Genius

   1) A High Rate of Original Thinking Characterizes the Life of the Inventive Genius

   The biography of the inventive genius commonly records a lifetime of original thinking, though only a few ideas survive and are remembered to fame. Voluminous productivity is the rule and not the exception among the individuals who have made some noteworthy contribution. (Barron, 1963, p. 139)

   2) The Idea of the Genius and Its Origins

   The genius was, I suggest, in origin the Roman analogue to the psyche as here explained, the life-spirit active in procreation, dissociated from and external to the conscious self that is central in the chest. This will explain many facts not hitherto accounted for. The genius was believed to assume the form of a snake, as was the psyche. The psyche was believed to be in the head. . . .

   Not only was his genius thus apparently liable to intervene or take possession of a man but we shall also see reason to believe that it was, in the time of Platus, thought to enjoy knowledge beyond what was enjoyed by the conscious self and to give the latter warning of impending events. . . . The idea of the genius seems to have served in great part as does the twentieth-century concept of an "unconscious mind," influencing a man's life and actions apart from or even despite his conscious mind. It is now possible to trace the origin of our idiom that a man "has" or "has not" genius, meaning that he possesses or does not possess a native source of inspiration beyond ordinary intelligence. (Onians, 1954, p. 129)