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"The largest river takes its rise from some small fountain; issuing from this, it rolls its streams over a long extent of country, and is enlarged during its course by the influx of many rivulets derived from springs no more considerable than its own, till at last it becomes an impassable torrent, liker to the ocean than to the pitiful rill which purled near its source. In like manner, even those works of genius which appear most stupendous when they are compleated, spring at first from some single perception of sense or memory, obvious, it may be, and trifling, and become stupendous only by the gradual accession of ideas suggested by perceptions equally trivial and common."

— 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

"The largest river takes its rise from some small fountain; issuing from this, it rolls its streams over a long extent of country, and is enlarged during its course by the influx of many rivulets derived from springs no more considerable than its own, till at last it becomes an impassable torrent, liker to the ocean than to the pitiful rill which purled near its source. In like manner, even those works of genius which appear most stupendous when they are compleated, spring at first from some single perception of sense or memory, obvious, it may be, and trifling, and become stupendous only by the gradual accession of ideas suggested by perceptions equally trivial and common."

Metaphor in Context

The associating principles of the mind would never exert themselves if they were not excited into action by the impulse of some object already perceived. It is only when thus excited, that imagination runs out in search of those ideas which are related to that object. On this account, in analysing the operations of genius, we must at last have recourse to some perception giving rise to them, which was not itself suggested by imagination, but exhibited either by sense or by memory. These faculties give therefore in a manner the first hint of every invention; a hint perhaps inconsiderable in itself, but which may in some sense be considered as the source of the whole discovery that genius makes by means of it. The largest river takes its rise from some small fountain; issuing from this, it rolls its streams over a long extent of country, and is enlarged during its course by the influx of many rivulets derived from springs no more considerable than its own, till at last it becomes an impassable torrent, liker to the ocean than to the pitiful rill which purled near its source. In like manner, even those works of genius which appear most stupendous when they are compleated, spring at first from some single perception of sense or memory, obvious, it may be, and trifling, and become stupendous only by the gradual accession of ideas suggested by perceptions equally trivial and common. We admire with reason, the genius displayed by Newton in the discovery of the laws of gravitation which the celestial bodies observe in their revolutions. It was perhaps his perceiving by sense a stone or an apple fall to the ground, without any visible force impelling it, or the remembrance of this common appearance, that excited his genius, and directed it to that train of thought which conducted him at last to the investigation of these laws. It is affirmed by an ancient author, that the accidental hearing of the noise of a smith's hammers of different weights, gave Pythagoras the first hint of the cause of the variety of musical sounds, and led him by degrees into a complete theory of music. No philosopher would ever go in search of a theory, if some phenomenon subjected to his immediate observation, did not dispose him to consider in what manner it may be accounted for. It is the subject in which a poet is engaged, and which he has already conceived, that leads him, by resemblance, to find out an image proper for illustrating it. In every case, sense or memory sets imagination at first in that road, by pursuing which it arrives at important inventions.
(I.v, pp. 95-8)