genius

78:2.4Adam left a great in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual cul­ture be­hind him, but it was not ad­vanced in me­chan­i­cal ap­pli­ances since ev­ery civ­i­liza­tion is lim­ited by avail­able nat­u­ral re­sources, in­her­ent ge­nius, and suf­fi­cient leisure to in­sure in­ven­tive fruition. The civ­i­liza­tion of the vi­o­let race was pred­i­cated on the pres­ence of Adam and on the tra­di­tions of the first Eden. Af­ter Adam’s death and as these tra­di­tions grew dim through the pass­ing mil­len­ni­ums, the cul­tural level of the Adamites steadily de­te­ri­o­rated un­til it reached a state of re­cip­ro­cal bal­ance with the sta­tus of the sur­round­ing peo­ples and the nat­u­rally evolv­ing cul­tural ca­pac­i­ties of the vi­o­let race.

196:0.6In a re­li­gious ge­nius, strong spir­i­tual faith so many times leads di­rectly to dis­as­trous fa­nati­cism, to ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the re­li­gious ego, but it was not so with Je­sus. He was not un­fa­vor­ably af­fected in his prac­ti­cal life by his ex­traor­di­nary faith and spirit at­tain­ment be­cause this spir­i­tual ex­al­ta­tion was a wholly un­con­scious and spon­ta­neous soul ex­pres­sion of his per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with God.

72:6.74. The in­come from nat­u­ral re­sources. All nat­u­ral wealth on the con­ti­nent is held as a so­cial trust by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, and the in­come there­from is uti­lized for so­cial pur­poses, such as dis­ease pre­ven­tion, ed­u­ca­tion of ge­niuses, and ex­penses of es­pe­cially promis­ing in­di­vid­u­als in the states­man­ship schools. One half of the in­come from nat­u­ral re­sources goes to the old-age pen­sion fund.

72:7.1The fed­eral gov­ern­ment is pa­ter­nal­is­tic only in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of old-age pen­sions and in the fos­ter­ing of ge­nius and cre­ative orig­i­nal­ity; the state gov­ern­ments are slightly more con­cerned with the in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen, while the lo­cal gov­ern­ments are much more pa­ter­nal­is­tic or so­cial­is­tic. The city (or some sub­di­vi­sion thereof) con­cerns it­self with such mat­ters as health, san­i­ta­tion, build­ing reg­u­la­tions, beau­ti­fi­ca­tion, wa­ter sup­ply, light­ing, heat­ing, recre­ation, mu­sic, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

132:5.8“6. Ge­nius wealth—riches ac­cru­ing from the re­wards of the cre­ative and in­ven­tive en­dow­ments of the hu­man mind.

132:5.20“6. If you chance to se­cure wealth by flights of ge­nius, if your riches are de­rived from the re­wards of in­ven­tive en­dow­ment, do not lay claim to an un­fair por­tion of such re­wards. The ge­nius owes some­thing to both his an­ces­tors and his progeny; like­wise is he un­der obli­ga­tion to the race, na­tion, and cir­cum­stances of his in­ven­tive dis­cov­er­ies; he should also re­mem­ber that it was as man among men that he la­bored and wrought out his in­ven­tions. It would be equally un­just to de­prive the ge­nius of all his in­cre­ment of wealth. And it will ever be im­pos­si­ble for men to es­tab­lish rules and reg­u­la­tions ap­pli­ca­ble equally to all these prob­lems of the eq­ui­table dis­tri­bu­tion of wealth. You must first rec­og­nize man as your brother, and if you hon­estly de­sire to do by him as you would have him do by you, the com­mon­place dic­tates of jus­tice, hon­esty, and fair­ness will guide you in the just and im­par­tial set­tle­ment of ev­ery re­cur­ring prob­lem of eco­nomic re­wards and so­cial jus­tice.

111:7.5“Much of my dif­fi­culty was due to the un­end­ing con­flict be­tween the two na­tures of my sub­ject: the urge of am­bi­tion op­posed by an­i­mal in­do­lence; the ide­als of a su­pe­rior peo­ple crossed by the in­stincts of an in­fe­rior race; the high pur­poses of a great mind an­tag­o­nized by the urge of a prim­i­tive in­her­i­tance; the long-dis­tance view of a far-see­ing Mon­i­tor coun­ter­acted by the near­sight­ed­ness of a crea­ture of time; the pro­gres­sive plans of an as­cend­ing be­ing mod­i­fied by the de­sires and long­ings of a ma­te­rial na­ture; the flashes of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence can­celled by the chem­i­cal-en­ergy man­dates of the evolv­ing race; the urge of an­gels op­posed by the emo­tions of an an­i­mal; the train­ing of an in­tel­lect an­nulled by the ten­den­cies of in­stinct; the ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­di­vid­ual op­posed by the ac­cu­mu­lated propen­si­ties of the race; the aims of the best over­shad­owed by the drift of the worst; the flight of ge­nius neu­tral­ized by the grav­ity of medi­ocrity; the prog­ress of the good re­tarded by the in­er­tia of the bad; the art of the beau­ti­ful be­smirched by the pres­ence of evil; the buoy­ancy of health neu­tral­ized by the de­bil­ity of dis­ease; the foun­tain of faith pol­luted by the poi­sons of fear; the spring of joy em­bit­tered by the wa­ters of sor­row; the glad­ness of an­tic­i­pa­tion dis­il­lu­sioned by the bit­ter­ness of re­al­iza­tion; the joys of liv­ing ever threat­ened by the sor­rows of death. Such a life on such a planet! And yet, be­cause of the ever-pres­ent help and urge of the Thought Ad­juster, this soul did achieve a fair de­gree of hap­pi­ness and suc­cess and has even now as­cended to the judg­ment halls of man­so­nia.”

68:6.11From a world stand­point, over­pop­u­la­tion has never been a se­ri­ous prob­lem in the past, but if war is less­ened and sci­ence in­creas­ingly con­trols hu­man dis­eases, it may be­come a se­ri­ous prob­lem in the near fu­ture. At such a time the great test of the wis­dom of world lead­er­ship will pre­sent it­self. Will Uran­tia rulers have the in­sight and cour­age to fos­ter the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of the av­er­age or sta­bi­lized hu­man be­ing in­stead of the ex­tremes of the super­nor­mal and the enor­mously in­creas­ing groups of the sub­nor­mal? The nor­mal man should be fos­tered; he is the back­bone of civ­i­liza­tion and the source of the mu­tant ge­niuses of the race. The sub­nor­mal man should be kept un­der so­ci­ety’s con­trol; no more should be pro­duced than are re­quired to ad­min­is­ter the lower lev­els of in­dus­try, those tasks re­quir­ing in­tel­li­gence above the an­i­mal level but mak­ing such low-grade de­mands as to prove ver­i­ta­ble slav­ery and bond­age for the higher types of man­kind.

88:1.9Hunch­backed and crip­pled chil­dren were re­garded as fe­tishes; lu­natics were be­lieved to be moon-struck. Prim­i­tive man could not dis­tin­guish be­tween ge­nius and in­san­ity; id­iots were ei­ther beaten to death or revered as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties. Hys­te­ria in­creas­ingly con­firmed the pop­u­lar be­lief in witch­craft; epilep­tics of­ten were priests and med­i­cine men. Drunk­en­ness was looked upon as a form of spirit pos­ses­sion; when a sav­age went on a spree, he put a leaf in his hair for the pur­pose of dis­avow­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity for his acts. Poi­sons and in­tox­i­cants be­came fe­tishes; they were deemed to be pos­sessed.

88:1.10Many peo­ple looked upon ge­niuses as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties pos­sessed by a wise spirit. And these tal­ented hu­mans soon learned to re­sort to fraud and trick­ery for the ad­vance­ment of their self­ish in­ter­ests. A fe­tish man was thought to be more than hu­man; he was di­vine, even in­fal­li­ble. Thus did chiefs, kings, priests, proph­ets, and church rulers even­tu­ally wield great power and ex­er­cise un­bounded au­thor­ity.