d move possesses an
existence only in relation to this cerebral system. Accordingly, the
difference between a genius and an ordinary man is a total diversity
of world and existence. The difference between man and the lower
animals may be similarly explained.

When Momus was said to ask for a window in the breast, it was an
allegorical joke, and we cannot even imagine such a contrivance to
be a possibility; but it would be quite possible to imagine that the
skull and its integuments were transparent, and then, good heavens!
what differences should we see in the size, the form, the quality,
the movement of the brain! what degrees of value! A great mind would
inspire as much respect at first sight as three stars on a man's
breast, and what a miserable figure would be cut by many a one who
wore them!

Men of genius and intellect, and all those whose mental and
theoretical qualities are far more developed than their moral
and practical qualities--men, in a word, who have more mind than
character--are often not only awkward and ridiculous in matters of
daily life, as has been observed by Plato in the seventh book of the
_Republic_, and portrayed by Goethe in his _Tasso_; but they are
often, from a moral point of view, weak and contemptible creatures as
well; nay, they might almost be called bad men. Of this Rousseau has
given us genuine examples. Nevertheless, that better consciousness
which is the source of all virtue is often stronger in them than in
many of those whose actions are nobler than their thoughts; nay, it
may be said that those who think nobly have a better acquaintance with
virtue, while the others make a better practice of it. Full of zeal
for the good and for the beautiful, they would fain fly up to heaven
in a straight line; but the grosser elements of this earth oppose
their flight, and they sink back again. They are like born artists,
who have no knowledge of technique, or find that the marble is too
hard for their fingers. Many a man who has much less enthusiasm for
the good, and a far shallower acquaintance with its depths, makes a
better thing of it in practice; he looks down upon the noble thinkers
with contempt, and he has a right to do it; nevertheless, he does not
understand them, and they despise him in their turn, and not unjustly.
They are to blame; for every living man has, by the fact of his
living, signed the conditions of life; but they are still more to be
pitied. They achieve their redem