Even potential genius has been touched by this. Ruskin, Thackeray, Diaz, Kruger, all these loved money well, and all approached the state defined by Oscar Wilde: 'to know the price of everything and the value of nothing.' Love of money makes genius a laggard, for genius does not pay except in a run too long for most men's breath. 'Too long!' ... that is perhaps the cry of a century disinclined to take infinite pains.
With the demand for money goes the demand for fame. I doubt whether a genius still unrevealed will accept the idea that he may not achieve swift success. The fatal result is that potential genius is tempted to take the necessary steps to 'get-famous-quick'; that is to say, it must condescend. Instead of being one so high that none can understand him, the genius must become one just high enough to be admired. Then he is popular--and defeated, for as some Frenchman rightly said, he has earned the wages of popularity, which are the same as those of glory ... but paid out in coppers.
It is not altogether our fault, all this. The conditions in which we live do not favour the breeding of titans. Mr Dreiser's 'titan,' Cowperwood, his 'genius,' Witla, are fairly good instances of the modern view of genius. They are blatant, stupid, acquisitive, full of the vulgar strength which would have made of them successful saloon keepers. They cannot help it; they dwell in a world like an international exhibition, between a machine that can turn out seventeen thousand sausages an hour and the most expensive Velasquez on record; they thrive on the sweet draught of the soda fountain rather than on the honey of Hymettus, while the sun sees his horses unharnessed from his chariot and set to grinding out units of caloric power by the something or other company. This does not suit genius. Genius needs solitude, true solitude, not only a place where you cannot buy newspapers, but a place where there are none _in the consciousness_. Genius needs to retreat upon itself, to fecundate itself until from the nightmare of one life is born the dream of another. Genius cannot find this solitude, because the round globe hums as it spins, because it is alive with haste, with deeds crowding into the fleet hour that is no slower nor more rapid however crowded it may be, but only more hectic. We have come to a point where noise is natural, where we cannot sleep unless trains roar past our windows and newsboys cry murders to the unmoved night.