His thought may be great, so great that, centuries after, society may attain to it as its richest outcome and its profoundest intuition; but before, that time, it is as bizarre as a madman's fancies and as useless.

What would be thought, we might be asked by writers of this school, of a rat which developed upon its side the hand of a man, with all its mechanism of bone, muscle, tactile sensibility, and power of delicate manipulation, if the remainder of the creature were true to the pattern of a rat?
Would not the rest of the rat tribe be justified in leaving this anomaly behind to starve in the hole where his singular appendage held him fast?
Is such a rat any the less a monster because man finds use for his hands.
To a certain extent this argument is forcible and true.

If social utility be our rule of definition, then certainly the premature genius is no genius.

And this rule of definition may be put in another way which renders it still more plausible.

The variations which occur in intellectual endowment, in a community, vary about a mean; there is, theoretically, an average man.