The genius lives in advance of his time, having a flash-like insight into knowledge hidden as mystery from the understandings of his fellow-men. He suffers the loneliness of the pioneer who, treading a path where none has[34] trod before, leaves an open way with marks of guidance and explanation for those who come after him. But such a man has compensation for the lack of human fellowship in his consciousness of achieving work capable of raising the standard of thought in the minds of those who behold it. They may not understand, but they can admire. They acknowledge the work of genius—an attitude which is conducive towards a fuller appreciation of what they admire. They behold, in fact, evidence of something they do not fully understand, but which they apprehend to be true. Thus art fulfils its divinely ordered purpose in the evolution of the human mind, its educational influence being traceable in all records of human progress. But there are spiritual ideals, visions of beauty, symphonies of harmony, unseen by earthly eyes, unheard by earthly ears, wholly impossible of demonstration, which remain for ever unexpressed and uncomprehended by those who have apprehended them. These[35] seers of visions and dreamers of dreams have not, perhaps, the artistic power by which an attempt could be made to transcribe the vision in a manner legible to the ordinary human understanding. Or there exists, perhaps, no adequate evidence by which even a genius is able to express what he has apprehended in ideal and abstract thought. Yet to the dreamer, the seer, the genius an ideal is none the less true because he cannot certify its truth by evidence that would convey its verity to other persons. One of the facts that the theory of the evolutionary descent of man and the evolutionary development of his soul has made clear is that there is no limit to his future acquirements of thought and understanding. Mental growth is a continual feeling after knowledge a little in advance of comprehension—of knowledge still hidden as mystery, to be approached only by a consistent application of the intellect towards the discovery of the evidence of truth in all things submitted to con[36]sideration. Speculative thought acts as an impetus to the mind to set about the finding of evidence that shall induce a natural growth of knowledge from mystery. Were there no knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, its development could not continue, for stagnation of thought, checking mental activity, must lead subsequently to degeneration. It is the effort to get, rather than the getting, which is the zest of existence. Without the hunger of mind and body, how could the nourishment necessary for the continuity of mental and physical life be obtained?