'Genius, cannot be taught,' Ralph Waldo Emerson reports, reiterating Socrates's conclusion in Plato's "Meno." This article considers this claim and its significance for moral education, specifically in modern science, by focusing on Emerson's account of genius and the virtue of self-trust that perfects it. Genius, for Emerson, does not refer "only" to extraordinary works or persons. It is also the creative action of the soul to be cultivated by all. Self-trust, in which all the virtues are realized, is its chief virtue. Emerson knows that virtue begins but does not end in imitation. The goal of moral education is not simply to ape the virtues of those we love and admire, but to cultivate the virtues needed to innovate on received models, to excel by pressing beyond exemplars who have gone before. Can genius, then, be taught? Emerson's answer is not so simple as it may appear at first blush.