Great Genius and Counterfeits

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Samuel Taylor Coleridge · Secret Doctrine's Third Proposition Series · 27 pages

Twenty-seven pages with a full abstract and train of thoughts. *It is one of the most readable files in this section* because its subject is an ordinary one — what we mean when we call somebody a genius — and because Coleridge is brought in early to sharpen the question.

Coleridge's definition, that genius is at least the faculty of growth, is quoted and then pressed: which of two things is genius, an abnormal aptitude of the lower mind, or a brain fit to receive and manifest the divinity of a man's over-soul? The answer given is the second, and its consequence is stated with some force. No Ego differs from another in its primordial essence and nature; what makes one mortal a great man and another a vulgar one is the quality and make-up of the physical casing, and the adequacy or inadequacy of brain and body to transmit the light of the Inner Man — an aptness which is itself the result of karma. The manifestations of genius in a person are therefore only the more or less successful efforts of that Ego to assert itself on the outward plane, in the matter-of-fact daily life of the man of clay. From this follows the test the file offers, which is the part worth carrying away. The flame of genius is lit by no anthropomorphic hand save that of one's own spirit; so great genius, if true and innate rather than an abnormal expansion of the human intellect, can never copy or stoop to imitate, but will always be original and sui generis in its creative impulses. Artificial genius — so often confused with its higher counterpart, and being merely the outcome of lifelong study and training — will never be more than the flame of a lamp burning outside the portal of the temple, throwing a long trail of light but never entering.

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