We are so used to “the dull level of mediocrity,” and the labour whose noblest height is conscientious effort, that when we do find a strongly specialised individual so highly fitted to perform one service that he can do no other—we call him a genius. So great is the power of working in these “geniuses”—the happy lavish outpour of social energy through a natural channel—that we have put the cart before the horse as usual, and defined genius as “the capacity for hard work.” There are a thousand hard workers for one genius, but a fact like that does not worry our shallow generalisers. Unfortunately, owing to our lack of true education and the crushing weight of the false, only the exceptional genius now and then succeeds in forcing his way to his true place, and he does it by breaking through the poor, blundering, reward-and-penalty system with which we obstruct social development, and by letting out what is in him, producing his natural fruitage of work, quite irrespective of pay or punishment. Thanks to this quenchless functional vigour of Society we are never without some natural work; and thanks to our vast facility of transmission we all share in the products of genius to a greater or less extent. Yet it is but a painful and niggard harvest compared to the universal crop we might enjoy if we would let it grow. Happiness to the individual is in fulfilment of function, it is as much in farming as in fiddling, if you like it—“every man to his taste.” And the benefit to society lies in every man’s working “to his taste”; as beautiful and desirable a combination as need be imagined. This does not mean that all would manifest transcendent genius, but that each, in his place and degree, would have that strong instinctive tendency, that vivid delight in fulfilment of function which should accompany human work in every department. XVII: THE TRUE POSITION _Summary_