“Yes,” I answered, “or, rather, science gives us facts, truths, but never at all the complete truth. It gives us parts as parts, never the whole. Philosophy, on the other hand, does what we are doing here. It reaches out for the complete whole, for understanding, for unity, but it knows well that it can never attain the end. It reaches out for the complete good, and is satisfied with nothing less than that unattainable whole. But art does another thing; it tells us a lie—the most wonderful lie in the world—truer than any truth. It says: Look, here is completeness, harmony, wholeness, in this one small shape. And we know it cannot be so, but still we feel it to be there. That lie gives us, as no truth can, the thing we long for, and know to be most true. “Now, what do you mean by the word genius? What is genius?” I asked. “Usually,” said Virginia, “a genius is a crank. There is a girl in my art class who is the frousiest, queerest crank in the world, and every one calls her a genius.” “Geniuses are often queer,” said Henry. Ruth said, too, that many geniuses were anything but great and good in their private lives. “Well,” I answered, “I am surprised by your definition of a genius. But perhaps you will be more surprised, and sorry you said so much, when I tell you that I consider every one of you a genius.” “Oh, my,” said Virginia, “how nice! I wish I were.” I said: “What we usually call genius is but a larger power of understanding, a sense of unity, of the relations of things. And we all have that, in some degree. So we all have genius. It is not a matter of quality but of quantity. We are all the same stuff, only some more and some less.” Henry said I might use the word in that sense, but he didn’t think it was the true meaning. He said: “What definition is in the dictionary?” We had no dictionary at hand, so I tried to prove my definition true without a dictionary, and I succeeded. I said: “There is no gulf between the genius and the stupid looker-on. Don’t you see why there could not be?” “I see,” said Marian; “it is because the looker-on would have to have some genius, or else——” She could not finish. “Just so, Marian,” I went on; “or else he could not appreciate the artist’s work. It is the genius in the onlooker that appreciates the genius in the artist. And in so far as you can appreciate the genius of Shakespeare, in so far you have the same sort of genius.” “Then,” said she, “art makes us recognize ourselves.” “Yes,” I answered, “our bigger selves.” “So one might speak,” she said, “of a person developing his genius for music, or his genius for painting, and so on?” “Yes,” I answered; “and you see how easily and well one can use the word in that sense.” Ruth asked: “If the great genius is really one who understands better than the rest of us, and has a more harmonious vision, how is it that so many geniuses are incomplete and very imperfect in their personal lives?”