PAY AND GENIUS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3150, 2 August 1881, Page 4

PAY AND GENIUS.

What is a great book ? How can it be produced? By offering re wards ? If anybody thinks so let him go through a course of prize poems. An ingenious and amiable person proposed some time ago to offer a prize for the best essay upon the origin of evil. He was under the impression thafc he could get somebody to throw light upon that ancient puzzle by a chance of winning a few hundred pounds. Thafc stimulus would bo sufficient to convert a mere aspiring youth into a philosopher profounder than Plato, or Leibnitz, or Kant, or Hume ; and yet the potential philosopher must be so sluggish that, without the chance of a prize, he would not condescend to solve the doubts which have haunted humanity through all the centuries. The same simpleminded faith in the power of money was humorously expressed by a singularly acute political economist who, after listening to a long metaphysical discussion upon " being " (or some such entertaining problem), observed : "Ah! if there was money to be made out of it, we should have answered these questions in the city long ago." It might have been answered that even these acute persons in the city have not yefc succeeded in solving some of the problems which concern them most nearly, and wrangle as fiercely over theories aboufc the currency as philosophers over the distinction between object and subject. Nay, evon in matters touching all our pockets so closely, the chief lights are due to such abstract philosophers as Adam Smith and J. S. Mill, who have thought out fche problems mainly for the love of thinking. We have a quaint notion in these days that anything can be achieved by offering prizes and stimulating competition. Some day perhaps we shall offer rewards for fche best exhibition of the Christian virtues. Meanwhile our success does, not appear to be very encouraging, and, though poetry is more saleable than ever, the crop of rising poets is . not remarkable for abundance or quality,—Cornhill Magazine.