The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76,
February, 1864, by Various

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864

Author: Various

Release Date: May 12, 2005 [EBook #15819]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Transcriber's note: Footnotes moved to end of document.]

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XIII.--FEBRUARY, 1864.--NO. LXXVI

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by Ticknor and
Fields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

* * * * *

GENIUS.

When Paul Morphy plays seven games of chess at once and blindfold, when
young Colburn gives _impromptu_ solution to a mathematical problem
involving fifty-six figures, we are struck with hopeless wonder: such
power is separated by the very extent of it from our mental operations.
But when we further observe that these feats are attended by little or
no fatigue,--that this is the play, not the tension of faculty, we
recognize a new kind, not merely a new degree, of intelligence. These
men seem to leap, not labor step by step, to their results. Colburn sees
the complication of values, Morphy that of moves, as we see the relation
of two and two. What is multiform and puzzling to us is simple to them,
as the universe lies rounded and is one thought in the Original Mind. We
seek in vain for the secret of this mastery. It is private,--as deeply
hidden from those who have as from those who have it not. They cannot
think otherwise than so, and to this exercise have been provoked by
every influence in life. The boy who is an organized arithmetic and
geometry will count all the hills of potatoes and reckon the kernels of
corn in a bushel, and his triangles soon begin to cover the barn-door.
He sees nothing but number and dimension; he feeds on these, another
fellow on apples and nuts. But his brother loves application