BRUCE CHARLTON writes here:

This essay by Robert Graves had a big influence on me from when I first read it more than 35 years ago, in a copy borrowed from Bristol Central Library. As usual with Robert Graves, the essay is compounded of brilliant insights, crazy notions, and rampant egotism – expressed with total conviction.

‘Genius,’ in either its modern or Roman conceptualization, is a pagan value and a part of that noble pagan world with its ‘warrior code’ values of honour, integrity, duty. In its Roman conception, genius would ideally be an attribute of all respect-worthy men; but while necessary, genius is not sufficient, and is not one of the highest ‘goods.’ In particular, a man of genius may also (nonetheless) be consumed with pride and devoted to power.

 Graves contends that “compulsory education of a logical, secular and wholly impersonal sort” is hostile to genius:

 [A]ll professors from the College Principal down have their knives into any student who cannot conceal his individualism; they are required to diagnose either a criminal tendency or mental ill-health.

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