The mind / by James Mark Baldwin.

  • James Mark Baldwin
Date:
[between 1898 and 1918?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The mind / by James Mark Baldwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    253/272 (page 249)
    to be full of rich and varied thought, who holds us sometimes by the power of his conceptions or the beauty of his creations, but in whose thought we yet find some incongruity, some eminently unfit element, some grotesque application, some elevation or depression from the level of common¬ place truth, some ugly strain in the aesthetic impression. The man himself does not know it, and that is the reason he includes it. His sense of fitness is dwarfed or paralysed. We in the community come to regret that he is so “ visionary,” with all his talent; so we accom¬ modate ourselves to his unfruitfulness, and at the best only expect an occasional hour’s entertain¬ ment under the spell of his presence. This certainly is not the man to produce a world movement. Most of the men we call “ cranks ” are of this type. They are essentially lacking in judgment, and the popular estimate of them is exactly right. It is evident, therefore, from this last explana¬ tion, that there is a second direction of variation among men : variation in their sense of the truth and value of their own thoughts, and with them of the thoughts of others. This is the great limitation which the man of genius shares with men gener¬ ally—a limitation in the amount of variation which he may show in his social judgments, especially as these variations affect the claim which he makes upon society for recognition. It is evident that this must be an important factor in our estimate of the claims of the hero to our worship, especially since it is the more obscure side of his tempera¬ ment, and the side generally overlooked alto-