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"As the bee extracts from such flowers as can supply them, the juices which are proper to be converted into honey, without losing its labour in sipping those juices which would be pernicious, or in examining those vegetables which are useless; so true genius discovers at once the ideas which are conducive to its purpose, without at all thinking of such as are unnecessary or would obstruct it."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Author

An Essay on Genius

Place of Publication

London and Edinburgh

Publisher

Printed for W. Strahan, T.Cadell, and W. Creech

Date

1774

Metaphor

"As the bee extracts from such flowers as can supply them, the juices which are proper to be converted into honey, without losing its labour in sipping those juices which would be pernicious, or in examining those vegetables which are useless; so true genius discovers at once the ideas which are conducive to its purpose, without at all thinking of such as are unnecessary or would obstruct it."

Metaphor in Context

In this manner an attachment to the design naturally produces that regularity of imagination, that capacity of avoiding foreign, useless, and superfluous conceptions, at the same time that none necessary or proper are passed by, which is always most perfect in the greatest geniuses, and constitutes no inconsiderable part of their excellence. As acuteness of smell carries a dog along the path of the game for which he searches, and secures him against the danger of quitting it, upon another scent: so this happy structure of imagination leads the man of genius into those tracks where the proper ideas lurk, and not only enables him to discover them, but, by a kind of instinctive infallibility, prevents him from turning aside to wander in improper roads, or to spend his time in the contemplation of unapposite ideas. As the bee extracts from such flowers as can supply them, the juices which are proper to be converted into honey, without losing its labour in sipping those juices which would be pernicious, or in examining those vegetables which are useless; so true genius discovers at once the ideas which are conducive to its purpose, without at all thinking of such as are unnecessary or would obstruct it. The extent of Homer's imagination is not more remarkable than its regularity. Poets of inferiour genius would have comprehended a history of the Trojan war in one of his poems, and all the events of the life of Ulysses in the other: but his correct imagination admits no detail inconsistent with the unity of the fable, no shining episode that can be deemed unconnected with the subject, nor a single image unsuitable to the nature of his work. In the writings of Newton, we scarce find any observation that is superfluous, any experiment whose force is fully implied in any other, any question or problem which has not something peculiar.
(I.iii, pp. 47-9)