ey have attained the power of giving Thought the character of
Fact, we notice no distinction between power of intellect and power of
will, but an indissoluble union and fusion of force and insight. Facts
and laws are so blended with their personal being, that we can hardly
decide whether it is thought that wills or will that thinks. Their
actions display the intensest intelligence; their thoughts come from
them clothed in the thews and sinews of energetic volition. Their force,
being proportioned to their intelligence, never issues in that wild and
anarchical impulse, or that tough, obstinate, narrow wilfulness, which
many take to be the characteristic of individualized power. They may, in
fact, exhibit no striking individual traits which stand impertinently
out, and yet from this very cause be all the more potent and influential
individualities. Indeed, in the highest efforts of ecstatic action,
when the person is mightiest, and amazes us by the giant leaps of his
intuition, the mere peculiarities of his personality are unseen and
unfelt. This is the case with Homer, Shakspeare, and Goethe, in
poetry,--with Plato and Bacon, in philosophy,--with Newton, in
science,--with Caesar, in war. Such men doubtless had peculiarities and
caprices, but they were "burnt and purged away" by the fire of their
genius, when its action was intensest. Then their whole natures were
melted down into pure force and insight, and the impression they leave
upon the mind is the impression of marvellous force and weight and reach
of thought.

If it be objected, that these high examples are fitted to provoke
despair rather than stimulate emulation, the answer is, that they
contain, exemplify, and emphasize the principles, and flash subtile
hints of the processes, of all mental growth and production. How comes
it that these men's thoughts radiate from them as acts, endowed not only
with an illuminating, but a penetrating and animating power? The answer
to this is a statement of the genesis, not merely of genius, but of
every form of intellectual manhood; for such thoughts do not leap, _a
la_ Minerva, full-grown from the head, but are struck off in those
moments when the whole nature of the thinker is alive and aglow with an
inspiration kindled long before in remote recesses of consciousness from
one spark of immortal fire, and unweariedly burning, burning, burning,
until it lit up the whole inert mass of surrounding mind in flame.

To show, indeed