THE CREATIVE MIND   About the creative personality there has always been much curiosity due to the attention aroused by its unusual behavior. The so-called artistic temperament has been termed divine and devilish, sublime and ridiculous, delineated in caricature and described in language of awe. What sort of mentality is behind the art work, what sort of personality is the creative artist? The behavior of artistic genius can be properly evaluated only in the light of its mentality, and its mentality we can readily study by comparing it with the mental status of its fellow-beings. The genius is a human being like other human beings. He is of the world with other men, he looks like other men, acts like them, evinces desires like theirs, and yet there is something in him and about him that is not like others. He is like others, but he is different in his likeness. He is then apparently not different in kind, but only so in degree. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec But degree of what? Obviously the degree of mental power possessed by other human beings, power of sensation, perception, memory, and imagination. Genius seems to be supreme in all those activities, interests, and powers, that all of us possess in a lesser degree. All of us see and hear, feel, understand, remember, imagine, and express ourselves, but genius, as is obvious from its products, can do all these things in a superlative manner. The world therefore means more to genius than to non-genius. Genius is more alive, more susceptible to the world about it than other human beings. We may therefore say, in general, that genius is an enhanced, superior capacity for living. The question, then, as to the nature of genius, reduces itself to an examination of what it is in the mental equipment of genius that makes such living possible. We can attempt an answer to this question by the data furnished by scientific experimentation in the field of musical artistry, on the basis of which we may draw some general conclusions on the mentality of artistic genius in whatever field of art it happens to operate.		Home The Nature and Objective of Aesthetics Art and the Artist The Art Work The Art Work in the Making The Creative Mind The Nature of Musical Talent The Mind of Genius The Personality of Genius Genius, Intelligence, and Temperament Artistic Genius and Temperament Genius, Disease, Drink and Drugs Genius, The Child and The Woman Art and the Artist Art and the Layman The Experience of Beauty Beauty in Music Painting Poetry