"Every deed of genius in this world is a visible protest of genius against the inertia of the mass?"

Question

What does this quote mean?

Answer 1

To me it reminds me of Galileo and Copernicus.

Galileo improved the telescope and turned it on the night sky; by doing that he committed heresy and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The bible claims "The Earth is the fundament, unmoving and unchanging." Popular Greek theory was that the Earth was the center of the universe with the heavens a series of crystal spheres and everything revolved around the heavens. The Catholic Church clung to Greek Theory even when the proof against it was as plain as the nose on your face.

Galileo saw that the moons of Jupiter revolved around that planet. The earth was NOT the center of the universe. After the threat of the Protestant Reformation the Catholic Church was in no mood to risk change or any claim that the bible was not the literal truth. The Pope called Galileo to the Vatican to face the charges of heresy. Galileo had to publicly renounce his beliefs and was sentenced to life imprisonment because of them.

Copernicus escaped this by not allowing his book to be published until he was on his death bed. In that book, the Copercunia, he denounced the theory of crystal spheres and proved that the planets revolved around the sun not the earth. This earth shaking idea opened the way for Isaac Newton to develop physics. If Newton had been hampered by the idea of crystal spheres and that everything revolved around the earth then his math would have made no sense and he would have gone back to alchemy.

Despite the Inertia of the Mass of society these two geniuses were able to advance the progress of science. Often geniuses have to face a lot of public ridicule and resistance to put forth their ideas.

Most scientific people believe in evolution, yet at the time Darwin published his theory it was revolutionary and it brought mankind down from being a divine creature designed by God in his own image, to the same status of an animal. The debate over this still rages today among those hide bound conservatives who refuses to admit that the bible was written by men not God. It may have been inspired by God but it was still a work of man and a primitive one at that.

How do you explain a telephone or a cell phone to a cave man? Can you explain the big bang or evolution to him? Bronze Age people are not much smarter and are not able to understand such complex ideas. So if God had tried to explain those ideas he would have been seen as insane, or those he was trying to explain it to would have no idea what he was talking about. The y lacked the fundamental understanding to understand the fundamental concepts they would need to understand the complex ideas. Modern man has that understanding, despite the best work of religion to keep us hidebound in the old science of the Greeks.

The quote: "Every deed of genius in this world is a visible protest of genius against the inertia of the mass?" Means that every action of genius is a clear and visible protest against the accepted wisdom of society; the genius has to overcome the inertia mass of society to put forth a new idea.