[Footnote 2: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, p. 177. There was recently introduced to the writer a boy, aged nineteen, for whom this would be an admirable solution. Brought up in a tenement and working as a clerk, this youngster wrote what competent judges pronounced to be really extraordinary lyrics. He was at the same time utterly helpless in the world of affairs. Even at college his casual habits and absorption would have prevented him from getting through his freshman year.]
Mill has generalized the situation of the genius:
Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an _atmosphere_ of freedom. Persons of genius are, _ex vi termini_, more individual than any other people--less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character.... If they are of a strong character, and break their fetters, they become a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing them to commonplace, to point at with solemn warning as "wild," "erratic," and the like; much as if one should complain of the Niagara River for not flowing smoothly between its banks, like a Dutch canal.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. III.]
THE ACTIVE AND THE CONTEMPLATIVE. One final distinction must be made, one that cuts across all the types of self hitherto discussed, namely, the distinction between the man of action and the man of thought. One need not go far in literature or in life to find the contrast made. In the Scriptures Mary is set over against Martha, Rachel against Leah. Hamlet and Ulysses are permanent representations of the melancholy thinker and the exuberant adventurer. The business man and the executive may be put over against the poet and the scholar; the strenuous organizer and administrator over against the quiet philosopher. Both have their outstanding uses, and, in their extreme forms, their outstanding defects. The active type, as we say, "gets things done." He builds bridges and industries; he manages markets and men. His eye is on the practical; he is dependable, rapid, and efficient. In an industrial civilization he is the great heroic type. The statesman and the railroad builder, the newspaper editors and the political leaders captivate the imaginations as they control the destinies of mankind.
