Forgetfulness and Genius

Forgetfulness is one of the characteristics of genius. It is said that Newton once rammed his niece's finger into his pipe; when he left his room to seek for anything he usually returned without bringing it. Rouelle generally explained his ideas at great length, and when he had finished, he added: "But this is one of my arcana which I tell to no one." Sometimes one of his pupils rose and repeated in his ear what he had just said aloud; then Rouelle believed that the pupil had discovered the arcanum by his own sagacity, and begged him not to divulge what he had himself just told to two hundred persons. One day, when performing an experiment during a lecture, he said to his hearers: "You see, gentlemen, this caldron over the flame? Well, if I were to leave off stirring it, an explosion would at once occur which would make us all jump." While saying these words, he did not fail to forget to stir, and the prediction was accomplished; the explosion took place with a fearful noise: the laboratory windows were all smashed, and the audience fled to the garden. Sir Everard Home relates that he once suddenly lost his memory for half an hour, and was unable to recognize the house and the street in which he lived; he could not recall the name of the street, and seemed to hear it for the first time. It is told of Ampere that when travelling on horseback in the country he became absorbed in a problem; then. dismounting, began to lead his horse, and finally lost it; but he did not discover his misadventure until, on arrival, it attracted the attention of his friends. Babinet hired a country house, and after making the payments returned to the town, then he found that he had entirely forgotten both the name of the place and from what station he had started.

One day Buffon, lost in thought, ascended a tower and slid down by the ropes, unconsciour of what he was doing, like a somnambulist. Mozart, in carving meat, so often cut his fingers, accustomed only to the piano, that he had to give up this duty to other persons. Of Bishop Munster, it is said that, seeing at the door of his own antechamber the announcement: 'The master of the house is out', he remained there awaiting his own return. Of Toucherel, it is told by Arago, that he once even forgot his own name. Beethoven, on returning from an excursion in the forest, often left his coat on the grass, and often went out hatless. Once, at Neustadt, he was arrested in this condition, and taken to prison as a vagabond; here he might have renmained as no one would believe that he was Beethoven, if Herzog, the conductor of the ochestra, had not arrived to deliver him. Gioia, in the excitement of composition, wrote a chapter on the table of his bureau instead of on paper. It is told of Ampere that having written a formula, with which he was preoccupied, on the back of a cab, he started in pursuit as soon as the cab went off.

Hagen notes that originality is the quality that distinguishes genius from talent. Talent aims at a point which appears difficule to reach; genius aims at a point which no one perceives. Genius divines facts before completely knowing them; thus Goethe descrived Italy very well before knowing it; and Schiller, the land and people of Switzerland, without having been there. And it is on account of those divinations which all precede common abservation, and because genius, occupied with lofty researches, does not possess the habits of the many, nad because, like the lunatic and unlike the man of talent, he is often disordered, the man of genius is scorned and misunderstood. Ordinaty persons do not perceive the steps which have led the man of genius to his creation, but they see the difference between his conclusions and those of others, and the strangeness of his conduct.

Men of genius have no fiercer or more terrible enemies than the men of academies, who poses the weapons of talent, the stimulus of vanity, and the prestige by preference accorded to them by the vulgar, and by governments which, in large part, consist of the vulgar. There are, indeed, countries in which the ordinary level of intelligence sinks so low that the inhabitants come to hate, not only genius, but even talent.

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