National genius

“ I know of no position in the world more desirable for a really great man, a man with a genius for statesmanship, a million-minded man, than to take this young, daring, hopeful nation, so full of promise, so ready for work, and lead them forward in the way of political righteousness, giving us ideas, persuading us to build institutions thereof, and make the high thought of a man of genius the common life of a mighty nation, young as yet and capable of taking any lesson of national nobility which the most gifted man can devise ”

“ We have whatever internally or externally is requisite to promote national greatness and prosperity. We live in the full possession and enjoyment of a government founded on the experience of the past, and reared by the genius and wisdom of an unrivalled ancestry. The mind here blooms and grows under the protecting wings of the Genius of Freedom—its native boldness and vigor unrestrained. Here it may be aroused to all that is noble in enterprise, or excellent in virtue. Here the aliments of its growth are as rich and as inspiriting, as they are abundant. ”

“ No country has produced men more learned and liberal, of more comprehensive genius, virtue, and real excellence, than England. Yet the contrast may as justly be exhibited there, as in any part of the world. But the balance of real merit, both individual and national, must be left to the all-pervading eye, which, with a single glance surveys the moral and intellectual system of creation. ”

“ The longer I live the more convinced I am that the only two things that really count in national existence, are a succession of writers of genius and the proud memories of great, noble, and honourable deeds. ”

“ Their Nobility are endowed with a liberal and enterprizing Spirit. They join and patronize Men of Genius and Talents in the Cultivation of the Arts, and Improvement of every Kind of experimental Knowledge. Their Pleasure consists in a national Ambition to excel. ”

“ Morally speaking, it is the mission of each nation in correlation with others to contribute to the universal work of civilization its own peculiar gifts. The state may be regarded as that organization of the public life which is designed to develop the national individuality; to foster the national genius in whatever direction it may seek to express itself, whether in industry, art, literature, or science ”

“ Hence, then, we deduce that true genius is the organ of its nation. The creative faculty is itself created; for it is the nation which first imparts an impulse to the character of genius. Such is the real source of those distinct tastes which we perceive in all great national authors. Every literary work, to ensure its success, must adapt itself to the sympathies and the understandings of the people it addresses. Hence those opposite characteristics, which are usually ascribed to the master-writers themselves, originate with the country, and not with the writer. ”

“ The vehement desire of that perfection which genius conceives, and cannot always execute, held a perpetual contest with that dejection of spirits which degrades the unhappy sufferer, and casts him, grovelling among the mean of his class. In a national work, a man of genius pledges his honour to the world for its performance ”

“ If, amid these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and while he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, and should tell him:
"Young man, there is America—which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners ”

“ In our country, the commercial character has so closely interwoven and identified itself with the national one, and its peculiar views have so terminated all our pursuits, that every rank is alike influenced by its spirit, and things are valued by a market-price which naturally admits of no such appraisement. In a country where "The Wealth of Nations" has been fixed as the first principle of political existence, wealth has raised an aristocracy more noble than nobility, more celebrated than genius, more popular than patriotism ”

“ His ability, his knowledge of human nature, and his passion for public service—qualities in which his merits are known to Europe—designate him as the founder of a great system of public liberality to the enterprise of genius. ”

“ Who can measure the gratitude our country owes to him for his furtherance of the true love of art and the ennobled æsthetic taste which it was his searching constant care to serve by securing the best of talent, by holding out help to struggling genius, and by exciting our living interest in such things? He was a pattern of American citizenship, the embodiment of unselfish, efficient public spirit. ”

“ One can not wonder at the Americans' extreme admiration of the genius and the statesman-like qualities of their distinguished countryman, his glorious and electrifying eloquence, his great powers of ratiocination, his solid judgment, his stores of knowledge, and his large and comprehensive mind—a mind of that real expansion and breadth which, heaven knows, too few public men can boast of. ”

“ When I look back at the processes of history, when I look back at the genesis of America, I see this written over every page, that the nations are renewed from the bottom, not from the top; that the genius which springs up from the ranks of unknown men is the genius which renews the youth and the energy of the people ”

“ Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius. ”

“ The nation that has produced a great poet, a great artist, a great statesman, a great thinker, takes its place on an equality with other nations of the world, and transfers to all of its citizens some of the genius of its most illustrious men.
This great Fair will be an object lesson to other nations. They will see the result of a government, republican in form, where the people are the source of authority, where governors and presidents are servants—not rulers. We want all nations to see the great Republic as it is, to study and understand its growth, development and destiny. ”

“ Before it all material conquests appear of little worth, and the lustre of all military or civil glory grows dim. Cherish this intellectual life; foster it; sustain it; do what you can by your own spirit and influence, and, if you are blessed with riches, give of your abundance to support and encourage those who, by genius, talent, and devotion, will [Pg 68] widen the intellectual kingdom. Be assured you will thus help to confer an inestimable boon on your race and on your country; and the influence for good will not be felt by the intellectual life of the nation only. ”

“ He possessed, above all, in an eminent degree, that quality which some call vulgar, but which very few possess—that quality not less useful to the government of states than to the conduct of life, and which gives more tranquillity than emotion to the soul, and more happiness than glory to those who possess it. It is of good sense that I speak. Audacity destroys, genius elevates, good sense preserves and perfects. Genius is charged with the glory of empires ”

“ For on this day of days, lo! The Nation comes forth,
To commence its career of Wit, Wisdom, and Worth—
To give Genius its due—to do battle with Wrong—
And achieve things undreamed of as yet, save in song,
Then arise! ”

“ Neither can I see any reason, why the genius of a nation should be more fixed in the point of government, than in their morals, their learning, their religion, their common humour and conversation, their diet and their complexion ”

“ The skill, the industry, the arts of the politician, had been used by a man gifted with the genius and not free from the faults of a philosopher, to plant in American usages, prejudices, and traditions,—in the very fibre of American [Pg 7] political life, a cardinal and fruitful idea. The work was done for all time. For Americans, government was thenceforth to be a mere instrument. ”

“ Our wills and our won'ts are our genius among the sons of men. They are what we are for. With England and America I will and I won't are an art form, our means of expressing ourselves, our way of invention and creation, of begetting an age, of begetting a nation upon a world. ”

“ Each generation hands it on beautified to the next; each has done something to give utterance to the universal thought. Those who are said to have genius have acquired some special aptitude by which they render the general shapes of the nation their own work, one in one point, another in another. What they produce is not their invention, but the invention of the whole nation ”

“ Fortunately for us, as a people, this year has given us more than ordinary opportunity for such recognition. Never before, in American history, has there been such a large discovery of talent and genius among us. ”

“ It may take the form of culture, of a desire that the republic-liable, like all self-made nations, to worship wealth-should be distinguished not so much by a vulgar national display as by an advance in the arts, the sciences, the education that adorns life, in the noble spirit of humanity, and in the nobler spirit of recognition of a higher life, which will be content with no civilization that does not tend to make the country for every citizen a better place to live in today than it was yesterday. ”

“ If those great men had been content, like others, to continue as they began, and had never made their persevering efforts for improvement, what would their countries have benefited from their genius, or the world have known of their fame? ”

“ Whatever may be the fate of the new nationality or its subsequent claims to the respect of mankind, it will assuredly begin its career with a reputation for genius and valor which the most famous nations may envy. ”

“ It has required the utmost variety of character and energy to establish a great nation, with a polity at once free and firm, upon this continent, and no sound type of manliness could have been dispensed with in the effort. We could no more have done without our great Englishmen, to keep the past steadily in mind and make every change conservative of principle, than we could have done without the men whose whole impulse was forward, whose whole genius was for origination, natural masters of the art of subduing a wilderness. ”

“ I have so strong a faith in the infinite ability which freedom gives to a great empire, that I am convinced of our being able, in all its eras, to find the species of public talent essential to its services. I regard the national mind, as the philosopher does the natural soil, always capable of the essential produce, where we give it the due tillage. ”

“ It is not easy to conceive how different the state of nations would have been at this day from what we now find it, had such a bent been given to the pursuits of genius, and such glory cast upon actions truly worthy of imitation. ”

“ Perhaps even, recovering from our present artificially induced and radically insincere mood of national self-abasement, we shall learn to take some pride in our own characteristic contributions as a nation to the arts of government, to the thought, the literature, the art, the mechanical inventions which have made and are re-making modern civilization. ”

“ Do you know the fellow who's really the American genius? The fellow who you don't know his name and I don't either, but his work ought to be preserved so's future generations can judge our American thought and originality to-day? ”

“ If genius constituted his title to distinction, if nature had gifted him with the power to serve the state, the state, without inquiry whether he were poor or rich, readily availed itself of his capacity, rewarded him during his life with political honours and authority, and, after his death, with imperishable glory. ”

“ The peculiar genius of our people is their capacity for self-government. Let them follow the inspiration of that genius, and esteem themselves for their real worth, and they will have no need of fearing the sting of European sarcasm. ”

“ But this term of reproach has gathered about itself all the glory that belongs to genius and skill in the useful arts, to industry, thrift and purity in the home, to patriotic valor on the field of battle, and to unpurchasable and unconquerable devotion to principle, and is now a name that is venerated by [Pg 202] every clear-headed and sound-hearted and well-informed and unprejudiced person in the world. ”

“ This singular revolution in the history of the human mind, and by its reaction this singular revolution in human affairs, was effected by a glorious succession of AUTHORS, who have enabled our nation to arbitrate among the nations of Europe, and to possess ourselves of their involuntary esteem by discoveries in science, by principles in philosophy, by truths in history, and even by the graces of fiction; and there is not a man of genius among foreigners who stands unconnected with our intellectual sovereignty. ”

“ In a country not under the dominion of foreigners, the only cause adequate to producing similar benefits is the rare accident of a monarch of extraordinary genius. There have been in history a few of these who, happily for humanity, have reigned long enough to render some of their improvements permanent, by leaving them under the guardianship of a generation which had grown up under their influence. ”

“ Our philosophers, our poets, and our historians, are printed at foreign presses. This is a perpetual victory, and establishes the ascendancy of our genius, as much at least as the commerce and the prowess of England. ”

“ The American genius, I say: but after all, and this is the real point of my remarks, what America is, Europe is becoming. We, who sit here, with the exception, of course, of Wilson, represent the Past, not the Future. Politicians, professors, lawyers, doctors, no matter what our calling, our judgments are determined by the old scale of values. Intellect, Beauty, Emotion, these are the things we count precious; to wealth and to progress we are indifferent, save as conducing to these. ”