The meaning of genius

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, on the idea of genius: “A culture that prostrates before idols makes itself small. But those who cannot take the measure of true stature diminish themselves. In an age as suspicious of greatness as our own, perhaps it is time to recognize that for all the perversion of the cult of genius in the past, it did preserve a sense of wonder in the face of human possibility, an exhilarating sense of awe at being — and being transcendent — in the world. We relinquish that wonder at a cost.”