While not agreeing, therefore, with the theory which makes the genius independent of the social movement--least of all with the doctrine that physical heredity is uninfluenced by social conditions--the hero worshipper is right, nevertheless, in saying that we can not set the limitations of the genius on the side of variations toward high intellectual endowment. So if the general position be true that he is a variation of some kind, we must look elsewhere for the direction of those peculiar traits whose excess would be his condemnation. This we can find only in connection with the other demand that we make of the ordinary man--the demand that he be a man of good judgment. And to this we may now turn. _The Judgment of the Genius._--We should bear in mind in approaching this topic the result which follows from the reciprocal character of social relationships. No genius ever escapes the requirements laid down for his learning, his social heredity. Mentally he is a social outcome, as well as are the fellows who sit in judgment on him. He must judge his own thoughts therefore as they do. And his own proper estimate of things and thoughts, his relative sense of fitness, gets application, by a direct law of his own mental processes, to himself and to his own creations. The limitations which, in the judgment of society, his variations must not overstep, are set by his own judgment also. If the man in question have thoughts which are socially true, _he must himself know that they are true_. So we reach a conclusion regarding the selection of the particular thoughts which the genius may have: _he and society must agree in regard to the fitness of them_, although in particular cases this agreement ceases to be the emphatic thing. The essential thing comes to be the reflection of the social standard in the thinker's own judgment; _the thoughts thought must always be critically judged by the thinker himself; and for the most part his judgment is at once also the social judgment_. This may be illustrated further.