the intervention of the occult original. But Nature
would not be mocked; and whenever this race of idolaters have worked
without her agency, she has afflicted them with the most stubborn
sterility.

Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical
times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than
their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the
imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how
to invent invention.

The character of genius, viewed as the effect of habit and education, on
the principle of the equality of the human mind, infers that men have an
equal aptitude for the work of genius: a paradox which, with a more fatal
one, came from the French school, and arose probably from an equivocal
expression.

Locke employed the well-known comparison of the mind with "white paper
void of all characters," to free his famous "Inquiry" from that powerful
obstacle to his system, the absurd belief of "innate ideas," of notions of
objects before objects were presented to observation. Our philosopher
considered that this simple analogy sufficiently described the manner in
which he conceived the impressions of the senses write themselves on the
mind. His French pupils, the amusing Helvetius, or Diderot, for they
were equally concerned in the paradoxical "L'Esprit," inferred that this
blank paper served also as an evidence that men had _an equal aptitude for
genius_, just as the blank paper reflects to us whatever characters we
trace on it. This _equality of minds_ gave rise to the same monstrous
doctrine in the science of metaphysics which that of another verbal
misconception, _the equality of men_, did in that of politics. The
Scottish metaphysicians powerfully combined to illustrate the mechanism of
the mind,--an important and a curious truth; for as rules and principles
exist in the nature of things, and when discovered are only thence drawn
out, genius unconsciously conducts itself by a uniform process; and
when this process had been traced, they inferred that what was done by
some men, under the influence of fundamental laws which regulate the
march of the intellect, must also be in the reach of others, who, in the
same circumstances, apply themselves to the same study. But these
metaphysicians resemble anatomists, under whose knife all men are alike.
They know the structure of the bones, the movement of the muscles, and
where t