Evil genius

“ One feels as if persistence in evil were impossible to one so delicate both in mind and form. That peculiar order of genius to which he belongs seems as if it ought to be so estranged from all directions, violent or coarse. When in poetry he seeks to utter some audacious and defying sentiment, the substance melts away in daintiness of expression, in soft, lute-like strains of slender music. ”

“ Which, by Jupiter and all the gods, you can not and will not do! You have arrived at such a pitch of folly or madness or—I know not what to call it: I am tempted often to think, that some evil genius is driving you to ruin—for the sake of scandal or envy or jest or any other cause, you command hirelings to speak, (some of whom would not deny themselves to be hirelings,) and laugh when they abuse people. ”

“ He feels that [Pg 251] man is surrounded with mystery, the mystery of Fate, or, as we should say, with the mystery surrounding the future history of the world; he seems to be anxiously asking of himself if the way that he has chosen and followed is the best and wisest way, or whether some evil genius has not introduced itself into his life, in order to drive him to perdition? He hears at night the voice of the evil genius amid the sounds and songs that should give rest and repose to his agitated spirit. ”

“ Have not many of them, possessing courage to inspire, intelligence to enlighten, sensibility to refine the world, sickened under the languor of neglect or got embittered at the endless contradictions and misrepresentations of their fellows, dying at last as unfortunate men, unhappy to themselves, unbeneficial to their contemporaries? What an evil is the not unfrequent depravity of genius, and which under happier circumstances might have been a great salutary influence instead! ”

“ But with the history of this maiden he weaves the workings of an evil genius, which in the end is triumphant; for even the pure are contaminated after they arrive at that period when they consider that vice has its virtues. ”

“ In order to be able to say Nay to everything representing an ascending evolution of life—that is, to well-being, to power, to beauty, to self-approval—the instincts of ressentiment, here become downright genius, had to invent an other world in which the acceptance of life appeared as the most evil and abominable thing imaginable. ”

“ We are told that every man has his attendant evil genius, or tutelary spirit, to execute the orders of the master demon—that the attending evil angel sees every move we make upon the board; witnesses all our actions, and permits us to do mischief, and every thing that is pernicious to ourselves;—that, on the contrary, our good spirit, actuated by more benevolent motives, is always accessary to our good actions, and reluctant to those that are bad. ”

“ That very intellect which should have shed a halo over the pure things of earth is here devoted to the production of things evil.
A tendency to sap the foundation upon which rest the pillars of morality, and to poison the minds of youth, seems to be a prevailing vice. High literary attainments, great mental powers, have been brought into the arena to battle for crime, lasciviousness, and vice. In all ages the vile corruption of man’s nature, aided by genius and talent, has been manifested in the production of things evil. ”

“ There lies the source of evil which some evil power perhaps without us stirs up till it wells over in misery. Then fiercely turns the wretch first against "the world and the world's law," both sometimes iniquitous, and last of all against the rebellious spirit in his own breast, but for whose own innate corruption his moral being would have been victorious against all outward assaults, violent or insidious, "and to the end persisting safe arrived."
Many men of genius have died without their fame, and for their fate we may surely mourn without calumniating our kind. It was their lot to die. ”

“ A good and evil genius attended every man, and his virtues and vices were esteemed to be spirits: A wicked man had an evil spirit; a virtuous man, a good one; a wrangler had a spirit of contradiction; people who could not speak, had a dumb spirit; a malicious man, a spirit of envy ”

“ He who could attain to a comprehension of the production of genius, and desires to carry out practically the manner in which Nature usually goes to work, would have to be just as evil and regardless as Nature itself. ”

“ We have such pathetic trust too in the inherent friendliness of the universe that it seems inconceivable to us that a great genius, inspired from hidden cosmic depths, should be actually a power of evil, dangerous to humanity. ”

“ The evil in ourselves, the things we are afraid of, are sources of strength, if we know how to use them. Envy and greed are capable of utilization—what would have become of man without them? Genius is egoistic, nourishing itself on others, ruling them, exploiting them. ”

“ And grapple with their evil star,
is no truer proof of the general theory that genius will make its mark, despite circumstance, than is the occasional occurrence of strange instances in which murder has been detected despite seemingly perfect precautions. ”

“ He has not been deterred by the aspect of vice and wickedness, and misery and guilt, from seeking a spirit of good in things evil, but has endeavored by the might of genius to transmute what was base into what is precious as the beaten gold. ”

“ The ancients believed that a genius or demon took possession at birth of each mortal, to guide him; that these genii were sometimes seen as a flame of fire partly immersed in the bodies which they governed; — on an evil man, resting on his head; in a good man, mixed with his substance. ”

“ Genius; thus recognising, in common with almost every other race, the enduring antagonism between the Principles and Powers of Good and Evil. The Evil Spirit, Mbwiri, they worship with a special homage; his might is to be dreaded, and his anger, if possible, averted. He is the lord of earth; and before him, as before a tyrant whose hand can grasp their lives and fortunes, they bend in humble adoration. But as the Good Spirit will do them no injury, they conceive it unnecessary to address to it any regular or formal prayer. ”

“ Even the evil power of perverted genius—for such we may well call it when it ventures to contemn both law and right, and fancies itself to be raised high above the voice of conscience and the moral duties of docility and humblemindedness as belonging to ordinary minds—even such a perverted genius may be made the idol of a man who has once turned his back on the simple truth and on God, and has arrogantly set himself in opposition to both. ”

“ The Genius of Humanity and the Spirit of Evil are playing at chess for the souls of men: the Genius of Humanity has lost to his infernal adversary some of his principal pieces,—love, humility, innocence, and lastly, peace of [195] mind;—but he still retains faith, truth, and fortitude ”

“ And in the mighty impulse to evil with which it was continually operating as an energy of feeling, it compelled the subservience of the intellect; and thus combined the passions with a faculty skilful to guide their direction, to diversify their objects, to invent expedients, and to seize and create occasions. What was it that this intelligent depravity would stop short of accomplishing? Reflect on the extent of human genius, in its powers of invention, combination, and adaptation ”

“ True, some men of genius have been seen under the diadem; but the evil is then even greater: the ambition of such a man impels him to conquest and despotism, his subjects soon have to lament his glory, and sing their Te-deums while perishing with hunger. ”

“ Nevertheless, let no one boast. Just as every man, though he be the greatest genius, has very definite limitations in some one sphere of knowledge, and thus attests his common origin with the essentially perverse and stupid mass of mankind, so also has every man something in his nature which is positively evil. Even the best, nay the noblest, character will sometimes surprise us by isolated traits of depravity; as though it were to acknowledge his kinship with the human race, in which villainy—nay, cruelty—is to be found in that degree. ”

“ Many of those peculiarities of men of genius which are not fortunate, and some which have hardened the character in its mould, may, however, be traced to this period. Physicians tell us that there is a certain point in youth at which the constitution is formed, and on which the sanity of life revolves; the character of genius experiences a similar dangerous period. Early bad tastes, early peculiar habits, early defective instructions, all the egotistical pride of an untamed intellect, are those evil spirits which will dog genius to its grave. ”

“ In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness. In religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
In another place he says,—
“Talent lying in the understanding is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.”
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There seems confusion here, for genius lies not in the amount of intellect—it is a quality of the intellect apart from quantity. And the distinction between talent and genius is definite. Talent combines and uses; genius combines and creates. ”

“ In the course of time a second genius was believed to exist, of an evil nature, who, as the instigator of all wrong-doing, was ever at war with the beneficent genius; and on the issue of the conflict between these antagonistic influences, depended the fate of the individual. The genii were depicted as winged beings, greatly resembling our modern representations of guardian angels. ”

“ The principle of recognition of evil under all its guises is at the basis of the true education of man. ”

“ This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world, the dunces are all in confederacy against him. ”

“ But if we evoke it for evil it answers with fading power, and we soon are unable to evoke it for good, for the evil we have called forth works for our feebleness and extinction. Or is there another and evil genie, a dark effigy of the higher also waiting on us as slave of our desires? ”

“ The powers abused to evil had been originally of rare order,—imagination, and scope, the energies that dare, the faculties that discover. But the moral part of the brain had failed to dominate the mental,—defective veneration of what is good or great; cynical disdain of what is right and just; in fine, a great intellect first misguided, then perverted, and now falling with the decay of the body into ghastly but imposing ruins,—such was the world of that brain as it had been three years ago. ”

“ Knowing the nature of man, the perversity of those who govern, and the debasement of the governed—this knowledge hath disgusted me with life; and since there is no choice but to be the accomplice or the victim of oppression, what remains to the man of virtue but to mingle his ashes with those of the tomb?
The Genius then gave me a look of severity, mingled with compassion; and after a few moments of silence, he replied:
Virtue, then, consists in dying! The wicked man is indefatigable in consummating his crime, and the just is discouraged from doing good at the first obstacle he encounters! ”

“ But when all the others have completed their demonstrations to the song of the best of worlds, quite at the last, at the background of the system, like a tardy avenger of the monster, like a spirit from the tomb, like the statue in Don Juan, there comes the question as to the origin of evil, of the monstrous, nameless evil, of the awful, heartrending misery in the world:—and here they are speechless, or can only find words, empty, sonorous words, with which to settle this heavy reckoning. ”

“ He who had looked with haughty eyes on the infirmities of others, who had disdained to serve his race because of their human follies and partial frailties,—he, even he, the Pharisee of Genius,—had but escaped by a chance, and by the hand of the man he suspected and despised, from a crime at which nature herself recoils,—which all law, social and divine, stigmatizes as inexpiable, which the sternest imagination of the very heathen had invented as the gloomiest catastrophe that can befall the wisdom and the pride of mortals! ”

“ On the other hand, imagine the "enemy" as the resentful man conceives him—and it is here exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived "the evil enemy," the "evil one," and indeed that is the root idea from which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a "good one," himself—his very self! ”

“ His intellect, we are told, is utterly and spiritually darkened, his will the slave of sin, set to work iniquity greedily, his imagination corrupt, his passions rebellious, his affections perverted, incapable of good in thought, word, or deed, and completely devoted to evil. Taking this view as correct, we might suppose the prime use of man’s understanding was to devise wickedness, of his memory to prolong the thoughts of it, of his will to form only guilty resolves, and of his passions to riot in all that is vile and ungodly. ”

“ The Voice of History.—In general, history appears to teach the following about the production of genius: it ill-treats and torments mankind—calls to the passions of envy, hatred, and rivalry—drives them to desperation, people against people, throughout whole centuries! Then, perhaps, like a stray spark from the terrible energy thereby aroused, there flames up suddenly the light of genius; the will, like a horse maddened by the rider's spur, thereupon breaks out and leaps over into another domain. ”

“ What good is there, then, beside the perfect holiness and happiness of the universe, to the production of which the existence of moral evil is necessary? There seems to be no such good in reality. It appears to be a dream of the imagination, a splendid fiction, which has been recommended to the human mind by its horror of the cheerless gloom of scepticism. ”