Though people will agree with you that men of genius
are usually singular, or as the proverb says, _there are no great
wits without a grain of madness_, yet they will always look down on
ages that have produced no men of genius. They will pay honour to
the nations among whom they have existed; sooner or later, they
rear statues to them, and regard them as the benefactors of the
human race. With all deference to the sublime minister whom you
have cited, I still believe that if falsehood may sometimes be
useful for a moment, it is surely hurtful in the long-run; and so,
on the other hand, truth is surely useful in the long-run, though
it may sometimes chance to be inconvenient for the moment. Whence I
should be tempted to conclude that the man of genius who cries down
a general error, or wins credit for a great truth, is always a
creature that deserves our veneration. It may happen that such an
one falls a victim to prejudice and the laws; but there are two
sorts of laws, the one of an equity and generality that is
absolute, the other of an incongruous kind, which owe all their
sanction to the blindness or exigency of circumstance. The latter
only cover the culprit who infringes them with passing ignominy, an
ignominy that time pours back on the judges and the nations, there
to remain for ever. Whether is Socrates, or the authority that bade
him drink the hemlock, in the worst dishonour in our day?

_He._--Not so fast. Was he any the less for that condemned? Or any
the less put to death? Or any the less a bad citizen? By his
contempt for a bad law did he any the less encourage blockheads to
despise good ones? Or was he any the less an audacious eccentric?
You were close there upon an admission that would have done little
for men of genius.

_I._--But listen to me, my good man. A society ought not to have
bad laws, and if it had only good ones, it would never find itself
persecuting a man of genius. I never said to you that genius was
inseparably bound up with wickedness, any more than wickedness is
with genius. A fool is many a time far worse than a man of parts.
Even supposing a man of genius to be usually of a harsh carriage,
awkward, prickly, unbearable; even if he be thoroughly bad, what
conclusion do you draw?

_He._--That he ought to be