in Antiquity, the tutelary spirit that watched over the destinies of nations, and of each individual. The idea of the genius, or δαιμων, is first met with in the mythology of the Greeks. Homer makes no mention of these demons; but Hesiod accounts for their origin by describing them as the souls of good men who lived in the golden age. According to him, they are 30,000 in number: their functions are to watch over the human race and carry out the will of Jove, unseen by mortal eye. This conception was taken up by the Platonists, who assigned to every man at his birth a good and an evil daemon. According as either of these was in the ascendant, the life of the individual was influenced for good or evil. The beautiful conversations of Socrates on his good and evil genius are familiar to all who have read the works of Plato.

Like the demons of the Greeks, the genii of the Romans were tutelary or guardian spirits; but their functions began at a still earlier period. They were in fact (as the etymology of their name implies) the producing or life-giving powers which organized the being whom it was their duty to protect till death. On this account also the nuptial bed was called the lectus genitalis. By every Roman citizen the genius was worshipped with especial honour, and a birthday was celebrated with offerings of the finest flowers and wine to them. Every one thought it at once a duty and a privilege to "indulge his genius" (indulgere genio), i.e. to enjoy to the utmost the merriment allowed on these occasions.

In the Roman mythology genii were not confined to the human race alone. Every living being, and even every place, had a guardian spirit of its own. These local genii were symbolized under the form of a serpent (the type of renovation) eating fruit placed before him. (Plutarch, De Genio Secretis; Hartung, Die Relig. der Rom.; Smith's Dict. of Gr. and Roma. Antiq., &c.)

in its modern uses, signifies generally the bent of national or individual disposition. In a more limited sense it denotes those endowments and powers of mind which one has received from nature. To define or illustrate the term, when employed in this sense, is difficult if not impossible. Fuseli described it as "that power which enlarges the circle of human knowledge, or combines the known with novelty." A better, though far from perfect, definition is that of the poet Crabbe: "I recognize genius wherever there is power to stimulate the thoughts of men and command their feelings." Better than either of these is that of Coleridge, which we extract from his Table Talk: "To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder..." and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar—

"With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, And man and woman."

This is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talent. Genius is in fact a quality so subtle and impalpable that though we are aware of its presence, and recognise it when it manifests itself, we cannot tell exactly in what it consists. It has been called by Diderot, "L'étendue de l'esprit, la force de l'imagination, et l'activité de l'âme." That this definition is not correct is plain, because these qualities are often found separately or collectively in men to whom "the vision and the faculty divine" have been denied. In general terms, genius may be considered as that power which either creates ideas wholly new, or combines old ideas in new and unexpected forms. It is to be found in every department of thought in which the human mind has been exercised; and no work is fairly entitled to be called great which does not exhibit traces of this quality. Genius, like art, is of no country, and is not restricted to any form of thought. Galileo and Newton were undoubtedly men of genius as Dante and Shakspeare; and if we deny the title to Tacitus we must also withhold it from Sir Walter Scott. Genius, like talent, is of various degrees; but its presence is an indispensable element in all greatness.

GENGHIS KHAN, or ZINGHIS KHAN, a celebrated Tartar chief, in the early part of the thirteenth century, who with his barbarian hordes overran and desolated Asia. See Asia, vol. iii. p. 745, and general index.