experience has proved attainable, and the dextrous use of such means as experience has proved to be efficient.

Talent values effort in the light of practical utility; genius always for its own sake, labors from the love of labor. Talent may be acquired. For (in the distinctive meaning of the word), it does not entirely coincide with native character. It may be imitative, the acquired ability to repeat what has already been done, while the individuality may be too feebly developed to mark very distinctly even its manner of operation. Genius always belongs to individual character, and may be cultivated, but can not be acquired. Talent qualifies eminently for the duties of business life: genius for the most exalted efforts of intellect. Genius, however, commonly operates unconsciously, and when best developed always manifests itself during the cultivation and exercise of talent. It was by improving his talent for the stage that Shakspeare unfolded his poetic genius, which otherwise would have concealed, perhaps, its vast capacities from himself; and the cultivation of a talent for singing, or playing, is the invariable means whereby musical genius is made acquainted with its own power. Whoever despises his talent will never make much of his genius; but if he has any, will squander it on things of little profit. In daily work talent is the more serviceable. For he can be yoked into the harness at command. Genius comes only at his own free will, and then it is commonly to

take the reins into his own hand and guide the car which talent draws.

By tact we mean an inferior or limited degree of talent a skill or adroitness in adapting words or deeds to circumstances, involving, of course, a quick perception of the propriety of circumstances. It is also applied to a certain degree of mechanical skill. In literature, it designates that very convenient faculty of perceiving the demands of the book market, and of successfully meeting them by compilations and adaptations of common property. It implies quickness of observation and facility of execution, but neither profundity nor strength. Nearly of kin to instinct, its ends are always temporary and definite. Because its range is narrow, and its force limited. Yet when connected with higher mental endowments it greatly enhances their value, and many a fine genius has been sadly crippled by the want of it. How much wider would have been the influence of Coleridge and of Shelley had their transcendant genius been united to a little tact! In Goëthe all these powers were so happily combined that it is not very easy to determine what amount of his success was due to each. Certainly neither his remarkable genius, nor his laborious talent would have won for him the place he occupies without the coöperation of consummate tact.

We sometimes hear of a universal genius, a phenomenon which is never seen. The term is commonly applied to a man of great talent in acquisition; or of

tact to employ his knowledge in various ways. A man of true genius is never fluctuating in his pursuits. He will exert great power upon whatever he attempts; but will certainly fix upon one prominent occupation, from the impulsive power of strong individuality, and the clearness with which he determines the comparative value of things. At the same time, if any one intends the word to apply, not to pursuits, but to powers, there is a sense in which the highest genius may be called universal—that is, comprehensive of all the powers of the mind to whom it belongs. For it is nothing more than an intense energy of spiritual life. But as each individual has his own peculiar character of spirit, that fact will only the more certainly determine the singleness of his aim. Hence in the ordinary acceptation of the term, there can be no such thing as a man of universal genius.

CHAPTER VIII.

IMAGINATION AND FANCY.

THESE remarks concerning the powers of criticism and production proceed of course upon the supposition that the mind has powers. A train of thoughts without a mind to think, is altogether inconceivable. A favorite theory may induce a man to adopt the doctrine, but no theory can enable him to form a distinct conception of such a reality. And that other notion that the mind is merely a passive basis, capable of being resolved, now into one state, and then into another, by certain agents, called laws, involves an inexplicable difficulty of gratuitous assumption. Every man's consciousness, if he will only appeal to it, will assure him that nothing extraneous calls his thoughts before him; but that he himself thinks: and the being that thinks and feels, must certainly have power to think and feel an inference so obvious as to have obtained a place in the common language of men. Many words are employed for no other purpose than to name intellectual powers. Taste, genius, and talent, are never conceived of as thoughts or states of the mind; but

always as powers. Neither is originality spoken of as thought; but as a characteristic tone of thinking. Thus imagination and fancy, though sometimes applied to the results of thinking, are more commonly and properly confined to mental powers.

I would not deem it necessary to speak of these latter, any more than of several other subordinate faculties which I omit, were not a distinctive understanding of them requisite to a true conception of the most commanding exercise of genius. Without genius, talent, or at least some degree of tact, no excellence of any kind can be produced. There are sovereign powers, or to speak more correctly, degrees of the inventive power, without which all the rest would be silent and unproductive; and genius, while wielding a dominion over every faculty of the soul, finds its highest delight in the work of impersonation.

The meaning of imagination, as the name of a mental faculty, is pretty well established in good and popular usage; but is greatly disputed by metaphysicians. Brown absorbs it in his gigantic theory of suggestion. In his view, there is no power of any kind. Although that doctrine of his philosophy is explicitly rejected by the common voice, it is at the same time implicitly adopted by all who admit without modification his intellectual theory. In what is commonly called imagination, he regards the mind as entirely passive, or at most, incapable of exercising anything but selection, and that only partially, not as extending farther than