own
thoughts, his own works, and by admitting the world only as the heir
of his ample existence. Then the world would find the mark of his
existence only after his death, as it finds that of the Ichnolith.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note._--For an illustration of this feeling
in poetry, Schopenhauer refers the reader to Byron's _Prophecy of
Dante_: introd. to C. 4.]

It is not only in the activity of his highest powers that the genius
surpasses ordinary people. A man who is unusually well-knit, supple
and agile, will perform all his movements with exceptional ease, even
with comfort, because he takes a direct pleasure in an activity for
which he is particularly well-equipped, and therefore often exercises
it without any object. Further, if he is an acrobat or a dancer, not
only does he take leaps which other people cannot execute, but he also
betrays rare elasticity and agility in those easier steps which others
can also perform, and even in ordinary walking. In the same way a man
of superior mind will not only produce thoughts and works which could
never have come from another; it will not be here alone that he will
show his greatness; but as knowledge and thought form a mode of
activity natural and easy to him, he will also delight himself in them
at all times, and so apprehend small matters which are within the
range of other minds, more easily, quickly and correctly than they.
Thus he will take a direct and lively pleasure in every increase of
Knowledge, every problem solved, every witty thought, whether of his
own or another's; and so his mind will have no further aim than to be
constantly active. This will be an inexhaustible spring of delight;
and boredom, that spectre which haunts the ordinary man, can never
come near him.

Then, too, the masterpieces of past and contemporary men of genius
exist in their fullness for him alone. If a great product of genius
is recommended to the ordinary, simple mind, it will take as much
pleasure in it as the victim of gout receives in being invited to a
ball. The one goes for the sake of formality, and the other reads the
book so as not to be in arrear. For La Bruyere was quite right when he
said: _All the wit in the world is lost upon him who has none_. The
whole range of thought of a man of talent, or of a genius, compared
with the thoughts of the common man, is, even when directed to objects
essentially the same, like a brilliant oil-painting, full of life,
compared