Shakspeare's
name suggests other and purely intellectual benefits.
Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with their medals, swords,
and armorial coats, like the addressing to a human being thoughts out
of a certain height, and presupposing his intelligence. This honor,
which is possible in personal intercourse scarcely twice in a lifetime,
genius perpetually pays; contented, if now and then, in a century, the
proffer is accepted. The indicators of the values of matter are degraded
to a sort of cooks and confectioners, on the appearance of the
indicators of ideas. Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the
supersensible regions, and draws on their map; and, by acquainting us
with new fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. These
are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have
conversed with is the show.
We go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school to see the power and
beauty of the body; there is the like pleasure, and a higher benefit,
from witnessing intellectual feats of all kinds; as, feats of memory,
of mathematical combination, great power of abstraction, the
transmutings of the imagination, even versatility, and concentration,
as these acts expose the invisible organs and members of the mind,
which respond, member for member, to the parts of the body.
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