uns to gravitate with and to him; and this is
subversive of originality. Age is as visible in thought as it is in
man. Death is indispensably requisite for a _new_ life. Genius is
like a tree, sheltering and affording support to numberless creepers
and climbers, which latter die and live many times before their
protecting tree does; flourishing even whilst that decays, and thus,
lending to it a greenness not its own; but no new life can come out
of that expiring tree; it must die: and it is not until it is dead,
and fallen, and _rotted into compost_, that another tree can grow
there; and many years will elapse before the new birth can increase
and occupy the room the previous one occupied, and flourish anew with
a greenness all its own. This on one side. On another; genius is
essentially imitative, or rather, as I just now said, gravitative; it
gravitates towards that point peculiarly important at the moment of
its existence; as air, more rarified in some places than in others,
causes the winds to rush towards _them_ as toward a centre: so that
if poetry, painting, or music slumbers, oratory may ravish the world,
or chemistry, or steam-power may seduce and rule, or the sciences sit
enthroned. Thus, nature ever compensates one art with another; her
balance alone is the always just one; for, like her course of the
seasons, she grows, ripens, and lies fallow, only that stronger,
larger and better food may be reared.

_Kalon._ By your speaking of chemistry, and the mechanical arts and
sciences, as periodically ruling the world along with poetry,
painting, and music,--am I to understand that you deem them powers
intellectually equal, and to require of their respective professors
as mighty, original, and _human_ a genius for their successful
practice?

_Kosmon._ Human genius! why not? Are they not equally human?--nay,
are they not--especially steam-power, chemistry and the electric
telegraph--more--eminently more--useful to man, more radically
civilizers, than music, poetry, painting, sculpture, or architecture?

_Kalon._ Stay, Kosmon! whither do you hurry? Between chemistry and
the mechanical arts and sciences, and between poetry, painting, and
music, there exists the whole totality of genius--of genius as
distinguished from talent and industry. To be useful alone is not to
be great: _plus_ only is _plus_, and the sum is _minus_ something and
_plus_ in nothing if the most unimaginable particle only be absent.
The fine ar