A distribution of genius epochs, from the Cattell 1000 (1894), showing Greek genius peaking at 500-450BC and Roman genius peaking at 100BC-50AD. |
● Egyptian genius
● Greek genius
● Roman genius
● Chinese genius
● Middle ages genius
● Italian genius [3]
● German genius
● English genius
● French genius
● American genius
“The European, accustomed to the use of gunpowder, passes it by, without thinking much of its extraordinary energies; the workman, who labors to manufacture it, finds nothing marvelous in its properties, because he daily handles the matter that forms its composition. The American, to whom this powder was a stranger, who had never beheld its operation, looked upon it as a divine power, and its energies as supernatural. The uninformed, who are ignorant of the true cause of thunder, contemplate it as the instrument of divine vengeance. The experimental philosopher considers it as the effect of the electric matter, which, nevertheless, is itself a cause which he is very far from perfectly understanding.—It required the keen, the penetrating mind of a Franklin, to throw light on the nature of this subtle fluid—to develop the means by which its effects might be rendered harmless—to turn to useful purposes, a phenomenon that made the ignorant tremble—that filled their minds with terror, their hearts with dismay, as indicating the anger of the gods: impressed with this idea, they prostrated themselves, they sacrificed to Jupiter or Jehovah, to deprecate his wrath.”— Baron d’Holbach (1770), The System of Nature [2]