomed. and
the phrases and conventions and rules of
any art or science are mental tools.
There is hardly one among the great
geniuses of the nineteenth century, at
least, who has not at some time in mis-
life, usually during the latter half of it.
written or wrought something which he
believed to be good work, but about
which the critics disagreed. The extent
to which he has made himself ridiculous,
or simply incomprehensible. depends
somewhat on the amount of self-con-
seriousness he has about him. and some
what on his common sense. Some of
Tennyson's later poems are in this class
of literature. and a great many OF Brown
ing's. Some men express their highest
only in conversation, and not in
the terms of their trade at all, and some
cannot talk but can write. OF these two
classes Alcott and Hawthorne, of the
Concord group Of litterati, were the ex-
tremes. Alcott made fame for himself
by his conversations. but when he tried
to write his thoughts became common
place. Hawthorne's conversation was
very much like the snakes in Ireland.
one might express the paradoxical fact
that genius is sometimes apparently not |
genius at all. by the statement that souls |
are always to some extent untranslatable, |
and that a mans facility of expression !
ices not extend, as a rule, to all his fac
Ilties; that is, he cannot translate the !
greatness of his soul equally well in all |