a good or evil spirit or daemon, whom the ancients supposed set over each person, to direct his birth, accompany him in life, and to be his guard. See DEMON.

Among the Romans, Festus observes, the name genius was given to the god who had the power of doing all things, deum qui vim obt nevet rerum omnium gerendam; which Vossius, de Idol. rather chooses to read generandam, who has the power of producing all things; by reason Censorinus frequently uses gerere for gignere.

Accordingly St Augustin, de Civitate Dei, relates, from Varro, that the Genius was a god who had the power of generating all things; and presided over them when produced.

Festus adds, that Aufutius spake of the genius as the Son of God, and the Father of men, who gave them life; others, however, represented the genius as the peculiar or tutelary god of each place; and it is certain, the last is the most usual meaning of the word. The ancients had their genti of nations, of cities, of provinces, &c. Nothing is more common than the following inscription on medals, GENIUS POPULI ROM. "the genius of the Roman people;" or GENIO POP. ROM. "to the genius of the Roman people. In this sense genius and lar were the same thing; as, in effect, Censorinus and Apulius affirm they were. See LARES and PENATES.

The Platonists, and other eastern philosophers, supposed the genii to inhabit the vast region or extent of air between earth and heaven. They were a sort of intermediate powers, who did the office of mediators between gods and men. They were the interpreters and agents of the gods; communicated the wills of the deities to men; and the prayers and vows of men to the gods. As it was unbecoming the majesty of the gods to enter into such trifling concerns, this became the lot of the genii, whose nature was a mean between the two; who derived immortality from the one, and passions from the other; and who had a body framed of an aerial matter. Most of the philosophers, however, held, that the genii of particular men were born with them, and died; and Plutarch attributes the ceasing of oracles partly to the death of the genii.—See ORACLE.

The heathens, who considered the genii as the guardians of particular persons, believed that they rejoiced and were afflicted at all the good and ill fortune that befel their wards. They never, or very rarely, appeared to them; and then only in favour of some person of extraordinary virtue or dignity. They likewise held a great difference between the genii of different men; and that some were much more powerful than others: on which principle it was, that a wizzard in Appian bids Antony keep at a distance from Octavius, by reason Antony's genius was inferior to and stood in awe of that of Octavius. There were also evil genii, who took a pleasure in persecuting men, and bringing them evil tidings: such was that mentioned by Plutarch which appeared to Brutus the night before the battle of Philippi. These were also called larvae and lemures. See LARVAE and LEMURES.

in matters of literature, &c. a natural talent or disposition to do one thing more than another; or the aptitude a man has received from nature to perform well and easily that which others can do but differently and with a great deal of pains.

To know the bent of nature is the most important concern. Men come into the world with a genius determined not only to a certain art, but to certain parts of that art, in which alone they are capable of success. If they quit their sphere, they fall even below mediocrity in their profession. Art and industry add much to natural endowments, but cannot supply them where they are wanting. Every thing depends on genius. A painter often pleases without observing rules; whilst another displeases though he observes them, because he has not the happiness of being born with a genius for painting.

A man born with a genius for commanding an army, and capable of becoming a great general by the help of experience, is one whose organical conformation is such, that his valour is no obstruction to his preference of mind, and his preference of mind makes no abatement of his valour. Such a disposition of mind cannot be acquired by art: it can be possessed only by a person who has brought it with him into the world. What has been said of these two arts may be equally applied to all other professions. The administration of great concerns, the art of putting people to those employments for which they are naturally formed, the study of physic, and even gaming itself, all require a genius. Nature has thought fit to make a distribution of her talents talents among men, in order to render them necessary to one another; the wants of men being the very first link of society: she has therefore pitched upon particular persons, to give them aptitude to perform rightly some things which she has rendered impossible to others; and the latter have a greater facility granted them for other things, which facility has been refused to the former. Nature indeed has made an unequal distribution of her blessings among her children; yet she has disfranchised none; and a man divested of all kinds of abilities, is as great a phenomenon as an universal genius.

From the diversity of genius the difference of inclination arises in men, whom nature has had the precaution of leading to the employments for which she designs them, with more or less impetuosity in proportion to the greater or lesser number of obstacles they have to surmount in order to render themselves capable of answering this vocation. Thus the inclinations of men are so very different, because they follow the same mover, that is, the impulse of their genius. This, as with the painter, is what renders one poet pleasing, even when he trespasses against rules; while others are disagreeable, notwithstanding their strict regularity.

The genius of these arts, according to the abbé du Bos, consists in a happy arrangement of the organs of the brain; in a just conformation of each of these organs; as also in the quality of the blood, which disposes it to ferment, during exercise, so as to furnish plenty of spirits to the springs employed in the functions of the imagination. Here he imagines that the composer's blood is heated; for that painters and poets cannot invent in cool blood; nay, that it is evident they must be rapt into a kind of enthusiasm when they produce their ideas. Aristotle mentions a poet who never wrote so well as when his poetic fury hurried him into a kind of frenzy. The admirable pictures we have in Tasso of Armida and Clerinda were drawn at the expense of a disposition he had to real madness, into which he fell before he died. "Do you imagine," (says Cicero), "that Pacuvius wrote in cold blood? No, it was impossible. He must have been inspired with a kind of fury, to be able to write such admirable verses."