BOOK 15 1. 1.N63 1 c. 1 
 
 NISBET # INSANITY OF GENIUS AND 
 
 GENERAL INEQUALITY OF HUMAN FACUL 
 
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THE 
 
 INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
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THE , -. 
 
 INSANITY OF GENIUS ^"^"^ 
 
 AND THE 
 
 GENERAL INEQUALITY OF HUMAN FACULTY 
 
 PHYSIOLOGICALLY CONSIDEEED 
 
 J. F. NISBET 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'SIARRIAGE AND HEREDITY' ETO. 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 Uontron . 
 WAED & DOWNEY 
 12 YOEK STEEET, COVENT GARDE^^ 
 
 1891 
 
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^ PEEFAGE 
 
 Men of genius have exercised a powerful influence in the 
 world since history began. Yet they are still more or less of 
 an enigma even to themselves. As chiefs and warriors 
 
 ' among savage tribes, as men of letters, art, or science, 
 statesmen or military commanders in civilised communities, 
 they win the admiration of their fellows without furnishing 
 in their own lives any conclusive indication of the means by 
 which their success is achieved. They strike out a path 
 for themselves, and seem to owe little or nothing to help 
 or example. Genius has never been the monopoly of any 
 
 ' t class or system. It is as likely to manifest itself in the 
 
 ^ peasant as in the peer, and, indeed, in any list that might be 
 drawn up of the great men of the world, examples would be 
 found of intellectual capacity asserting itself in all conditions 
 of life, and quite independently of the much-vaunted ad- 
 vantages of education. By what fatality a small number of 
 
 Ts individuals thus find themselves born to pre-eminence in 
 every successive generation — carrying, so to speak, the 
 marshal's baton in their knapsack — is one of the most 
 interesting questions that can engage the human mind, and 
 many, accordingly, have been the speculations indulged in 
 
 \ with regard to the nature and origin of the gifts which lift 
 ^ the favoured few above the general level of their species. 
 A For over two thousand years some subtle relationship has 
 
 ^ been thought to exist between genius and insanity. Aris- 
 X. totle noted how often eminent men displayed morbid symp- 
 
VI THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 toms of mind. Plato distinguislied two kinds of delirium — 
 one being ordinary insanity, the other the spiritual exaltation 
 which produced poets, inventors, or prophets, and which was 
 not an evil but a gift of the gods. The furor jooeticus and 
 the amabilis iiisania of the Komans had reference to the same 
 phenomenon. Dryden borrowed from Seneca the suggestion 
 of his well-known line as to great wit and madness being 
 near allied. Lamartine spoke of the maladie mentale quon 
 appelle genie, and Pascal pointed out that V extreme esprit est 
 voisin de V extreme folie, furnishing in his own person a sad 
 exemplification of his view. In modern times the connection 
 of genius with insanity has been scientifically insisted upon 
 by Lelut, Moreau (de Tours), Lombroso, and one or two more 
 recent writers. Lelut, in 1837, scandalised the world of 
 letters by declaring upon the physiological evidence fur- 
 nished by the life of Socrates that the ' father of philosophy ' 
 was not figuratively, but literally the victim of sensory 
 hallucinations, and, ten years later, the same authority passed 
 a, similar judgment upon Pascal.^ 
 
 Following up this line of inquiry Moreau, in 1859, laid 
 down the principle, based upon a number of rather doubtful 
 examples, that genius was essentially a nevrose, or nerve 
 affection, his contention being that originality of thought 
 and quickness or preponderance of the intellectual faculties 
 were organically much the same thing as madness and 
 idiocy.^ A few years later Lombroso, in Italy, supported this 
 ner/rosite theory, quoting some further examples of insanity 
 in distinguished men or their near relatives, but admitting 
 that many others had shown no trace of mental aberration.^ 
 Various German writers, notably Hagen ^ and Radestock,-"* 
 
 * Lelut : Du Dhnon de Socrate, and L'Amiilette de Pascal. 
 
 2 Moreau : La Psijchologie morbide. ^ Lombroso : Genio e Follia. 
 
 * Hag:en : ' Ueber die Verwandtschaft des Genies mit dem Irresein,' 
 AJlgeint'h^e Zeltschrlft fiir PsyeJnatrie, 1877. 
 
 * liadestock : Genie und Wahnsinn, 1884. 
 
PEEFACE VU 
 
 have since given a similarly qualified adherence to Morean, 
 while Ribot,^ in France, touching incidentally upon the 
 question, has remarked that the objections taken to Moreau's 
 theory have mainly been sentimental and not very dis- 
 tinguishable from prejudices, and that genius, whatever it 
 may be, is but rarely transmitted. 
 
 On the other hand, there has always been a strong body 
 of opinion, philosophical and scientific, against the supposed 
 connection of genius with insanity. Locke, Helvetiiis, and 
 other early authorities, ascribed all intellectual superiority to 
 education ; and, in the last century, in England, it was 
 generally believed that men were not naturally adapted by 
 mental constitution to one pursuit more than another, but 
 that, when a particular aptitude was evinced, it was due to 
 the direction given to the mind by casual events or circum- 
 stances. In accordance with this view Dr. Johnson main- 
 tained that genius resulted from a mind of large general 
 powers being turned in a particular direction. Charles 
 Lamb, forgetting the fact that he himself had been confined 
 in a lunatic asylum, expressed a similar opinion. ' So far 
 from the position holding true,' observes Lamb, ' that great 
 wit (or genius in our modern way of speaking) has a neces- 
 saiy alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the con- 
 trary, will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is 
 impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakespeare. 
 The greatness of wit by which the poetic talent is here 
 chiefly to be understood manifests itself in the admirable 
 balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate 
 straining or excess of any one of them.' Goethe, also, was 
 opposed to the mad view, holding that the man of genius 
 summed up in his own person the best qualities of the family 
 or the race to which he belonged. 
 
 Unsupported as it was by any evidence except the 
 
 ^ Ribot : L'Hcredite 2}sychologique 1887. 
 
Vlil THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 recorded insanity or eccentricity of a few great men, and 
 leaving unexplained the cases of the many who had lived in 
 the full enjoyment of their faculties, Moreau's theory natu- 
 rally aroused the keenest opposition. The great physiolo- 
 gist, Flourens published, in 1861, a treatise contemptuously 
 i^efuting it as absolutely fatal to the dignity of man. ' I 
 could as soon believe in the assimilation of virtue and vice,' 
 said Flourens, ' as in that of genius and insanity. Although 
 vice has so long flourished in the world, virtue, as Fenelon 
 has remarked, is still called virtue, and cannot be dispossessed 
 of its name. So,' added Flourens, ' will it be with genius ; 
 and what vice has been unable to do with regard to virtue, 
 that will science be unable to do with regard to genius. 
 Genius, in short, will always be genius. . . . We are eter- 
 nally reminded of the hallucinations of Socrates and Pascal. 
 Socrates believed he was accompanied by a demon or familiar ; 
 Pascal thought he saw a precipice open at his feet. But 
 what does all this prove ? Does it prove that hallucination 
 is genius, or that it produces genius ? Without their hallu- 
 cinations would not Socrates still have had his good sense 
 and Pascal his grand esprit ? Is it not the fact that the 
 relations of genius and insanity are merely external, occa- 
 sional, and fortuitous ? , . . Genius is the faculty carried to 
 an extreme of seeing and thinking justly. Many roads lead to 
 the truth. The man of genius is he who opens these roads.' ' 
 Among English scientific men Moreau's views have 
 found little favour. Galton, in 1869, put forward a theory 
 of hereditary genius,*'^ maintaining that intellectual gifts of 
 whatever kind — literary, poetic, artistic, philosophical, or 
 administrative — were the attributes of a superior type of 
 humanity, and that, like the physical perfections of the race- 
 horse or the prize-bullock, they were transmissible from one 
 generation to another in the favoured families where they 
 
 ' Flourens : Be la Faison, dn Genie, et 'de la Folie. 
 - Francis Galton : Hereditary Genius. 
 
PEEFACE IX 
 
 occurred. Maudsley has also thrown the weight of his 
 authority into the scale against Moreau. ' It is undoubtedly 
 true,' says this writer, ' that where hereditary taint exists in 
 a family, one member may sometimes exhibit considerable 
 genius while another is insane or epileptic ; but the fact 
 plainly proves no more than that in both there has been a 
 great natural sensibility of nervous constitution, which, under 
 different outward circumstances or internal conditions, has 
 issued differently in the two cases. Such a condition, more- 
 over,' Maudsley goes on to say, ' is not characteristic of the 
 highest genius, since anyone possessing it lacks, by reason 
 of his great sensibility, the power of calm, steady, and 
 complete mental assimilation, and .:piust fall short of the 
 highest intellectual development — of the truly creative 
 imagination of the greatest poet, and the powerful, almost 
 intuitive ratiocination of the greatest philosopher. His 
 insight may be marvellously subtle in certain cases, but he is 
 not sound and comprehensive. Although it might be said 
 then, by one not caring to be exact, that the genius of an 
 acutely sensitive and subjective poet denoted a morbid con- 
 dition of nerve-element, yet no one, after a moment's calm 
 reflection, would venture to speak of the genius of such as 
 Shakespeare and Goethe as arising out of morbid conditions.' 
 Again, ' the acts of the genius may be novel, but they con- 
 tain, consciously or unconsciously, well-formed design,' whereas 
 ' the acts of the person who has the evil heritage of an insane 
 temperament are purposeless, irregular, and aim at the 
 satisfaction of no beneficial desire. ... In both cases there 
 may be an uncommon deviation from the usual course of 
 things ; but in the one case there is the full recognition of 
 the existing organisation as the basis of a higher develop- 
 ment, in the other there is a capricious rebellion as the 
 initiation of a hopeless discord.' ^ And George Henry 
 
 ' Maudsley : The Pathology of Mind. 
 
X THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Levves's studies led him to the conviction that nothing 
 was less like genius than insanity, although unquestionably 
 some men of genius had had occasional attacks of this 
 malady.^ 
 
 Latterly, heredity and environment have been recognised 
 as factors in the moulding of genius. Herbert Spencer 
 regards the great man as the product of many co-ordinated 
 social influences over which he personally has no control.^ 
 ^ Along with the whole generation of which he forms a 
 minute part,' says the eminent evolutionist, ' along with its 
 institutions, language, manners, and its multitudinous arts 
 and appliances, he is a resultant. The genesis of the great 
 man depends upon the long series of complex influences 
 which has produced the race in which he appears and the 
 social state into which that race has slowly grown. . . . 
 Before he can remake his society, his society must make him. 
 All those changes of which he is the proximate initiator have 
 their chief causes in the generation he is descended from.' 
 This view is controverted, however, by a recent writer of some 
 distinction in America. ' The causes of production of great 
 men,' says William James, ' lie in a sphere wholly inacces- 
 sible to the social philosopher. He must accept geniuses as 
 data, just as Darwin accepts his spontaneous variations. For 
 him, as for Darwin, the only problem is. How does the environ- 
 ment affect them, and how do they aflect the environment ? 
 Now, I affirm that the relation of the visible environment to 
 the great man is in the main exactly what it is to the " varia- 
 tion " in the Darwinian philosophy. It chiefly adopts or 
 rejects, preserves or destroys — in short selects him.' The 
 determining causes of the great man, in Mr. James's opinion, 
 are, 'molecular and invisible, and inaccessible, therefore, to 
 direct observation of any kind. . . . The same parents, living 
 in the same environing conditions, may at one birth produce 
 
 * Fortnightly Review, February 1872. 
 
 ^ Herbert Spencer : PHneiplcs of Sociology. 
 
PEEFACE XI 
 
 a genius, at the next an idiot or a monster . . . and tlie 
 more we consider the matter, the more we are forced to 
 believe that two children of the same parents are made to 
 differ from one another by a cause which bears the same 
 remote and infinitesimal proportion to its ultimate effects as 
 the famous pebble on the Rocky Mountain crest, whose angle 
 separates the course of two rain drops, itself bears to the 
 Gulf of St. Lawrence and to the Pacific Ocean.' ^ 
 
 And more recently still, Henri Joly, rejecting Moreau's 
 views, which he holds to be untenable, concurs to a large 
 extent in the environment theory of "William James and in 
 the physiological view expressed by Goethe. ' The great 
 man,' says Joly, ' is evidently the culminating point of his 
 race, and all experience shows the unlikelihood of two 
 geniuses following each other in the same family. If, how- 
 ever, by the side of an extraordinary individual immediately 
 preceding or succeeding him, there should be found a nature 
 resembling his, it appears almost always under a feminine 
 form. Here may be found maintaining for a time, or re- 
 viving, their lustre, those gifts which the head of the family 
 has brought to perfection, and whose fertility at the same 
 time he has exhausted.' ^ 
 
 The merely literary theories of genius are numerous, but 
 
 too vague to call for serious consideration. For example, 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes conceives genius to be a ' creating 
 
 and informing spirit which is with us and not of us. This,' 
 
 he goes on to say, 'is the Zeus that kindled the rage of 
 
 Achilles; it is the muse of Homer; it is the demon of 
 
 Socrates ; it is the inspiration of the seer ; ... it shaped 
 
 the forms and filled the soul of Michel Angelo, when he saw 
 
 the figure of the great law-giver in the yet unhewn marble, 
 
 and the dome of the world's yet unbuilt Basilica against the 
 
 black horizon ; ... it comes to the least of us as a voice that 
 
 ^ Atlantic Montlily, October 1880. 
 
 ^ Henri Joly : Pisyclwlogie des Grands Hommes, 1883. 
 
Xii THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 will be heard ; ... it lends a sudden gleam of sense and 
 eloquence to the dullest of us all ; we wonder at ourselves, or, 
 rather, not at ourselves but at this divine visitor who chooses 
 our brain as his dwelling-place and invests our naked thoughts 
 with the purple of the kings of speech or song.' * Very pretty, 
 but very unsubstantial ! Mrs. Oliphant, again, wonders 
 whether not only an infusion of Irish blood, but the breath- 
 ing of Irish air, for a generation or two, has not quickened 
 the imagination of the Irish descendants of English settlers 
 in Ireland ; ^ while ' Ouida,' greatly daring, urges that the 
 social atmosphere of England is fatal to poetic genius and 
 that of Italy peculiarly favourable to it.^ 
 
 From this review of authorities, great and small, it is 
 clear that no convincing explanation of genius has yet been 
 put forward. The various theories above set forth are one 
 and all open to the fatal objection that they do not cover all 
 the admitted facts of the case. While insanity treads upon 
 the heels of genius in quite a remarkable number of instances, 
 the fact remains that many men of the highest attainments 
 retain full possession of their senses to the last, and otherwise 
 display no outward affinity with the insane and the idiotic. 
 Equally insufficient is Galton's theory of hereditary genius. 
 For if there is one thing more clearly established than another 
 in this connection, it is that the families of men of genius, so 
 far from exhibiting any of the qualities of prize stock, fall 
 considerably below the average both in point of numbers and 
 fitness. If education be pointed to as an all-important 
 element in the making of character, we may ask what it did 
 for Faraday, Dickens, or Burns, who received but a very 
 insignificant amount of schooling. Year by year thousands 
 of young men are turned out by the universities and the 
 higher schools of the country, but very few rise to the level 
 
 » Oliver "Wendell Holmes : Mechamsm of Tliouglit and Morals. 
 
 2 Mrs. Oliphant: Life uf Sheridan. 
 
 ' JS^urth American lieciew, February 1890. 
 
PEEFACE xiii 
 
 of genius. Such education as is received in his youth by a 
 great man has seldom much to do with the shaping of his 
 career. It was not education that made Shakespeare a poet, 
 Reynolds a painter, or Darwin a naturalist. As to the 
 Johnsonian theory of genius, one can hardly believe that it 
 was ever based upon practical observation. Diversity of 
 tastes and aptitudes is shown by boys in the schoolroom long 
 before circumstances influence their lives materially, and if 
 an eminent poet or painter could be found willing to take 
 the command of an army in the field, it is inconceivable 
 that a successful general should, by taking thought, excel 
 in writing poetry or painting pictures in times of peace. 
 Much is said, again, of the importance of taking pains. But 
 nothing is more certain than that industry alone is not 
 enough to enable the aspirant in any walk of life to become 
 distinguished. Some men toil hard to learn what others 
 acquire by the slightest application. Nay, more, the art 
 of taking pains is, itself, a natural endowment, like a good 
 or a bad memory, and is probably responsible for much of 
 the difference existing between the reckless, scatterbrained 
 ne'er-do-well, who never accomplishes anything, and the 
 steady, persistent worker who, with similar faculties, carves 
 his name indelibly upon his epoch. 
 
 Turning now to the philosophical view that the great 
 man is the resultant of many co-ordinated social factors, 
 it is not easy to realise how such influences should have 
 so impinged at the little town of Stratford-on-Avon, on 
 April 26, 1564, as to ensure the birth of one William 
 Shakespeare. Admitting that the sixteenth century in 
 England was favourable to the advent of a great dramatic 
 poet, we are entitled to ask why William Shakespeare, the 
 third child of his father, was the chosen man rather than 
 his brother Gilbert, who became a respectable hosier, or his 
 brother Edmund, who was an actor of no repute. The man 
 
XIV THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 of genius necessarily contains within the four corners of his 
 system all the elements of his greatness. Environment may 
 be favourable or unfavourable to him ; he may be unnoticed 
 by his contemporaries, and obtain merely the tardy recogni- 
 tion of posterity, or conceivably he may be snuffed out alto- 
 gether by adverse circumstances before being able to make 
 his power felt. With the genius that perishes in embryo, or 
 that never comes to perfection, we are not here concerned ; 
 for, although it might be curious to speculate as to the 
 number of able generals unhappily shot as subalterns in 
 their first engagement, or as to the village Hampdens who 
 have lost their oppoitunity through the passing of the 
 Reform Bill, the inquiry could hardly be of a practical 
 character. To the genius that contrives to assert itself 
 environment is more or less an accident. It is true that we 
 do not look for the rise of a great dramatic poet like Victor 
 Hugo among the Zulus, or of a Mozart among a tribe of 
 tom-toming savages. But this admits of easy explanation. 
 The great man assimilates and recasts the material supplied 
 him by his epoch. It is the faculty of utilising existing 
 material that constitutes his genius, and this he cannot be 
 said to owe to his environment. It is something personal to 
 himself; something due to his physical organisation. For, 
 clearly, the social influences which act upon a Victor Hugo 
 and a Mozart, act equally upon masses of their totally un- 
 distinguished countrymen. The 'heir of all the ages' is 
 never alone in the enjoyment of his privileges ; he shares 
 them with multitudes of his fellow-men. Merely to be born 
 in an epoch favourable to the advent of a great poet, a 
 great commander, or a great statesman, implies little or 
 nothing, therefore, as to the individual's chances of dis- 
 tinction. Looked at from any point of view, in short, 
 the inadequacy of the existing theories of genius is mani- 
 fest. 
 
PEE FACE XV 
 
 This is obviously one reason why another attempt should 
 be made to solve the problem of what constitutes genius. 
 It is not, however, an entirely sufficient reason. If so many 
 distinguished philosophers and physiologists have been un- 
 able to come to any agreement upon this subject, what 
 justification, it may be asked, have I for taking it up? The 
 answer to this is simple. Within the past few years science 
 has opened up new methods of inquiry, thrown new light 
 upon many cognate subjects, and placed new instruments in 
 the hands of the investigator for getting at the truth. The 
 results of modern research affecting most intimately the 
 question of genius are, first, the localisation of the functions 
 of the brain, and, secondly, the established kinship of an 
 extensive group of brain and nerve disorders, of which 
 insanity or paralysis is the more obvious expression, and 
 gout, consumption, malformations, etc., the more obscure. 
 Both these branches of knowledge are of greatest utility in 
 solving the problem before us; and their due application 
 to the facts of biography will be found to rob genius of 
 much, if not all, of the mystery which has hitherto en- 
 shrouded it. 
 
 The result is to place upon a solid basis of fact the long- 
 suspected relationship of genius and insanity. Apparently at 
 the opposite poles of the human intellect, genius and insanity 
 are, in reality, but different phases of a morbid susceptibility 
 of, or a want of balance in, the cerebro-spinal system. This 
 conclusion is arrived at from a close examination of the lives 
 of all the greatest men whose personal and family history is 
 authentically known. For obvious reasons I have refrained 
 from dealing with living personages^; but the abundance 
 and sufficiency of the material to hand happily renders this 
 restriction of no moment. In the selection of names I have 
 been guided solely by the desire to obtain a representative 
 list. I have, indeed, been under no temptation to trim or 
 
XVI THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 square the facts, for whenever a man's life is at once suffi- 
 ciently illustrious and recorded with sufficient fulness to be a 
 subject of profitable study, he inevitably falls into the morbid 
 category — a remarkable proof, surely, of the soundness of a 
 theory which after all need not, like a chain, be tested by 
 its weakest link. 
 
 My method of inquiry is not unlike that of the family 
 doctor who is called in to examine a patient. With the 
 help of the biographer I ask the great man, figuratively 
 speaking, to stand up ; I look at his tongue, feel his pulse, 
 and inquire into his family history. By this means a wholly 
 difierent view of genius is obtained from that generally 
 current. The biographer, unfortunately, is too often as 
 troublesome a person to deal with as the family nurse. It 
 is difficult to learn the essential facts of a great man's life 
 if they conflict, as they not infrequently do, with the bio- 
 grapher's notion of greatness. Commonly, the writer falls in 
 with the popular view of genius, which is that a certain 
 quasi-divine influence, or afflatus of an inscrutable nature, 
 descends upon certain individuals after the manner of the 
 Holy Ghost. If, however, he happens to be of a scientific 
 turn of mind, he affects to believe that the great man has 
 inherited his genius from his mother, or that, as Goethe 
 held and as Joly has further insisted, he is the culminating 
 point of his race, the crowning triumph of a sound and 
 vigorous ancestry on both sides. In any case, the smallest 
 suggestion that the object of his veneration has not been 
 entirely sane, affects the ordinary biographer as a red rag 
 affects a bull. He loses temper and treats it as a shameless 
 affront to the great man's memory ; for insanity, in his view, 
 seems to be a sort of reprehensible thing which no well- 
 conducted person would be guilty of. Sometimes he con- 
 descends to argue the point with the subtlety of a special 
 pleader, and when the facts happen to be too strong for him. 
 
PEEFACE xvii 
 
 he is ready with an explanation as to ' over- work,' ' anxiety,' 
 ^ excessive strain,' ' excesses,' and the like. 
 
 Still, patient research in biography brings to light a vast 
 number of facts of an instructive character, all helping to solve 
 the problem of that diversity of faculty which is seen to exist 
 among men born under similar circumstances. The heredity 
 of genius is abundantly established, but it is not heredity of 
 the simple and direct kind imagined by Galton when he 
 wrote his treatise on the subject twenty years ago. Variation 
 steps in at every point, and an instability of the nervous 
 system of one or both parents manifests itself in the off- 
 spring in a manifold shape, the sensory or intellectual 
 faculties being quickened at the expense of the nutritive, and 
 vice versa, upon a scale of almost infinite complexity. The 
 word genius is susceptible of many interpretations. For the 
 purposes of this inquiry I give it the widest, applying it not 
 merely to the creative gift in literature and art, but to that 
 inherent ability which enables its possessor to excel in any 
 given sphere of human activity, literary, artistic, scientific, 
 administrative, military, commercial, religious, philanthropic, 
 or even criminal. Genius is essentially a manifestation of 
 nerve energy, and the scope of a man's faculties is necessarily 
 determined by a physical organisation over which he has no 
 control. In thus asserting the principle of a fatalism in the 
 lives of great men, like that which Orientals conceive to 
 exist in all human affairs, I am well aware that I am flying 
 in the face of many excellent treatises written for the 
 edification of the young; but no fiction, however well-in- 
 tended, can, after all, be as beneficent as truth, and if any 
 prejudices suffer from contact with the facts set forth in the 
 following pages so much the worse for them. 
 
 Incidentally, I endeavour to lift the veil from one or two 
 obscure but interesting subjects, which, in an inquiry of this 
 kind, force themselves upon the attention. The cause and 
 
 a 
 
xviii THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the manner of Shakespeare's death are, for the first time, in- 
 vestigated in the light of his family history, or such of it as 
 is known to us, and the result is to convey a different im- 
 pression of the man from that hitherto prevailing. From 
 the neuropathic point of view there are incidents in Shake- 
 speare's life, which, though small, are extremely significant, 
 and by a new chain of circumstantial evidence, of which the 
 signatures attached to his will are an important link, the 
 death-bed scene of the poet is reconstituted in a manner 
 which only the latest advances of physiological and medical 
 science have rendered possible. For the first time, also, the 
 difficult subject of Inspiration is made to yield up, as it seems 
 to me, some portion at least of its secret. ' The great desi- 
 deratum in the theory of intellectual character,' says Bain, 
 ' is to give an intelligible resolution of the innate power of 
 recasting and moulding the raw material of thought, of the 
 determination to self-activity, so to speak, in place of remain- 
 ing content with the received forms and order of the com- 
 municated impressions. In short, it is the problem of original 
 genius that is the reproach of the schools of mental philo- 
 sophy.' To some extent, I venture to think, this reproach is 
 now wiped away, and here, again, I avail myself of the latest 
 discoveries with regard to the mechanism of the brain and 
 nervous system. Phrenology necessarily receives some share 
 of attention, and is, in a limited degree, rehabihtated, or, at 
 least, shown to have more foundation in fact than seemed at 
 first compatible with the mapping out of the sensory and 
 motor areas of the brain upon Ferrier's system. 
 
 Lastly, this investigation of the neuropathic side of 
 genius will be found to throw fresh difficulties in the way of 
 an application of the principle of Fatural Selection to the 
 human race. In his latter years, Darwin's confidence in his 
 theory as applied to man was somewhat shaken, and his distin- 
 guished co-worker. Alfred Russel Wallace, has since admitted 
 
PREFACE XIX 
 
 that the ' noblest and most characteristic of human faculties ' 
 do not appear to come under the Darwinian law. Whatever 
 may be man's relations with the lower animals, and what- 
 ever may be the causes of Darwin's spontaneous variations, 
 the fact, now clearly established, that the progressive achieve- 
 ments of the intellect are wholly unconnected with a survival 
 of the fittest, may be allowed to have an important bearing 
 upon the evolution theory. 
 
 London : March, 1891, 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 TO 
 
 THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 From the rapid sale tliis book has met with, a second edition 
 being called for within the space of a few months, and the 
 keen controversy it has excited in many quarters, it would 
 appear that I did not over-estimate the desirability of en- 
 deavouring anew to solve the perplexing question of genius, 
 and to ascertain, in the light of the latest discoveries in 
 physiology, its bearing upon the progress of the human race. 
 ' The Times,' in a leading article, characterised the subject 
 of my inquiry, namely, the genesis of the better members of 
 the community, as ' one of vital importance to ever}^ civilised 
 country.' Acknowledging the force of the evidence brought 
 forward in support of my view, the leading journal went on 
 to say : ' History seems to teach that the continuance of great 
 gifts, either mental or physical, for several successive genera- 
 tions, although not unknown, is at any rate highly exceptional ; 
 and that the rise of individuals above the current level of 
 humanity is most frequently compensated for, so to speak, by 
 a swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction. ... At 
 present, we fear, in so far as the facts offer themselves to 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xxi 
 
 experience, the inheritance of great qualities is the exception 
 rather than the rule.' Mr. Galton himself, whose opinions 
 as expressed in his work on ' Hereditary Genius ' I had set 
 myself to refute, felt constrained to admit, in an address 
 delivered before the recent Congress of Hygiene and Demo- 
 graphy, that the best, like the worst, members of the com- 
 munity, did not seem to be able to hold their own in point 
 of fecundity. 
 
 Professor Huxley also has been good enough to express 
 his general agreement with me on this question in the 
 following terms : ' Genius to my mind means innate capacity 
 of any kind above the average mental level. From a bio- 
 logical point of view, I should say that a " genius " among 
 men stands in the same position as a " sport " among animals 
 and plants, and is a product of that variability which is the 
 postulate of selection both natural and artificial. In my 
 apprehension, Darwin's theory proper assumed variation as 
 a fact, and does not attempt to account for it, nor can be 
 called upon to do so. And ever since the subject was first 
 discussed, I have tried to insist upon this. On the general 
 ground that a strong and therefore markedly abnormal 
 variety is, ipso facto, not likely to be so well in harmony with 
 existing conditions as the normal standard, which has been 
 brought to be what it is largely by the operation of those 
 conditions, I should think it probable that a large proportion 
 of " genius sports " are likely to come to grief, physically and 
 socially, and that the intensity of feeling which is one of the 
 conditions of what is commonly called geuius, is especially 
 liable to run into the fixed ideas which are at the bottom of 
 so much insanity.' 
 
 That such weighty support as the foregoing should be 
 lent to my view, in however qualified a degree, more than 
 compensates me for the obloquy I have incurred from anony- 
 mous reviewers who have roundly asserted my theory to be 
 
XXll THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 that all men of genius are lunatics. No intelligent reader 
 of the book need be told that such an assertion is nonsense. 
 Genius is not lunacy ; it is insight, power, and energy in ex- 
 cess of the normal allowance, and my contention is that such 
 great gifts, however desirable in themselves, are not obtained, 
 as a rule, without some disturbance of the healthy equilibrium 
 of the brain and nervous system. Emerson had some inkling 
 of this truth, though he knew nothing of the mechanism of 
 mind upon which. I am able to base it. ' In the chief ex- 
 amples of religious illumination,' he observes, ' somewhat 
 morbid has mingled, in spite of the unquestionable increase 
 of mental power. . . . Shall we say that the economical 
 mother disburses so much earth and so much fire to make a 
 man, and will not add a pennyweight though a nation is 
 perishing for a leader ? ... If you will have pure carbon, 
 carbuncle, or diamond to make the brain transparent, the 
 trunk and organs shall be so much the grosser ; instead of 
 porcelain they are potter's earth, clay, or mud.' 
 
 It has been objected to my theory that neuropathy exists 
 among the ' dolts and dunderheads ' of the world in perhaps 
 as great a degree as among the men of genius. I dare say it 
 does. Indeed, I should expect this to be the case wherever 
 the dolts and dunderheads fall as much below the average 
 level of mental capacity as men of genius rise above it. I 
 expressly say that the soundest man is he who most nearly 
 approaches the average. It is upon the medium type that 
 Nature evidently relies for the continuance of the species, 
 not upon extremes or accidental variations. All Darwinians 
 will admit in the abstract that divergencies or variations 
 from the main type are bad and bound to come to naught. 
 Nevertheless, there is one variation for which some amono* 
 them deem it their duty to stand up at all hazards, namely 
 genius. I can attribute this only to prejudice — to the 
 rooted conviction which has obtained for so many years that 
 
PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xxiii 
 
 exceptional ability of any kind denotes the superior animal. 
 It will surely be evident on a moment's reflection, that if the 
 musician with his exceptional ear, or the painter with his 
 exceptional eye, were as sound and as prolific as his neigh- 
 bours, and if his gift were freely transmissible, the human 
 race would soon be splitting up into a number of distinct 
 species, each with a special endowment. On Professor 
 Huxley's showing it is inevitable that all departures from 
 the mean, in the human species, including those which 
 constitute genius, should be unsound. 
 
 In the face of the existing evidence, it cannot be asserted 
 that among the general population of the country there is to 
 be found anything like as much nerve disorder as among men 
 of genius of the first rank. For the purposes of comparison 
 in this respect I fortified myself, while writing the book, with 
 the health-record of a number of average men of my acquain- 
 tance, but I thought it safer on the whole to take the wider 
 basis afforded by the Registrar General's returns, in which, 
 be it observed, the dolts and dunderheads are thrown into 
 the scale against me, since they tend to make the total 
 amount of neuropathy greater than that existing among 
 average individuals. Some of my critics have sapiently in- 
 quired why nothing was heard of neuropathy in Homer's 
 time, or in Shakespeare's, forgetting that the very anatomy 
 of the body, to say nothing of the causes of the nervous ail- 
 ments, was not then discovered ; others, with as little justice, 
 have commented adversely upon the very slight evidence offered 
 at the close of the different chapters as to the ailments or the 
 causes of death of the eminent men_^who flourished from two 
 or three centuries ago. With regard to the latter I would 
 observe that my reason for mentioning them in the lump is 
 to show that although only the slightest evidence is pro- 
 curable respecting them, that evidence, as far as it goes, 
 tends to support my view. The whole strength of the case 
 
XXIV THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 for the insanity (i.e. the unsoundness) of genius lies in the 
 lives of the great men of the past few generations, about 
 whom nearly everything is known. And it is worthy of re- 
 mark that, as a rule, in their case the greater the genius 
 the greater the unsoundness. 
 
 SeiJteniber 1891. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF GENIUS— MIND AN UNBROKEN MATERIAL 
 CHAIN OF CAUSES AND EFFECTS— STRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN- 
 ITS ACTION — SENSORY AND MOTOR AREAS — THE SUBDIVISION OF 
 FACULTY — MENTAL ASSOCIATIONS AND ACQUISITIONS — ILLUS- 
 TRATIONS OF DEFECTIVE ACTION IN THE VARIOUS CENTRES- 
 HYPNOTISM AND ITS LESSONS— EFFECTS OF DRUGS AND ALCOHOL 
 — NON-EXISTENCE OF THE WILL — DEPENDENCE OF MENTAL 
 FUNCTION UPON BRAIN STRUCTURE — DEGREES OF MENTAL 
 DEVELOPMENT IN INDIVIDUALS — THE KEY TO GENIUS . . 1-3G 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ORGANIC FUNCTIONS REGULATED BY THE BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD 
 — ALLIED NERVE DISEASES — INSANITY, IDIOCY, PARALYSIS, 
 EPILEPSY, CONSUMPTION, GOUT, ASTHMA, DEFORMITIES, BLIND- 
 NESS, DEAFNESS, ETC. — ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES — DRINKING 
 HABITS, CRIMINAL INSTINCTS, NE'ER-DO-WELLISM, PIETY, 
 AVARICE, PHILANTHROPY, AND OTHER MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 IN RELATION TO THE CEREBRO-SPINAL SYSTEM — THE VARIA- 
 TIONS OF HEREDITY — THEIR PROBABLE CAUSE . , . 37-55 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 RELATION OF GENIUS TO INSANITY — HALLUCINATIONS — DIVERSITY 
 OF FACULTY— THE LAW OF EXCESS AND DEFICIENCY OF BRAIN 
 FUNCTION — EXTRAORDINARY POWERS OP IDIOTS AND MADMEN 
 —ILLUSTRATIVE CASES— CHANGE OF CHARACTER FROM BRAIN 
 DISEASE — THE POETIC AND LITERARY FACULTIES OF THE 
 INSANE— MAD POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS — HALF-GENIUSES— 
 GENIUS AND INSANITY COMBINED IN BLAKE .... 56-80 
 
 b 
 
XXVI THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PAGR 
 EXAMPLES OF MEN OF LETTERS LAPSING INTO OR APPROACHING 
 INSANITY — SWIFT, JOHNSON, COWPER, SOUTHEY, SHELLEY, 
 BYRON, CAMPBELL, GOLDSMITH, CHARLES LAMB, WALTER SAVAGE 
 LANDOR, ROUSSEAU, CHATTERTON, PASCAL, CHATEAUBRIAND, 
 "GEORGE SAND, TASSO, ALFIERI, EDGAR ALLAN POE, ETC. . 81-108 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 METAMORPHOSIS OF NERVE-DISORDER IN CONNECTION WITH GENIUS 
 — ^GOUT, BLINDNESS, DEFORMITY, AND NE'ER-DO-WELLISM IN 
 MILTON'S FAMILY — THE NE'ER-DO-WELLISM OF THE SHERIDANS 
 — THE COLERIDGE FAMILY PRESENTING EXAMPLES OF GOUT, 
 INSANITY, DIPSOMANIA, PARALYSIS, AND CONSUMPTION — WORDS- 
 WORTH'S SISTER INSANE — BURNS'S HYPOCHONDRIA AND DRUNKEN- 
 NESS — UNSOUNDNESS OF WALTER SCOTT'S FAMILY — BULWER 
 LYTTON'S CHARACTERISTICS— MACAULAY AS A PRODIGY — THE 
 BRONTE FAMILY — PATRICK BRONTE INSANE, HIS DAUGHTERS 
 CONSUMPTIVE, HIS SON A NE'ER- DO-WELL — DICKENS'S GOUT AND 
 PARALYSIS— THACKERAY, GEORGE ELIOT, WILKIE COLLINS, AND 
 BROWNING AS NEUROPATHIC SUBJECTS — THE ECCENTRICITIES OF 
 BALZAC, DUMAS, AND ALFRED DE MUSSET — GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 AN EPILEPTIC— INSANITY IN VICTOR HUGO'S FAMILY . . 109-145 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 NEUROPATHIC ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE — EXTRAORDINARY 
 MORTALITY OF HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS — CHARACTER OF HIS 
 FATHER AND MOTHER — CONJECTURES RESPECTING GILBERT, 
 RICHARD, AND EDMUND SHAKESPEARE — THE CIRCUMSTANCES 
 
 OF Shakespeare's retirement — new interpretation of 
 
 THE known facts OF HIS DEATH— THE SIGNATURES TO HIS 
 WILL AS EVIDENCE OF A PARALYTIC ATTACK— UNFITNESS OP 
 HIS OFFSPRING — PROOF OF PARALYSIS IN HIS GRAND- 
 DAUGHTER 146-1G2 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MUSICAL AND ARTISTIC FACULTIES ALLIED TO INSANITY — 
 EXAMPLES IN BACH, HANDEL, MOZART, BEETHOVEN, AND MEN- 
 DELSSOHN—ABSOLUTE INSANITY OF DONIZETTI AND SCHUMANN 
 
CONTENTS XXvfi 
 
 — NERVE DISORDER AMONG THE OLD MASTERS — MICHEL 
 ANGELO ECCENTRIC — REYNOLDS'S BLINDNESS AND DEAFNESS— 
 PLAXMAN DEFORMED — THE INSANITY OF ROMNEY, COSWAY, 
 HAYDON, AND LANDSEER — TURNER'S CONDITION IDIOTIC — NEU- 
 ROPATHIC CHARACTER OF THE ACTOR'S GENIUS — EXAMPLES IN 
 EDMUND KEAN, JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH, AND RACHEL . 163-192 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 COMMANDERS AND STATESMEN AS NEUROPATHIC SUBJECTS — ALEX- 
 ANDER THE GREAT — JULIUS CESAR — MARLBOROUGH — CLIVE 
 —NAPOLEON— AND WELLINGTON— THEIR PARALYTIC AND EPI- 
 LEPTIC TENDENCIES— THE PROPHETICAL MISSIONS OF MAHOM- 
 MED AND JOAN OF ARC — CHARACTERISTICS OF CHARLES V. AND 
 FREDERICK THE GREAT — UNSOUNDNESS OF THE CROMWELL 
 BLOOD — THE PITTS, FATHER AND SON — INSANE TENDENCIES OF 
 THE FORMER — WARREN HASTINGS'S PARALYSIS — BROUGHAM'S 
 EXTRAVAGANCE AND IRRESPONSIBILITY — THE NEUROPATHIC 
 STRAIN IN BEACONSFIELD 193-215 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC GENIUS— THE ECCENTRICITIES OP 
 SOCRATES — INSANITY OF BACON'S MOTHER — HIS BROTHER 
 ANTHONY DEFORMED— INSANITY OF SWEDENBORG AND AUGUSTE 
 COMTE— CARLYLE AND HIS ANCESTRY — NERVE DISORDER OF 
 COPERNICUS, GALILEO, AND KEPLER— ISAAC NEWTON'S INSANITY 
 — THE HERSCHELLS, JAMES WATT, HUMPHRY DAVY, FARADAY — 
 THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND AILMENTS — MISCELLANEOUS EX- 
 AMPLES OF NERVE-DISORDER AMONG MEN OF SCIENCE — THE 
 ARITHMETICAL AND CHESS-PLAYING FACULTIES — THE DARWIN 
 FAMILY — ERASMUS DARWIN'S ECCENTRICITIES — INSANITY OF 
 ONE OF HIS SONS — THE WEDGWOODS— CHARLES DARWIN'S 
 DESCENT — THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF COMMERCIAL GENIUS, 
 PHILANTHROPY, PIETY, AND CRIMINALITY — NEUROPATHIC AS- 
 PECTS OF PIETY IN LUTHER, BUNYAN, GEORGE FOX, AND 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN — NEER-DO-WELLISM AND GENIUS . 216-253 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MEMORY AS AN ELEMENT OF GENIUS— AUTOMATIC ACTIVITY OP 
 THE BRAIN— CREATIVE GENIUS AS DISTINGUISHED FROM TALENT 
 — DKEAMS OF EMINENT MEN— WAKING VISIONS- -INSPIRATION — 
 
XXVlii THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 PAGE 
 ITS PHYSICAL BASIS— THE IMPULSE TO PRODUCE— ACTIVE AND 
 SLUGGISH GENIUSES— LITERARY STYLE— METRE AND CADENCE 
 AS SENSORI-MOTOR EFFECTS— THE VISUAL ELEMENT IN LITERA- 
 TURE — WIT AND PUNNING — THE ARTISTIC FACULTY AS AN 
 ASSOCIATED SENSORY AND MOTOR ENDOWMENT — EXAMPLES IN 
 MUSIC AND PAINTING — ACTING CONSIDERED AS A MOTOR SUS- 
 CEPTIBILITY — ITS INDEPENDENCE OF INTELLECT — MILITARY 
 GENIUS AND EPILEPSY — BRAIN-MECHANISM OF THE ORATOR, 
 THE STATESMAN, THE PHILOSOPHER, THE MAN OF SCIENCE, 
 THE PHILANTHROPIST, THE RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIAST, THE MAN 
 OF BUSINESS, THE NE'ER-DO-WELL, THE MISER, AND THE 
 CRIMINAL 254-300 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 PHRENOLOGY AND ITS LIMITATIONS — EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR OF IT — 
 THE FOREHEAD AS AN INTELLECTUAL REGION — EFFECTS OP 
 INJURY OR DISEASE OF THE FRONTAL LOBES — THE CONCEN- 
 TRATIVE FACULTY — CRIMINAL HEADS — LOCALISATION OF WIT — 
 SWIFT'S SKULL— PARALLELISM BETWEEN THE OLD PHRENOLOGY 
 AND THE NEW— CORRECT AND INCORRECT LOCALISATIONS — SIZE 
 AND WEIGHT OP BRAINS — HEADS OF REMARKABLE MEN — SAVAGE 
 AND CIVILISED BRAINS — THE PHRENOLOGY OP THE FUTURE 301-314 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 MEN OP GENIUS MORE SUBJECT TO NERVE-DISORDER THAN THE 
 COMMUNITY AT LARGE — COMPARATIVE STATISTICS ON THE 
 SUBJECT — PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OP GENIUS RARE — EXAMPLES 
 OF IMPERFECT GENIUS — VARIETIES OP FACULTY AND TEM- 
 PERAMENT IN EMINENT MEN— VANITY — THE SEXUAL PASSION 
 — GENEROSITY AND MEANNESS — POETRY AND SCIENCE — 
 IMPORTANCE OP THE NATURAL BENT — THE PERFECT MAN 
 UNKNOWN — FAMILIES IN WHICH GENIUS MAY BE LOOKED FOR 
 — NEUROPATHIC UNIONS AND THEIR BEARING UPON DARWINISM 
 — INAPPLICABILITY OF NATURAL SELECTION TO MAN — UNKNOWN 
 AGENCIES AT WORK — ORIGIN OF THE FITTEST — EVIDENCE OP A 
 ' GROWTH-FORCE ' IN NATURE— GENIUS AS A LAW . . 315-331 
 
 INDEX. , , 333-341 
 
THE 
 
 INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF GENIUS— MIND AN UNBROKEN MATERIAL CHAIN 
 OF Causes AND EFFECTS— STRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN — ITS ACTION — 
 SENSORY AND MOTOR AREAS— THE SUBDIVISION OF FACULTY- 
 MENTAL ASSOCIATIONS AND ACQUISITIONS— ILLUSTRATIONS OF DK- 
 FECTIVE ACTION IN THE VARIOUS CENTRES — HYPNOTISxM AND ITS 
 LESSONS — EFFECTS OF DRUGS AND ALCOHOL— NON-EXISTENCE OF 
 THE WILL — DEPENDENCE OP MENTAL FUNCTION UPON BRAIN 
 STRUCTURE— DEGREES OP MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIVIDUALS 
 — THE KEY TO GENIUS 
 
 Much of the uncertainty prevailing with respect to the nature 
 of genius and the conditions of its appearance, is due to a 
 habit of looking upon the human mind as an intangible 
 something, a spiritual essence, associated in some way with 
 the body, but not govei-ned by the laws of matter. Upon 
 reason, judgment, imagination, and other abstract terms of a 
 like degree of vagueness, there have been endless disquisitions 
 by eminent men of past ages, who have never succeeded in 
 establishing among themselves a definite or incontrovertible 
 basis of agreement. While there has been but one truth 
 requiring exposition, there have been many different and 
 opposed schools of philosophy professing to expound it. 
 The cause of so much divergence of opinion is plain. Until 
 the anatomy of the brain and nervous system was as closely 
 studied as it has been within the past twenty years, all 
 reasoning as to the processes of sensation and thought was 
 necessarily as unsound as the methods of treating disease 
 which obtained before the discovery of the circulation of the 
 blood. The Lockes, theDugald Stewarts, the Benthams, the 
 
 B 
 
2 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Humes, and other distinguished writers of a bygone day, 
 who discussed the operations of the mind, were somewhat in 
 the position of a man who should presume to lecture upon 
 the steam-engine without knowing anything of its internal 
 arrangement of valves and pistons. Happily the inquirer 
 into the mysteries of thought is no longer constrained to 
 wade, as in the past, through a bottomless quagmire of spe- 
 culation; he has now something like a solid footing to go 
 upon, and the relations of mind and matter have become like 
 other branches of science, the subject of exact investigation. 
 
 It is to physiology more particularly that the world owes 
 its deliverance from the long reign of error or misconception 
 as to the operations of the mind. The development of the 
 brain and nervous system is traced from the most rudimen- 
 tary beginnings. In the lowest living forms nerve does not 
 exist. We see merely a sensitive pulp moving without any 
 apparent organs of sense, though possibly in its seemingly 
 homogeneous substance there may be differentiated tracks — 
 the rudiments of nerves — along which sensation travels. 
 The earliest appearances of a nervous system as we ascend 
 the scale of life are a few filaments connected by a nerve 
 cell or a group of nerve cells. These, by-and-by, show 
 a tendency to cluster at one point, to lay the foundation of 
 a brain, but we get as high as the fishes before discovering 
 any more complicated sti'ucture than sensory ganglia and 
 nerves. The rudimentary brain consists of the cerebellum 
 and the medulla oblongata, those portions of the brain sub- 
 stance which are in immediate connection with the spinal 
 column, and where the various organic and automatic func- 
 tions of the body appear to be carried on. Many grades of 
 the animal creation get on very well with no other mental 
 equipment. In the higher animals, including man, there is 
 found, superposed upon the cerebellum, the cerebrum, which 
 fills the upper portion of the skull in the shape of the right 
 and the left hemispheres, and where, in a manner presently to 
 be indicated, sensory impressions are received from the outer 
 world, ideas formed, and orders given for transmission to all 
 parts of the muscular system. 
 
 All mental processes are now shown to be an unbroken 
 
STRUCTUEE OF THE BRAIN 3 
 
 material chain of causes and effects. As in the analogy of 
 the steam-engine, there are no doubt certain ultimate facts 
 in materialism — facts beyond which it is impossible to go. 
 The force of the steam-engine and the force of the nerve 
 cells of the brain are alike mysterious in their origin ; both 
 are manifestations of the unknown and unknowable Power 
 underlying the universe. Nevertheless, if we do not know 
 what force primarily is, we can at least tell the conditions 
 under which it is exercised, whether in the case of the steam- 
 engine or in that of the brain, and an investigation of genius 
 and other forms of mental faculty consequently resolves itself 
 into an investigation of our cerebral mechanism. 
 
 The hemispheres of the brain consist mainly of a mass of 
 white substance overlaid with a thin coating of gray matter. 
 This outer layer varies in thickness, averaging, however, 
 about one-tenth of an inch, and extends to upwards of 300 
 square inches, its surface being enormously increased by 
 being thrown into numerous folds or convolutions. On mi- 
 croscopic examination the gray matter proves to be thickly 
 charged with nerve-cells of various shapes — round, oval, pear- 
 shaped, tailed, and star-like, or radiated — each having two or 
 more slender threads or nerves connected with it, while the 
 internal white substance is made up entirely of nerves. Both 
 cells and nerves are excessively minute, and form an extremely 
 complicated network. The cells are evidently the sources of 
 some power which the fibres conduct, and may be roughly 
 compared to galvanic batteries generating electricity, which 
 is carried by wires wherever it may be wanted. Indeed, 
 this analogy holds good to a remarkable extent, inasmuch as 
 the conducting nerves, like the electric wires, appear to be 
 insulated by sheaths or coverings. In the interior of the 
 brain are two large ganglia containing a certain amount of 
 gray matter, and known as the optic thalamus and the corpus 
 striatum ; these are both connected by fibres with the outer 
 gray coating, and are evidently important centres for the 
 generation, collection, and distribution of nerve force. The 
 radiating fibres from the central ganglia bear but a small 
 proportion, however, to the fibres passing from one portion 
 of the surface to another. The difi'erent convolutions and 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 areas of the bi\iin are very extensively connected, and it is 
 obvious that a disturbance in one region is liable to be com- 
 municated to all adjacent regions, and even to distant ones. 
 The hemispheres being the counterparts of each other, the 
 brain is double, but uniformity of action seems to be ensured 
 between its two sections by a broad connecting band of fibres 
 called the corpus callosum. The cerebellum difiers in ap- 
 l^earance from the hemispheres, but nerve-cells and fibres are 
 its main constituents ; its connection with the hemispheres 
 appears to be chiefly through the motor paths. 
 
 So much for the general structure of the brain. How 
 does it act ? The phrenologists conceived that each portion 
 subserved a special faculty, and that the mental aptitudes of 
 an individual could be read from the greater or less develop- 
 ment of the bumps on his skull. Their system was based 
 upon the comparison of a man's known character with the 
 size and shape of his head ; it was necessarily a very loose and 
 untrustworthy system, and modern physiologists do not speak 
 of it with respect, though, as we shall see in a subsequent 
 chapter, it contains a basis of truth which is considerable and 
 in some degree unsuspected. Whatever may be said of the 
 overweening confidence of Gall and Spurzheim in their method, 
 they are entitled, at all events, to the credit of perceiving or 
 divining a fact which has only been conclusively proved in 
 oar own day, namely, that the brain is a sort of mosaic, and 
 that its various parts are charged with special functions. The 
 discovery of the true state of the case was very gradual. Long 
 after Gall formulated the phrenological doctrine, Flourens 
 iound that removing slices of the cerebral substance caused 
 loss of function in the animal opei-ated upon ; Schiff after- 
 wards discovered that different portions of the cerebral sub- 
 stance were raised in temperature by different sensations; 
 and it was observed that disease of certain regions of the 
 brain had more or less definite results. In 1870 a flood of 
 light was thrown upon the subject. It would have been a 
 sad shock to the eighteenth century philosophers to be told 
 that the true science of thought was to be initiated by experi- 
 ments upon the brain of a dog. Nevertheless, when Fritsch 
 and Hitzig bared a dog's brain upon their dissecting-table 
 
LOCALISATION OF FACULTY 5 
 
 and found that an electric stimulus applied to certain convo- 
 lutions caused spasmodic movements of the opposite side of 
 the animal's body, they laid the foundation of the modern 
 system of metaphysics. Since then Ferrier, Horsley, Srhafer, 
 Goltz, and a host of investigators have been in the field and 
 have reaped a rich harvest of observations.^ 
 
 Broadly speaking, the hemispheres of the brain have 
 been mapped out into centres of sig;ht, hearing, touch, smell, 
 taste, and muscular movement. Upon the main lines of 
 these all physiologists are agreed, though observers differ 
 as to the precise limitations of each area. Considering the 
 methods employed in the localisation ex])erimeuts a slight 
 diversity of opinion is not surprising. The operator first 
 applies the electric stimulus to a given convolution of the 
 brain and notes the muscular or other results produced. With 
 a knife or the electric cautery he then destroys the same con- 
 volution and notes the animal's corresponding loss of muscular 
 power or sensation. It is clear, however, that the electric 
 stimulus cannot be rigidly confined to a small region, and 
 that the shock of the knife or the cautery may likewise have 
 a disturbing effect for some distance around. Hence, no 
 doubt, the tendency of the various spheres in the reports of 
 different observers to overlap or encroach upon each other. 
 Besides, as already remarked, there exists between all the 
 areas a most intimate system of intercommunication, a sensa- 
 tion in any one region reacting at once upon various other 
 regions so as to produce a highly complex and co-ordinated 
 series of effects in the feelings, ideas, or action of the indi- 
 vidual. It is found that each hemisphere of the brain controls 
 the movements and sensations of the opposite side of the body, 
 the nerves crossing over before entering the spinal column. 
 Thus an injury to the motor area for the leg or foot in the 
 right hemisphere causes paralysis in the left limb and vice 
 versa. 
 
 At first sight it would appear that the phrenologists have 
 
 ' Ferrier: The Functions of the Brain, 1880; and Cerebral Localisa- 
 tion, 1890 ; PhilosojjMcal Transactions of the Royal Society, 1887-8. 
 Eastian : The Brain as an Organ of Mind. Luys : Le Cerveau et ses 
 Fonctions, etc. 
 
6 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 been ludicrously wide of the mark in their reading of the 
 bumps. Injury to, or stimulation of the gray matter along 
 the upper portion and sides of the hemispheres where they 
 locate self-esteem, firmness, benevolence, imitation, wonder, 
 hope and ideality, paralyses or excites muscularly the entire 
 opposite side of the body, the area in question being sub- 
 divided into centres for controlling the movements of the feet, 
 legs, arms, hands, head, face, mouth, and eyes. This motor 
 region is now very well defined, partly by observation of the 
 results of disease in the human subject, partly by experiment 
 upon the brains of monkeys, which are constructed on the 
 same plan as the brains of human beings. On the left temple 
 is a centre roughly corresponding to the ' constructiveness ' 
 of the phrenologists, whence the movements for speech are 
 controlled. Destruction of this centre produces the condition 
 known as aphasia, in which a person understands perfectly 
 what is said to him, and thinks an answer without being able 
 to utter it. Habit, which seems to be the cause of our right- 
 handedness, is probably responsible for the location of the 
 speech centre on the left side, for in left-handed individuals 
 it is found on the right side of the brain. Hard by is the 
 centre for agraphia, or the condition in which one is unable 
 to express oneself intelligibly in writing. When it is de- 
 stroyed the patient loses control over the movements of his 
 hand. 
 
 Impressions of sight are received in the occiput — in plain 
 English, the back of the head — the region appropriated by 
 the phrenologists to self-esteem, approbativeness, inhabitive- 
 ness, adhesiveness, and even, in part, philo-progenitiveness. 
 The hearing area is over the ear, where phrenology places 
 acquisitiveness and secretiveness, while smell, taste, and touch 
 are centred in the lower convolutions. If these different 
 centres are injured or destroyed the faculty concerned sufi'ers 
 accordingly. The frontal lobes of the brain are supposed to 
 play some part in arranging or co-ordinating the material of 
 thought. Electrical excitation of this region yields no results, 
 but as the stimulus is directed towards the motor region at 
 the temples, movements of what Ferrier calls ' attention ' are 
 observed. 
 
THE BRAIN IN ACTION 7 
 
 The frontal lobes reach their highest development in man, 
 and an ample forehead is, no doubt, the general indication of 
 a clever mind. Intellect, however, is not the product of the 
 frontal lobes alone, or indeed of any one region of the brain ; 
 it is rather the outcome of all the cerebral centres, sensory 
 and motor, in combination. If nothing more could be said of 
 the different cerebral centres than has been done in the fore- 
 going pages we should still be far from understanding the 
 mechanism of thought. But we are not solely dependent for 
 our knowledge of the brain upon the results of the electrical 
 stimulus or the cautery as applied by the physiologist. 
 Where experiment or direct proof ends, induction begins. 
 The line of active research known as the localisation of the 
 functions of the brain suggests where the truth lies if it does 
 not bring us to the truth itself. 
 
 What happens when we receive a sensory impression, say, 
 through the eye ? There is a disturbance of the nerves of 
 the eye in the first instance. The impression is then con- 
 veyed to the visual centre of the brain by what, for want of 
 a better term, is called a nerve-current. When a nerve is 
 excited there is a change in its substance, probably chemical. 
 This change, once begun, propagates itself along the nerve at 
 the rate of ninety feet a second. Nothing is really known of 
 its nature, but exercise is seen to exhaust the carrying power 
 of the nerve, while repose and the circulation of healthy 
 blood restore it. We are temporarily deafened by a loud 
 noise and blinded by an intense light, because, for the moment, 
 the energy of the nerve cells is exhausted by the strain put 
 upon them. From the eye the nerve-current duly arrives in 
 the visual area of the brain, and, according to its character, 
 throws the nerve-cells of that area together with their ex- 
 tensive network of fibres into activity. The impression con- 
 veyed from the eye to the brain is most likely of a twofold 
 character, optical and muscular. While one set of nerves 
 conveys the shades of light and colour, another takes 
 note of the muscular adjustments of the eye which are con- 
 cerned with form, so that every object seen calls into play 
 certain groups of nerve-cells and fibres in the visual and 
 motor areas : and it is probable that every group thus 
 
8 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 formed is capable of being revived under an appropriate 
 stimulus. 
 
 Herbert Spencer reduces all mental action to a sense of 
 likeness and unlikeness in the things perceived — change or 
 no change in consciousness.^ A red light, for example, 
 affects our nerves in a certain way. We then pass to the 
 contemplation of some other object. By-and-by the red 
 light comes again; the result in our minds is a flash of 
 recognition, a renewal of the first experience, together with 
 a feeling of identification ; and the repetition of this enables 
 us to class redness as a definite sensation. We next see a 
 green light, which affects our nerves differently from the red. 
 It brings about, let us say, a different grouping of nerve- 
 cells. There is now a shock of difference or change, and we 
 discriminate between the past impression and the present 
 one. 
 
 So with all impressions conveyed to us from the outer 
 world through the various channels of sight, hearing, touch, 
 taste, and smell. The grades of discrimination are many. 
 The eye distinguishes an immense variety of shades ; a fine ear 
 is sensible to a small fraction of tone. In sight and hearing 
 there are probably thousands of grades of discrimination ; in 
 touch, taste, and smell they are fewer though still numerous. 
 To the perception of likeness and unlikeness, Bain adds as 
 one of the fundamentals of thought the faculty by which a 
 past impression, that is to say. a past combination of nerve- 
 cells, is revived under an appropriate stimulus. ^ This is the 
 principle of memory. ' Working together,' observes Bain, 
 ' our sense of agreement and our sense of difference exhaust 
 the meaning of what we call knowledge. To know anything 
 as a tree is to discriminate it from all differing objects, and 
 identify it with all agreeing objects. We are perpetually 
 reminded of objects by the presence of something of a resem- 
 bling kind.' On this point the conclusions of Bain and 
 Herbert Spencer are identical. ' Our reason,' says Bain, 
 ' essentially consists in using an old fact in new circumstances 
 through the power of discerning its agreement or disagree- 
 
 * Herbert Spencer : Pri?ic'ij)les of Psijchology. 
 2 Buiii : Body and Mind. 
 
MEMORY y 
 
 ment with them.' ' Our various states of consciousness,' says 
 Herbert Spencer, ' are elaborated out of our perceptions of 
 change, kind of change, degree of change, facility of change, 
 arrangement of change, etc., all running together in larger 
 and larger groups and series until they embody to us what is 
 called the outer world.' 
 
 It is the power of associating one impression with another 
 that makes the difference between the richly endowed and 
 the poorly endowed mind. How does one impression just 
 received arouse another impression previously received ? Evi- 
 dently by the passing of a nerve current from one group of 
 cells and fibres to another group. If the passage is easily 
 effected, and if the nerve-cells of the second group are lively, 
 the revived impression will be strong ; if the connection is 
 uncertain, if the bridge, so to speak, is in a bad state of 
 repair or the nerve-cells sluggish, the revived impression, in 
 other words our memory of the past fact or sensation, will be 
 weak and partial. There is no doubt that a constant repe- 
 tition of this process of association tends to make the con- 
 nection easier. In the nerve-cells, where the currents meet 
 and join, there is, in consequence of the meeting, says Bain, 
 ' a strengthened connection or diminished obstruction, a pre- 
 ference track for that line over other lines where no conti- 
 nuity has been established.' Whether in these established 
 connections or groupings the nerve-cells increase in activity, 
 or whether the conducting power of the fibres improves, it is 
 impossible to say. Probably both causes operate. Some 
 authorities suppose that as the cell-junctions of the fibres are 
 the places where a great many independent nerve-circuits 
 come into close neighbourhood, these affect one another by a 
 process in the nature of electrical induction. 
 
 Both our sense of likeness and our sense of unlikeness in 
 the objects perceived have their bases in memory, which is the 
 power of continuing or recalling impressions no longer stimu- 
 lated by the original agent. ' If we suppose the sound of 
 a bell striking the ear, and then ceasing,' observes Bain, 
 'there is a certain continuing impression of a feebler kind, 
 the idea or memory of the note of the bell, and it would take 
 some very good reason to deter us from the obvious inference 
 
10 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 that the continuing impression is the persisting (although 
 reduced) nerve currents aroused by the original shock. And 
 if that be so with ideas surviving their originals, the same is 
 likely to be the case with ideas resuscitated from the past — 
 the remembrance of a former sound of the bell. All observa- 
 tion confirms this doctrine. The mental recollection of lan- 
 guage is a suppressed articulation ready to burst into speech. 
 When the thought of an action excites us very much, we can 
 hardly avoid the actual repetition of it, so completely are all 
 the nervous circuits repossessed with the original currents of 
 force. The lively remembrance of a pleasant relish will pro- 
 duce the same expression of countenance, the very smack of 
 the reality. In strongly imagining a kick, we can scarcely 
 refrain from giving one. As we rehearse in thought the 
 movement of a dance, we almost join in it. It has even been 
 shown by experiment that the persi^^tent imagination of a 
 bright colour fatigues the nerves of sight.' 
 
 A curious experience related by Wigan, who, fifty years 
 aofo, wrote about the functions of the brain, illustrates the 
 revival under morbid excitation of a special nerve-grouping 
 in the auditory centre. ' I remember hearing a bell,' says 
 Wigan, ' at Mola di Gaeta, with a very peculiar sound ; it 
 probably was a musical note of an exact pitch which had 
 never struck my ear before from any instrument, or it might 
 have been something in the quality of the tone independent 
 of its position in the musical scale. I happened at the 
 moment to be in the midst of a long train of painful emotions, 
 and the two things became associated in my mind. I never 
 heard the same bell again, but in passing Mont Cenis I en- 
 countered one of those whirlwinds called a tourmente^ and felt 
 that I had taken cold in my ears, which began to be slightly 
 painful, w^hen I suddenly heard the peculiar sound of the bell 
 of Mola di Gaeta. I was entirely convinced that I heard a 
 bell ; I looked round for a campanella in vain, and tried, with 
 a little success, to persuade my companions of the truth of my 
 convictions. All the way thence to Beauvoisin the same 
 sound continued in my ears, renewing all the painful impres- 
 sions connected with my first hearing it, and it was not till I 
 had sat for some time in a very hot room at Martigny that 
 
MODES OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 11 
 
 it ceased to annoy me. On resuming my journey the sound 
 was renewed, and it was nob till after a hot bath and free 
 injection of the ears with warm water at Lyons that I finally 
 got rid of the distressing delusion.' ' The comparative 
 feebleness of remembered states or ideas,' says Bain, ' is, we 
 may presume, an exact counterpart of the diminished force of 
 the revived currents of the brain. It is but seldom that the 
 re-induced currents are equal in energy to those of direct 
 stimulation at first hand.' Formerly it was believed that 
 the brain was a sort of storehouse for ideas which were 
 docketed and put away in pigeon-holes for future use. With 
 our present knowledge of its structure this is no longer a 
 tenable hypothesis. ' It must be considered as almost beyond 
 a doubt,' says Bain, who, in this matter, is fully supported 
 by Ferrier, ' that the renewed feeling occupies the very same 
 parts of the brain and in the same manner as the original 
 feeling.' 
 
 What is implied by this modern anatomical theory of 
 the intellect ? This, that for every act of memory, every 
 exercise of bodily aptitude, every habit, recollection, train of 
 ideas, there is a specific co-ordination of nerve-cells and fibres 
 in the brain resulting in a specific set of sensations or 
 movements. That is to say, every stimulus from the outer 
 world conveyed through sight, hearing, touch, taste or smell, 
 actuates in the brain some group of fibres and cells between 
 which connections have been established, partly by inherited 
 structure and partly by custom. The instincts of the lower 
 animals are the outcome of an inherited structure, a per- 
 manent grouping of nerve-cells which always respond in a 
 given way to a given stimulus. Many of our own bodily 
 functions are similarly regulated. In the case of acquired 
 knowledge, lines of preference for the nerve-currents seem to 
 be determined by circumstances. It is in this manner that 
 the social instincts — the general habits, the likes and dis- 
 likes, the morals of a community find a physical embodiment. 
 They are the outcome of established methods of brain action 
 which, as I have shown in a previous work,^ vary as between 
 one community and another, and even in the same com- 
 ' Marriaye and Heredity. 
 
12 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 munity as between one period and another. In proportion 
 as acts become habitual, they cease to be conscious and tend 
 to become instinctive. Tricks of habit are a result of the 
 tendency of certain nerve-groupings to be revived, for it seems 
 to be a law of nerve tissue that what it has done once it is 
 prone to do again. 
 
 On the principle here laid down it will be seen that every 
 sensory area of the brain has its own memories or cohesive 
 nerve-groupings, each liable to be revived directly through 
 its own centre, or indirectly by nerve-currents from other 
 centres. Onr ideas of the commonest and simplest objects 
 are made up of the impressions derived from many centres, 
 sensory or motor ; and the due co-ordination of such impres- 
 sions is only effected by practice. As we have been sorting 
 our impressions from childliood we have ceased to become 
 aware of the complexity of the process which is gone through. 
 With regard to the acquirement of voluntary movements 
 Ferrier observes : ' Some particular object held before a child 
 recalls by sight a pleasurable sensation and excites desire 
 (which is the ideal persistence of a sensation and its tendency 
 towards repetition) ; but, instead of inducing as yet a definite 
 action for its gratification, it excites only vague and undefined 
 movements of arms, legs, and facial muscles — the expression 
 of general excitation of the motor centres. In process of 
 time the centre of the special differentiated movement neces- 
 sary to the gratification of the desire can be thrown individu- 
 ally into action, and thus a definite act of volition is for the 
 lirst time fairly accomplished. . . . And it is curious and in- 
 teresting to observe in a child how, in the growth of volition, 
 the first action fairly differentiated in response to any parti- 
 cular sensation or desire is repeated in response to desire in 
 general, however ludicrously insufficient to accora})lish the 
 desired end. The individual activity of the various motor 
 centres having once been fairly established, at first in response 
 to particular sensations and desires, voluntary acquisition 
 proceeds apace, the centres being free to form new associa- 
 tions. The associating fibres between the one motor centre 
 and the various sensory centres may thus become innumer- 
 able. Complex and intricate movements are longer in being 
 
ASSOCIATED PEr.CI':PTIONS 13 
 
 acquired than those which are simple or reilex, and ah-eady 
 hereditarily organised. Hence, the movements of articulation 
 in combination with those of vocalisation are longer in being 
 acquired than those of the arms and legs.' 
 
 To persons who have been born blind and who have after- 
 wards gained their sight, an object seen for the first time 
 appears to touch the ball of the eye and is not recognised as 
 what it is, say a stick or a stone. The optical effect of the 
 stick or the stone comes gradually to be associated with the 
 muscular adjustment of the eye to particular distances, to 
 form, etc., and with its weight, hardness, coldness, and other 
 qualities ascertained through the sense of touch, and when all 
 these sensations and associations are completed by practice, 
 then, and not till then, do we arrive at a perfect conception 
 of the object before us. To vary the illustration, we see a 
 carving-knife. Its optical effect is produced in the visual 
 area. Instantly by the multitudinous lines of communication 
 which exist, other nerve-groupings in other areas are aroused 
 by association and offer suggestions as to the weight, hard- 
 ness, smoothness, cutting, and pain-producing qualities of 
 the knife, all based upon experience tactile and motor ; the 
 memories of taste and smell stimulate the glands of the mouth 
 and the action of the jaws, they even react upon the visual 
 area, calling up the picture of a dinner-table set with articles 
 of food and drink. Perhaps the auditory centre is aroused to 
 furnish impressions of something that has been told about a 
 carving-knife, or, if the story has been read in a book, the 
 visual and motor centres are once more called into play to re- 
 produce the impressions originally derived from a succession 
 of printed pages. In short, the sight of the carving-knife 
 causes a nerve-thrill to spread over the greater portion of the 
 cerebral hemispheres, arousing trains of impressions, or, in 
 other words, reviving cohesive nerve-groupings in the various 
 centres as it passes. A powerful stimulus throws all our 
 centres into activity. When a man is angry, his features, 
 limbs, and body are all agitated. 
 
 If one centre is incapacitated, the other centres form co- 
 hesions of their own. A person born blind has ideas from 
 which every visual impression is excluded. He knows, let us 
 
14 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 say, a pair of scissors by touch, and instantly names them. 
 When he gains his sight and the scissors are held up to him 
 he does not at first know what they are. The optical effect 
 has, as yet, formed no associations in his brain. A lady shown 
 a tea-cup under such circumstances could not tell what it was 
 until she had felt it ; only after repeated experiments with 
 sight and touch combined could another patient distinguish, 
 at a distance, a cat from a dog. The form, size, and weight 
 of objects are slowly discovered by similar means. Colour is 
 necessarily learnt by the association of a particular impres- 
 sion with a name. Five and twenty days after gaining the 
 use of her eyes, a lady, operated upon by Waldrop, had con- 
 stantly to be informed of the meaning of objects around her, 
 whether in or out of doors. ' What is that ? ' she would ask, 
 ' A soldier.' ' And that thing which has just passed us ? ' 
 ' A man on horseback.' ' And that bright thing on the pave- 
 ment there ? ' 'A lady in a red shawl.' The same training 
 has to be undergone by the other centres of hearing, taste, 
 smell, and touch. A rat's tail was cut off and engrafted in 
 its back, where it took root. After the nerve-connection had 
 been formed the animal could feel a pinch in its new tail, 
 but was unable at first to locate the sensation. In about 
 three months it leamt to turn and try to bite the offending 
 object.^ 
 
 Our knowledge of men and things is made up of an 
 incalculable number of cohesive nerve-groupings in the 
 different centres. Persons are associated with places, occu- 
 pations, amusements, property, age, rank, and position, and 
 with the many attributes that make up character and repu- 
 tation. The links of association are almost infinite, and, if one 
 set fails us, another will be found to hold good. In trying to 
 remember a thing it is usually sufficient to be able to alight 
 upon some limb or fragment of the necessary cohesion ; the 
 entire group of associated impressions is then revived. Per- 
 sons who tie a knot on their handkerchiefs in order the better 
 to recall some fact at a given time unconsciously avail them- 
 selves of this cerebral mechanism ; they associate the tactile 
 and motor centres with the thing to be remembered, and 
 ' Taine : De V Intelligence. 
 
CHIEF SPHERES OF MENTAL ACTIVITY 15 
 
 when accidentally pulling out their handkerchiefs they come 
 upon the knot the whole set of impressions hanging upon 
 it is liable to flash upon them. Acquisitions of knowledge 
 are the formation of nerve-groupings in endless variety, the 
 most richly endowed mind being that in which such groupings 
 are most numerous, most extensive, and most easily revived. 
 In man, the visual, auditory, motor, and tactile centres 
 appear to be the chief spheres of cerebral action ; he has 
 very little cohesive faculty in the centres for smell and taste. 
 Perhaps the visual and the motor centres are the chief, and 
 it is an anatomical fact that, between these, in the human 
 brain, the nerve communication is very extensive. Great 
 bands of fibres also extend from these areas into the frontal 
 convolutions, which, being larger in man than in the monkey 
 or the lower animals, are believed to be a sort of intellectual 
 centre, or centre for the sorting of impressions. Many 
 animals have acuter senses than man, but they are not so well 
 able to found abstract ideas upon them. The dog's sense of 
 smell is much keener than ours, and the corresponding portion 
 of its brain is larger, showing that some relation exists be- 
 tween the development of an organ and its efficiency. In cats 
 and rabbits, as well as dogs, the olfactory bulbs and tracts 
 are very large ; in amphibious animals they are small ; in 
 fishes they are rudimentary or nil. In the monkey and man, 
 where smell is good but subordinate to other faculties, the 
 olfactory apparatus is small though distinct. Some animals 
 use their noses to investigate the nature of substances which 
 man would examine by means of sight or touch ; and, as every 
 sense has its memory, we need not be surprised at a dog, for 
 example, finding his way back over long distances by smell 
 alone. He is guided by a train of smells as effectually as 
 we are guided by a train of sights, or, in other words, a suc- 
 cession of objects impressed upon our visual centre.^ Yet, 
 acute as he is, a dog cannot reason abstractedly upon impres- 
 sions derived through his nose as a man does, for example, 
 
 * In man the memory of smells does exist in a certain degree. Mauds- 
 ley says of himself : ' There are certain smells which never fail to bring back 
 to me instantly and visibly scenes of my boyhood, though I was not in the 
 least thinking of them at the time.' — Physiology of Mind. 
 
16 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 with reference to the smell of sewer gas, and the chances of 
 its being followed by typhoid fever. The animal's reflective 
 mechanism is defective, and does not enable him to do more 
 than put together a few general ideas. Savages, whose 
 frontal lobes are smaller than those of civilised man, show a 
 similar incapacity for abstractions, their speech containing 
 only such phrases as are required to describe the most striking 
 objects of nature and the experiences of their daily life. 
 
 Contrary to the belief of Gall and his disciples, the cere- 
 bellum is most assuredly not the seat of ' amativeness.' 
 Experiment shows it to be the centre of those automatic 
 movements whereby our equilibrium is maintained. A bitch, 
 mentioned by Ferrier, in which only a small fragment of the 
 right lobe of the cerebellum existed, showed ' heat,' became 
 impregnated and bore young, but could not stand erect or 
 move from place to place except by ' butting forward, and 
 proceeding by force of her falls.' Men who sustain injuries 
 to the cerebellum reel as if intoxicated, though if the affection 
 be of slow and partial growth, they are able to accommodate 
 themselves to it, probably by an adaptation of the faculties 
 of sight and touch. Hitzig placed the poles of an electric 
 battery behind a man's ears. The patient experienced a 
 feeling of giddiness, and the direction in which his equili- 
 brium was disturbed depended upon the direction of the 
 current. With his eyes closed he felt as if he were being 
 whirled from left to right, or from right to left, or as if the 
 basis of support on one side were withdrawn. With his eyes 
 open, he saw objects whirling round him in one direction or 
 the other. In experiments upon monkeys, it has been found 
 that injury to the after part of the middle lobe of the cere- 
 bellum causes a tendency in the animal to fall backwards. 
 If one of the lobes on either side is affected, there is a dis- 
 turbance of equilibrium on that side amounting to constant 
 rotation of the body. Electric stimulus of the cerebellum 
 causes spasmodic movements of the eyes and limbs, showdng 
 the relation of ocular movements to those required for the 
 adjustment of the equilibrium. The mechanism of the cere- 
 bellum is, perhaps, largely independent of the hemispheres. 
 Nevertheless, these interest themselves in all, or nearly all, 
 
MENTAL xiCQUISITIONS 17 
 
 automatic movements. The main seat of the sexual feeling- 
 is probably the centre of touch, with extensive connections in 
 all the other centres except that of taste. No feeling is more 
 widely diffused or more powerful. It is capable of throwing 
 the whole of the hemispheres into activity, not excepting 
 the purely intellectual regions, and the shock produces ex- 
 tensive exhaustion of the nerve-cells, which then require 
 sleep or rest. 
 
 If not only every thought and feeling, but every fragment 
 of a thought and feeling, is the outcome of a certain grouping 
 of nerve-cells and fibres, the number of such nerve-cells and 
 fibres available in even the poorest brains must be enormous. 
 Yet, in point of variety and complexity, the nerve elements 
 of the brain would appear to be by no means disproportionate 
 to the intricacies of mental function. The following calcula- 
 tion is given by Bain : ' Allowing for intervals, we may 
 suppose that a line or row of 500 cells occupies an inch of 
 the gray matter of the brain, thus giving a quarter of a 
 million to the square inch for 300 inches. If one half of the 
 thickness of the layer is made up of fibres, the cells, taken by 
 themselves, would be a mass one-twentieth of an inch thick ; 
 say sixteen cells in the depth. Multiplying these numbers 
 together we should reach a total of 1,200 millions of cells in 
 the gray covering of the hemispheres. As every cell is united 
 with at least two fibres, often many more, we may multiply 
 this number by four for the number of connecting fibres 
 attached to the mass, which gives 4,800 millions of fibres. 
 Assume the respective numbers to be (nerve-cells) 1,000 millions 
 and (fibres) 5,000 millions, and make the comparison with 
 our acquisitions as follows : With a total of 50,000 acquisi- 
 tions evenly spread over the whole of the hemispheres, there 
 would be for each nervous grouping at the rate of 20,000 
 cells and 100,000 fibres. 
 
 ^ With a total of 200,000 acquisitions of the assumed 
 types, which would certainly include the most retentive and 
 most richly endowed minds, there would be for each nervous 
 grouping 5,000 cells and 25,000 fibres. This leaves out of 
 account a very considerable mass of nervous matter in the 
 spinal cord, medulla oblongata, cerebellum, and the lesser 
 
 c 
 
18 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 gray centres of the brain, in all of which there are very large 
 deposits of gray matter with communicating white fibres to 
 match. Such an estimate, confined to the hemispheres of the 
 brain, is enough to show that, numerous as are the embodi- 
 ments to be provided for, the nervous elements are on a 
 corresponding scale, and that there is no improbability in 
 supposing an independent nervous tract for each separate 
 acquisition.' ^ 
 
 In the process of waste and repair that goes on, the 
 molecules of the system are constantly renewed, but each 
 new set takes the stamp of its predecessors, and thus the 
 continuity of our personality is assured. That all kinds of 
 sensorial and motor activity depend upon the soundness of 
 the nerve-connections existing between the different areas of 
 the brain, is shown by some curious results of brain disease. 
 Spoken language is carried on between the auditory centre 
 and the motor centre for articulation. It is in the auditory 
 centre that the nerve-groupings which constitute the memory 
 of words are formed, and upon the efficiency of this centre 
 depends our faculty for remembering things we have heard, 
 for learning languages by ear, for appreciating music. A 
 word, whether spoken or written, is only a symbol. It is 
 custom that associates the word bread in English with 
 something to eat. The French adopt imin^ the Germans 
 Brod, to signify the same thing. ^ Before a word is learnt a 
 nerve-connection has to be formed between the nerve-group 
 embodying it in the auditory centre, and the nerve-group 
 required in the motor centre for giving it articulation. Now, 
 suppose this nerve-connection were to break, either through 
 the decay or the imperfect nutrition of some set of nerves, 
 what might be expected to happen ? Surely this, that the 
 patient would know perfectly well a word when he heard it, 
 but that he would not be able to say it. He would be 
 suffering from the well-known malady called aphasia. Some- 
 
 ' Bain : Body and 3Iind. 
 
 2 Dr. Samuel Wilkes says his parrot associated things with words. It 
 never caught, however, the word nuts ; but, when nuts were on the table, it 
 uttered a peculiar squeak, which the members of the family fully understood 
 to mean nuts.— Joiir7ial of Mental Science, 1879 
 
DEFECTIVE ACTION OF THE BRAIN 19 
 
 times the nerve-connection between the auditory and the 
 speech centre is not broken but only deranged. In that 
 case the patient speaks freely, but his words are wrong — he 
 calls pills ' potatoes,' a stick a ' cord,' and so on. The nerve- 
 group of the auditory centre throws into action the wrong 
 nerve-group of the motor centre. If the derangement is 
 great the patient's attempts to speak will result in an unin- 
 telligible jargon, as in the case of the French lady (mentioned 
 by Trousseau), who, wishing to bid a visitor take a chair, 
 said, ' Cochon, animal, fichu, bete.' Sometimes the patient 
 knows, sometimes he does not know, that he has wrongly used 
 a word. In the worst cases, short of absolute dumbness, 
 only one set of nerves between the auditory and the articu- 
 latory centres are open ; the patient then uses one word for 
 everything, sometimes not even a word, but a sound. 
 
 Similar defects are found in connection with the visual 
 and other centres. The patient sees properly, but loses the 
 power of naming objects. With a horse before him, he 
 cannot remember what to call it. He will ask for a glass of 
 
 , without being able to recall the name of the drink 
 
 required. A friend will offer him beer. ' No,' he will 
 answer. 'Water?' 'No.' 'Milk?' 'No.' 'Whisky?' 
 * Yes.' He knows the thing when he sees it, but cannot 
 mention it by name. There is a derangement of the nerve- 
 connection between the centre for sight and that for speech. 
 Abernethy tells an amusing story of a friend who could not 
 recollect a person's name, and who dragged him into a 
 neighbouring street to show it him on a door-plate. The 
 printed word is as much a symbol as the spoken one, only iz 
 appeals to the eye instead of the ear. Consequently, a defect 
 in the visual centre, or in the ocular adjustments that convey 
 the form of the letters, causes inability to read, while the 
 faculties of hearing and speaking remain. It will thus be seen 
 that learning to read a foreign language is a wholly different 
 process from learning to speak it ; in the one case the visual 
 centre, with its muscular adjustments of the eye, in the other 
 the auditory centre is employed. In both cases extensive 
 nerve-groupings have to be established and linked with each 
 other. For the reading of ordinary literature in Chinese, 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE INSxVXITY OF GENIUS 
 
 some 10.000 separate characters have to be learnt and re- 
 membered. The nerve-groupings in connection with lan- 
 guage generally will be much greater than this, though their 
 intimate association with each other will cause them to be 
 easily revived. In language, as in our acquisitions generally, 
 the various centres act and re-act upon each other. The 
 student will frequently remember a word by sight, that is 
 to say, by its place in some printed page, when his auditory 
 centre is powerless to recall it. It is also a common experience 
 that a fact read in a book is forgotten, but remembered if we 
 make a note of it. The reason is that, in the latter case, 
 two centres instead of one are brought into play; a double 
 memory is established, that of sight and that of muscular 
 movement. It is like the tying of the knot on the handker- 
 chief. Letters, especially initial letters, cohere in the memory 
 independently of words. Hence, a person may recognise 
 individual letters when whole words are Greek to him. 
 W. W. Ireland knew an aphasic patient who could not read 
 written-out numbers, such as ' thirty-seven ' or the corre- 
 sponding Roman numerals ' XXXVIl,' but who could read the 
 ordinary figures '37,' while perfectly understanding all that 
 was said to him. His age was 32 ; when this was written 
 42, he corrected it. 
 
 Applying the same principle to themalady called agraphia, 
 many things that perplexed the wisest of our forefathers 
 become as clear as day. A woman, who has somehow lost 
 the faculty of writing, consults a specialist. He asks her to 
 write her name. She takes a pen, and in all good faith 
 scribbles : — 
 
 Sunnil Siclaa Satreni, 
 
 adding by way of an address, 
 
 Sunesr nut ts mer tlnn lain. 
 
 The defect here is similar to the misuse of words in speech. 
 There is something wrong with the nerve-groupings and their 
 ^•onnections employed in the movements for writing. As in 
 ^he case of speech, the defect may be great or small. Some- 
 times a patient can begin writing a word correctly, but 
 
APHASIA AND AGRAPHIA 21 
 
 inevitably lapses into meaningless combinations of letters like 
 ' fFg' or ' ndend.' Asked to spell cat, a patient so affected 
 will say, properly enough, c, a, t, and then write ' candd.' In 
 extreme cases, one meaningless group of letters is written for 
 all words. Persons unable to write their own thoughts, or 
 perhaps to think coherently, may still be able to write 
 correctly to dictation, though unable to read afterwards what 
 they have written. In this case the connection between the 
 auditory centre and the writing muscles is good, while that 
 between the writing muscles and the visual centre is impaired. 
 It may happen that a person to whose visual centre a written 
 word makes no appeal, will learn what the word is by tracing 
 with his hand the outlines of the letters, thus bringing a 
 motor centre with its memories into play. It is on the same 
 principle that comparatively illiterate people help themselves 
 to understand a printed page by audibly or silently articulat- 
 ing the words. 
 
 Thought, like our impressions of the outer world, is 
 necessarily the product, not of one centre but of many centres 
 combined. A blind man learns to read with his hngers, a 
 nerve-connection being formed in his brain between the 
 centre for touch and that for articulation. The often-quoted 
 deaf-mute, Laura Bridgman, was observed during thought, or 
 when dreaming, to execute unconsciously the same movements 
 as she was accustomed to make in the actual exercise of her 
 manual speech. The paralysis of the first Lord Denman was 
 accompanied by total inability to form letters into words, or 
 words into sentences. He could only sign his name by seeing 
 it written out and copying it. But his intelligence seemed 
 to be unaffected; law reports and parliamentary debates 
 interesting him then as much as ever. Men could play chess 
 without knowing the names of the pieces, or even the name 
 of the game. And it is surely a common experience to 
 elaborate ideas before, and sometimes without being able to 
 express them in words. John Hunter, although a great 
 thinker, had a poor command of words, and Turner was 
 wholly unable to express his ideas of art in intelligible lan- 
 guage. Still, there can be no doubt that speech powerfully 
 supports thought. Lordat, the. distinguished professor of 
 
22 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 medicine, lost his power of speech after a fever, understand- 
 ing what was said to him, but being unable to express him- 
 self except in writing. During his malady he professed to 
 combine abstract ideas as freely as before, but his friends 
 noticed a deterioration of his intellectual faculties. Ferrier, 
 Bastian, and other specialists, note that aphasic patients lose 
 their powers of abstract thought, or think with difficulty. 
 
 Music, like speech, resides in the auditory centre, with an 
 executive faculty in the motor centres. An impairment of 
 the nerve-connection between the auditory and the motor 
 centres gives rise to the same sort of disabilities as we have 
 seen existing in the case of speech. Kussmaul mentions a 
 patient who could compose music, write musical notes, and 
 recognise an air which he had heard, but who could not play 
 from notes. Another had lost the value of musical notes, but 
 could play an air after hearing it. Frederick Clay, the com- 
 poser, who died, in 1889, of paralysis, from which he had suf- 
 fered for some years, presented curious symptoms. He lost 
 the art of reading music, but when a piece of his own compo- 
 sition was played in his presence, and played inaccurately, he 
 stopped the performance at the faulty passage. His speech was 
 mainly confined to monosyllables. When asked to name his 
 favourite opera, he replied ' Don,' meaning ' Don Giovanni.' 
 Along with the faculty of reading music, he had also lost that 
 of ordinary reading and writing, but he could recall the names 
 of Derby winners lor many years back. 
 
 All partial disorders of memory and impairment of intelli- 
 gence or modes of feeling will be understood from the fore- 
 going pages. Linne forgot his own works and read them 
 with pleasure as the writing of a stranger. Walter Scott 
 forgot a novel which he had dictated. The poet Rogers had 
 to ask his servant whether he knew the people he met. 
 Wycherley's memory played him tricks in his old age ; if 
 anything was read to him over night he would rise next 
 morning full of the ideas and expressions he had heard, and 
 write them down in the full belief that tliey w^ere his own. 
 After an attack of apoplexy a patient of Brown-Sequard's 
 lost all memory of events that had occurred during a period 
 of five years, this period, which comprised liis marriage, finish- 
 
FREAKS OF MEMORY 23 
 
 ing about six months before the attack. As the result of a 
 knock on the head a man is said to have forgotten his Greek 
 but nothing else. Abercromby relates that a surgeon whose 
 head was injured by a fall from his horse, could give instruc- 
 tions for treating the wound, but completely forgot the 
 existence of his wife and family for three days. Sharpey 
 tells of a young woman who, after an irresistible tendency 
 to sleep, forgot everything she knew, recognising nobody, not 
 even her parents, and had to begin to learn reading and 
 writing like a child. Amid the wreck of her acquisitions 
 only some knowledge of music remained, but she was not 
 conscious of how or when she had studied music. Double 
 personality is not unknown. There is a recorded case of an 
 hysterical woman who, in her normal state, was 'grave, 
 reserved, and laborious,' but who, after recovering from a fit 
 of unconsciousness, was ' gay, turbulent, imaginative, and 
 coquettish,' this continuing until she was seized with torpor, 
 when she became as before. Forbes Winslow tells of a young 
 married woman who, after a period of debility, lost all sense 
 of the time that had elapsed since the day of her marriage. 
 She remembered with remarkable vividness every previous 
 event of her life ; but when her husband approached her she 
 repudiated all knowledge of or relation to him. She acted 
 in the same way with regard to her child. Her parents and 
 friends by their authority succeeded in persuading her that 
 she was in reality married, and had given birth to a son, but 
 she beheld her husband and child without being able to 
 imagine how she had come by them. Men have been known 
 to forget their own names, and to beg their friends to tell 
 them from time to time who they were. As the result of 
 shock to their nervous system, people in danger of death by 
 drowning or otherwise find memories revived which previously 
 would have seemed to be entirely obliterated from their minds. 
 The long- forgotten languages and prayers of youth return to 
 them, together with pictures of the scenes of their childhood. 
 Luys lays claim to have solved the uses both of the optic 
 thalamus and the corpus striatum. From an anatomical ex- 
 amination of the radiating nerves in connection with these 
 organs, he holds that the optic thalamus collects the sensory 
 
24 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 impressions arriving from the outer world as well as from all 
 parts of the body and nutritive sj^stem, and launches them 
 into the appropriate areas of the gray matter; and that the 
 corpus striatum is, inversely, an intermediate station for 
 sensory impressions passing into muscular action. If these 
 conjectures are well founded, a disturbance of faculty, sensory 
 or motor, will be produced by disease in the optic thalamus 
 or the corpus striatum as well as in the various outer centres. 
 Records of cases seem to bear out Luys's view. Thus, a 
 young woman, mentioned by John Hunter, successively lost 
 smell, sight, hearing, and touch. After death it was 
 foand that her optic thalamus in both hemispheres had been 
 progressively destroyed by disease. Stimulation of the corpus 
 striatum in one hemisphere, again, causes a general contrac- 
 tion of the muscles on the opposite side of the body, as if the 
 whole motor area were being excited at once. Hasmorrhage 
 into the brain commonly proceeds from the rupture of small 
 arteries passing through these internal ganglia ; hence, a very 
 small derangement here produces extensive paralysis and loss 
 of sensation, precisely as the traffic in all parts of the city of 
 London is deranged by a block at the Mansion House. 
 
 In hypnotism certain areas of the brain seem to be stimu- 
 lated in an extraordinary degree at the expense of others. 
 When the body is torpid the senses are excessively acute. 
 The ticking of a watch, the smell of a flower, can be detected 
 by the patient at incredible distances. Through a layer of 
 cotton wool placed upon his eyes he can read a newspaper, 
 and colours influence him through a wooden screen one-hfth 
 of an inch thick. The emotional areas, also, become extra- 
 ordinarily susceptible. The picture of a merry face makes the 
 patient laugh, a gloomy one makes him cry. The memory is 
 enormously quickened. ' I once heard a young married lady,' 
 says Luys, ' who had listened to one of my lectures, repeat 
 the lecture several months afterwards in a state of somnam- 
 bulism, with the utmost accuracy, reproducing, like a phono- 
 graph, the very tones of my voice, using every gesture that I 
 used, and adapting, too, in a remarkable way, her words to 
 her subject. A year afterwards this lady had still the same 
 capacity, and displayed it every time she was put into a state 
 
PROBABLE CAUSE OF HYPNOTISM 25 
 
 of somnambulism. And, extraordinary as it may seem, when 
 once awakened she was utterly unable to repeat to me a single 
 word of the lecture. She said she did not listen to it, she 
 understood not a word of it and could not say a single line.' 
 
 An unequal distribution of blood in the brain would 
 seem to be the more immediate cause of the hypnotic con- 
 dition. The operator's first step is to fatigue one of the senses, 
 usually the sight, by causing the patient to gaze fixedly at a 
 bright object ; sometimes the hearing, by a regular beating 
 of the notes of the scale ; more rarely the sense of touch, by 
 gently rubbing a particular part of the body. By this means 
 seemingly a disturbance of the circulation is set up. There is 
 probably an excessive flow of blood to the fatigued region, 
 which then becomes unduly sensitive. When there is a 
 full supply of blood in the brain all the senses are active ; 
 when the circulation is feeble the functions are depressed or 
 suspended. Sleep is caused by a withdrawal of the blood- 
 supply of the hemispheres ; dreaming arises from a partial 
 circulation through the various centres; in sleep-walking 
 the motor centres are thrown into activity. Brain disease is 
 sometimes indicated by an unusual delicacy of the centres 
 of sight and hearing — the result of an excessive blood 
 supply ; and defects in the speech centre have been found to 
 be due to the plugging of an important artery in that region. 
 A sudden excitement in one centre seems to draw away the 
 blood from other centres, whose efficiency is thereby reduced. 
 The physical process of digestion hinders intellectual activity. 
 An idea occurring to us makes us cease any bodily exercise 
 in which we may be engaged until the new excitement sub- 
 sides. The fear of shipwreck, or any violent emotion, checks 
 sea-sickness. The poet Moore, in crossing the Irish Channel, 
 was sea-sick when news was brought to him of his father's 
 death, whereupon his disorder left him. 
 
 Drugs and poisons taken into the blood produce various 
 intellectual disturbances, as does also the vitiated circulation 
 caused by malignant fevers. Of alcohol most people have 
 some experience. Its first effect is to loosen the connecting 
 links of the different centres, producing a want of harmony 
 between sensations and motor acts and impairing the various 
 
"26 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 kinds of memory. It is for this reason that a drunken man 
 is reckless and irresponsible. Finally, alcohol paralyses all 
 sensation and movement. The staggering gait of a drunken 
 man is probably due to a disturbance of the cerebellum, for 
 which alcohol would seem to have a special affinity, like that 
 of strychnine for the spinal centres. In drunkenness the 
 weak points of the character are thrown into relief, one man 
 becoming morbidly irritable and quarrelsome, another ludi- 
 crously affectionate, a third stupid, a fourth obscene, a fifth 
 sordidly avaricious, a sixth profusely generous, a seventh 
 vain, an eighth silly, a ninth superstitious. In hypnotism it 
 has been observed that the patient's faculty for falsehood is 
 largely if not wholly suppressed ; in drunkenness there is the 
 same deficiei'.cy in the organic cohesions of the different 
 centres where a lie might be concocted. Whence the pro- 
 verb. In vino Veritas. Opium, according to De Quincey, does 
 not affect the equilibrium, its action being apparently confined 
 to the hemispheres, where it stimulates past and forgotten 
 ' memories ' into great activity. Chloroform, in addition to 
 paralysing the hemispheres, like alcohol, acts upon the medulla 
 oblongata, affecting chiefly the breathing power — an impor- 
 tant fact established by the Hyderabad Commission of 1 889. 
 Hashisch, with which interesting experiments were made 
 upon himself by Moreau (de Tours), produces errors of sense 
 and false convictions. ' The mind has a tendency to exag- 
 gerate everything, and the slightest impulse carries it along. 
 By a word or gesture our thoughts may be successively 
 diverted to a multitude of different objects with a rapidity 
 and a lucidity which are truly marvellous.' 
 
 In the modern theory of brain-function above set forth 
 there is no place for that bugbear of the older metaphysicians, 
 the will. If it be admitted that what men call mind is 
 only the working of a sensitive mechanism called the brain, 
 which is acted upon by stimuli from the outer world, through 
 the senses, pretty much as a weather-cock is acted upon 
 by the wind, it follows that in speaking of the will as an 
 agent in our mental processes we mistake a word for a thing. 
 A railway engine is not thought to exercise will, when, in 
 obedience to the force of the steam generated in its boiler, it 
 
NON-EXISTE^^CE OF THE WILL L7 
 
 moves backwards or forwards, slowly or quickly, according to 
 the setting of its gear for the time being. It is not respon- 
 sible for the steam or the mode of its action. A ship, again, 
 is not credited with volition when it sails before the wind or 
 obeys its rudder. Equally with the locomotive and the 
 sailing vessel, man is moved hither and thither by external 
 influences acting upon an organisation with which he has 
 been endowed at birth or, rather, at conception. At every 
 step in life he is driven one way and another by different 
 impulses, all having relation to the general question of 
 pleasure or pain, profit or loss, to the individual. He is 
 required, as he thinks, to make up his mind as to which way 
 he will go. The forces acting upon him are numerous and 
 subtle, some obvious and material, others purely ideal, many 
 hereditary and unconscious. There is a multiplicity of 
 motives counteracting and reacting upon each other in the 
 various centres of his brain. To all, he is more or less re- 
 sponsive, just as the memories, or experiences, or here- 
 ditary predispositions concerned in the conflict, are strong 
 or weak. In the end, one impulse or set of impulses proves 
 itself the strongest, and he is carried along by it. Mean- 
 while he flatters himself that he has made an effort of will 
 in this direction ; in reality, he has been as passive as a 
 musical instrument that is played upon. He thinks he com- 
 mands whereas he only obeys. ' Will,' says Herbert Spencer, 
 ' is spoken of as something apart from the feeling or feelings 
 which for the moment prevail over others ; whereas it is 
 nothing but the general name given to the special feeling 
 that gains supremacy and determines action. Will,' he adds 
 in a forcible metaphor, ' is no more an existence separate from 
 the dominant feeling than a king is an existence separate 
 from the man occupying the throne.' 
 
 Some men are as rash as others are cautious. The rash 
 man has imperfect links of association between one centre 
 and another, or one set of impressions and another ; when, 
 therefore, a pleasurable object is presented to him in the form 
 of a sensory impression, past impressions of an opposite 
 character in the same or in other centres are not aroused. 
 He is in the position of a judge arriving at a decision upon 
 
28 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 incomplete evidence. The cautious man, on the other hand, 
 is one in whom a long series of impressions, recorded in 
 different centres, link themselves together and become suc- 
 cessively revived, the strongest finally asserting itself and 
 passing into the motor area. Both men believe that the 
 course they take is volitional ; in reality they are unconsciously 
 governed by the mechanism of their brain-centres, which may 
 be good or bad, efficient or inefficient. Honesty, therefore, 
 is no guarantee that we shall hold sound views or do wise 
 deeds. To go one step further, no man can be said to be 
 responsible for his opinions. Everyone expresses himself 
 according to the manner in which he has been impressed, and 
 this depends altogether upon the state of the cerebral organi- 
 sation with which he happens to be endowed. Obstinacy arises 
 from conditions similar to those of impulsiveness, one set of im- 
 pressions being more readily and vividly aroused than others ; 
 and selfishness, benevolence, vanity, in fact all the varied 
 characteristics of human nature, are to be explained on the 
 same principle. 
 
 All extreme or fanatical views are attributable to defective 
 comparison, that is to say, to a defective revival of counter- 
 acting memories in the brain. The delusions of insanity 
 would also seem to have defective comparison as their chief 
 basis. The morbid excitability of a sensory centre produces 
 an effect appropriate to that centre — an hallucination of sight, 
 hearing, smell, touch, or taste. If the cohesive memories 
 aroused in the other centres by this action, memories of time, 
 place, touch, movement, etc., are sufficiently extensive and 
 vivid, they correct the false impression ; the patient knows 
 that what he sees or hears is an hallucination. If, on the 
 other hand, through the destruction or the inactivity of certain 
 areas, the cohesive memories are poor, so that the individuaj 
 has but a slender basis of comparison whereon his judgments 
 may be formed, the hallucination begins to wear the aspect 
 of reality ; the sight or the sound is accepted as a fact, and the 
 patient is mad. Fixed ideas, rooted and unreasonable pre- 
 judices, general narrowness of view, are minor manifestations 
 of the same infirmity. Each half of the brain appears to be 
 capable of elaborating thought, as instances are recorded of 
 
SIMILARITY OF THOUGHT IN TWINS 29 
 
 men exercising tlieir intellectual faculties after one of their 
 hemispheres has been destroyed by disease. In ordinary 
 health, the hemispheres no doubt act in unison, owing to the 
 extensive system of fibres binding them together. Some of 
 the forms of insanity may be due to an impairment of these 
 connecting fibres, especially when the patient has insane im- 
 pulses which his reason seems to hold in check. Not infre- 
 quently patients feel a desire to murder somebody, but have 
 sense enough to control it, and even to place themselves volun^- 
 tarily under restraint lest the impulse should overpower them. 
 In such cases we may suppose one hemisphere to be morbidly 
 active while the other is sound, or nearly so. 
 
 The dependence of will upon physical conditions of a 
 purely hereditary kind is curiously exemplified by the experi- 
 ence of twins. A close physical resemblance between twins is 
 often accompanied by a similarity in their ideas. No less than 
 eleven out of thirty-five cases examined by Galton ^ testify to 
 this. The twins make the same remarks on the same occa- 
 sion, begin singing the same song at the same moment, and 
 so on. ' An observer and friend,' adds Galton, ' graphically 
 described to me the effect produced on her by two such twins 
 whom she met casually. She said, " Their teeth grew alike, 
 they spoke alike and together, and said the same things, and 
 seemed just like one person. . ." One twin, A, who happened 
 to be at a town in Scotland, bought a set of champagne 
 glasses which caught his attention, as a surprise for his 
 brother, B ; while, at the same time, B, being in England, 
 bought a set of precisely the same pattern as a surprise for 
 A.' Upon this theory of the will, which, by the way, abolishes 
 that freedom of judgment upon which men are accustomed 
 to plume themselves, and which forms the basis of so many 
 religious systems, it is possible with the exercise of a little 
 patience to explain even the most trivial volitional acts, so 
 called, of one's daily life. An ingenious writer,^ in a passage 
 too long to quote, shows how absolutely conditioned is such 
 an apparently free act as the determination to touch, hy 
 accident^ some one of the squares of a chess-board. 
 
 ' Galton : Inquiries into Human Faculty. 
 ' Jonathan Edwards. 
 
so THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Hypnotism throws an instractive light upon the so-called 
 operations of the will. The operator obtains control over the 
 sensory and motor faculties of his subject, who then has no 
 sensations or desires that are properly his own, but performs 
 extremely complicated and apparently rational acts in obedi- 
 ence to suggestion. If told that he is hot, he takes off his 
 coat and fans himself ; he accepts a candle as a cigar and 
 smokes it ; if a knife is put into his hand, a train of 
 muscular associations is aroused, and he cuts with it ; an 
 umbrella being given him, he opens it and believes he is in a 
 shower of rain ; dance music makes him dance, and if the 
 tune is suddenly changed to a religious one, he falls on his 
 knees in the attitude of prayer. A suggestion conveyed to 
 the patient while he is in a hypnotic state may remain latent 
 in his mind after he is restored to himself, and in due time 
 be translated into action. He is told, for instance, that in 
 ten minutes he is to get up and open the door. He is there- 
 upon restored to consciousness and remembers nothing of 
 what has been said to him, but when the ten minutes have 
 elapsed he gets up and opens the door. On being asked why 
 he does so he says he does not know ; he obeys an uncon- 
 scious impulse, communicated to his muscles by the auto- 
 matic mechanism of the brain. At Nancy, where extensive 
 experiments in hypnotism are carried on, a suggestion is 
 said to have been latent in a patient's mind for 172 days. 
 To a hypnotized subject, Mdlle. A. E., the operator, 
 Beaunis, said : ' At ten o'clock on the morning of New Year's 
 Day you will see me appear in your room. I shall wish 
 you a happy New Year and disappear again.' This was in 
 July. On waking, the lady remembered nothing and no more 
 was said. At the given date Beaunis happened to be in Paris, 
 but at ten o'clock the lady, being then busy in her room, 
 heard a knock at the door, and said, 'Come in.' To her 
 astonishment Beaunis entered, dressed in his summer clothes, 
 wished her a happy New Year and retired. She looked 
 out of the window, but did not see him leave the house. 
 Soon afterwards she went downstairs and told a friend 
 Beaunis had paid her a visit. Nor could she be persuaded 
 that he had not actually been there in person. 
 
FORCE OF HAEIT 31 
 
 Whence, then, comes the common delusion that will is an 
 integral part of our mental equipment ? The belief seems to 
 have its root in consciousness. Of consciousness we can only 
 say that it is a fact in connection with our nervous system. 
 It appears to come into existence only when a variety of nerves 
 are stimulated. The power of discriminating between suc- 
 cessive sensations has already been described as one of the 
 fundamental conditions of knowledge. Now, discrimination 
 is but another word for consciousness, a necessary element in 
 this being a change from one nerve-state to another. If we 
 could conceive the weathercock as being endowed with a dis- 
 criminating faculty, we should perceive that whatever might 
 be its belief as to the voluntary nature of the movements it 
 was executing, these movements would in every case have 
 been entered upon before it began to discriminate them. This 
 is precisely what happens in the case of our own so-called 
 volitions. They are begun before they come within the 
 sphere of consciousness at all. When actions are so often 
 repeated that the requisite nerve-groupings become closely 
 organised in the brain-centres, such actions cease to be 
 conscious. Memory, reason, feeling, and will simultaneously 
 disappear in proportion as mental changes become automatic. 
 We act then from force of habit. Much of our mental action 
 takes place thus unconsciously, as when a man goes to bed 
 with his head in a state of muddle and gets up in the morn- 
 ing with a clear perception of the course he ought to take ; 
 or when, after he has been vainly trying to remember a thing 
 and has apparently ceased to think of it, it flashes upon his 
 consciousness. As Taine remarks, there are many stages or 
 platforms where our mental action is carried on, though only 
 one may be lighted up at a time. It was force of habit, 
 with perhaps some hereditary tendency, which constituted 
 the Greek Nomos, or custom having the force of law, as 
 described by Grote — the established fact and condition of 
 things which each new member of the community is born to 
 and finds subsisting, the aggregate of beliefs and predispo- 
 sitions to believe, ethical, religious, ^sthetical, and social, 
 respecting what is true or false, holy or unholy, honourable 
 or base in all the relations of life. 
 
32 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 The identical modes of feeling and judgment that prevail 
 among masses of human beings are the result of brains of 
 similar organisation being acted upon by similar stimuli ; and 
 it is in accordance with this principle that an author, an 
 orator, a painter, or a musician, counts upon producing his 
 effect. Common-sense is the established groove of thought 
 in a community. It varies with time and place. The social 
 virtues of to-day are not those of 500 years ago. Our English 
 common-sense is not the common-sense of the Zulus. It is 
 not even that of our near neighbours the French, in some 
 particulars. Much of this effect is educational, but the special 
 grouping of nerve-cells, the persistent nerve-thrill which is 
 involved in the operations of common-sense, must be such as 
 falls within the capacity of the average brain of the commu- 
 nity. Special susceptibilities, or want of susceptibilities, in 
 the individual will always lead to deviations from common- 
 sense, that is to say to originality. Most minds have little 
 bents of their own. A person will be found at a given 
 moment repeating a given thought. Examiners put the 
 same questions year after year. In conversation we un- 
 consciously drift into our favourite subjects. The efhciency 
 of a musical instrument does not more depend upon its con- 
 struction than does the scope of the mind upon tlie cerebral 
 organisation. 
 
 While there is a pretty general level of intellect in com- 
 munities, individuals differ widely from each other in mental 
 development. ' I was present,' says Forbes Winslow, ' at 
 the post-mortem examination of the body of a gentleman 
 who died of visceral disease at the advanced age of eighty-four. 
 Up to this period he had been remarkable for great vigour of 
 intellect and for extraordinary elasticity and retentiveness of 
 memory. He appeared to have forgotten no impression that 
 had ever been made upon his mind, in early as well as in 
 advanced life. During the examination of the brain I was 
 repeatedly struck with its anatomical appearance. The gray 
 matter was by no means diminished in quantity or consist- 
 ence. The fissures were well marked, and both as to volume, 
 character, and depth of its convolutions, the brain presented 
 an aspect similar to what a pathologist would expect to detect 
 
CAUSES OF INSANITY 33 
 
 in a person dying in full intellectual power at the age of 
 thirty or forty. In another case I examined the brain of a 
 gentleman whose mind had become prematurely enfeebled for 
 six years previously to his death. He died at the age of fifty- 
 six. The convolutions of the brain had greatly diminished 
 in depth as well as in complexity, and the encephalic mass 
 also presented a general shrunken or atrophied appearance.' ' 
 
 Insanity in all its degrees is to be ascribed to a lowered 
 or heightened susceptibility of brain tissue. If a morbid 
 change is not always visible after death, it does not follow 
 that it has not existed, for in the groupings of nerve-cells and 
 fibres in the brain, we have to deal with phenomena tran- 
 scending the highest powers of the microscope. Violent 
 mania and imbecility are probably due, the former to an 
 excessive susceptibility of the nerve-cells, the latter to their 
 decay. In the one case, hallucinations of the senses occur, 
 according to the area affected, with imperfect reasoning 
 powers, arising from insufficient comparison; in the other, 
 the perceptive faculties as well as memory in its various forms 
 cease to act, the brain gradually becoming an inert mass, 
 incapable of responding to any external impressions whatever. 
 In acute delirium the exciting cause is usually found to be 
 inflammation of the brain or its membranes. ' Oases of chronic 
 insanity, in which all anatomical lesions are wanting 
 observes Maudsley, ' are rare. Many of the more advanced 
 cases exhibit some degree of atrophy of the brain, especially 
 of the convolutions, effusion into the subarachnoid space, 
 discolouration of the gray matter, and general hardening of 
 the white substance.' Insanity attended by symptoms of 
 depression is often due to a deficiency of blood in the 
 system, in which case the patient is pale and emaciated, 
 with little or no sensibility. 
 
 Among individuals of the same race, a greater or less 
 capacity of mind may be attributed with perfect confidence 
 to a greater or less development or susceptibility of the dif- 
 ferent areas of their brain. There are persons with poorly 
 constituted brains in which a sight or sound — an impression 
 from the outer world — arouses few cognate or secondary 
 ^ Forbes Winslow : Obscure Diseases of .the Brain. 
 
34 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 impressions — few memories, that is to say. Dolt and block- 
 head are the words commonly applied to these unfortunates 
 who are governed almost wholly by the sensory impressions 
 of the moment. The possessor of a well-endowed visual 
 centre in conjunction with a poor auditory one, will remem- 
 ber things he has seen better than things he has heard. He 
 will have a good memory for faces, and a bad one for re- 
 lated facts. He will have a clear perception of surrounding 
 objects, with their colours and their relations to each other, 
 but he will be a poor hand at remembering a tune. He may 
 be a painter, he will never be a musician. In the musician 
 the auditory centre is necessarily the most susceptible, since 
 it is here that his memories are the most cohesive and the 
 most easily revived. 
 
 In intellectual or artistic pursuits of every kind, the 
 power of concentrating one's thoughts is of great importance. 
 Upon what does this power depend ? As sensory impressions 
 tend to call up appropriate movements, so induced move- 
 ments call up the sensory impressions commonly associated 
 with them. So much is clear. By throwing himself into 
 the physical attitudes of joy or sorrow, the actor contrives to 
 bring his sentiments into a corresponding state. In view of 
 this, Ferrier offers the ingenious suggestion that a person 
 whose motor centres are highly developed may, by the 
 agency of these, be enabled to control his ideas, just as one 
 may call up a state of grief, more or less pronounced, by 
 assuming the physical expression appropriate to it. He 
 concludes that, as the motor centres are not merely the basis 
 of sensori-motor cohesions and acquisitions, but also the 
 basis of the powers of concentration and control of ideation, 
 a relatively high development of the motor centres, as com- 
 pared with the sensory centres, will be found in those 
 animals and individuals capable of the highest intellectual 
 achievements. There is no necessary contradiction here to 
 the theory, above adopted, of the will. The highly developed 
 motor centres spoken of by Ferrier are but the means where- 
 by a communicated impulse from the outer world is carried 
 into effect. Will still remains essentially a matter of cerebral 
 organisation, which the individual is powerless to alter. 
 
RICH AND POOR BRAINS 35 
 
 That persons are born with richly or poorly organised 
 brains is beyond all question. The fact is as indisputable as 
 that they are born potentially tall or short, stout or lean, 
 dark or fair, and although education helps to increase their 
 mental acquisitions, it cannot add to, nor can anything but 
 disease or accident take away from, their native capacity, 
 Rudolph Wagner, an authority on the physiology of the 
 brain, observes : ^ Between the convolutions of different in- 
 dividuals there are remarkable dififerences, so that one may 
 distinguish richly convoluted and poorly convoluted brains. 
 These relate only to more numerous divisions and to bendings, 
 etc., of the primary convolutions, which retain the same num- 
 ber and essential position in all normal brains of whatever 
 race. The most notable differences occur in the convolutions 
 of the frontal lobes. There are to be found brains of adults 
 which in this respect resemble the brain of a seven months' 
 foetus, and of which it may truly be said that, in their out- 
 ward configuration at least, they have remained in a foetal 
 condition. The slighter development of the frontal convolu- 
 tions occurs more especially in female brains, so that it may 
 be said that they resemble in this respect the foetal brain 
 in its later stages of development, before the final evolution of 
 the frontal lobes. There are to be found also male brains of 
 the same character, which may, therefore, be said to belong 
 to the female type, and female brains which in their rich- 
 ness of convolution approach the male type. As a rule, 
 however, the convolutions and fissures are better developed 
 in all the lobes when the frontal convolutions are especially 
 complex.' As Ferrier and others have shown, there are many 
 grounds for believing that the frontal lobes form the sub- 
 strata of these physical operations which lie at the founda- 
 tion of the higher intellectual processes, and their varying 
 degrees of development in individuals is a matter of common 
 observation. 
 
 Diversity of brain mechanism necessarily produces diver- 
 sity of function. It is not alone the poet who is born, not 
 made. As much may be said of the painter, the musician, 
 the commander, the administrator, the philosopher, the man 
 of science or the inveterate criminal. Macaulay, before he 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 wa? eight years old, wrote a Compendium of Universal 
 History. Reynolds began to paint and Handel to compose 
 without instruction ; Napoleon studied war in the playground ; 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, before his fifteenth year, was im- 
 mersed in metaphysics and theological controversy. Envi- 
 ronment may do much for the species, but it does little for 
 the individual. All special aptitudes and predispositions 
 depend upon the preponderance of certain areas of the brain 
 possessing more enduring records, more vivid recollections, 
 a greater supply of nerve force, active or latent, than other 
 areas, and thus providing a richer store of material together 
 with a more efficient means of utilising that material for 
 intellectual or artistic operations. Here we have the key to 
 genius in all its forms, creative and destructive, nay, to all 
 the diversities of human faculty, whether in the direction of 
 plus or minus. We have now to discover how the inequali- 
 ties of brain structure, underlying these diversities of faculty, 
 arise. 
 
37 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ORGANIC FUNCTIONS REGULATED BY THE BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD- 
 ALLIED NERVE DISEASES— INSANITY, IDIOCY, PARALYSIS, EPILEPSY, 
 CONSUMPTION, GOUT, ASTHMA, DEFORMITIES, BLINDNESS, DEAFNESS, 
 ETC.— ILLUSTRATIVE TABLES — DRINKING HABITS, CRIMINAL INSTINCT?, 
 NE'ER-DO-WELLISM, piety, AVARICE, PHILANTHROPY, AND OTHE.t 
 MORAL CHARACTERISTICS IN RELATION TO THE CBREBRO-SPINAL 
 SYSTEM — THE VARIATIONS OP HEREDITY— THEIR PROBABLE CAUSE 
 
 The operations of the brain are not purely sensory, motor, or 
 intellectual ; they are also, and to a very large extent, ad- 
 ministrative as regards the living body. For all practical 
 purposes the brain and spinal cord are one. Not only does 
 the spinal cord convey the impulses of the cerebral hemispheres 
 to the trunk and limbs ; it is in itself an organ of nervous 
 activity, as is shovv^n by the persistence of reflex action in the 
 lower portions of the body after their connection with the 
 brain has been cut off. Many important functions are regu- 
 lated by the medulla oblongata, the bulbous head of the spinal 
 marrow, situated just inside the skull. If an animal is 
 deprived of its brain above the medulla oblongata it loses the 
 faculties of sensation and of voluntary motion, but it still lives 
 and breathes. Under due stimulation the eyelids will close, 
 the muscles of the face and tongue contract, and the ear 
 twitch ; if food is put into the mouth the act of swallowing is 
 performed ; the placing of the nipple to the lips excites suck- 
 ing. What is still more remarkable, the animal so mutilated 
 utters a cry as of pain when pinched ; yet it cannot feel any- 
 thing, the cry being only a result of the reflex action of the 
 larynx and the lungs. When the medulla oblongata is de- 
 stroyed the animal can emit no sound, though pinching may 
 still produce reflex action in its limbs ; and respiration also 
 ceases. The movements of the heart are caused by the 
 
38 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 intrinsic ganglia of the heart itself, for it will beat even after 
 its removal from the body, but over the heart's action and the 
 state of the blood pressure the medulla oblongata exercises a 
 controlling influence. By the gray matter of the spinal cord, 
 the tone of the muscles, the secretions of the skin, and the 
 nutrition of the tissues are regulated. All the functions 
 necessary to life, indeed, are organised in the cerebro- spinal 
 system independently of consciousness ; this is shown by the 
 simple fact that they are carried on during sleep. The 
 hemispheres, when active, take note of much that is done by 
 other portions of the cerebro-spinal system ; it is in them, 
 as we have seen, that memories of various kinds are stored 
 up to serve as the fabric of thought. Without hemispheres, 
 no animal, we may suppose, can have any conscious thought, 
 and in proportion as the cerebrum is organised will the 
 mental powers, apart from the instincts, which are purely re- 
 flex, be developed. But although the hemispheres may look 
 on, so to speak, at the organic functions, they have compara- 
 tively little to do with them. We cannot hold our breath 
 for any length of time; we cannot voluntarily stop the 
 heart's action. If we had this power, suicide would be a 
 much easier matter than it is. To a limited extent respira- 
 tion is under our control, and it is not improbable that the 
 Indian fakirs who feign death so successfully are able to 
 weaken the action of the heart. Practice enables an actor 
 to turn pale at will. The influence of the hemispheres in 
 the organic functions is also shown by the fact that in hys- 
 terical or epileptic subjects like Louise Latour hallucinations 
 may so aflect the nutritive system as to produce in the body 
 and limbs a semblance of the wounds of Christ. The result 
 of hypnotic suggestion in the cure of disease and in the 
 production of morbid symptoms in a healthy body point to 
 the opei'ation of similar causes.* 
 
 What is more particularly to be noted in connection with 
 the present inquiry, however, is the broad and indisputable 
 fact that the growth, nutrition, and maintenance of the body 
 depend upon the efficiency of the cerebro-spinal system, and 
 that defects in this may be productive not only of deformities 
 * Tucke}' : Psycho-therapentlcs. 
 
ALLIED NERVE DISOEDEES 39 
 
 but of a whole group of constitutional diseases, comprising 
 scrofula, rickets, gout, rheumatism, consumption, asthma, 
 diabetes, and even dipsomania, as well as intellectual and 
 motor disorders. This subject has been zealously studied 
 of late years by Charcot, Bouchard, Mobius, Fere, Dejerine, 
 Eevington, and others, and from their investigations ^ the whole 
 neuropathic family of diseases would appear to be but different 
 manifestations of a single &vil, namely, an instability of some 
 sort in the nervous system, betraying itself in one form or 
 another according to its seat in the body. If the brain is 
 deranged, the various forms of hallucination or insanity ensue ; 
 if, on the other hand, the seat of the evil is the spinal centres, 
 an impairment of the nutrition and vital forces of the body 
 takes place. 
 
 In these varying complications, heredity plays an impor- 
 tant part ; for the origin of all the nerve diseases from 
 insanity downwards probably lies in that common physical 
 condition known as ' lowness,' or ' being out of sorts.' This is 
 induced in a man by fatigue, exposure, or unsuitable diet ; 
 he marries a woman suffering from the like weakness, and 
 the evil becomes aggravated in their children. That it 
 should have been reserved for the science of the present day 
 to discover the family relationship of a number of maladies 
 as old as mankind, is not surprising when we consider how 
 diverse in their symptoms these allied diseases ' are. Until 
 the functions of the brain and the nervous system came to be 
 as fully understood as they have been of late years, it was 
 naturally impossible for any observer, however shrewd, to 
 discover the relation say of insanity to ' club-foot.' For the 
 problem is complicated by the indirect operation of heredity. 
 The nerve-diseases seldom descend in a simple and direct 
 form from parent to child ; they become metamorphosed in 
 passing from one generation to another, and even assume 
 different forms among members of the same family. Igno- 
 rance of the subject, be it remarked, is still very wide-spread. 
 People are not unwilling to confess to having gout in their 
 
 ' Dejerine : VHeredite dans les Maladies du Systhne Nerveux, 1886. 
 See also ' The Neuropathic Diathesis,' by G. T. Eevington, Journal of 
 
 Mental Science 1887-88. 
 
40 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 family, but they scrupulously hide the existence of insanity. 
 Yet, at bottom, the one disease is no more respectable than 
 the other, and may indeed claim it as a near relative. The 
 connection of diabetes with the neuropathic group was 
 discovered by the merest accident. It was found that 
 puncture of the fourth ventricle of the brain produced the 
 diabetic condition, sugar appearing in large quantities in the 
 urine; and further investigation showed the formation and 
 excretion of the sugar to be the result of vaso-motor paralysis 
 of the liver, the immediate consequence of the injury in 
 question. 
 
 Morbid heredity follows the same lines as normal heredity ; 
 it is direct or indirect, it may throw back, appear collaterally, 
 or occur in parent and child at corresponding periods of life. 
 There is no ascertained law governing the alternations in the 
 form of the disease ; the insanity of a parent may be meta- 
 morphosed in the child into general ill-health, dyspepsia, 
 liability to neuralgia or headache, or even excessive physical 
 activity ; it may, on the other hand, descend directly, so that 
 the son becomes as mad as the father. The importance of a 
 proper selection of partners in wedlock can hardly be over- 
 rated. If the members of a family in whom nerve-disorder 
 prevails marry into families similarly affected, the chances 
 of a healthy offspring being born to them are exceedingly 
 remote. Nerve-disorder in one parent is, however, counter- 
 acted by the soundness of the other, and the children in such 
 a case are likely to show a mixture of healthy and unhealthy 
 tendencies. Many unsound families are saved from extinc- 
 tion by the accident of one of their members selecting a 
 healthy partner. In families suiBfering from nerve-disorder, 
 some members die young, while others attain a great age. 
 If the evil happens to affect any important seat of organic 
 life, the patient succumbs early ; if, on the other hand, the 
 intellectual regions alone are impaired, he may complete, and 
 in consequence of excessive stimulation of his vital functions, 
 even exceed the ordinary span of human life. Both short 
 life and long life in excess are, therefore, symptoms of the 
 neuropathic condition, as, indeed, is every marked departure 
 from the mean of existence. It has been remarked that while 
 
NEUKOPATHIC FAMILIES 41 
 
 certain unions are sterile, the same pai'ties, differently united, 
 are prolific enoagli. The explanation of the fact must be 
 sought in the neuropathic condition of the couples. Suffer- 
 ing from the same nerve-disorders they make an unwholesome 
 blend ; if they are not childless, their children, unfit to live 
 die young. There is another important fact to be noted. 
 Like long and short life, irregularities of growth, such as ex- 
 cessive stoutness or leanness, great height or dwarfishness, may 
 also be looked for in families where nerve-disorder prevails. 
 
 Practical illustrations of heredity in mankind bear out 
 to the full the variation theory. Mobius gives the following 
 family table : A drunkard dies of delirium tremens at fifty, 
 leaving a daughter who is a ' little excitable ' in tempera- 
 ment. This woman marries an apparently sound man, and 
 has a mixed offspring, namely : 
 
 1. Daughter. Melancholic, with suicidal tendencies. 
 Marries a man suffering from tuberculous disease. Of this 
 union are born a daughter who dies of a puerperal disorder, a 
 son who is tuberculous, a daughter who dies in infancy of con- 
 vulsions, and a son who dies at twenty-six of spinal disease. 
 
 2. Son. Melancholic and suicidal. Marries a healthy 
 woman and has several children, apparently sound. 
 
 3. Son. Melancholic, and actually committed suicide. 
 Married a woman of unknown character, and leaves eight 
 children, of whom two die of convulsions, two • suffer from 
 neuralgia, and one is epileptic. Others apparently well. 
 
 4. Son. Suffers from neuralgia. Marries a woman of 
 * nervous temperament.' Leaves a son with a deformed ear, 
 a daughter who dies of convulsions, a second daughter who is 
 six-fingered and slightly hydrocephalic, and a third who is 
 apparently sound. 
 
 In 1884, a Calabrian soldier named Salvator Misdea shot 
 several of his comrades in cold blood, and was sentenced to 
 death by court-martial. His pedigree was investigated by 
 Lombroso, Blanchi, and Basilei, who tabulate the result as 
 follows : 
 
 Grandfather unintelligent, but of very active habits. Of 
 his sons, the eldest was extremely hot tempered, and died of 
 asthma; the second was eccentric, the third lame, irascible and 
 
42 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 homicidal, the fourth semi-imbecile, the fifth (Salvator's 
 father) eccentric, drunken, and extravagant, married to an 
 hysterical woman, who had one brother a brigand, and another 
 a thief. Salvator, the offspring of this ill-starred union, was 
 himself epileptic, hypochondriacal, feeble in memory and in- 
 telligence, and drunken. He had brothers and sisters, of 
 whom one was epileptic, another sound, a third impetuous 
 and hot tempered, a fourth obstinate and unteachable. One 
 of his uncles (the second) had a family of idiots and imbeciles. 
 
 Among the children of epileptic parents the mortality is 
 enormous. About half the number born die in childhood, 
 principally of convulsions. They have so great an instability 
 of nerve-element that convulsions result from the slightest 
 irritation. Indeed, any sort of disease of the nervous system 
 in the parents seems to dispose to this ill condition of the 
 child, the acquired deterioration of the parent becoming the 
 inborn organic feebleness of the offspring. Convulsions, as 
 Maudsley remarks, are the sure sign of a weakness or lowered 
 vitality of nerve-element — a defect which implies an unstable 
 equilibrium of its organic constitution. Of the children of 
 epileptic parentage who survive the perils of infancy only one 
 in seven, apparently, inherits clirectly the complaint of its 
 parents ; the others are hysterical, paralytic, idiotic, insane, 
 cross-eyed, or subject to St. Vitus's dance, pretty much in 
 the order named. Among the morbid conditions which, in 
 parents, lead to epilepsy in the children, Dejerine enumerates 
 alcoholism, persistent headache, suicidal tendencies, neuralgia, 
 deafness, blindness, club-foot, paralysis, and ataxy. Other 
 observers have noted in addition melancholia, somnambulism, 
 apoplexy, nervous excitability, meningitis, softening of the 
 brain, and lock-jaw. 
 
 The mixed conditions resulting from healthy blood on one 
 side, and a morbid taint on the other, are well illustrated 
 by the following family history : An ' eccentric ' man marries 
 a healthy woman, and has three sons and a daughter. The 
 eldest son is sound, the daughter is weak-minded, the 
 second son is also weak-minded, and the third is eccentric 
 and ailing. This third son, who, in spite of his ill-health, 
 lives to be seventy-one, marries an intelligent and apparently 
 
NEUROPATHIC FAMILIES 43 
 
 sound woman, and has a large family with the following 
 characteristics : 
 
 1. Alexander: imbecile; dies at sixty-nine of peritonitis 
 due to congenital hernia. 
 
 2. Ellen: sound and long-lived. 
 
 3. Mary : imbecile ; dies at twelve. 
 
 4. William : idiot ; alive at sixty-eight. 
 
 5. John : idiot ; dies at fifty-six. 
 
 6. Eobert : imbecile ; dies at sixty-one of debility, due to 
 disease of bones of the foot. 
 
 7. Joan: consumptive; dies at forty-four, leaving a 
 daughter who also dies of consumption. 
 
 8. Thomas : a sufferer from chronic bronchitis with 
 nervous exhaustion; marries a sound woman and has an 
 imbecile son. 
 
 9. Anne: imbecile; dies at forty-four of consumption. 
 
 10. James: well and long-lived; marries and has eight 
 healthy children. 
 
 11. Charles: imbecile; dies at four. 
 
 In this singularly corrupt and numerous family, two 
 children, and two only, escape the hereditary taint on the 
 father's side. Morbid heredity in both parents seems to 
 leave almost no loophole of escape for the offspring, judging 
 from the following table by Mobius : 
 
 A man who has suffered from St. Vitus's dance in his 
 youth, and is intelligent but rather singular in his habits, and 
 deformed, and who has a sister subject to nervous attacks, 
 marries a woman belonging to a neuropathic family. Their 
 children are one and all morbidly affected as follows : 
 
 1. Daughter : deformed and hysterical; marries a sound 
 man, and has hysterical, nervous, or tuberculous children. 
 
 2. Son : suffers from St. Vitus's dance ; is cross-eyed 
 and melancholic, marries a sound woman, and has a child 
 subject to convulsions. 
 
 8. Daughter : deformed and hysterical : marries a sound 
 man, and has four daughters — the first, scrofulous and 
 nervous ; the second, deaf; the third, scrofulous and deformed ; 
 the fourth, nervous. 
 
 4. Son : intelligent, but of extremely variable temper ; 
 
44 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 marries a woman who is sound mentally, but tuberculous, and 
 has a scrofulous, nervous, hysterical, ailing, and melancholic 
 family. 
 
 5. Daughter : subject to St. Vitus's dance and hysterics. 
 
 None of the family tables yet given shows an access of any 
 particular faculty along with general morbid conditions, but 
 the case is not rare. I quote again from Mobius. A medical 
 man of position, gay and active, marries a woman of unknown 
 characteristics and has a family : 
 
 1. Son : small, deformed, of mediocre intelligence ; marries 
 a sound woman and has, a. son : deformed and weak-minded ; 
 unmarried, h. daughter : of quick intelligence, a little 
 deformed; married but childless, c. daughter: bright and 
 witty, exhibits some mental derangement at the age of 
 puberty; marries a sound man and has four children, three 
 of whom die in infancy, and one is idiotic, d. daughter : 
 indolent, suffers from pains in the head, eccentric. 
 
 2. Daughter : of unknown characteristics ; has a son 
 superior morally and intellectually, who marries his cousin (h) 
 and is childless. 
 
 3. Daughter : also of unknown characteristics ; has a son 
 of vigorous intellect, but melancholic, who is married to his 
 cousin (d), and has a nervous, epileptic, and melancholic 
 family. 
 
 4. Daughter : intelligent, but gluttonous ; childless. 
 
 5. Daughter : quick and imaginative, a little eccentric 
 end capricious; marries a sound man and has, a. son: intel- 
 lectually vigorous, but hypochondriacal and capricious; marries 
 a sound woman, and has six children, three of whom die 
 young, while one is an invalid, and two well. h. daughter : 
 nervous ; marries a nervous man, and has an extremely 
 nervous daughter, a son of feeble intellect, and another son 
 who dies young of brain disease, c. son : intellectually 
 vigorous, gay, imaginative, but capricious and hot-tempered ; 
 marries a sound woman, and has four daughters, three of 
 whom die young, while the fourth is nervous, and a son who 
 is an invalid. 
 
 In a family table given by Vizioli, there appears to have 
 been born to a neuropathic couple (the husband gouty and 
 
ALCOHOLISM 45 
 
 apoplectic, dying at seventy-five, and the wife dying of gan- 
 grene at seventy- two), no fewer than sixteen children, the 
 majority suffering from paralysis, impediments of speech, 
 apoplexy, ataxy, hypochondria, dipsomania, or deformities. 
 In two cases there occurs remarlmble intelligence combined 
 with apoplexy, ataxy, heart disease, hypochondria, and early 
 death. There are also two cases in the same family of extra- 
 ordinary sexual poiver. Concerning the latter characteristic 
 it may be noted that whereas, formerly, medical authorities 
 were wont to attribute paralysis and kindred affections to the 
 sexual excesses that so often precede them, they are now 
 disposed to reverse the order of matters, and to recognise such 
 excesses as a mere symptom, an effect and not a cause of the 
 morbid state of the nervous system. As much may be said 
 of the extraordinary weakness or total absence of the faculty 
 observed in certain cases, and also of the perversion of the 
 sexual instinct. 
 
 The frequent occurrence of alcoholism in the group of 
 allied nerve diseases is remarkable. It would appear that 
 the drunkard's vice is not solely acquired by the unhappy 
 individual himself, but is due to hereditary predisposition. 
 No authority who has lately studied this question enter- 
 tains any doubt as to the persistence of the alcoholic taint in 
 families, or as to its metamorphosis into other forms of nerve 
 disease in passing from parent to child. It is found in close 
 family connexion with insanity, epilepsy, violent temper, 
 paralysis, imbecility, suicidal tendencies, deaf- mutism, 
 and kleptomania. ' N'est pas alcoolique qui veut,' observes 
 a well-known medical authority ; and, indeed, it is a 
 matter of common observation that there are not only 
 people who have acquired no excessive liking for drink, 
 whatever their opportunities or temptations may have been, 
 but to whom alcoholic liquors are positively distasteful. 
 Dejerine gives details of a case in which a man of alcoholic 
 tendencies, marrying a sound woman, engendered an hysteri- 
 cal daughter and a son who was dipsomaniac and epileptic. 
 On the authority of Charcot, the same writer publishes the 
 pedigree of a family whose members suffered variously from, 
 St. Vitus's dance, paralysis, hysteria, impaired sight and 
 
46 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 speech, and other affections. The father was epileptic, the 
 mother subject to headaches and attacks of nerves. The 
 grandfather was eccentric, and had a sister who suffered from 
 asthma, and who had a son alcoholic and irresponsible ; the 
 grandmother was of violent temper, and had a nephew who 
 committed suicide. Magnan has observed epilepsy and al- 
 coholism existing side by side in the same individual. It 
 sometimes happens that a man becomes a settled drunkard 
 at forty, and that his son, born twenty years before, develops 
 in due time the same habit. What the father transmits to 
 his son in such a case is not the vice of drunkenness itself, 
 but the physical condition which conduces to it. Some 
 authorities endeavour to establish a distinction between al- 
 coholism and dipsomania — between acquired and inherited 
 habits of drinking. The line of demarcation is one very 
 difficult to draw. Both evils are the result of a craving of 
 the stomach, due to some perversion of the gastric sensibility, 
 and both in extreme cases are accompanied by affections of 
 the brain and organic disturbances, particularly of the liver. 
 
 Similarly it may be said that consumption or tuberculosis 
 is not transmitted directly, but is the result of a transmitted 
 physical condition. There is no doubt but that tubercular 
 disease propagates itself in numerous families from generation 
 to generation, and that such families show a special suscepti- 
 bility or tendency to it in one or other of its forms. At 
 the same time there is reason to believe that the structural 
 disease itself is not hereditarily transmitted, but that it is 
 directly excited in each individual in whom it appears by 
 a process of external infection due to the action of the 
 tubercle bacillus. In other words, if the disease itself is 
 not inherited, a particular temperament which renders the 
 constitution liable to be attacked by it is capable of heredi- 
 tary transmission, and is found alternating with diseases of 
 the nervous order. 
 
 Ne'er-do-wellism, profligacy, or general good-for-nothing- 
 ness, is as much the product of a defective brain organisation 
 as insanity itself, of which, indeed, it is a variety. Only to 
 be found in families where there is a neuropathic taint, it is 
 a frequent concomitant of genius, if not in the individual, 
 
MOEAL HEIIEDITY 47 
 
 at all events in his near relatives ; and its physical basis is 
 to be sought, partly in an excess of sensual appetites, partly 
 in the same order of nerve-groupings as caution, caution and 
 ne'er-do-wellism being due, respectiv^ely, to an excess and a 
 deficiency in the revivability of those past impressions which 
 serve as a guide to present conduct. 
 
 ' Crime, vice, and insanity,' says Fere, ' are only separated 
 by social prejudices, they are united by their character of 
 fatality.' The hereditary nature of crime has been maintained 
 by Maudsley, Jacoby, Lombroso and other writers ; and the 
 case of the infamous Jukes family in America, whose crimi- 
 nal pedigree has been made out for seven generations, and 
 who now number over 600 individuals, lends much sup- 
 port to the theory already well established by the frightful 
 ravages of epilepsy and other nerve diseases among the 
 criminal classes. Gluttony figures among Dejerine's tables 
 as a vice of the epileptic order ; so do avarice and excessive 
 piety. Here is the family history in which the latter cha- 
 racteristics occur : 
 
 A man of eccentric habits, very intelligent, but opposed 
 to the education of his children and extremely avaricious, has 
 a family of seven. Of these the eldest is violent in temper 
 and has a child insane ; the second is obtuse, avaricious, and 
 devout, having one child obtuse, and another deaf-mute and 
 imbecile ; the third, a daughter, is avaricious and devout, is 
 attacked by puerperal mania, has a tuberculous daughter, two 
 other children who have died of meningitis and convulsions 
 respectively, and two sons of defective intelligence, one being 
 a somnambulist ; the fourth is maniacal and devout ; the 
 fifth devout ; the sixth insane, and the seventh imbecile. 
 
 As piety is a frequent symptom of the epileptic condition, 
 and as vanity and many faculties of a simple or complex 
 character are occasionally found in an inordinate state of de- 
 velopment when the cerebro-spinal system is unsound, it is 
 not surprising that avarice should be a member of what Fere 
 calls the ' neuropathic family.' Philanthropy itself may be 
 placed upon the same footing. Howard, the prison re- 
 former, was a tyrant in his own house and had a son who 
 was insane. So also with selfishness. The explanation of 
 
48 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 these facts, so subversive of the current notions of morality, 
 will be found in what has been said concerning the operation 
 of the will. Owing to the non-receptive or the irresponsive 
 action of one or more centres of the brain — a question of 
 cell or nerve-nutrition — certain sets of ideas maintain them- 
 selves in the field of consciousness to the exclusion of others, 
 or certain impulses independently of consciousness obtain 
 the upper hand. There are people who, as the saying goes, 
 do not listen to reason, who are insensible to all save their 
 own interests ; others, again, may be so self-sacrificing as 
 to denude themselves unreasonably of their comforts and 
 possessions for the benefit of their neighbours or possibly of 
 the heathen. Both classes may be as truly neuropathic as the 
 dyspeptic or the sufferer from tic-douloureux. Intense con- 
 victions of all kinds, including the most bigoted professions 
 of religion, will generally be found associated with an ailing, 
 sickly, or nervously unsound constitution. On the other 
 hand, the man of robust health is of necessity tolerant and 
 many-sided in his views. 
 
 There are various physical or mental defects of a minor 
 character arising from anomalies of the nervous system which 
 it is hardly necessary to enumerate. They will occur to the 
 intelligent reader on a moment's reflection. Stuttering, due 
 to a defect in the motor centres of articulation, bad teeth, 
 excessive hairiness or baldness, albinoism, all arising from 
 defects in the nutritive process, together with writer's cramp, 
 which is known to occur in people who do not write, are as 
 truly nervous in their origin as congenital blindness and 
 deafness, or physical malformations.^ 
 
 Gout, popularly believed to be the result of good living 
 notwithstanding its frequent occurrence in poorly-nourished 
 people, is an important member of the group of nerve dis- 
 eases now under consideration. With its kindred affection 
 of rheumatism it is perhaps more liable to transmission 
 in a direct form than some others. Dyce Duckworth, 
 the latest English authority on gout, states that in those 
 families whose histories are the most complete and trust- 
 worthy, the influence is strongly shown, and occurs in 
 • Fere : * La Famille Nevropathique,' Archives de Neiirologie, 1884. 
 
METAMOKPHOSES OF HEEEDITY 49 
 
 from fifty to seventy-five per cent, of the cases ; further, that 
 the children of gouty parents show signs of articular gout at 
 an age when they have not assumed those habits of life and 
 peculiarities of diet which are commonly regarded as the 
 exciting cause of the disease. But gout also alternates with 
 neuropathic troubles. Bouchard, a French authority, is clear 
 upon this point ; he finds it intimately associated with in- 
 sanity, epilepsy, hypochondria, asthma, St. Vitus's dance, 
 etc. Various examples of this kind are given by Dejerine. 
 A man suffering from rheumatic gout, gravel, neuralgia, and 
 headaches engenders three children, of whom the first dies at 
 thirteen from meningitis, the second suffers from headaches 
 and fainting fits, and the third is subject to convulsions and 
 hysterical crises. In another case, the father, suffering from 
 eczema, dies suddenly (presumably from brain or heart disease, 
 the common cause of sudden death), the mother is hysterical, 
 and their children suffer from diabetes, consumption, sciatica, 
 hypochondria, and other evils. Per contra, any one of the 
 nerve diseases enumerated, from insanity downwards, may be 
 accompanied or followed in members of the same family by 
 gout or rheumatism. Suppressed gout may cause paralysis, 
 hallucinations, or attacks of mania. These troubles cease 
 when the gout returns to the joints. Gairdner, Lynch, and 
 other writers note affections of speech alternating with gout. 
 Fere has had under treatment a gouty subject in whom fits 
 of hypochondria preceded attacks in the joints and ended as 
 these began ; a son of the same patient escaped gout, but was 
 subject to hallucinations. Another individual known to Fere 
 suffered from violent explosions of temper, headaches, and 
 sciatica ; at thirty-three he was attacked by gout which was 
 followed by shaking palsy. In other cases gout is attended 
 by intellectual torpor, imbecility, or malformations. Asthma 
 is also of frequent occurrence in gouty families. 
 
 The interesting question remains : By what process is the 
 transformation of one nerve disease into another effected ? 
 Of late years the labours of Van Beneden, Hertwig, Weismann, 
 and others, have thrown some light upon this mystery and 
 have furnished a plausible explanation of the variations of 
 heredity. It is now well established that a young animal 
 
50 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 arises from the fusion within the female ovum or egg of an 
 extremely minute particle derived from its male parent. 
 The ovum is much larger than the male germ or speruia- 
 tozoon, but it contains a nucleus which is believed to be the 
 bearer of the hereditary characteristics. Technically, these 
 particles are termed the male pro-nucleus and the female 
 pro-nucleus, the body formed by their fusion being known 
 as the segmentation nucleus, which is, properly speaking, the 
 starting-point of every individual organism. 
 
 If the male and female particles were always combined in 
 equal proportions, and in precisely the same way, the young 
 animal would, no doubt, be an exact reproduction of its parents 
 in equal parts. But this is not so. There is a certain 
 amount of variability to be observed in the transmission of 
 characteristics, the young animal taking more after one 
 parent than another, and even throwing back in a greater 
 or less degree to more distant ancestors. The highest power 
 of the microscope does not reveal the exact composition of 
 the pro-nucleus supplied by each parent, though it has been 
 established that the double nucleus of the fertilised ovum is 
 accurately composed, half of female and half of male elements. 
 At this early stage the segmentation nucleus is not a homo- 
 geneous, structureless body, but is built up of different parts. 
 It contains extremely delicate threads, which are either coiled 
 up or intersect each other to form a network, the meshes 
 of which are filled up by a viscous substance ; and these 
 various parts evidently consist of molecules having, like those 
 of other matter, the property of self-adjustment. By a pro- 
 cess of division, cells, similar to those already existing, arise, 
 and these in turn also multiply by division. In course of 
 time the various cells arrange themselves into layers, and 
 from these are derived all the tissues and organs of the body. 
 Whether in the embryonic or the adult stage of life, there- 
 fore, every cell in the body is derived by descent from the 
 segmentation nucleus through repeated divisions. 
 
 It is clear that the segmentation nucleus embodies the 
 characters of both parents, and, in a lesser degree, of their 
 immediate ancestors, and observation of the offspring points 
 to the conclusion that in each successive act of generation 
 
THE ACT OF CONCEPTION 51 
 
 the admixture of parental and ancestral characters takes place 
 in different proportions. How this is effected the microscope 
 partly shows. Prior to the conjunction of the male and 
 female pro-nuclei in the segmentation nucleus, portions of 
 the germ-plasm are extruded from the egg, forming what are 
 called the polar bodies. This curious phenomenon Weismann 
 aptly explains on the hypothesis, that a reduction of the 
 number of ancestral germ-plasms in the egg is a necessary 
 step towards fertilisation and the development of the young 
 animal. He supposes that by the expulsion of the polar 
 bodies one-half the number of ancestral germ-plasms is re- 
 moved, and that the original bulk is restored by the addition 
 of the male pro-nucleus to that which remains. He further 
 supposes, though this is not proved, that a similar reduction 
 takes place in the ancestral elements of the male pro-nucleus. 
 As precisely corresponding molecules of this germ-plasm are 
 probably not expelled from each ovum or each male pro- 
 nucleus, similar germ-plasms need not be retained in each 
 case ; and thus diversities may be expected to arise between 
 the offspring of the same parents.^ 
 
 * Weismann : Biological Memoirs, ' On the Number of Polar Bodies 
 and their Significance in Heredity.' This theory covers the facts better 
 than any other hitherto put forward. The nuclear substance does not 
 appear to be sexually differentiated ; that is to say, it appears to be ]oretty 
 much the same in the male and female pro-nucleus — seeing that the 
 female germ-cell transmits the male characters of the ancestors of the 
 female quite as readily as the female characters, and that the male germ- 
 cell transmits the female quite as readily as the male characters of the 
 ancestors of the male. In all sexual eggs two polar bodies are observed. 
 The first is presumably a part of the nucleus which was required to com- 
 plete the growth of the egg, and which, once the growth is complete, 
 becomes superfluous. The second is believed to consist of germ-plasms, 
 bearing hereditary characteristics, by the removal of which from the egg, 
 the excessive accumulation of different kinds of hereditary tendencies is 
 prevented, and room made for the introduction of the male or sperm - 
 nucleus. It is an essential part of Weismann's theory that there should 
 be complete or approximate equality between the quantities of hereditary 
 substance derived from either parent. As to the germ-plasm of the offspring, 
 it follows that the latter can only contain half as much paternal germ- 
 plasm as was contained in the germ-cells of the father, and half as much 
 maternal germ-plasm as was contained in the germ-cells of the mother. 
 There is no room for more. With each succeeding generation the original 
 quantity of germ-plasm becomes reduced until it reaches the vanishing 
 point, its place being taken by due proportions of germ-plasm derived 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 By a suclden change after the entrance of one male cell, 
 the ovum usually ceases to be receptive. Occasionally, how- 
 ever, two spermatozoa are believed to enter. Twins thus 
 born of two germinal spots in the same ovum appear to be 
 invariably of the same sex, and amazingly like each other 
 in body and mind, whereas the resemblance between those 
 derived from separate ova is much less close. On the subject 
 of twins Galton has collected some interesting facts. The 
 father of two twins writes : — 
 
 ' Their general health is closely alike ; whenever one of 
 them has an illness the other invariably has the same within 
 a day or two, and they usually recover in the same order. 
 Such has been the case with whooping cough, chicken pox, 
 and measles ; also with slight bilious attacks, which they 
 have successively. Latterly they have had a feverish attack 
 at the same time.' 
 
 Another parent of twins says : — 
 
 ' If anything ails only one of them, identical symptoms 
 nearly always appear in the other ; this has been singularly 
 
 from more recent sources. Although the microscope has not yet revealed 
 a similar reduction of the germ-plasms of the male, the reduction, accord- 
 ing to Weismann, must, somewhere or somehow, occur, as otherwise the 
 number of male ancestral germ-plasms would be increased by one-half 
 at every fertilisation. ' If then,' continues Weismann, ' we consider how 
 numerous are the ancestral germs which must be contained in each 
 nucleus, and further, how improbable it is that they are arranged in pre- 
 cisely the same manner in all germ-cells, and finally, how incredible it is 
 that the nuclear thread should always be divided in exactly the same 
 place to form corresponding loops or rods, we are driven to the conclusion 
 that it is quite impossible for the reduction of the nucleus to take place 
 in an identical manner in all the germ-cells of a single ovary so that the 
 same ancestral germ-plasms should always be removed in the polar 
 bodies. But if one group of ancestral germ -plasms is expelled from one 
 egg and a different group from another es;g, it follows that no two eggs 
 can be exactly alike as regards their contained hereditary tendencies ; 
 they must all differ. In many cases the difference will only be slight, that 
 is when the egg contains very similar combinations of ancestral germ- 
 plasms. Under other circumstances the differences will be very great : 
 namely, when the combinations of ancestral germ-plasms contained in the 
 egg are very different. . . . According to my theory the differences 
 between the children of the same parents becomes intelligible in a simple 
 manner from the fact that each maternal, and presumably each paternal, 
 germ-cell contains a peculiar combination of ancestral germ-plasms, and 
 thus, also, a peculiar combination of hereditary tendencies.' 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF TWINS 53 
 
 visible in two instances during the last two montlis. Thus 
 when in London one fell ill with a violent attack of dysentery 
 and within twenty-four hours the other had precisely the 
 same symptoms.' 
 
 A medical man writes of twins : — 
 
 ' Whilst I knew them for a period of two years there was 
 not the slightest tendency towards a difference in body or 
 mind ; external influences seemed powerless to produce any 
 dissimilarity.' 
 
 The mother of the two other twins, after describing how 
 they were ill simultaneously up to the age of fifteen, adds 
 that they shed their first milk teeth within a few hours of 
 each other. Trousseau tells of twins having a remarkable 
 pathological resemblance. When one had an attack of 
 ophthalmia, the other in a distant town was simultaneously 
 attacked by the same disease. Moreau knew twins who were 
 not only so nearly alike as to be easily mistaken the one 
 for the other, but whose dominant ideas (they suffered from 
 monomania) were absolutely the same. They both considered 
 themselves subject to persecutions ; the same enemies had 
 sworn their destruction and employed the same means to effect 
 it. Both had hallucinations of hearing ; both were melan- 
 choly and morose. Being confined in different wards of the 
 same hospital (at Bicetre) they had no communication with 
 each other. Yet, from time to time, at irregular intervals, 
 without appreciable cause, and by the purely spontaneous 
 effect of their illness, a very marked change took place in the 
 condition of the two brothers. Both about the same time 
 roused themselves from their habitual stupor and prostration 
 and made the same complaints to the superintendent. The 
 same thing occurred when they were confined in different 
 asylums, one being at Bicetre, the other at St. Anne. Baume 
 ('Annales Medico-Psychologiques,' 1863) speaks of two 
 brothers, twins, who had nearly simultaneous attacks of in- 
 sanity, and who, being miles apart, dreamt a remarkable dream 
 on the same night and about the same hour (they believed 
 they were catching a thief who, a few days before, had robbed 
 a box containing their joint savings) ; during a subsequent 
 attack of insanity, one attempted to drown himself, and the 
 
54 THE IXSAXITY OF GENIUS 
 
 other, knowing nothing of the incident, actually did so. In 
 other cases it has been found that twins have both been born 
 ruptured, that they have suffered from toothache at the same 
 age and have had the same tooth extracted, that their hair 
 falls off at the same period, that identical diseases attack 
 both, and that they die at very nearly the same age and from 
 the same cause. It has already been shown that in life and 
 in a state of health the same ideas occur to both. 
 
 The observed facts of nerve disease carry us a little further 
 than the microscopic investigations of the physiologist. In 
 families where there arises some instability of nerve element, 
 we have seen how diverse are the forms it assumes from 
 simple neuralgia to insanity. The obvious conclusion is that 
 the symptoms of the evil vary according to the function of 
 the particular portion of the cerebro-spinal system which 
 happens to be morbidly affected. The change is, probably, 
 for the most part of a molecular character, undiscoverable by 
 the microscope. In pronounced cases of insanity and paraly- 
 sis, however, some actual deterioration of the brain-substance 
 is visible, and various organic disorders have been found 
 associated with an impaired condition of the spinal marrow. 
 How the metamorphoses of nerve disease are regulated it is 
 impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, to say.^ 
 They appear to be capricious, but as the facts of heredity con- 
 tinue to be observed and recorded in all their aspects it is 
 possible that some law will ultimately be evolved from the 
 existing confusion. 
 
 As already remarked, the earliest irregularity, the first 
 disturbance of the healthy equilibrium of the nervous system, 
 is probably the very common condition known as ' being out 
 of sorts.' There is a loss of nervous force, betraying itself in 
 headache, languor, want of appetite, impaired digestion, weak- 
 ness, excitability, and kindred symptoms, the result of mental 
 worry, business cares, want of exercise, insufficient sleep, im- 
 proper food, and excesses of all kinds. ' Being out of sorts ' 
 is sometimes said to be a disease of civilisation and to be most 
 commonly met with in great towns. This, however, is a 
 mistake ; it appears in all conditions of society. Where it 
 does arise it is apt, unless promptly checked, to become per- 
 
PLEASURABLE AND PAINFUL EMOTIONS 55 
 
 roanent, in which case it leads to an innate weakness or 
 nervous instability in the second generation. The operation 
 of congeDital causes of this kind is fully admitted by Weis- 
 mann in his theory of ' the Continuity of the Germ-plasm.' 
 Whether such a temporary condition as drunkenness in one of 
 the parents at the moment of conception could exercise an 
 injurious effect upon the child is not proved, although many 
 observations to that effect have been recorded. Chronic 
 alcoholism, however, does almost certainly afi'ect the nurture 
 of the germ-cells, and thus react disastrously upon the off- 
 spring. 
 
 Although most of the organic functions are withdrawn 
 from the control of the hemispheres we are made generally 
 conscious of anything being wrong in our systems. The 
 feeling of health is not the feeling of disease. ' That the 
 sensations of organic life,' says Ferrier, ^ are represented in 
 the cerebral hemispheres directly or indirectly is plain from 
 the extraordinary influence which states of the viscera exercise 
 on the emotional tone of the individual. Organic sensations 
 generally, with one or two exceptions, are, unless rising to 
 the pitch of painful intensity, obscure and non-localisable, and 
 the healthy or morbid psychological activity is expressed 
 subjectively as the vague and ill-defined feeling of well- or 
 ill-being. Whether the centres of organic sensation are fused 
 with those of tactile or common sensibility, or whether they 
 are specially represented in and through the optic thalami or 
 elsewhere, are all questions as yet unsolved. But, wherever 
 situated, they seem to be the foundation or universal back- 
 ground of pleasurable or painful emotions in general. As 
 healthy states of the viscera produce pleasurable feelings, and 
 morbid states of the viscera produce painful or depressing 
 feelings, so conversely, on the principle that the revived feel- 
 ing occupies the same parts as the original, pleasurable 
 emotions exalt and painful emotions" depress the vital func- 
 tions. Visceral derangements are frequently the cause and 
 always the accompaniment of melancholic depression/ 
 
56 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 RELATION OF GENIUS TO INSANITY — HALLUCINATIONS — DIVERSITY OF 
 FACULTY — THE LAW OF EXCESS AND DEFICIENCY OF BRAIN FUNC- 
 TION — EXTRAORDINARY POWERS OF IDIOTS AND MADMEN — ILLUS- 
 TRATIVE CASES— CHANGE OF CHARACTER FROM BRAIN DISEASE — 
 THE POETIC AND LITERARY FACULTIES OF THE INSANE — MAD 
 POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS — HALF GENIUSES — GENIUS AND INSANITY 
 COMBINED IN BLAKE 
 
 It is chiefly through insanity that a view can be obtained of 
 the workings of genius, and, from the facts I propose to bring 
 forward, it will be seen that the two conditions of mind have 
 much in common. The man of genius overflows with ideas ; 
 countless memories are stirred in his brain, and he discovers 
 combinations and affinities in facts, tones, and colours, that 
 lie beyond the scope of the ordinary mind. In all these ac- 
 jomplishments the madman is his equal. Both the man of 
 genius and the madman owe their characteristics of thought 
 and action to the excessive stimulation, the depression, or 
 the excitability of certain regions of their brain. The differ- 
 ence between them is hardly a question of degree of suscepti- 
 bility ; it is rather a question of area. As an exciting cause 
 in both cases, there may be an excessive or vitiated blood 
 supply to the affected portion of the brain, or the nerve-cells 
 and fibres of this portion may be naturally super-sensitive — 
 it is impossible to determine which. Genius frequently 
 merges into insanity, and insanity into genius, and both 
 are attended by a common train of functional disorders. For 
 it appears to be a law of Nature that excessive activity or 
 depression of one region of the brain or spinal system entails 
 a depression or an excessive activity of some other region, 
 with a consequent loss of healthy function, affecting either 
 the sensory or motor apparatus or the numerous channels 
 
SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS 57 
 
 tlirougli wlilcli the growtli and nutrition of the body are 
 regulated. All this will be seen from the investigation to 
 be made in subsequent chapters of the lives of great men 
 in all spheres of human activity. Genius, insanity, idiocy, 
 scrofula, rickets, gout, consumption, and the other members 
 of the neuropathic family of disorders, are so many different 
 expressions of a common evil — an instability or want of equi- 
 libriam in the nervous system. 
 
 There may be hallucinations of most of the senses with- 
 out any appreciable impairment of the reasoning faculties. 
 This is the explanation of the phenomena known as spectral 
 illusions — figures of persons or animals or inanimate objects 
 persistently occupying the patient's field of vision, although 
 he knows them to have no actual existence. It is commonly 
 thought that spectral illusions have no connection with 
 insanity, but there is no doubt that the local disorder of the 
 brain from which they arise would, if more widely extended, 
 produce insanity. As accompaniments of insanity, halluci- 
 nations of the senses are very frequent, particularly of the 
 sense of hearing, whereby the patient believes that he is 
 addressed by spirit voices. The most striking case on record 
 of hallucinations without insanity is prcbably that of Nicolai, 
 the Berlin bookseller. One day, while walking with his wife 
 and friend, Nicolai suddenly saw at a distance of ten paces 
 the figure of a deceased person. This, after causing him 
 great alarm, soon vanished, but afterwards he was assailed by 
 swarms of figures day and night. ' I saw,' he declared, in 
 a report made by himself to the Royal Society in Berlin, 
 'for almost two months constantly, and involuntarily, a 
 number of human, and other apparitions, and this while I 
 was in the full enjoyment of my senses, and even, after I had 
 overcome the terror which at first seized me, perfectly com- 
 posed in mind.' The apparitions consisted of human figures 
 of both sexes ; they commonly passed to and fro as if they 
 had no connection with each other like people at a fair, but 
 sometimes they appeared to converse. Once or twice he saw 
 among them persons on horseback, also dogs and birds. 
 They all appeared their natural size, and absolutely life-like. 
 Nicolai could not summon up the figures by an effort of will 
 
58 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 or imagination ; they came and went as they pleased. He 
 was attended night and day by two female spirits about 
 three feet in stature, and of brown complexion. *They 
 called each other by their names, and several spirits,' he 
 adds, ' would call at my chamber door and ask whether such 
 spirits lived there, and these would answer they did.' The 
 application of leeches to the patient's neck banished this 
 affliction, the figures becoming paler and paler until they 
 disappeared, and Nicolai was troubled with them no more. 
 Here there were hallucinations of hearing as well as of sight, 
 obviously the result of an excessive supply of blood to certain 
 areas of the brain. 
 
 In true insanity there is frequently a very general dis- 
 turbance of faculty, as is shown by the case of Kadinsky, a 
 physician of Moscow, who, having been insane for two years, 
 has left an interesting record of his symptoms. His illness, 
 he relates, began with an irregular mental activity, a head- 
 long race of thoughts, delusions, and dominant ideas, after 
 which came hallucinations of all the senses, except taste. 
 He felt abnormal pressure on the neck and other parts of 
 the body ; simple and co-ordinated sounds assailed his ears, 
 sparks floated before his eyes, and there was sometimes a 
 universal lighting up of the field of vision. Once he saw a 
 statue of white marble — a Venus in a stooping position. 
 After some seconds, the head of this figure seemed to fall off*, 
 exposing the muscles of the neck ; the head, moreover, when 
 it fell, broke, exposing the brain ; and the contrast between 
 the white marble and the red blood, adds the patient, was 
 especially striking. The equilibrium of the body was also 
 disturbed. The patient had a sense of rolling down a slope, 
 of being whirled round or thrown into the air, and of flying 
 through space. At other times it happened that to the 
 right eye the wall of the room seemed to be moving upwards, 
 while to the left eye^the opposite wall seemed to be moving 
 downwards, the painful feeling of a sundering of the brain 
 being thus produced. And all this while he was fully con- 
 scious of himself and able to take note of his abnormal im- 
 pressions. In epilepsy or falling sickness there is a violent 
 agitation of the motor centres, affecting successively different 
 
VARIETIES OF MEMOEY 69 
 
 groups of muscles; temporary delusions of the senses are 
 also produced, and the disease has a tendency to spread to 
 other regions of the brain, insanity being a frequent although 
 not an invariable result. It is observed that while hallucina- 
 tions of sight are not infrequent in sane people, hallucina- 
 tions of hearing are nearly always followed or accompanied 
 by insanity. Probably this arises from the relative situation 
 of the different centres of the brain. The visual centre 
 lying at the back of the head is far removed from the 
 supposed seat of what may be called the more intellectual 
 faculties, namely, the frontal lobes, while the auditory centre 
 is more forward and in greater proximity to that region. 
 It need hardly be said, however, that in insanity all the 
 senses are liable to derangement. Some lunatics eat the 
 most disgusting substances without the smallest incon- 
 venience. Others are utterly insensible to pain, and have 
 been known to wilfully hold their hand or foot in the fire 
 till it was burnt to a cinder. Others, again, constantly suffer 
 the sensation of smelling putrid matter. 
 
 Among ordinary persons there seems to be as much 
 diversity of faculty as there is of feature. Gal ton has col- 
 lected statistics showing that, among one hundred sane 
 people taken at haphazard, the power of mentally calling up 
 some past scene varies greatly.^ Some see vividly in their 
 mind's eye the breakfast table of the morning with each 
 object upon it distinct and properly coloured ; others find the 
 general image faint or misty and wanting in detail, while 
 others, again, appear to have almost no power of visualisation 
 whatever, but reconstitute the scene by an exhaustive process 
 of association. Here we have really examples of the different 
 kinds of memory to which reference has been made — memories 
 of sight, smell, taste, or movement, each depending upon the 
 efficiency of its particular centre in the brain. Some persons 
 possess an accurate appreciation of form without being able 
 to fill in a mental picture, in which case there is probably a 
 deficiency in the colour sense. Colour blindness is under- 
 stood to have its seat, not in the visual centre, but in the eye 
 itself, or in the nerves of the eye, whereby imperfect sensations 
 ' Galton : Inquiries into Human Faculty. 
 
60 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 are transmitted to the brain. When the visual centre is 
 highly developed, it is extremely responsive to impressions 
 made upon the other centres. Thus, a person so endowed, 
 on hearing a number pronounced, say the number ten, at 
 once sees it in outline before him ; numerals in certain minds 
 have even a habit of arranging themselves in geometrical 
 patterns. So with the sense of hearing. Sounds are asso- 
 ciated with particular colours. There is an old, and no 
 doubt a true story, of a man who always pictured to himself 
 the sound of a trumpet as red. 
 
 As to the law of excess and deficiency in brain-function, 
 it is observed in idiocy, which is due to the imperfect struc- 
 ture of the brain, that one faculty, either sight, hearing, 
 smell, taste, or touch, is occasionally extraordinarily acute. 
 ' The senses of many idiots and imbeciles,' says Ribot,^ ' are 
 unequally affected. The arrested development is not uniform 
 at all points. The sight may be remarkably good while the 
 other senses are obtuse, and a weakness of the memory in 
 general may coincide with an excessive development of some 
 portion of it. Certain idiots, insensible to every other impres- 
 sion, have a pronounced taste for music, and can retain an air 
 which they may have heard but once. Others (the case is 
 rarer), have a recollection of form and colour, and display an 
 aptitude for drawing. More frequently one may meet with 
 idiots having a special memory for figures, dates, proper 
 names, and words generally. Dr. Herzen informs me of a 
 Russian of Archangel who became imbecile at twenty-seven, 
 and who, of the brilliant faculties of his youth, retained only 
 an extraordinary memory, which enabled him to solve the 
 most difiicult problems in arithmetic and algebra, and repeat 
 word for word long poems after once hearing or reading 
 them.' Drobisch relates the following, of which he was an 
 eye-witness : — 'A boy of fourteen, who was almost an idiot, 
 had great difficulty in learning to read. He had, neverthe- 
 less, a marvellous faculty for remembering the order in which 
 words or letters were placed. If he had two or three minutes 
 to run over a page printed in a foreign language, or treat- 
 ing of questions of which he was ignorant, he was able to 
 ' Eibot : Les Maladies de la Menioire. 
 
EXCESS AND DEFICIENCY OF BEAIN FUNCTION 61 
 
 repeat the words from memory as correctly as if the book 
 had been lying before him.' ' There was,' says the Kev. 
 Henry Fearon, ' a man in my father's parish who could 
 remember the day when every person had been buried in the 
 parish for thirty-five years, and could repeat with unvarying 
 accuracy the name and age of the deceased and the mourners 
 at the funeral. But he was a complete fool ; outside the line 
 of burials he had not one idea, and could not give an intelli- 
 gible reply to a single question, or even be trusted to feed 
 himself.' 
 
 The reports of the Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind 
 make mention of a female deaf and blind mute, Julia Brace 
 by name, in whom the sense of smell was extraordinarily 
 keen. Anybody whom she had met before, she recognised by 
 smell. She knew all her acquaintances by the smell of their 
 hands, being able, in fact, to perceive and distinguish odours 
 unfelt by other persons. In sorting clothes that had come 
 for the wash, she could distinguish those of each friend. If 
 half a dozen strangers threw each his glove into a hat, 
 and the gloves were mixed, Julia would take them up, 
 and by means of smell alone assign them to their owners. 
 She could also tell brothers and sisters by smell. In the 
 same institution there was a blind boy in whom hearing was 
 carried to a wonderful pitch, and who was lent to a locksmith 
 on one occasion for an extremely delicate experiment. There 
 was an iron safe to be opened by means of a key, but to 
 avoid deranging the mechanism it was necessary to know 
 which one of ten bolts should be shot back. The bolt sought 
 for was longer than the others, and the locksmith argued 
 that if lifted by the key and allowed to fall without being 
 shot back, it would have a different sound from the others. 
 His ear, however, could detect no difference between the 
 different bolts. The blind boy being called in, listened as 
 the bolts were tried one after the other, and declared that 
 the sixth one struck a little the loudest. Upon this, the lock- 
 smith lifted and turned back the sixth bolt, and the lock was 
 opened without the combination being deranged. Maudsley 
 says : ' I have seen an imbecile in the Earlswood Asylum for 
 Idiots, who can repeat accurately a page or more of any book 
 
62 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 which he has read years before, even though it was a book 
 which he did not understand in the least ; and I once saw 
 an epileptic youth, morally irabecile, who would, shutting his 
 eyes, repeat a leading article in a newspaper word for word 
 after reading it once. I have also been informed of a similar 
 case in which the person could repeat backwards what he had 
 just read.' The late Mrs. Somerville, in her autobiography, 
 mentions two idiots, whom she had known, possessed of extra- 
 ordinary memories. The first never failed to go to kirk, and, 
 on returning home, could repeat the sermon word for word, 
 saying, ' Here the minister coughed .... here he stopped to 
 blow his nose.' The second idiot knew the Bible so perfectly 
 that, if you asked him where such and such a verse was to 
 be found, he could tell without hesitation, and repeat the 
 chapter. A female child, three and a half years of age, the 
 offspring of a paralytic father, that came under the treatment 
 of Brierre du Boismont, was subject to violent fits of rage 
 and caprice, but at the same time was intelligent far beyond 
 her years. Dr. Robert Jones, resident physician of Earlswood 
 Asylum, informs me that he has recently liad two imbeciles 
 under his care, of whom one could play any difficult piece of 
 music after once hearing it, and the other was able to repeat 
 word for word whole pages of Gibbon's ' Decline and Fall of 
 the Roman Empire.' A third idiot now in Earlswood possesses 
 an extraordinary arithmetical faculty, and another, great con- 
 structive ingenuity in making models of ships. 
 
 In insanity, where there is a wide disturbance of faculty, 
 the patient's general character undergoes a change. Wigan 
 tells of a gentleman who, by dint of long and exemplary 
 services, rose to a position of great importance, in which he 
 exercised a paternal control over his subordinates and was 
 much respected by all who knew him. Gradually, tov/ards 
 the age of sixty, this gentleman became garrulous and light 
 in his conversation, and the others in his office suspected him 
 of drinking. He had many rebuffs from the persons under 
 his command, but this in no degree changed the indecorous 
 levity of his conversation, which had formerly been remarkably 
 dignified and as reserved as was compatible with his excessive 
 benevolence of disposition. Months passed on, his language 
 
MORAL INSANITY 63 
 
 became gradually worse, and despite repeated warnings from 
 his employers lie sank at last into the most depraved 
 obscenity, which led to his dismissal. Not long afterwards 
 he died of brain disease. Without being positively insane, a 
 person may have what is called the ' insane temperament ' — 
 a condition characterised by singularities of thought, feeling, 
 and action. He is eccentric in his habits ; he does apparently 
 purposeless acts, and he is often either extremely obstinate or 
 given to violent fits of temper. With his children he is 
 usually severe ; it is the man of insane temperament who 
 cuts off his son with a shilling for some trifling peccadillo. 
 If not engaged in family quarrels he carries on a bitter feud 
 with a neighbour. The insane temperament rarely lands its 
 possessor in an asylum, but his children are apt to go there 
 or to suffer from some of the diseases which alternate with 
 insanity or follow in its train. ' Moral insanity ' — another 
 name given to the insane temperament — 'is,' says Forbes 
 Winslow, ' responsible for a vast amount of domestic discord, 
 disunion, and misery. It often co-exists with great talents 
 and high attainments, and is compatible with the exercise of 
 active philanthropy and benevolence.' It cannot, indeed, be 
 too emphatically urged that what is variously called moral 
 principle, the law-abiding instinct, or conscience, is largely 
 the result of constitutional causes over which we have no 
 control — a physical condition, which may be inherited in a 
 more or less perfect degree. 
 
 To the category of morbid inheritance belongs the case of 
 a ' rather sharp-looking lad,' described by Maudsley. ' He 
 could not hold his attention to anything, though very quick 
 in instant perception. He was, however, most ingenious in 
 mischief, and delighted to talk of playing some viciously 
 malicioua trick, in the imaginative description of which he 
 exulted in a braggart and grotesquely dramatic fashion, 
 chattering incessantly, and running from subject to subject 
 without any other connection than the unity of character 
 given them by the leading bent of his distinctive disposition. 
 Though he could tell stories of the events, and even minute ex- 
 periences of years back with surprising exactness of detail, he 
 had no perception of truth, but evinced an inexhaustible and 
 
64 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 uncontrollable craving for what might have been called lies 
 had his nature been in the least sensible to truth, but what 
 were really the constructions of a vivid and busy imagination 
 revelling in its vicious activity. His continual talk was 
 of killing persons or animals that had in any way offended 
 him or ruffled his prodigious self-conceit ; and he was ludi- 
 crously ferocious and boastful in his dramatic conceptions 
 and circumstantial descriptions of the grand way in which 
 he would do it. His father had died of what was called 
 softening of the brain soon after he was forty years old, 
 having been insane for some time before his death; his 
 paternal grandmother had died demented in an asylum at a 
 great age, having lived there for upwards of twenty years. 
 On his mother's side, also, there was insanity, and she her- 
 self, though not actually insane, was extremely excitable, and 
 a singularly insincere and shifty-minded person.' 
 
 Morally insane, also, was the man mentioned by Forbes 
 Winslow, who was discarded by his family for his gross and 
 inexplicable acts of impropriety, and who abandoned himself 
 without restriction to all kinds of debauchery, vice, and 
 profligacy, squandering, meanwhile, in the most reckless 
 manner, a fortune which he had obtained with his wife. At 
 the age of fifty he became clearly insane, and was placed in 
 confinement. The conduct of a clergyman, also known to 
 Forbes Winslow, had, for years, been marked by great eccen- 
 tricity and caprice before his insanity became sufficiently 
 acute to justify the interference of his friends. Yet, during 
 the whole time he wrote and preached capital sermons and 
 attended faithfully and zealously to all his parish duties. 
 Similar causes were responsible for the behaviour of a young 
 gentleman mentioned by the same writer, who, for a long 
 time, had been a cause of much unhappiness to his family. 
 ' He drank to a frightful excess, indulged in the society of 
 the most degraded, depraved, vicious men and women, and 
 squandered in a few years a splendid patrimony. He married 
 a respectable girl much below him in social rank and station, 
 whom he in a short time brutally ill-treated ; he then deserted 
 her and an infant child, leaving them both to the charity of 
 friends. Towards his own immediate family he manifested 
 
MORBID CHANGES OF CHARACTER 65 
 
 no kind of interest or affection. His father, who was a man 
 very advanced in years, was subjected to a murderous assault 
 on one occasion because he refused to attach his signature to 
 one of his son's reckless acceptances. The young man was 
 eventually accused of various acts of gross brutality as well 
 as of theft. There never was known such an instance of 
 accomplished vice and cold-blooded depravity.' His friends 
 did not think him insane, but a post-mortem examination 
 showed the enveloping membranes of the brain to have been 
 affected for years. A young man of good family, known to 
 Wigan,had an irresistible impulse whenever he passed a church 
 door during divine service to run into the organ loft and 
 play some well-known jocular tune attached, perhaps, to pro- 
 fane or indecent words. This he would do so suddenly that 
 it was impossible to prevent it before he had thrown the 
 congregation into confusion. He was always sorry for it, 
 and declared that he tried with all his might to prevent it. 
 In all other respects he was perfectly sane, but he was subject 
 to periodical epileptic fits, and the propensity was at last 
 observed to have some connection with the malady. For 
 several years this mild and equivocal form of mental distur- 
 bance continued ; the patient then entered into great sexual 
 excesses and sensual indulgence, and died of what his friends 
 called brain fever. A young lady patient of Maudsley's, who 
 became wilfully passionate, impulsive, eccentric, developed, 
 at the same time, an extraordinary vanity and was able to 
 write letters containing vigorous and clever remarks. 
 
 So much for the results of disease upon the general cha- 
 racter. Those of accident may be illustrated by a patient of 
 Forbes Winslow's, a tradesman, who fell from the top of an 
 omnibus in Oxford Street and suffered concussion of the 
 brain. ' For some hours after the accident he continued in a 
 state of semi-unconsciousness. At length he opened his eyes, 
 gazed listlessly around him and asked, '' Where am I ? What 
 has happened ? " In the course of a fortnight he was able to 
 resume his business. About twelve months afterwards, a 
 marked difference was observed in his character. He became 
 peevish and quarrelsome, discharging his principal clerk for 
 some trifling inaccuracies. A short time subsequently to this 
 
 F 
 
Q6 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 change being observed, he had, whilst in his country house, 
 an attack of epilepsy. His mind appeared clearer and more 
 composed than it was previously. He exhibited great self- 
 command and acuteness in matters of business and appeared 
 to be less irritated by family affairs. In about six weeks he 
 showed symptoms of mental depression, which were soon fol- 
 lowed by uncontrollable paroxysms of violent and furious 
 passion. He had a second epileptic seizure, and on recover- 
 ing from this fit a kindliness of disposition and affection again 
 showed themselves. The change in the state of his intellect, 
 and the altered condition of his emotions after each attack of 
 epilepsy, were remarkable.' Other recorded cases of epilepsy 
 show an alternation of extreme wickedness and extreme piety 
 in the same individual, both states being most probably due 
 to defective cohesions in the various centres. 
 
 Occasionally there is great intellectual activity produced 
 by the epileptic condition, which seems to be caused by a 
 wave of morbid excitement passing over the different cerebral 
 centres. There is then a wonderful aptitude to conceive 
 things quickly and to examine them under their most bril- 
 liant and poetical aspect. Previous to attacks of paralysis or 
 apoplexy, the sight or the hearing may become abnormally 
 acute, so that the patient sees objects at an unusual distance, 
 or is oppressed by such a slight sound as the humming of a 
 fly. Forbes Winslow had a patient who was able, while occu- 
 pying a room at the top of the house, to hear, with remarkable 
 clearness, the conversation taking place in the kitchen. ' In 
 another case,' says the same writer, ' a few hours prior to an 
 apoplectic seizure, a man remarked to his son that, when in 
 a distant part of the house, he could hear distinctly a con- 
 versation that was taking place in the dining-room at a time 
 when no one else could distinguish the sound of human 
 voices.' The quickening of the senses in hypnotism produces 
 intellectual effects of a surprising kind. Patients drawn from 
 the inferior classes throw themselves into suggested characters 
 and present them with a power and a truthfulness beyond, not 
 only their own waking capacity, but that of the most intelli- 
 gent and cultivated persons. Insane patients of little or no 
 education astonished Lombroso by the depth of their remarks 
 upon philosophical and scientific subjects. One, a tailor, 
 
MENTAL POAVERS OF THE INSANE G7 
 
 named Farino, placed in confinement for killing the mother 
 of a girl with whom he believed himself to be in love, wrote 
 a long, de-tailed, and extremely graphic accouLt of the crime. 
 Several members of his family were insane, aid he himself 
 was undoubtedly so. He was without the smallest literary 
 culture. Nevertheless, his memoir, quoted in full by Lom- 
 ]iroso, is a curious example of hallucinations existing side by 
 side with perfect reasoning powers and a consciousness of 
 right and wrong, and is marked, not only by clearness and 
 propriety, but even by eloquence of style, and shows in par- 
 ticular an extraordinary tenacity and correctness of memory 
 for the smallest events of bygone years. His reminiscences, 
 in fact, exhibit much greater variety and accuracy than would 
 those of an ordinary person of sound mind.^ 
 
 Forbes Winslow knew a gentleman who, whilst insane, 
 wrote an able, philosophical, and critical essay on ' Original 
 Sin.' It was found among his papers after death. He was, 
 when he penned the dissertation, under the delusion that 
 there was a family conspiracy to poison him. The same 
 writer declares that men, naturally most dull of apprehension, 
 in fact, nearly half-witted, exhibit both in the early and in 
 the advanced stages of insanity ' considerable intellectual 
 acuteness and capacity. . . . Mechanical ingenuity, acute 
 sense of hearing, seeing, and smelling, as well as wonderful 
 powers of adaptation to all possible physical conditions are 
 often observed among a certain class of the insane, utterly in- 
 capable of appreciating a rational idea.' Forbes Winslow 
 once attended a young man whose attack of insanity was sup- 
 posed to have been caused by ill-usage whilst at school. ' I 
 was informed,' he says, ' that this youth had never exhibited 
 any particular talent for arithmetic or mathematical inquiries ; 
 in fact, it was alleged that he was incapable of doing even a 
 simple sum of addition or multiplication. After his recovery 
 from the acute symptoms of his maniacal attack, and when he 
 was able to employ his mind in reading and conversation, it 
 was found that an extraordinary arithmetical power had been 
 evolved during his illness. He was able with wonderful 
 facility to solve several rather complex problems. This talent 
 ' Lombroso : Geiilo e Follla. 
 
 F 2 
 
CS THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 continued for several months, but after his complete restoration 
 to health, he relapsed into his former natural state of arithme- 
 tical dulness, ignorance, and general mental incapacity.' The 
 wife of a clergyman, also attended by Forbes Winslow, exhi- 
 bited during her paroxysms of maniacal excitement a won- 
 derful talent for rapid and clever versification. The disposition 
 to improvise was manifested mostly at night. After her re- 
 covery all capacity for rhyming appeared to subside. Previous 
 to her mental illness she had not exhibited the slightest 
 poetical inclination or ability. Van Svvieten speaks of a 
 w^oniau who, during her paroxysms of mania, showed a rare 
 facility for versification, though she had before been occupied 
 with manual labour and her understanding had never been 
 enriched by culture. He also quotes the case of a young 
 workman, who, never having dreamt of making verses, during 
 an attack of fever became a poet and was inspired. 
 
 In their lucid intervals, insane people speak of the clear- 
 ness of intellect they experience during their attacks. ' I 
 always awaited with impatience,' said a patient to Willis,' 
 ' the accession of the paroxysms of insanity, since I enjoyed 
 during their presence a high degree of pleasure. They lasted 
 ten or twelve hours. Everything appeared easy to me. No 
 obstacles presented themselves in theory or in practice. My 
 memory all of a sudden acquired a singular degree of per- 
 fection. Long passages of Latin authors occurred to my 
 mind. In general I have great difficulty in finding rhyth- 
 mical terminations, but then I could write in verse with as 
 much facility as in prose. I was cunning, malicious, and 
 fertile in all kinds of expedients.' ' The records of the wit 
 and cunning of madmen,' says Rush,^ ' are numerous in every 
 country. Talents for eloquence, poetry, painting, music, and 
 uncommon ingenuity in several of the mechanical arts are 
 often evolved in a state of madness. A gentleman whom I 
 attended in a hospital often delighted, as well as astonished, 
 the patients and officers by his displays of oratory in preach- 
 ing from a table in the hospital-yard every Sunday. A female 
 patient of mine, who became insane after parturition, sang 
 
 ' Francis Willis : A Treatise on Mental Derangement. 
 '^ Benjamin Rush : On the Diseases of the Mind. 
 
MENTAL POWERS OF THE INSANE G9 
 
 Iiymns and songs of her own composition during the latter 
 state of her illness with a tone and voice so soft that T hung 
 upon it with delight every time I visited her. She had never 
 discovered a talent for poetry or music in any previous part of 
 her life. Two instances of a talent for drawing evolved from 
 madness have occurred within my knowledge. And where is 
 the hospital for mad people in which elegant and completely 
 rigged ships and curious pieces of machinery have not been 
 exhibited by persona who never discovered the least turn 
 for a mechanical art previously to their derangements ? ' 
 W. W. Ireland knew a patient in an asylum who could not 
 talk reasonably on any subject, his speech being an incoherent 
 torrent of words, but w^ho was able to make an ingenious 
 snare for catching birds. 
 
 As a prelude to positive insanity, patients often feel 
 alarmed at the excessive rapidity of their thoughts. A 
 gouty patient told Wigan that, at times, there seemed to 
 be another person thinking with his brain, and telling him 
 things which he knew to be false, but which he had the 
 greatest difficulty to prevent himself from uttering as his own. 
 This gentleman's delusions became so pronounced that he 
 was in imminent danger of being removed to an asylum. At 
 this juncture the gout came out in his toe, whereupon his 
 brain was suddenly cleared of its delusions and his reasoning 
 powers became extraordinarily acute. ' In some preliminary 
 stages of insanity,' observes Oonolly, 'the patient displays an 
 unwonted vivacity of attention and an incredible activity of 
 memory. Nothing escapes him, every subject receives illus- 
 tration from his lips, his observations on common things 
 display unusual acuteness, his art is irresistible, and his 
 sentiments are exalted. He marvels within himself that he 
 is a master of such varied stores as are now revealed to him.' 
 Abercrombie treated a boy who suffered from nervous attacks 
 resulting in blindness, loss of speech, .and paralysis of the 
 right side. Meanwhile the patient's intellect was not affected, 
 but was ' extremely acute.' The same authority notes gene- 
 rally in the insane a ' fertility of imagination which changes 
 the character of the mind without remarkably distorting it. 
 The memory,' he adds, ' is even more ready than in health, 
 
70 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 ;ind old associations are called up with a rapir?ity qnite un- 
 known to the individual in his sound state of mind.' In a 
 case of insanity that came under Pritchard's care, the earlier 
 symptoms displayed by the patient, a commercial man, were 
 ' greater energy in business and more acuteness in buying 
 and selling.' Penel says : ' I ha.ve often stopped at the door 
 of a literary gentleman, who, during his paroxisms of insanity, 
 appeared to soar above his usual mediocrity of intellect, solely 
 to admire his newly-acquired powers of eloquence. He de- 
 claimed on the subject of the Revolution with all the force, 
 the dignity, and the purity of language that this very in- 
 teresting subject would admit of. At other times he was a 
 man of very ordinary abilities.' Lombroso had under his 
 care a poor woman who, in her insanity, developed a remark- 
 able faculty for drawing and embroidery, tracing butterflies, 
 which were so natural that they looked as if they had alighted 
 upon the fabric. Luys observes that patients under an attack 
 of mania will improvise, make quotations, associate ideas with 
 extreme rapidity, say witty things, make puns, and generally 
 perform mental feats of which they would have been incapable 
 in their ordinary state. A young butcher confined in Bicetre 
 asylum astonished his keepers by reciting whole speeches 
 from the ' Phedre ' of Racine. In a lucid interval he stated 
 that he had but once heard the tragedy in question and that, 
 despite his efforts to recall it, he could not recite a single 
 verse. One of De Quincey's friends, Charles Lloyd, who had 
 attacks of insanity, in one of which he died, was a most in- 
 teresting talker. And ' the splendour of his talk,' says De 
 Quincey, ' was quite hidden from himself, he was as free from 
 vanity or even complacency in reviewing what he had done 
 as it is possible for a human creature to be.' On the other 
 hand, the vanity of the insane may be excessive. An insane 
 volume of poems was published in Brussels in 1839; its 
 author, an undoubted lunatic, observed in his preface, ' A 
 man who writes on subjects as vast as these here treated ought 
 to be possessed of all human knowledge. Such a man am I ; 
 my works prove it, and by my works I desire to be judged.' 
 This gentleman at the same time, like many sane people of 
 the same type, disclaimed all idea of vanity. 
 
MENTAL POWERS OF THE INSANE 71 
 
 The journals composed and printed by tlie inmates of 
 lunatic asylums in different European countries abound in 
 poems, articles, and scientific speculations of a high order of 
 merit, proving the truth of the remark of Nathaniel Lee, the 
 * mad poet,' himself long an inmate of Bedlam, that ' it is 
 difficult to write like a madman though it may be easy enough 
 to write like a fool.' Of the literature of the insane in Italy, 
 Lombroso gives numerous examples, and Octave Delepierre 
 has collected many curious facts bearing on this subject from 
 France, Germany, and America, as well as England.^ There 
 are not a few literary madmen — unquestionable lunatics — 
 known to history. Nathaniel Lee, whose compositions were 
 praised by Addison, wrote poems and tragedies while confined 
 in Bedlam. Christopher Smart, a contemporary of Dr. John- 
 son's, confined as a dangerous lunatic, and deprived even of 
 pens and ink, wrote a long poem on the walls of his cell with 
 the aid of a key. It was in honour of King David, and the 
 following verses will give an idea of its nobility and elevation 
 of style : — 
 
 He sang of God — the mighty source 
 Of all things — the stupendous force 
 
 On which all strength depends ; 
 From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes 
 All period, power, and enter[)rise 
 
 Commences, reigns, and ends. 
 
 Glorious the sun in mid career, 
 Glorious the assembled fires appear, 
 
 Glorious the comet's train ; 
 Glorious the trumpet and alarm, 
 Glorious the Almighty's outstretched arm, 
 
 Glorious the enraptured main. 
 
 Glorious, more glorious is the crown 
 Of him that brought salvation down 
 
 By weakness called the Son ; 
 He that stupendous truth believed, 
 And now the matchless deed 's achieved, 
 
 Determined, dared, and done. 
 
 Octave Delepierre : Histoire de la Llttcrature des Fous. 
 
72 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Thomas Lloyd, one of the notabilities of Bedlam in the early- 
 part of the present century, was an extraordinary compound of 
 vanity, malice, and poetic talent. He believed himself to be 
 the sublimest poet that the world had seen, and that he had 
 a universal acquaintance with ancient and modern languages, 
 science, history, and music. More than once his extraordinary 
 gifts secured his liberation, but he had always to be shut up 
 again, and, like Christopher Smart, died in confinement. 
 Here is a sample of his verse : — 
 
 When disappointment gnaws the bleeding heart 
 And mad resentment hails her venom'd darts ; 
 When angry noise, disgust, and uproar rude, 
 Damnation urge, and every hope exclude ; 
 These, dreadful though they are, can't quite repel 
 The aspiring mind that bids the man excel. 
 
 In 1811 London was surprised by the publication of a drama 
 by one Thomas Bishop, entitled ' Karanzzo's Feast ; or. The 
 Unfair Marriage : a tragedy founded on facts 2366 years ago, 
 and 555 years before the birth of Christ. In five acts, em- 
 bellished with sixteen descriptive plates by the first artists, 
 ancient and modern. Printed by George Smalton, and sold 
 by Hookham, and at the author's, 22 Clarges Street.' The 
 author divided his work into ' Prologue, epilogue, dirge, and 
 design,' and among his characters were the King of Babylon, 
 the King of Persia, Lord Strawberry, Dr. Pill, four queens, 
 Mrs. Hector, three savages, and five ghosts. In his preface 
 he took credit to himself for being the first writer to convey 
 to the public an exact idea of the characters, scenery, 
 weapons, etc., existing at the date of the action. Grotesque 
 as it was, the treatment of the subject was not without 
 ingenuity. The closing scene contained the following stage 
 directions. ' On one side a forest, part of which is dark. 
 Two sofas and the appearance of a clock. Three savages 
 in the distance.' 
 
 The case of a lawyer named Milman excited much atten- 
 tion in Pennsylvania at the beginning of the present century. 
 He went out of his mind on hearing that his bride had been 
 struck dead by lightning, and, whereas, before his insanity, 
 
MENTAL PO\ATi:ES OF THE INSANE 73 
 
 he had no literary aptitudes, after it he developed a very 
 pleasant talent for satire, humour, and description, and wrote 
 copiously. A similar change of capacity under similar cir- 
 cumstances is recorded of Luke Clennel, a painter and protege 
 of the Earl of Bridge water. In 1817, while engaged upon 
 an important picture for his patron, he suddenly lost his 
 reason. Being a violent lunatic he was shut up in a mad- 
 house, and here, curiously enough, he took to writing verses, 
 of which the following, addressed to the Evening Star, are a 
 specimen : — 
 
 Look ! What is it with twinkling light 
 That brings such joys serenely bright, 
 That turns the dusk again to light ? 
 'Tis the Evening Star ! 
 
 What is it with the purest ray, 
 That brings such peace at close of day, 
 That lights the traveller on his way 1 
 'Tis the Evening Star ! 
 
 About the same period a farm labourer of Northamptonshire 
 attracted attention by his verses. A volume of his was pub- 
 lished in London in 1825. Soon afterwards he became 
 insane, but in the asylum he retained all his talent for versi- 
 fication and rhythm. His memory was astonishing. He 
 seemed to assimilate everything that he read or heard, 
 picturing events so vividly in his mind that he related them 
 afterwards as if he had seen and taken part in them. Of the 
 execution of Charles I. he believed himself to have been an 
 eye-witness, and he was accustomed to tell most graphically 
 his pretended experiences of the battle of the Nile and of the 
 death of Nelson. 
 
 As there have been poets, so there have been philosophers 
 undoubtedly mad. The scientific world was much perplexed 
 in 1529 by the publication at Florence of a treatise on the 
 anatomy of language. This proved to be the work of a 
 doctor, one Joseph Bernardi, an inmate of a lunatic asylum. 
 The author's contention was that the whole race of monkeys 
 possessed the faculty of speech, but were too well advised to 
 employ it; and he sustained his views with such ability 
 
74 TITE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 as to call forth from a Jesuit Father a refutation of them, 
 based upon Scripture. In 102 2 an insane professor of Sala- 
 manca, Miguel de Flores, published an ingenious theory of 
 the universe, according to which the Supreme Being occu- 
 pied the centre of creation with all matter moving round him 
 in concentric circles. And some accompanying engravings 
 showed the Deity working the universe by the mechanical 
 action of his arms and legs. In this country, at different 
 periods, nonsensical books on scientific subjects, showing 
 much misdirected ingenuity, have been put forth with every 
 appearance of good faith on the part of their authors. The 
 more curious among these, perhaps, are Thomas Wirgman's 
 ' Devarication [_sic] of the New Testament,' and ' Grammar of 
 the Five Senses,' published in the time of George III. ; and 
 William Martin's ' New System of Natural Philosophy on the 
 Principle of Perpetual Motion,' dating from 1821. There 
 was a scintilla of genius in Martin's family, his brother 
 being the painter John Martin. 
 
 Many men who might be described as half-geniuses 
 are known to history — men extraordinarily gifted, but too 
 insane to turn their gifts to proper account. Such was 
 George Burges, the college friend of Bulwer Lytton, who 
 astonished people by his cleverness and oddity, and of whom 
 some account is given by Lord Lytton in his biography of 
 the author of ' Pelham.' ' While still an undergraduate at 
 Trinity he published an edition of Euripides, with a preface 
 and critical notes in Latin, which astonished by its excellence 
 the best Greek scholars of the time, and raised the highest 
 expectations of his future achievements as a Hellenist. . . . 
 After leaving the University he was known chiefly by the 
 eccentricities of his conduct and the absurdity of his specu- 
 lations. He used to drive about London in a two-horsed 
 vehicle of peculiar shape, the panels of which were painted 
 with hieroglyphics, emblematical of his views as to the origin 
 of language. He started two coaches, which plied up and 
 down the New Road, and he inscribed upon his visiting cards, 
 " Mr. George Burges, ap^aToiroios " (coachbuilder). He in- 
 vested a large sum of money in the construction of a huge, whale- 
 shaped machine for the aerial conveyance of passengers from 
 
HALF-GEXIUSES 75 
 
 Dover to Calais. He invented a coat fastened only by a single 
 button in the centre of the back, and wore it in the streets of 
 London, where it attracted general notice, but none of those who 
 chanced to see him in his model dress were induced to adopt it. 
 He then set up as the maker of a new kind of stays, which 
 he called corsets a la Venus, and he frightened and offended 
 some of the leading ladies of fashion by the earnestness with 
 which he requested their permission to try this invention 
 upon them. About this time he married, perhaps in order 
 that the corset d la Venus might have at least one fair trial 
 under his personal superintendence. Matrimony, or the ill- 
 success of his other occupations, disposed him again to 
 authorship, and he wrote an unreadable play called " The 
 Sin of Erin ; or. The Cause of the Greeks," which he pub- 
 lished with a dedication from " George Burges to George 
 Byron," greatly to the annoyance of the poet. His next 
 experiment was a series of public lectures upon ancient 
 and modern literature. In the course of these lectures he 
 asserted that the pyramids have a foundation exactly corre- 
 sponding in shape, as well as in size, with the above-ground 
 portion of them (a foundation consisting, in short, of an 
 inverted underground pyramid), and he sang to the tune of 
 " Malbrook," the 6sXco Xsyscv 'ArpslSas of the pseudo-Ana- 
 creon. His Greek, indeed, overflowed on every occasion. 
 His knowledge of it was extraordinary, and he especially 
 loved to exercise his fertile ingenuity in amending the text 
 of the Greek dramatists — emendations marked by the same 
 kind of wild invention which distinguished his innovations in 
 dress and carriages. His lectures on literature shared the 
 fate of all his projects. They were neither popular nor re- 
 munerative, notwithstanding the apparent attractiveness of 
 the following advertisement : 
 
 ^ " Good and Cheap Food, 
 * " Witlwut Ruin to the Farmers. 
 
 ' " The nobility and gentry in and out of Parliament, and 
 now nearly ruined by the awful depression of the landed 
 interest, are respectfully informed that Mr. George Burges, 
 M.A. of Trinity College, Cqimbridge, will, in his seventh 
 
76 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 lecture, detail an easy plan by which his Majesty's ministers 
 may, if they will, increase the revenue a million sterling 
 annually, and so improve the soil of England as to enable it 
 to feed sixty millions of mouths on cheaper and better bread 
 than can be grown upon, or imported from, any other part of 
 the globe." 
 
 ' In the meanwhile his fortune had vanished into the 
 coaches, the flying machines, the corsets d la Venus, and other 
 creations of his genius, and for some years he earned a scanty 
 subsistence by teaching and by drudgery work for the book- 
 sellers. In this long period of toil and penury, with a wife and 
 family to maintain, his buoyant hilarity and self-complacency 
 triumphed over his fits of depression at every monetary 
 gleam which broke in upon his burdened existence. In 
 1856 a legacy from a friend and the assistance of Bishop 
 Blomfield saved him from absolute destitution, and he then 
 settled with his wife at Ramsgate, where they kept a lodging- 
 house, and where he died soon afterwards from the effects of 
 a paralytic stroke.' Theology has also had its share of 
 visionary geniuses, some of whom, like Mahomet, Luther, 
 and John Bunyan, have exercised an influence in the world, 
 entitling them to be placed in somewhat better company than 
 the foregoing. 
 
 Quite on the borderland of genius and insanity stands 
 William Blake, the contemporary of Charles Lamb. Blake, 
 who was the son of a hosier and of stunted growth, developed 
 in his youth a genius for art and poetry. As a boy in his 
 father's shop he drew pictures on the counter, and wrote 
 poetry on the backs of the bills. He was moody and mystical, 
 living a life of dreamy abstraction. He had hallucinations 
 of hearing ; celestial voices seemed to call him. He took to 
 engraving as a means of livelihood, but he wrote poetry 
 copiously, turning out between his twelfth and fifteenth year 
 no fewer than seventy pages of verse. By-and-by, hallucina- 
 tions of sight beset him. Historical figures of poets, heroes, 
 and princes swarmed around him. These he mistook for 
 reality, and he gave out that his designs were not the work 
 of fancy, but revelations made to him in visions which he was 
 commanded by celestial voices to publish. He held consulta- 
 
GENIUS AND INSANITY COMBINED 77 
 
 tions witli the spirit of his deceased brother, and from him 
 obtained, as he said, a valuable art secret — the truly beautiful 
 and original method he employed in the engraving and 
 tinting of his plates. The spirit also counselled him as to 
 the treatment of one of his best known and most successful 
 works, ' Days of Innocence.' ' Write,' said the spirit, ' the 
 poetry and draw the designs upon copper, with a certain 
 liquid (which he named and which Blake ever kept a secret), 
 then cut the plain parts of the plate down with aquafortis, 
 and this will give the whole, both poetry and figures in the 
 manner of the stereoscope.' ' The Gates of Paradise,' another 
 of Blake's works, although ambitious in scope, is quite in- 
 comprehensible. It consists of twenty-seven designs, ex- 
 tracted, possibly, from many visions, and seems to embody 
 the fall of Lucifer and the creation of man ; but, in truth, all 
 that can be truly said of it is that it swarms with fantastic 
 figures, human, demoniac, and divine. In a letter written 
 by the artist to Flaxman in 1800 he says : — 
 
 ' I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could 
 well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled 
 with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and printed in 
 ages of eternity — before my mortal life, and these works are 
 the delight and study of archangels. Why, then, should I be 
 anxious about the riches or fame of mortality ?' 
 
 Moses, Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, were Blake's 
 constant companions in visions. When asked how these 
 great men looked, he answered : ' They are all majestic 
 shadows, gray, but luminous, and superior to the common 
 height of men.' ' Did you ever see a fairy funeral, Madam ? ' 
 he once asked a lady in company. ' Never, sir,' was the 
 answer. ' I have,' said Blake, ' but not before last night. I 
 was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness 
 among the branches and flowers, and more than common 
 sweetness in the air. I heard a low and pleasant sound, and 
 knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad leaf of a 
 flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures 
 of the size and colour of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing 
 a body laid out on a rose leaf, which they buried with songs 
 and then disappeared. It was a fairy's funeral.' 
 
78 THE INSANITi' OF GENIUS 
 
 Subsequently to this period, he designed an extravagant 
 and incomprehensible work called ' Jerusalem,' embodying 
 aspects of earth and heaven. Plate after plate is meaningless 
 as a whole, yet many of the figures looked at from the point 
 of view of form and effect belong to the highest art, being 
 marked by wonderful freedom of attitude and position. 
 Others of his works, if less ludicrous, are quite as natural 
 and poetic, so that it is impossible to deny to Blake the 
 possession of true artistic genius. Curiously enough, he be- 
 lieved the spirit of Titian to be the evil genius of art, and 
 professed to suffer from his persecutors. Blake drew visions 
 for his friends. Sometimes a shape was long in appearing, 
 and he sat with his pencil and paper ready, and his eyes idly 
 roaming in vacancy. All at once the desired vision would 
 come upon him, and he would work like one possessed (as 
 indeed he was). .A friend asked him to sketch the figure 
 of William Wallace. He consented, and there was a pause. 
 At length ' There, there ! ' he exclaimed, ' I see him now. 
 How noble he looks ! Reach me my things.' Having draw^n 
 for some time with a careful hand and steady eye, as if a living 
 sitter were before him, the artist stopped suddenly, saying 
 ruefully, ' I cannot finish it. Edward I. has just stepped in 
 between him and me.' ' That's lucky,' said his friend, ' for I 
 want the portrait of Edward too.' Blake took another sheet 
 of paper and sketched the features of the Plantagenet king, 
 whereupon his ^lajesty vanished, and the head of Wallace 
 was then duly finished. The informant of Allan Cunning- 
 ham, from whose life of Blake I have been quoting,^ saw 
 these pictures. They represented two warlike heads of the 
 size of common life. That of Wallace was noble and heroic, 
 that of Edward stern and bloody. 
 
 On one occasion Blake sketched the ghost of a flea which 
 appeared to him. ' I felt convinced,' relates Varley, who saw 
 the artist make the drawing, * by his mode of proceeding, 
 that he had a real image before him ; for he left ofi*, and 
 began on another part of the paper to make a separate 
 drawing of the mouth of the flea, the opening of which 
 
 ' Allan Cunningham : Lives of British Painters, Sculjjturs, and Archi- 
 tects. 
 
GENIUS AND INSANITY COMBINED 79 
 
 prevented him from proceeding with the first sketch for 
 the time being.' Sometimes Blake desired to see a spirit 
 in vain. ' For many years,' he said, ' I longed to see Satan. 
 I could never believe he was the vulgar fiend our legends 
 represent him to be. I imagined him a classic spirit, with 
 some of his original splendour about him. At last 1 had 
 my wish. I was going down stairs in the dark, when sud- 
 denly a light came streaming amongst my feet. I turned 
 round, and there he was, looking fiercely at me through the 
 iron grating of my staircase window. I called for my 
 things. My wife (for Blake was married to a woman who 
 loved him and believed in him) thought a fit of song was on 
 me, and brought me pen and ink. I said, " Hush ! Never mind, 
 this will do." As he appeared so I drew him.' ' Upon this,' 
 says the biographer's informant, ' Blake took out a piece of 
 paper with a grated window sketched on it, while, through 
 the bars, glared the most frightful phantom that ever man 
 imagined. Its eyes were large and like live coals ; its teeth 
 were as long as those of a harrow, and the claws were 
 such as might appear in the disturbed dream of a clerk in 
 the " HerakTs " office.' ' It is the Gothic fiend of our legends,' 
 said Blake, ' all others are apocryphal.' Another friend of 
 Cunningham's once called on Blake, and found him sitting, 
 pencil in hand, and drawing a portrait with all the seeming 
 anxiety of a man who is conscious of having a fastidious sitter. 
 He looked and drew, and drew and looked, yet no living soul 
 was visible. ' Disturb me not,' said Blake in a whisper. 
 ' I have someone sitting to me.' ' Sitting to you,' exclaimed 
 the astonished visitor, ' where is he ? I see no one.' ' But I 
 see him,' answered Blake, haughtily. ' There he is, his name 
 is Lot ; you may read of him in the Scriptures. He is sitting 
 for his portrait.' 
 
 As Cunningham rightly observes, ' Had Blake always dealt 
 with such visionary matters, he would have no claim to be a 
 man of genius, some of whose works are worthy of any age 
 or nation.' Even while indulging in these hallucinations, he 
 drew and engraved one of the noblest of all his productions, 
 the ' Inventions of the Book of Job.' His poems, too, are, 
 
60 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 some of them, admirable. His ' Songs of Innocence ' are intro- 
 duced with the following pretty verses : — 
 
 Piping down the valleys wild, 
 Piping songs of pleasant glee, 
 On a cloud I saw a child. 
 And he, laughing, said to me — • 
 
 ' Pipe a song about a lamb ; ' 
 So I piped with merry cheer. 
 
 * Piper, sing that song again ; * 
 So I piped— he wept to hear. 
 
 * Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe, 
 Sing the songs of happy cheer ; 
 So I sang the same again 
 While he wept with joy to hear. 
 
 * Piper, sit thee down and write 
 In a book that all may read.' 
 So he vanished from my sight 
 And I plucked a hollow reed. 
 
 And I made a rural pen. 
 And I stained the water clear, 
 And I wrote my happy songs 
 Every child may joy to hear. 
 
 Blake died at seventy-one, childless. He was too flighty 
 and eccentric to attain a commanding position as an artist, 
 but his imagination undoubtedly glowed with what is called 
 the ' divine fire.' 
 
 •( ?h 
 
81 
 
 CHAPTER TV 
 
 EXAMPLES OF MEN OF LETTERS LAPSING INTO OR APPROACHING 
 INSANITY— SWIFT, JOHNSON, COWPER, SOUTHEY, SHELLEY, BYRON, 
 CAMPBELL, GOLDSMITH, CHARLES LAMB, WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, 
 ROUSSEAU, CHATTERTON, PASCAL, CHATEAUBRIAND, GEORGE SAND, 
 TASSO, ALPIERI, EDGAR ALLAN POE, ETC. 
 
 Among English men of letters and poets who have become 
 actually insane, or who have had hallucinations and idiosyn- 
 crasies characteristic of insanity, may be mentioned Swift, 
 Johnson, Cowper, Southey, Shelley, Byron, Campbell, Gold- 
 smith, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, and Edgar Allan 
 Poe, with whom may be coupled, among foreign writers, 
 Rousseau, Pascal, Chateaubriand, Tasso, Silvio Pellico, and 
 Alfieri. Swift has been harshly judged by those who regard 
 genius and wisdom as interchangeable terms. There was 
 certainly much eccentricity, and even cruelty, in his conduct, 
 especially in his treatment of the two hapless women g^jprp 
 known as Stella and Vanessa, to whom he held out 
 delusive hopes of marriage, but he was never quite respon- 
 sible for his actions. His insanity was congenital. A 
 paternal uncle, Gordon Swift, was ' seized with lethargy, lost 
 both speech and memory, and died insane,' and Swift, from, 
 his boyhood, was full of crazy impulse. At Dublin Univer- 
 sity he led a wild, vicious life, for which he was severely 
 censured by the academical authorities. The same irresponsi- 
 bility marked his conduct as a man, and from his correspon- 
 dence and other sources we learn that he suffered at various 
 times from giddiness, deafness, impaired sight, muscular 
 twitchings, and paralysis of the muscles of the right side of 
 the mouth — all symptoms of brain disease. He had violent 
 explosions of temper, and sometimes addressed strangers in 
 an abrupt and enigmatical fashion. Before he became a 
 
 >lS^o| 
 
82 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 celebrity, he astonished the frequenters of Button's coffee- 
 house by the singularity of his actions, and was known for a 
 time as the ' mad parson.' He was always haunted by the 
 dread of going out of his mind. On one occasion, observing 
 by the wayside an elm that had been blasted by lightning, 
 he said to a friend, ' I shall be like that tree, I shall die at 
 the top.' As old age approached, his condition worsened. 
 He developed violent mania, and had to be placed under a 
 keeper. Some time before his death, however, he lapsed 
 into a state of imbecility, in which he is said to have kept 
 silence for months together. A post-mortem examination 
 revealed extensive serous effusion upon the brain and also 
 softening of the cerebral substance. 
 
 Ninety years after Swift's death, that is to say in 1835, 
 his bones were exhumed in the course of some alterations 
 made in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and the skull was 
 then found to present abnormal characteristics. ' The con- 
 dition of the cerebral surface of the whole of the frontal 
 region,' said a medical man who examined the skull, ' is of a 
 character indicating the presence during life of diseased action 
 in the subjacent membranes of the brain. The skull in this 
 region is thickened, flattened, and unusually smooth and 
 hard in some places, whilst it is thinned and roughened 
 in others. The marks of the vessels on the bone exhibit, 
 moreover, a very unusual appearance ; they look more like 
 the imprints of vessels which had been generated de novo in 
 connection with some diseased action, than as the original 
 arborescent trunks. The impressions of the middle arteries 
 of the dura mater (an enveloping membrane of the brain) are 
 unusually large and deep, and the branches of those vessels, 
 which pass in the direction forwards, are short and thick, and 
 terminate abruptly by dividing into an unusual number of 
 minute twigs, whilst those of the same trunks that take their 
 course backwards are long and regular, and of graduated size 
 from the beginning to the end of their course. . . . The 
 internal parts corresponding to the frontal protuberances were 
 unequal in concavity.' ^ From the peculiar formation of the 
 
 * Wilde : Closing Years of Dean Swiff s Life. 
 
SWIFT AND JOHNSON 83 
 
 skull, the cerebellum, it was thought, must have been 'ex- 
 ceedingly small.' ^ 
 
 As the cerebellum has since been shown to be the centre 
 for movements connected with the equilibrium, we have in 
 this circumstance, no doubt, an explanation of those fits of 
 giddiness of which Swift constantly complained in his corre- 
 spondence. ' A sudden tarn at any time,' he wrote, ' makes 
 me feel giddy for a moment' — showing a deficiency in the 
 balancing mechanism. His giddiness began, according to 
 his own account, at the age of twenty-three ; his deafness a 
 few years later. As he died at seventy-eight, he suffered 
 from active brain disease for over fifty years — an unusually 
 long period. Wilde concludes from Swift's treatment of 
 Stella and Vanessa, that he was constitutionally incapable 
 of any passion stronger than friendship. 
 
 From his father Dr. Johnson inherited ' a vile melan- 
 choly,' which, to borrow his own words, made him ' mad all 
 his life, or, at least, not sober.' This parent was a Dr. 
 Lichfield bookseller of obscure extraction ; John- Johnson 
 son's mother, according to Boswell, was a woman of ' dis- 
 tinguished understanding.' There was a second sou of the 
 marriage, Nathaniel, who died in his twenty-fifth year. At 
 twenty, Johnson was in a state of ' perpetual irritation, fret- 
 fulness, impatience, dejection, gloom, and despair.' P'rom 
 hypochondria he was never afterwards free. He suffered, 
 likewise, from convulsive cramps and scrofula — a well-known 
 concomitant of nerve disorder — and he had the use of only 
 one eye, though the other was very little different in appear- 
 ance. On one occasion he had a paralytic seizure, which 
 deprived him for the time being of speech, and in this state 
 he wrote a prayer entreating the Almighty to allow him, as 
 long as he should live, the enjoyment of his uuderstanding. 
 The dread of insanity haunted Johnson as it did Swift, and 
 he must sometimes have been on the Yery brink of mental 
 derangement. Upon his other disorders hallucinations of 
 hearing supervened. ' One day at Oxford,' says Boswell, 
 ' as he was turning the key of his chambers, he heard his 
 mother distinctly call " Sam," although she was then at 
 
 ' Wilde. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE INSANI^rY OF GENIUS 
 
 Lichfield.' So morbid was Johnson's constitution, that he 
 ' never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of 
 his limbs.' Concerning his hj^pochondria, Boswell naively 
 remarks : ' How wonderful, how inscrutable are the ways of 
 God ! Johnson, who was blest with all the powers of genius 
 and understanding, in a degree far above the ordinary state 
 of human nature, was, at the same time, visited with a dis- 
 order so athictive, that they who know it by dire experience 
 will not envy him his exalted endowments. . . . Insanity 
 was the object of his most dismal apprehension, and he 
 fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to it, at the very 
 time when he was giving proofs of more than ordinary sound- 
 ness and vigour of judgment.' The complaint that carried 
 Johnson off was asthma, attended with dropsy. 
 
 The ancestry of Cowper was distinguished on both sides. 
 It must, however, have been corrupt in an equal degree, 
 Cowper i^^^smuch as symptoms of mental derangement de- 
 clared themselves in the poet in his boyhood. His 
 father, a clergyman, was a son of Justice Cowper, and nephew 
 of the first Earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor ; his mother, Anne, 
 boasted a connection with several noble houees, and could 
 trace her descent from Henry III. Which parent was the 
 more responsible for the transmission to Cowper of his 
 insanity, and with this of his genius, it is now impossible to 
 say. Nor is the point material, seeing that the neurotic 
 condition of the poet speaks for itself and does not require 
 to be established by collateral evidence. South ey states that 
 Cowper's father and uncle could both write verses — an 
 ominous gift! while his mother died at the early age of 
 thirty-four, so that there was probably a condition of nervous 
 unsoundness in both parents. 
 
 At eight or nine years of age, Cowper was threatened 
 with loss of sight ; the progress of the disease was stopped, 
 but his eyes remained liable to inflammation all his life. At 
 twenty-one, when Cowper was studying for the bar, he fell 
 into melancholia. ^ Day and night,' he says in his autobio- 
 graphical notes, ' I was upon the rack, lying down in horror 
 and rising up in despair This state of mind con- 
 tinued near a twelvemonth, when, having experienced the in- 
 
COWPER 86 
 
 efficiency of all human means, I, at lengtli, betook myself to 
 God in prayer.' Throughout his life Cowper's hallucinations 
 had a strong religious colouring. The long fit of depression 
 above referred to ended as suddenly as it began. He was 
 walking one day on the cliffs at Southampton. 
 
 ' On a sudden,' he says, ' as if another sun had been 
 Mndled at the instant in the heavens on purpose to dispel 
 sorrow and vexation of spirit, I felt the weight of all my 
 misery taken off me. My heart became light and joyful in a 
 moment.' 
 
 Such lightning-like changes of mood are frequent in 
 insanity, and, however subtle they may seem, are known to 
 be dependent upon strictly physical conditions. In another 
 year Cowper's melancholia returned with redoubled force, 
 inspiring him, to use his own words, with the ' dark and 
 hellish purpose of self-murder.' His attempts at suicide are 
 detailed with curious minuteness in his autobiographical 
 sketches.' First he bought laudanum. This was when be 
 was twenty-two and already writing poetry. ' The apothe- 
 cary of whom I bought the drug,' he says, ' seemed to 
 observe me narrowly, but if he did I managed my voice and 
 countenance so as to deceive him.' Here we have a good 
 example of the madman's cunning; and another marked 
 characteristic of insanity is disclosed in a subsequent hallu- 
 cination. He kept the poison in his pocket for some time, 
 but one day, happening to read a letter in a paper which he 
 took up in a coffee-house, a strange sensation came over him. 
 *The author seemed to be acquainted with my purpose of 
 self-destruction, and to have written that letter in order to 
 secure and hasten the execution of it.' Flinging down the 
 paper he rushed out to seek a convenient spot for suicide, 
 but before he had gone far the idea occurred to him 
 that he would go to France and enter a monastery. He 
 accordingly went home to the Temple -and prepared for his 
 departure. Again his mind changed, and the suicidal im- 
 pulse once more possessed him. He called a cab and drove 
 to the Tower Wharf, intending to throw himself into the 
 river from the Custom House Quay, but on arriving there he 
 * Southey : Life of CowjJer. 
 
86 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 ' found the water low, and a porter seated upon some goods 
 as if on purpose to prevent him.' Returning to his chambers 
 in the Temple, he tried to take the laudanum, but could not 
 bring himself to do so, and the same irresolution defeated 
 his efforts to cut his throat. Hanging was his next thought. 
 He fastened a thong to his bedroom door, looped it round 
 his neck as he stood upon a chair and then threw himself 
 into space. As he did so he distinctly heard a voice say 
 three times, ' 'Tis over.' The voice, however, was mis- 
 taken. The frenzied poet hung by the neck until he lost 
 consciousness, and his next impression was finding himself 
 lying face downwards upon the floor ; the thong had 
 broken. 
 
 After this providential escape Cowper abandoned the idea 
 of suicide, though ' a frequent flashing like that of fire before 
 his eyes and an excessive pressure upon the brain made him 
 apprehensive of apoplexy.' He gave himself up to religious 
 despair ; he thought he had committed the unpardonable sin 
 and was oppressed by uninterrupted misery by day and 
 terrifying visions by night. To reassure himself in this 
 condition he tried to repeat a prayer, but could not remember 
 the words of it. In the effort to recall them, he says, ' I 
 perceived a sensation in the brain like a tremulous vibration 
 of all the fibres of it. Afterwards a numbness seized upon 
 the extremities of my body, and life seemed to retreat before 
 it. My hands and feet became cold and stiff", a cold sweat 
 stood upon my forehead, my heart seemed at every pulse to 
 beat its last, and my soul to cling to my body as if on the 
 brink of departure. While traversing the apartment in the 
 most horrible dismay of soul, expecting every moment that 
 the earth would open her mouth and swallow me up ... a 
 strange and horrible darkness fell upon me. If it were 
 possible that a heavy blow could light on the brain without 
 touching the skull, this was the sensation I felt. I clapped 
 my hand to my forehead and called aloud through the pain 
 it gave me. At every stroke my thoughts and expressions 
 became more wild and indistinct ; all that remained clear 
 was the sense of sin and the expectation of punishment.' 
 This crisis ended in Cowper's removal to a lunatic asylum, 
 
SOUTHEY 87 
 
 where he was confined for eighteen months. On his release 
 ke composed the well-known hymn : — 
 
 The soul, a dreary province once 
 Of Satan's dark domain, 
 Feels a new empire formed within 
 And owns a heavenly reign. 
 
 The imxprovement in his condition, however, was not per- 
 manent. Attacks of insanity occurred at intervals, and once 
 he nearly succeeded in hanging himself, being discovered and 
 cut down while on the point of strangulation. Throughout 
 his life he was a victim to religious melancholia, and in this 
 state — one, as he described it, of ' unutterable despair,' he 
 died in his sixty-ninth year. More clearly marked symptoms 
 of insanity could not be found than in this man of genius, 
 rightly described by Southey as 'the most popular poet of his 
 generation.' Cowper's brother John, a clergyman, died of 
 asthma. 
 
 Southey himself retained the use of his faculties till 
 within a few years of his death, but he came of an unsound 
 stock on his mother's side. He had a maternal g 
 uncle who was an idiot, and a peculiarity of this 
 relative was that, though he learnt to know the letters of the 
 alphabet separately, he could never be taught to combine 
 them into words, but yet possessed ' an excellent memory,' 
 and a sort of shrewdness which, says Southey, ' would have 
 qualified him had he been bom two centuries earlier to have 
 worn motley and figured with cap and bells and a bauble in- 
 some baron's hall.' Apoplexy carried off this weakling of 
 the family. Southey 's mother, 'while a mere child, had a 
 paralytic affection which deadened one side from the hip 
 downwards, and crippled her for almost twelvemonths.' ' In 
 quickness of capacity,' says her son, ' I never knew her 
 equal.' Southey's father kept a shop, but was ' passionately 
 fond of field sports.' Extraordinary physical energy is often 
 found in connection with nerve-disorder, the result of an 
 excessive stimulation of the motor centres of the brain. 
 Whether on the side of Southey's father some neuropathic 
 tendency existed, there is nothing very positive- to show. 
 
88 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 An uncle, Thomas Southey, appears to have been rather 
 eccentric. At his death this relative left a considerable 
 amount of property to his footboy, Tom, and another stranger, 
 ignoring the claims of an aged sister who kept house for 
 him and who was unprovided for. This poor old lady, 
 indeed, he turned out of doors for no other reason than that 
 ' she discovered some regret at seeing the footboy, Tom, 
 preferred to her nephews.' As to Soiithey's father, a passion 
 for field sports is a somewhat suspicious attribute of a shift- 
 less young tradesman, who tries his luck first as a grocer and 
 then as a linendraper. It is to be noted that the physical 
 energy which is so indispensable an element in productive 
 genius was possessed by Southey in a remarkable degree. 
 His literar}^ output was enormous, consisting of some forty 
 or fifty volumes of poems, history, biography, and essays on 
 general subjects. Literary exertion, he himself remarked, 
 was as necessary to him as meat and drink. As a child he was 
 precocious, and wrote verse before he was eight years of age. 
 
 Whether as the legacy of one or both parents, Southey's 
 sensibility was extreme. In a letter written in his forty-fifth 
 year, he says : ' It is a matter of surprise to me that this 
 bodily machine of mine should have continued its operations 
 with so few derangements, knowing as I w ell do its excessive 
 susceptibility to deranging causes. If I did not vary my 
 jmrsuits, I should soon be incapable of proceeding with any, 
 so surely does it disturb my sleep and affect my dreams if I 
 dwell upon one with any continuous attention. If it "vvere 
 not for great self-management, and what may be called a 
 strict intellectual regimen, I should soon be in a deplorable 
 state of nervous disease.' 
 
 Carlyle, who saw Southey in his latter days, thought him 
 the 'excitablest man' he had ever met. 'The shallowest 
 chin, small, care-lined brow, the most vehement pair of hazel 
 eyes! A well read, honest, limited, kindly-hearted, most 
 irritable man ! I said to myself, " How has this man con- 
 trived, with such a nervous system, to keep alive for near 
 sixty years ? How has he not been torn to pieces long 
 since under such furious pulling this way and that ? " ' i 
 ' Thomas Carlyle : Iteininiscenccs. 
 
SOUTHEY 89 
 
 Not long after these words were penned, Southey's mind did 
 give way. He sank into a condition of imbecility, in which 
 he died. ' The approaches of his malady,' says his son, ' had 
 been so gradual as almost to escape notice. A loss of 
 memory on certain points, a lessening acuteness of the per- 
 ceptive faculties, an occasional irritability wholly unknown in 
 him before, a confusion of time, place, and person, the losing 
 of his way in well-known places — all were remembered to 
 have taken place when the meJancholy fact had become too 
 evident that the powers of his mind were irreparably 
 weakened. . . For a year before his death, he passed his time 
 as if in a dream, with little, if any, knowledge of what went 
 on around him.' In addition to his mental instability. South ey 
 exhibited some irregularities of physical growth. Carlyle 
 noted the fact at their first meeting. ' He ' (Southey) ' had 
 only half risen, and nodded on my coming in, and all along I 
 had counted him as a lean, little man ; but now (as Carlyle 
 was taking his leave), he shot suddenly aloft into a lean tall 
 one, all legs, in shape and stature like a pair of tongs.' At 
 eight-and-twenty, Southey suffered from ' an ominous dimness 
 of sight at times,' but this weakness appears to have worn off. 
 Most of Southey's brothers and sisters died young, and in 
 one instance, hydrocephalus is mentioned as the cause of 
 death. The same form of brain disease carried off" some of 
 Southey's own children, though, as his wife also became in- 
 sane, this result need not be ascribed to Southey's organisa- 
 tion exclusively. Of a daughter, who died at twelve months 
 from hydrocephalus, he remarked that previously she had 
 given no sign of disease save a ' somewhat unnatural quick- 
 ness and liveliness.' Side by side with the genius of a family 
 occurs with strange frequency and regularity the ne'er-do- 
 well, a brother or other near relative possessing the sensibility 
 and the waywardness of genius without its faculty of self- 
 control. Southey's youngest brother Edward was of this 
 stamp. ' The subject,' says Southey's biographer, ' is a pain- 
 ful one, and I may be excused from entering into it further 
 than to say that every effort was made both by my uncle, 
 Mr. Hill, and his brothers, to place him and keep him in a 
 respectable line of life. He possessed excellent abilities, and 
 
90 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 had received a good education, and, if he had chosen a profes- 
 sion, they would have prepared him for it. He was placed 
 first in the navy, then in the army, but in vain ; for he finally 
 took to the wretched life of an actor in provincial theatres/ * 
 Miss Tyler, a relation of Sonthey's on the maternal side, 
 rendered herself notorious for her immorality. 
 
 The immediate progenitors of Shelley were eccentric. 
 His grandfather, Bysshe Shelley, had a melancholy tempera- 
 Q„^,,^^ ment, which is ascribed to his having been crossed 
 m love m his youth. He invited no friendships, 
 and lived apart from persons of his own station. Although 
 wealthy, he hoarded money, and was indifferent to his 
 personal appearance. Similar characteristics appeared in 
 Timothy Shelley, the poet's father, whom Dowden describes 
 as a ' kindly, pompous, capricious, well-meaning, ill-doing, 
 wrong-headed man.' Timothy married a Miss Elizabeth 
 Pilfold, who had a ' violent and domineering temper,' and 
 the poet was the offspring of this union. From boyhood, 
 Shelley was of a peculiar disposition. He was fond of 
 musing alone, and was thought to be a strange and un- 
 sociable being. At Eton, he was known as ' mad Shelley.' 
 He combined the diverse qualities of shyness, singularity, 
 carelessness of attire, and unusual excitability of temper. 
 Often he lost himself in waking visions, which were followed 
 by much nervous excitement, his eyes flashing, his lips 
 quivering, his voice being tremulous with emotion, and a sort 
 of ecstasy coming over him. His sleep was disturbed by 
 frightful dreams, and he was a somnambulist. As he grew 
 to manhood, the excitability and impulsiveness of his tempera- 
 ment increased rather than diminished. He had a small, 
 piercing, discordant voice, but his features breathed anima- 
 tion, fire, enthusiasm, and a vivid and preternatural intelli- 
 gence. In conversation, he was impetuous and argumentative. 
 About his twentieth year, the general state of his nerves was 
 such that he had constantly to take laudanum to calm them. 
 Hogg says he always looked ' wild, intellectual, unearthly, 
 like a spirit that had just descended from the sky, or a demon, 
 risen at that moment out of the ground. In telling a story 
 ' Cuthbert Southey : Life and Letters of Robert Souihey. 
 
SHELLEY 91 
 
 he would shriek with paroxysms of the wildest laughter.' 
 Hogg adds that Shelley had ' singular caprices, unfounded 
 frights and dislikes, vain apprehensions, and panic terrors. . . 
 He was unconscious and oblivious of time, places, persons, and 
 seasons; falling into some poetic vision or day dream, he 
 quickly forgot all that he had repeatedly and solemnly 
 promised. Or he would run away after some object of 
 imaginary urgency and importance which suddenly came 
 into his head, setting off in vain pursuit of it, he knew not 
 whither.' 
 
 There is no doubt that Shelley had actual hallucinations. 
 While staying at Keswick, he was alarmed early one morn- 
 ing by a noise outside the cottage he occupied. He went to 
 the door, opened it, and instantly received a blow which 
 struck him to the ground, where he lay for a while un- 
 conscious. This was Shelley's account of the affair, but the 
 neighbours were sceptical as to his supposed adventure, and 
 believed him to be the victim of a delusion. Trelawney 
 thought that Shelley's imagination played him false as to 
 occurrences. Certainly Shelley indulged for a time in the 
 foolish belief that he had elephantiasis, and if the Keswick 
 hallucination is a doubtful one, there is proof of his having 
 had visions in Italy. ' After tea,' wrote Williams, shortly before 
 he and Shelley were drowned in the Bay of Spezzia, ' Shelley 
 complained of being unusually nervous, and, stopping short, 
 he grasped me violently by the arm and stared steadfastly at 
 the white surf that broke upon the beach under his feet. 
 Observing him sensibly affected, I demanded of him if he 
 were in pain, but he only answered by saying, " There it is 
 again — there ! " He recovered after some time, and declared 
 that he saw as plainly as he then saw me, a naked child rise 
 from the sea and clap its hands as in joy, smiling at him. 
 This was a trance that it required much reasoning and 
 philosophy to awaken him from, sa forcibly had the vision 
 operated on his mind.' ^ Again, it is related by Medwin on 
 Byron's authority, that Shelley thought he met one day oi 
 the terrace near his Italian residence a figure wrapped in a 
 mantle, which lifted up the hood of its cloak and revealed the 
 1 Dowden : Life of Percy Bysslie Shelley, 
 
92 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 jDliantasm of himself, saying, ' Siete soddisfatto ? ' (Are you 
 satisfied ?). Mary Shelley also mentions this vision, adding 
 that Shelley often saw such figures when ill. Seeing a 
 spectral image of oneself is a form of hallucination that 
 occurs among the apoplectic and the insane ; and it is also 
 observed during the delirium of fever. Goethe experienced 
 it in open day as well as Shelley. To the last, Shelley's 
 terrifying dreams, a sure sign of morbid cerebral action, con- 
 tinued to afflict him, and he seems occasionally to have been 
 in doubt as to whether they were dreams or waking visions. 
 
 In forming an estimate of Shelley's conduct as a man 
 and as a husband, it is obviously^unfair to judge him by the 
 ordinary standard of sanity. Like Swift, he was the slave of 
 morbid impulse, and who can say what developments of 
 moral unsoundness his accidental death at the age of thirty 
 may not have nipped in the bud ? Both he and his brother 
 John left issue, but it is strange to note how many of their 
 descendants have been childless. Among the half dozen 
 adults forming the first generation, three, if not four, cases 
 of childlessness occur, an enormous proportion, testifying to 
 the existence of neuropathic conditions. 
 
 ' Some curse,' wrote Byron to a friend, ^ hangs over me 
 and mine.' He was right. It was the curse of heredity. 
 Byron ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ father and his mother's side Byron 
 came of a vitiated stock, although with the fatuity 
 of the common run of men who look at the extent of a 
 genealogical tree, and not at its vigour or freshness, he 
 was proud to an extraordinary extent of his descent, prouder, 
 it has been said, than of his works. It is unnecessary to 
 go deeply into the poet's pedigree in order to ascertain its 
 neurotic character. In his immediate progenitors the ' insane 
 temperament ' stares us in the face. The ancestor whom he 
 succeeded in the title, his grand-uncle, was a licentious, 
 quarrelsome, vindictive man, feared or hated by everybody, 
 and popularly known as the ' mad,' or ' wicked Lord Byron.* 
 There was no enormity of crime of which this representative 
 of a noble house was thought to be incapable by those who 
 knew him. Under circumstances that forcibly suggested 
 murder, he killed his friend and neighbour Chatworth, in a 
 
BYRON 93 
 
 room where, by the feeble light of a single candle and without 
 seconds or witnesses, a so-called duel was fought about a 
 trifle. Shunned by his equals and deserted by his wife, he 
 led a morose and lonely existence. From hatred to his son 
 and heir he let the family seat go to ruin, cut down the 
 timber on the estate, and sold illegally a portion of his 
 property. His son and his son's son, however, died before 
 him, whereupon the miserable old man transferred his aver- 
 sion from them to the ' little boy at Aberdeen,' as the poet 
 was then called. The brother of this ' mad Lord Byron,' was 
 Admiral John Byron, the poet's grandfather, in whom the 
 devil-may-care nature of the family happened to be turned 
 to good account. Admiral Byron was a man of remarkable 
 courage and endurance, and distinguished himself both in 
 peace and war ; but in his son John, father of the poet, the 
 worst characteristics of the Byron blood re-appeared. 
 
 ' Mad Jack Byron ' led such a dissolute life, that, before he 
 was out of his teens, he was held in general disrepute. At 
 twenty-two he ran away with the Marchioness of Carmarthen, 
 married her after her divorce — she was an heiress — and, after 
 squandering her fortune, killed her, it was said, by his ill- 
 usage. When penniless, he looked about for another heiress, 
 and found one in Miss Gordon, whose money also, after mar- 
 riage, he spent like water, leaving her almost penniless with 
 her only child. To such straits was the fine gentleman subse- 
 quently reduced by his own extravagance that, after separat- 
 ing from his wife, he had the meanness to write her a begging 
 letter, imploring her to give him a guinea. He went to 
 France and died there in his thirty-sixth year. To Harness, 
 the poet more than once stated that his father ' was insane 
 and killed himself.' The suicide has not been clearly estab- 
 lished, but circumstances point to it. Jeafferson observes 
 that the man who was known throughout life as ' mad Jack 
 Byron,' may be presumed to have beeli a person whose ' eccen- 
 tricity bordered upon insanity,' and that having gone abroad 
 with a few guineas in his purse, just enough to keep him 
 for a few weeks, suicide was with him a very likely re- 
 source.^ In any case, ' mad Jack's ' character and his early 
 ^ J. Cordy JeafTerson : The True Lord Byron. 
 
94 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 death, leave no room for doubt as to the morbid condition 
 of his faculties. 
 
 The poet was no less unfortunate in his mother. His mater- 
 nal grandfather, who was subject to melancholia, drowned 
 himself at forty, and another near relative attempted suicide 
 by poison.^ His mother, inheriting thus a strain of in- 
 sanity, was a woman of very unbalanced temperament. At 
 the theatre in Edinburofh she went into convulsions on seeingf 
 Mrs. Siddons act. Her husband had good reason to fear her 
 temper ; to be sure, it was sorely tried, but towards other 
 people she fell into 'frequent fits of uncontrollable fury.' 
 Jeafferson says she rarely allowed a week to pass without ' a 
 wild outbreak of hysterical rage.' She even mocked at her son 
 for being ' a lame brat,' and Disraeli hints that she was ad- 
 dicted to drink. As a child Byron feared this unnatural 
 mother, as a man he ridiculed and despised her ; but the bio- 
 graphical theory which attributes the poet's unhappy charac- 
 teristics to maternal ill-treatment in his boyhood, obviously 
 does not take sufficient account of the evil heredity to which 
 he was subject. While still a youngish woman, Mrs. Byron 
 died suddenly, owing, it was said, to a lit of anger into 
 which she had been thrown by an upholsterer's account, but 
 more probably as the result of some affection of the brain or 
 nervous system, and Byron, instead of following the body to 
 the grave, engaged with his servant in a bout with boxing- 
 gloves ! 
 
 Combining thus, in himself, two converging lines of 
 morbid heredity, Byron was necessarily a being of strange and 
 wayward habits. It is such parentage as his that fills our 
 mad-houses with patients. For, be it remarked, there can 
 be no pretence of any inheritance on his part of intellectual 
 gifts in the common acceptation of the word. ' Mad Jack 
 Byron ' may have had captivating manners, but he never gave 
 proof of possessing even average mental ability, while Mrs. 
 Byron, despite a distinguished lineage, was deplorably 
 lacking both in intelligence and refinement. The poet's 
 deformed foot is supposed by the biographer to have been due 
 to an accident at birth ; but malformations, as we have seen, 
 ' Eke : L>fe of Byron. 
 
BYRON 95 
 
 are a common accompaniment of nervous disorder, and the 
 deformity, which resisted all attempts to cure it, may be 
 regarded as congenital. Owing to Byron's sensitiveness on 
 the point, none of his friends, even the most intimate, appear 
 to have known precisely w^hat he suffered from ; nor is the 
 question ever likely to be settled. Trelawney's account is the 
 most positive and authentic. He saw Byron lying in his 
 coffin ; impelled by curiosity, he sent the servant out of the 
 room and uncovered the feet of the dead man. ' Then,' he 
 says, ^ the mystery was solved ; both feet were clubbed, and 
 his legs withered to the knees, but the right foot was the most 
 distorted, while the right leg was also shorter than the other.' 
 Byron's life, from first to last, was that of a man governed by 
 morbid impulse and scarcely responsible for his actions. In 
 friendship, politics, religion, and love he was uniformly un- 
 stable and insincere, and his strongest motive in everything 
 was probably vanity. 
 
 Although his whole life might be cited as a proof of the 
 neuropathic character of his genius, the evidence directly bear- 
 ing on the subject, apart from heredity, admits of being given 
 within small compass. His diary, written in the very heyday 
 of his youth and fame, reflects a distempered mind. ' When 
 I am tired,' he says, ' as I generally am, out comes this and 
 down goes everything. But I can't read it over, and God 
 knows what contradictions it may contain. If I am sincere 
 with myself (but I fear one lies more to oneself than to any- 
 body else) every page should confute, refute, and utterly abjure 
 its predecessor.' The entries abound in expressions of indif- 
 ference and callousness, of vacuity and satiety, of loathing and 
 contempt for his fellow-mortals. ' What have I seen ! ' he 
 exclaims. ' The same men all over the world. Aye, and 
 women too. . . Hang up philosophy ! To be sure I have 
 long despised myself and man, but I have never spat in the 
 face of my species before. Oh, fool ! I shall go mad.' A fear 
 of going mad haunted Byron through life, as it often does 
 those who are destined to that fate — Swift, for example. 
 Lady Caroline Lamb's first impression of him was that he 
 was ' mad, bad, and dangerous to know.' Lady Byron left him 
 after one miserable year of married life, and explained that she 
 
98 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 did so because it had been strongly impressed upon her mind 
 that ' Lord Byron was under the influence of insanity.' Sixteen 
 points in support of her contention were submitted to the 
 judgment of the medical men in the investigation which she 
 promoted, but they were never disclosed. This is understood 
 to have been one — that Byron was thrown into convulsions 
 by Kean's performance of the part of Sir Giles Overreach, 
 just as his mother had once been by the acting of Mrs. 
 Siddons. On another occasion he was said to have thrown 
 his watch, which he had worn from his earliest boyhood, into 
 the fire, and dashed it to pieces with the poker. That he once 
 discharged a pistol in his wife's bedroom is admitted even by 
 the Countess Guiccioli. 
 
 The grossest excesses and the keenest nervous suffering 
 marked Byron's life in Venice. ' His harem on the Grand 
 Canal, to which he gathered frail women from the homes of 
 artisans and the cabins of suburban peasants, was fruitful of 
 scandals. . . Little or nothing, however, was heard in Eng- 
 land of the degree to which the poet now succumbed to the 
 appetites of the glutton and the sot. . . In the increasing 
 violence of his temper, ever too fervid, in the alteration of his 
 voice, once so clear and musical that children turned from 
 their play for the delight of listening to it, and in his penman- 
 ship, always indicative of irritability, and now growing so 
 illegible that it troubled the best compositors to decipher it, 
 there were signs of the nervous distress caused by drinking. 
 ... At night he would roll in agony through long assaults 
 of acute dyspepsia, more often lie in melancholy moodiness, 
 or endure the torture of afflicting hallucinations. . . To 
 Byron, with a nervous idiosyncrasy that rendered him pecu- 
 liarly sensitive and impatient of physical discomfort, the pain 
 of these spasmodic seizures was almost maddening torment. 
 The mental anguish that came to him from dreams was no 
 less acute.' ^ 
 
 The epileptic attacks preceding Byron's death sufficiently 
 
 explain his restless, extravagant, and impetuous life. He 
 
 w^as the victim of his organisation as truly as the violent 
 
 lunatic who has to spend his miserable days in a padded 
 
 * Jeatrerson. 
 
CAMPBELL 97 
 
 room. It was at Missolonghi, in his thirty-sixtli year, that the 
 hrst epileptic seizure occurred. It appears to have been 
 sharp and severe, lasting about a quarter of an hour. * Every 
 reader of the Byronic biographies has heard of this attack. 
 A fact less generally known,' says JeafFerson, ' is that this 
 seizure was the first of a series. . . In fact the poet had five 
 epileptic fits within thirteen days.' Two months later he passed 
 away, the immediate cause of death being said to be ' fever ' 
 arising from a chill. Probably the end was hastened a little 
 by the excessive bleeding to which the patient was subjected, 
 the doctors fearing that the epileptic attacks would be fol- 
 lowed, as they so often are, by mental derangement. How 
 near to insanity Byron's condition was, the following glimpse 
 of it, given by his companion Leicester Stanhope, will show : 
 
 ' The mind of Byron was like a volcano, full of fire and 
 wealth, sometimes calm, often dazzling and playful, but even 
 threatening. It ran swift as the lightning from one subject 
 to another, and occasionally burst forth in passionate throes 
 of intellect nearly allied to madness. A striking instance of 
 this sort of eruption I shall mention. Lord Byron's apartments 
 were immediately over mine at Missolonghi. In the dead of 
 night I was frequently startled from my sleep by the thunders 
 of his lordship's voice, either raging with anger or roaring 
 with laughter, and arousing friends, servants, and, indeed, all 
 the inmates of the dwelling from their repose.' 
 
 In Byron's offspring neurotic characteristics are to be 
 detected. His daughter Ada suffered from determination of 
 blood to the head and died at thirty-seven, leaving by her 
 husband, Earl Lovelace, a son, who appears to have inherited 
 all the eccentricities of the Byron s, saving only his grand- 
 father's genius. This young man, Byron Noel, Viscount 
 Oakham, mixed little with people of his own rank, but served 
 as a common seaman, and then worked for some time as a 
 ship carpenter at Millwall. The abnormal character of his 
 organisation is suggested by his death occurring at the early 
 age of twenty-six. 
 
 A tendency to insanity was strongy marked in Thomas 
 Campbell, and reflected in his family. The evil appears to 
 have been mainly on his mother's side, for insanity existed 
 
98' THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 among liis maternal cousins, while his mother herself is de- 
 scribed by an indulgent biographer ^ as excessively ' irritable,' 
 and ' unnecessarily severe or even harsh in the 
 AMPBELL exercise of her authority,' a phrase of much signi- 
 ficance to the student of mental disease. In old age she became 
 paralysed. The poet's father was a merchant of good repute. 
 Both parents were long-lived, and transmitted their longevity 
 to some of their numerous children, who, in their several 
 ways as the brothers and sisters of a poet of undoubted 
 genius, present an instructive study in pathology. The family 
 record is as follows : — 
 
 Mary Cam; 
 
 pbell 
 
 died at 86 
 
 Paralysed, childless. 
 
 Isabella 
 
 J) 
 
 „ 79 
 
 Paralysed, ' poetical,' childless. 
 
 Archibald 
 
 jj 
 
 „. 70 
 
 Childless. 
 
 Alexander 
 
 )> 
 
 „ G5 
 
 Went abroad, prospered, and 
 had a large family. 
 
 John 
 
 5) 
 
 „ 43 
 
 Childless. 
 
 Elizabetli 
 
 3) 
 
 „ 64 
 
 Suffered from protracted ill- 
 health, childless. 
 
 Daniel 
 
 :j 
 
 — 
 
 Died in infancy. 
 
 Robert 
 
 J) 
 
 „ 85 
 
 Childless. 
 
 James 
 
 5) 
 
 „ 13 
 
 Drowned while bathing. 
 
 Daniel 
 
 3J 
 
 
 Nothing known of his death, 
 a ne'er-do-well. 
 
 The poet was the eleventh child. Besides his genius, the 
 characteristics of the family, it will be seen, were paralysis, 
 infertility, and ill-health. The presence of the ne'er-do-well, 
 as in Southey's case, is also noteworthy. This member of 
 the family was put into business, but, as the biographer 
 remarks, he had ' either too much genius or too little perse- 
 verance to keep there.' A ' boon companion,' and a ' man of 
 infinite humour,' he became unfitted for his calling, which 
 probably means that he gave himself up to drinking ; he then 
 went abroad and was no more heard of. He had one son, who 
 died early. As a child Campbell was precocious ; he wrote 
 verses at ten, was imaginative, sensitive, and passionately 
 fond of music. At eighteen he was attacked by melancholia, 
 ^ Charles ilogers : Life of Tliomas ODnplxll. 
 
GOLDSMITH 99 
 
 and Professor Pillans of Edinburgh, who knew him a jenr or 
 two later, wrote as follows to a friend : ' He accompanied me 
 to my father's in the lowest state of depression, so much so 
 that my father taunted me with bringing to his house a man 
 who seemed to be bordering on insanit3^' The Campbell 
 blood being so unquestionably corrupt, it was unfortunate 
 that its evil effects should have been intensified in the poet's 
 case by a consanguineous marriage. Such, however, was 
 the case. Campbell married his maternal cousin, who had a 
 sister insane, and who herself was very ' vivacious,' ' energetic,' 
 and ' irritable,' and the one son of his who survived the perils 
 of childhood was a lunatic. At the height of his reputation 
 Campbell showed signs of insanity, believing that he was 
 ruined, for example, while he was really in the most pros- 
 perous circumstances. He was eccentric in many ways, and 
 also, which is important in a pathological sense, suffered 
 from gout or rheumatism. His habits were most unsettled, 
 and his nerves so troublesome that he resorted to stimu- 
 lants. In his latter years he sank into a condition of mental 
 debility, in which he died at sixty-seven. 
 
 Little is known of Oliver Goldsmith's personal and family 
 history, but such facts of his career as have been recorded, 
 tend to qualify him for a place in the group of dis- qq^dsmith 
 tinguished men now under discussion. There was . 
 a strong tincture of ne'er-do-wellism in his character, and 
 much foolish moralising on his account has been indulged in 
 by biographers, who see in him only the man of genius 
 condemned to live from hand to mouth, and to write immortal 
 works in a garret. In truth, few young men had better 
 chances in life of comfort and respectability — if such be the 
 biographer's ideal of happiness — than Goldsmith, and none 
 assuredly threw such chances more perversely away. He 
 was maintained at college till he took his degree (in spite of 
 his being a ' dunce ' at learning), and neither then nor for 
 some years afterwards did he do a stroke of work of any kind, 
 but preferred to live on the bounty of his relatives. The 
 intermittent literary occupation that he finally settled down 
 to suited his temperament as an idler and a vagabond ; but 
 with money pouring in upon him whenever he chose to do 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 anything for it — Macaulay calculates that during the last; 
 seven years of his life Goldsmith made 800/. a year in English 
 currency — and with not a soul in the world to keep but 
 himself, he still lived in squalor, had to be dunned for his 
 milk bill, and died 2fi00l. in debt, this sum representing loans 
 that he had cadged from his friends, probably without the 
 smallest intention of repaying them. Of Oliver's brothers, 
 one was a humble village preacher, who appears to have died 
 early, another ' departed a miserable life ' as a cabinet maker, 
 and a third, after a career of adventure abroad, died in 
 wretched lodgings in London. Considering that their father 
 was a Protestant clergyman of some position in Ireland, this 
 must have been a very thriftless family altogether. Oliver 
 was a most unpromising boy. Though he scribbled verses 
 early, he was ' impenetrably stupid ' at school, and, according 
 to his sister, was ' subject to the most particular humours,' 
 with the 'most unaccountable alternations of gaiety and gloom.' 
 This mental condition explains his boyish freak of running 
 away from home for six weeks, and also his prolonged 
 vagabondage on the Continent. Bos well says, Goldsmith 
 ' disputed his way through Europe.' It is more likely, as 
 William Black remarks, that he ' begged his way through 
 Europe.' The portrait by Reynolds does not convey a 
 favourable impression of Goldsmith's character, exhibiting a 
 heavy, receding jaw, thick lips, a bulging brow, and a listless, 
 idiotic expression. Goldsmith died of some nervous affection, 
 the most clearly defined symptom of which was ' a violent 
 pain extending all over the fore part of his head.' 
 
 Charles Lamb appears to have owed his poetical and 
 literary faculties to a converging heredity of brain and nerve- 
 Charles disease. His father, who occupied the humble 
 Lamb position of a servant in Lincoln's Inn, wrote verses, 
 and about his fiftieth year lapsed into a state of imbecility ; 
 his mother became paralysed. This couple had three chil- 
 dren, John, Mary, and Charles Lamb. John is described in 
 one of the ' Essays of Elia ' as a man ' of fiery and tempes- 
 tuous temper, ' unable to reason logically, but jumping at 
 ' most admirable conclusions ; ' he held some position in the 
 South Sea House, and died respectably at sixty or thereabouts. 
 
CHARLES LAMB 101 
 
 Mary became subject to fits of insanity, in one of which she 
 stabbed her invalid mother to the heart and killed her. 
 Charles Lamb was himself confined for six weeks in a 
 madhouse about his twentieth year — the period at which he 
 wrote most of his sonnets. He was of puny physique, 
 constitutionally nervous and timid, subject to stammering, 
 and to violent headaches. In his later years he gave way 
 to what he called his ' cursed drinking.' The immediate 
 cause of his death at sixty was erysipelas, but Talfourd 
 says his constitution was by that time thoroughly broken 
 down. 
 
 In her lucid intervals Mary Lamb had a fine poetical taste, 
 very like Elia's own. Describing her insanity, Charles Lamb 
 says : — ' Her ramblings often sparkled with brilliant descrip- 
 tions and shattered beauty. . . . She would fancy herself in 
 the days of Queen Anne or George I. and describe the 
 brocaded dames and courtly manners as though she had been 
 bred among them, in the best style of the Old Comedy. It 
 w^as all broken and disjointed, so that the hearer could 
 remember little of her discourse, but the fragments were like 
 the jewelled speeches of Congreve, only shaken from their 
 setting. There was sometimes even a vein of crazy logic 
 running through them, associating things essentially most 
 dissimilar but connecting them by a verbal association in 
 strange order. As a mere physical example of deranged 
 intellect, her condition was, I believe, extraordinary ; it was 
 as if the finest elements of mind had been shaken into fan- 
 tastic combinations like those of a kaleidoscope.' Through- 
 out life Mary and Charles Lamb were devoted to each other, 
 having a perfect community of literary and poetic tastes. 
 
 In his defiance of all authority, his reckless impulse, his 
 tierce outbursts of temper, his swift changes of mood, his 
 general singularities which the most indulgent of j^ 
 biographers do not attempt to conceal, Walter 
 Savage Landor would most certainly have been entitled to be 
 classed as a victim of the ' insane temperament,' even had 
 his closing years been unmarked by any of the more unmis- 
 takable characteristics of insanity.^ He belonged to a 
 
 ' John Forster : IValter Savage Landor, a Biograjjhy. 
 
102 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 gouty family. As early as the age of twelve he had a violent 
 attack of s'out, and his father and brothers were sufferers 
 from that malady. In a previous chapter gout has been 
 shown to alternate sometimes with mental disorder. Landors 
 first attack was his last ; the gout never returned, but, on 
 the other hand, his mental condition was ever afterwards 
 peculiar. His laugh is historical ; it must have surpassed in 
 volume even that of Shelley or Byron. ' Higher and higher,' 
 says Forster in describing it, ' went peal after peal, until 
 regions of sound were reached very far beyond ordinary 
 human lungs.' Landor was consumed by an irrepressible 
 energy, for which his poetic and literary occupations afforded 
 some outlet. Poetry and literature he turned to instinctively, 
 for, being possessed of private means, he was never under 
 the necessity of writing for a livelihood. ' He had the 
 power, sudden as thought itself, of giving visual shape to 
 objects of thought, and with all this, an intense energy of 
 feeling and a restless activity of imagination eager to repro- 
 duce themselves in similar forms of vivid and picturesque 
 expression. He had an exceptional faculty for Latin verse, 
 his excellence in which was a tradition at Eugby for half a 
 century after he left. In every other study or pursuit he 
 was the creature of caprice. At Oxford his character was 
 ungovernable ; he held fierce and uncompromising opinions, 
 and once fired a fowling-piece into the window of a political 
 opponent — an offence for which, refusing to apologise, he was 
 rusticated for a year and very nearly expelled. Nor did 
 time soften his asperities. He was always uncontrollably 
 impetuous, and so prone to act from undisciplined impulse . . . 
 that during hardly any part of his life could he live with 
 other people in peace for any length of time ; good-humoured 
 for a while, he was apt gradually to become tyrannical where 
 he had power, and rebellious wdiere he had not.' 
 
 On one occasion, Forster had the greatest difficulty in 
 restraining him from sending a challenge to Lord John 
 Russell for some fancied slight to the memory of a supposed 
 ancestor. Sir Arnold Savage, Speaker of Henry the Seventh's 
 first House of Commons. A\^ter succeeding to the family 
 estates, he so embroiled himself with tenants and neighbours. 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1C3 
 
 tliat the control of the property was taken out of his hands, 
 and during a great part of his long life he lived abroad, 
 owing, as he said, to the many acts of injustice and unkind- 
 ness he met with in England. He was himself, however, his 
 greatest enemy. In public and private affairs his plan of 
 proceeding was on the eccentric principle of differing as 
 widely as he could from everybody else. He was ever 
 swayed by the mood that possessed him for the moment, and 
 ' though it was easy by humouring this to continue friendly 
 with him, it was yet easier to quarrel with him by opposing 
 it in however slight a degree.' Changing his clime, Landor 
 did not change his nature, for in Tuscany he contrived to 
 get himself expelled by order of the Government. The 
 mental breakdown in his latter years was complete. Eefer- 
 ring to an action for libel in which Landor had enmeshed 
 himself in one of his storms of frantic passion, Forster 
 remarks that the old man had ceased to be a ' responsible 
 human being.' He had not now even memory enough to 
 recollect what he was writing from day to day, and ' while 
 the power of giving keen and clear expression to every 
 passing mood of bitterness remained to him, his reason had 
 too far deserted him to leave it other than a fatal gift. He 
 could apply no gauge or measure to what he was bent upon 
 either doing or saying ; he seemed to have no longer the 
 ability to see anything not palpably before him ; and of the 
 effect of any given thing on his own or another's reputation, 
 he was become wholly powerless to jadge.' 
 
 Shortly afterwards, Landor persisted in printing, in spite 
 of the remonstrances of his friends, the worthless scraps of 
 his writings, which he called ' Dry Sticks;' the proofs had to be 
 altered without his consent ; and he had tried, though unsuc- 
 cessfully, to make it a condition with the publisher that his 
 name should appear on the title-page as ' the late W. S. 
 Landor.' He talked of a ' swimming"^in his head,' of inability 
 to remember places and faces, though verses of the ' Odyssey ' 
 and ' Iliad ' were perpetually floating before his mind. In this 
 condition he lived six or eight years longer, incurring another 
 action for libel, in which damages of a thousand pounds were 
 awarded against him. The close of his life was spent in 
 
104 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Italy, where, according to a letter of Browning's, lie required 
 to have some one always at hand to explain away his 
 irritations and halhicinations as they arose. He suffered 
 severely from sciatica, and upon his loss of memory deafness 
 supervened. His death at eighty-nine was brought about by 
 his abstaining for three days from food, whether as the result 
 of weakne-s or of some hallucination is unknown. 
 
 Thomas Chatterton, the most precocious literary genius 
 that the world has ever seen, was the offspring of a ' drunken, 
 ., wild-eyed ' choir singer, who died before his mar- 
 
 Chatterton -- -^ 1 ^ n P 1 
 
 vellous son was born, and oi a woman who was 
 long afflicted with a ' nervous disease,' probably palsy. His 
 sister, a Mrs. Newton, had an attack of insanity. The boy's 
 temper had ' something in it quite unusual in one so young. 
 Generally very sullen and silent, he was liable to sudden 
 and unaccountable fits of weeping, as well as to violent fits of 
 rage.' In his eighteenth year he committed suicide. It is 
 generally thought that this was due to his finding himself 
 in a state of destitution in a humble lodging in London. 
 Before his suicide, however, his landlady ' did not think he 
 was quite right in his mind.' He showed a 'growing rest- 
 lessness,' and 'sudden fits of vacancy or silence that came 
 upon him sometimes while he was talking rapidly.' He would 
 often ' look steadfastly in a person's face without speaking or 
 seeming to see the person for a quarter of an hour or more, 
 till it was quite frightful.' ^ Young as he was, the boy had 
 acquired a name for immorality in his native town of Bristol. 
 He appears also to have been enormously vain. ]\Irs. Newton 
 had an only daughter who died young. This was the last of 
 the Chattertons. 
 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau was of melancholy temperament, 
 and more than once had hallucinations of persecution.^ 
 „ There seems to have been insanity on his father's 
 
 side, a cousin oi the name oi Kousseau having 
 been afflicted with that disorder. He was a weakly and ailing 
 child, and a ne'er-do-well brother was a precocious libertine. 
 Corancez, a friend of Jean Jacques', has left on record some 
 
 ' ]\Iasson : Essays BiograpJdoal and Critical. 
 2 Moreau : Za Fsychulugie Morhide. 
 
EOUSSEAU 105 
 
 cnrious details as to the pliilosoplier s mental condition. 
 Rousseau lived under the constant belief that his life was 
 being conspired against ; and in the most trifling circum- 
 stances he saw a confirmation of his suspicions. ' My 
 enemies,' he remarked on one occasion, 'employ more in- 
 genuity in persecuting me than would be required for 
 governing Europe.' Corancez discovered Rousseau on several 
 occasions in a convulsed state, in which his features wore a 
 strange and terrifying expression. At such times the philo- 
 sopher's discourse was incoherent and wild, one of his remarks 
 being that his misfortunes had been specially predicted by 
 Tasso. Rousseau's condition at the time of his acquaintance 
 with Hume was clearly a dangerous one. What could 
 better reflect the hallucinations of a disordered mind than 
 his own account of his experiences ? ' One evening,' he says, 
 ' a remarkable circumstance struck me. As we were sitting 
 by the fire, I caught sight of Hume's eyes intently fixed on 
 mine, and that in a manner of which it is difficult to give an 
 idea. He gave me a steadfast, piercing look mixed with a 
 sneer, which greatly disturbed me. To get rid of my em- 
 barrassment, I endeavoured to look full at him in my turn, 
 but, in fixing my eyes on his, I felt a most inexpressible 
 terror, and was obliged soon to turn them away. . . . My 
 trouble increased even to the degree of fainting, and if I had 
 not been relieved by a suffusion of tears, I should have been 
 suffocated. Presently after this I was seized with the most 
 violent remorse, and in a transport of joy I sprang upon his 
 neck and kissed him. I felt my heart yearn towards him. 
 . . . The first night after my departure with Hume for Paris 
 we slept in the same chamber, when, during the night, I 
 heard him cry out with great vehemence in the French 
 language, " Je tiens Jean Jacques Rousseau." I knew not 
 whether he was awake or asleep. The expression was re- 
 markable. I took the words, however, in a favourable sense, 
 notwithstanding that the tone of voice in which they were 
 spoken was still less favourable than the expression. It is 
 indeed impossible for me to give any idea of it, but it corre- 
 sponds exactly with those terrible looks I have before men- 
 tioned. At every repetition of them I was seized with a 
 
lOG THE INSAXITY OF GENIUS 
 
 shuddering, a kind of horror. I could not resist, though a 
 moment's recollection restored me, and made me smile at 
 my weakness. The next day all this was joerfectly oblite- 
 rated.' ^ Rousseau died of apoplexy. 
 
 According to Lelut, who made a complete study of his 
 case from the pathological point of view,^ Pascal suffered 
 from hallucinations, one of which was, that there 
 was a yawning abyss by his side. He was all his 
 life a victim to extreme nervous suffering. As a child he 
 had a sort of hydrophobia, being unable to look upon water 
 without falling into convulsions. Another idiosyncrasy was 
 that he could not bear to see his father and mother together, 
 they had to approach him separately. His headaches were 
 of extraordinary intensity, and afterwards he had epileptic 
 convulsions, which were the cause of his death. A post- 
 mortem examination revealed a strange condensation and 
 solidification of portions of the brain, and an infusion of 
 blood into certain cavities, together with some irregularities 
 in the form of the skull. A sister of Pascal's, Jacqueline, 
 wrote verses, was very precocious and sensitive, and became 
 excessively pious, passing the latter part of her life in a state 
 of religious exaltation. 
 
 Chateaubriand belonged to a mad family, and was him- 
 self of a melancholic temperament. His father died of 
 Chateau- apoplexy ; a brother and sister were eccentric and 
 BRiAND vicious. The illustrious author of the ' Memoires 
 d'Outre-Tombe ' was haunted by ideas of suicide. As he 
 himself relates, he one day loaded a fowling-piece, sought a 
 retired spot, and tried to fire the weapon into his mouth ; it 
 failed to go off, and he was disturbed before he could carry 
 out his intention. This occurred in his youth, but his 
 suicidal ideas never quitted him. ' My great defect,' he 
 writes in the work above mentioned, ' is ennui, a distaste 
 for everything, and a perpetual doubt.' 
 
 Not a few other writers of eminence have shown 
 symptoms of insanity. George Sand was, in her youth, pro- 
 foundly melancholic and felt tempted to commit suicide. 
 
 * David Hume : Fhilo.^ojflilcal Essays 
 
 * Lelut : L' Amulctte de Pascal. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 107 
 
 * This temptation,' she writes, ' was sometimes so strong, so 
 sudden, so strange, that it can only be described as a species 
 of insanity. It partook of the character of a monomania.' 
 The sight of water, of a precipice, of a loaded pistol, or ot 
 bottles containing poison was sufficient to arouse suicidal 
 ideas in her mind, and her father, it appears, was subject to 
 a similar weakness. — Tasso's homicidal mania and other 
 eccentricities caused him to be confined for a time as a 
 lunatic. He saw apparitions, sometimes glorious, as when 
 the Virgin appeared to him in a crimson vapour, sometimes 
 hellish and impish ; he heard aerial laughter, hissing, and the 
 ringing of bells. He believed himself to be accompanied by 
 a familiar spirit with which he held sublime conversations. 
 In the presence of his friend Manso (who was also Milton's 
 friend), he summoned up this spirit and was surprised that 
 Manso did not see- and hear it also. — Silvio Pellico had 
 hallucinations of sight, hearing, and touch. The stillness of 
 his prison cell was broken by groans and laughter, while 
 spirit hands seemed to pluck him by the garments or to try 
 to extinguish the light. ' These apparitions,' he says, ' became 
 at times terrible realities.' In the dark he often saw phan- 
 toms. — Both Tannahill and Lenau committed suicide. The 
 latter, who ranks high as a poet in German estimation, was, 
 from his boyhood, of a restless and extravagant disposition, 
 and notorious for his excesses in wine and love.' Like Byron, 
 he often felt he would go mad. His deep melancholia was 
 followed by a stroke of paralysis. In a sudden frenzy he 
 threw himself out of a window, and from the injuries so 
 received he died. The brain proved on a post-mortem 
 examination to be profoundly diseased. — Holderlin's insanity 
 lasted nearly forty years. — Although never placed under 
 restraint, Edgar Allan Poe was undoubtedly an insane sub- 
 ject. More than once he attempted or threatened suicide 
 under delusions of persecution.^ -He was, moreover, very 
 erratic, hypochondriacal, and from his early years a con- 
 firmed drunkard, and he died of brain disease at forty. 
 The family stock was radically unsound. The poet's father, 
 David Poe, was a drunkard, and given to extravagances 
 1 W. J. Gill : Life of Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
108 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 which * excited great solicitude among his family and friends.' 
 At eighteen David Poe eloped with and married an actress, 
 and both he and she died early of consumption, leaving, besides 
 the author of * The Kaven,' a daughter and another son 
 named William. The daughter died young. William Poe 
 was a poet of some promise, but, like his brother, of very 
 ' irregular habits,' and short-lived. — Diderot had a sister 
 insane, and a brother inordinately pious ; Kerner's aunt 
 was of a poetic disposition but melancholic, and had a 
 daughter insane, another daughter, who was a somnambulist, 
 becoming the mother of the poet HaufF. — Alfieri had fits of 
 extreme exaltation and melancholy, was eccentric, and more 
 than once attempted suicide. — The Roman poet Lucretius 
 suffered from intermittent mania, in the lucid intervals of 
 v/hich he composed his great work ' De rerum natura.' At 
 forty-four he is said to have committed suicide. 
 
109 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 METAMORPHOSIS OF NERVE-DISORDER IN CONNECTION WITH GENIUS — 
 GOUT, BLINDNESS, DEFORMITY AND NE'ER-DO-WELLISM IN MILTONS 
 FAMILY — THE NE'ER-DO-WELLISM OF THE SHERIDANS — THE COLE- 
 RIDGE FAMILY PRESENTING EXAMPLES OF GOUT, INSANITY, DIPSO- 
 MANIA, PARALYSIS, AND CONSUMPTION — WORDSWORTH'S SISTER IN- 
 SANE — BURNS'S HYPOCHONDRIA AND DRUNKENNESS — UNSOUNDNESS 
 OF WALTER SCOTT'S FAMILY — BULWER LYTTON'S CHARACTERIS- 
 TICS — MACAULAY AS A PRODIGY — THE BRONTE FAMILY — PATRICK 
 BRONTE INSANE, HIS DAUGHTERS CONSUMPTIVE, HIS SON A NE'EK- 
 DO-WELL — DICKENS'S GOUT AND PARALYSIS — THACKERAY, GEORGE 
 ELIOT, WILKIE COLLINS, AND BRoWNING AS NEUROPATHIC SUBJECTS 
 -—THE ECCENTRICITIES OF BALZAC, DUMAS, AND ALFRED DE 
 MUSSET— GUSTAVE FLAUBERT AN EPILEPTIC — INSANITY IN VICTOR 
 HUGO'S FAMILY 
 
 As insanity is only one of tlie family of nerve-diseases, genius 
 v^ill be found combined, in most cases, with some other of 
 the many ailments, mental and physical, which ^ 
 spring from the neurotic condition. Evidence of 
 the morbid character of Milton's genius is furnished by the 
 threefold fact that he lost his sight from congenital causes, 
 that he was a gouty subject, and that a well-marked strain 
 of ne'er-do-wellism ran through his near collaterals. Milton's 
 father was a scrivener and a musician of considerable attain- 
 ments, who lived to a great age. Of the poet's mother the 
 suggestive fact is recorded by Aubrey that she ' had very 
 weak eyes and used spectacles presently after she was thirty 
 years old.' ^he died rather early, though of w hat disease is 
 not stated. To this couple six children were born, three of 
 whom died in infancy, leaving John, who was the third child, 
 an elder sister, Anne, and a younger brother, Christopher. 
 Anne married a man named Philips, and had two sons, 
 Edmund and John Philips, the black sheep of the family. 
 Both these nephews of the poet possessed literary ability, 
 
110 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 but they led shiftless lives and died miserably poor. The 
 former, who was a clever hack writer, married a widow with 
 children, but whether he left descendants is unknown. 
 John Philips wrote both prose and verse, and is described as 
 a ' man of very loose principles, who forsook his wife and 
 children without making any provision for them.' He had 
 gout both in his hands and feet. In the memoirs of one 
 John Dunton, published in 1705, it is said of him, 'He'll 
 write you oif a design in a very little time, if the gout or 
 claret don't stop him.' From this it would appear that to 
 his other vices he added drinking. Of his children Ave know 
 nothing. The poet's sister, after the death of her first 
 husband, married one Thomas Agar, who appears to have 
 brought a corrective influence to bear upon the Milton blood. 
 At all events, Agar's offspring by Anne Milton proved to be 
 vigorous enough to leave respectable and prolific descen- 
 dants, whence it may be concluded that the Philips blood 
 was not a desirable blend. Milton's only brother Christopher 
 became a disreputable judge, whose descendants do not appear 
 to have outlived the third generation. 
 
 As a child, Milton was a prodigy ; at ten years of age he 
 was a poet, or at least a writer of verses. Unlike most poets, 
 however, he was from his earliest years austere and serious, 
 albeit not free from a certain ' haughty self-esteem.' A 
 stickler for moral integrity, he was, as Masson expresses it, 
 ' dead against the wild-oats theory,' holding that sensual 
 indulgence at any period of life was the cause of spiritual 
 incapacity. He had a judicial though somewhat contentious 
 mind, and a total lack of humour. As a boy he suffered 
 with his eyes, and had torturing headaches. Soon after his 
 thirtieth year — the period from which his mother's infirmity 
 dated — his eyesight began seriously to fail, and at the age of 
 forty-four he found himself totally blind. As his eyes never 
 showed any structural blemish, or his visual memory any 
 falling off, the seat of the evil was probably the optic nerves. 
 The morbid condition he transmitted to his descendants. His 
 daughter Deborah had in turn a daughter who became a 
 Mrs. Foster, and this lady, Milton's granddaughter, being 
 visited by one Thomas Newton in 17-19, when she was sixty- 
 
MILTON 111 
 
 one years of age, was found to be ' extremely short-sighted,' as 
 well as ' weak and infirm.' She told Newton that her mother 
 Deborah had inherited Milton's weakness of eyes, having 
 been obliged to nse spectacles from about the time of her 
 marriage, and that she herself had been ' unable to read a 
 chapter of the Bible these twenty years.' 
 
 Milton's nerve-disorder revealed itself most unmistakably 
 through his daughter Anne, who was lame and otherwise 
 deformed, and who suffered from an impediment in her 
 speech.* Deborah, with her weak eyes, was ' likest her 
 father.' A third daughter, Mary, appears to have been of 
 an ailing disposition, for she remained unmarried and died 
 about forty. These were the children of Milton's first wife, 
 of whose character nothing is known except that she found 
 in the poet an uncongenial husband. There was a son born, 
 but he died in infancy, according to a biographer, ' through 
 ill-usage or the bad constitution of an ill-chosen nurse.' 
 More probably he fell a victim to the same inherent weak- 
 ness that crippled Anne, that blinded Deborah, and that 
 brought Mary to an early grave. By a second and a third 
 wife Milton had no family. The daughters lived most un- 
 happily with their father. They found him tyrannical, while 
 he thought themundutiful, and he accused them of cheating 
 him in money matters and stealing his books in order to 
 sell them. Genius may be a golden idol, but, if so, it too 
 often has feet of clay. The dissensions of the Milton house- 
 hold tell their own tale of what the world is accustomed to 
 venerate as greatness. Milton died at sixty-five of gout 
 ' struck in,' and some farther indications of a neurotic condition 
 is furnished by the fact that he was physically undergrown. 
 
 In a Darwinian sense the poet's descendants are to be 
 numbered among the unfit. The only one of his daughters 
 who had offspring was Deborah. She married a weaver 
 named Clark, and had ten children, of whom only three 
 attained to adult age. The first of these survivors. Urban 
 Clark, died unmarried ; another, the Mrs. Foster above re- 
 ferred to, had seven children, none of whom left issue ; the 
 third, Caleb Clark, went to Madras, and with the record of 
 
 ' Masson : Life of Milton. 
 
112 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the death of a single grandchild of his all trace of Milton's 
 posterity ceases. 
 
 Of the parentage of Kichard Steele there is nothing 
 known, in a medical sense, except that he lost his father at 
 St ele ^^^ years of age, that his mother died soon after- 
 wards, and that, in his thirty-sixth year, he speaks of 
 himself as being ' divested of all relations ' that might enjoy 
 anything after him. A medical man named Woodward had 
 Steele under his care, and in a posthumous volume, published 
 in 1757, makes the following reference to the case of his 
 eminent patient : ' He had the gout by fits for years, it 
 constantly growing upon him, and in the winter of 1715 
 (when Steele was forty-three) and the following spring the fit 
 was more severe than ever before, and continued for several 
 months.' Woodward represents that he cured Steele's gout, 
 although the patient ' frequently drank hard.' ' Only some- 
 times, after a great excess, his limbs became heavy, clumsy, 
 and stiff, but never to such a degree as not in a little 
 time to come to themselves.' In a diary kept by Steele in 
 1721 the writer deplores 'the miserable habit of mind' 
 which he has contracted through a gnilty indulgence of his 
 appetites and passions. Here Steele probably refers not only 
 to his drinking, but to his notorious thriftlessness and ex- 
 travagance. In 1727 Steele had 'a stroke of paralysis, 
 accompanied by a partial loss of speech, and he never com- 
 pletely recovered his mental powers.' ^ Two years later, at 
 the age of fifty-seven, he died. By a second wife, who was 
 not long-lived, Steele had two sons and two daughters. The 
 boys passed away at six and eleven years of age respectively ; 
 Mary, the second daughter, died soon after her father of a 
 ' lingering consumption.' The elder, Elizabeth, lived to be- 
 come Lady Trevor. Aitken says she ' inherited something 
 of her mother's beauty and her father's thriftlessness ; ' she had 
 two children : one was still-born ; the other, Diana, Steele's 
 only grandchild, lived to the age of thirty-four, but was an 
 idiot. ' It was thought,' says Aitken, ' that her idiocy was 
 due to a fright which her mother had from a stag previous 
 to her birth,' but her grandfather's gout and paralysis, her 
 ' Aitken : Life of Richard Steele. 
 
THE SHERIDANS 113 
 
 aunt's consumption, and the fact that Lady Trevor her- 
 self died of paralysis, giv^e a different complexion to the 
 matter. 
 
 Joseph Addison, Steele's more eminent colleague, died at 
 
 forty-seven of asthma. There is evidence that he A^^,^^.r 
 •^TT , T-i- Ti T • 1. Addison 
 
 was addicted to drinking, and that, despite his 
 
 brilliant social position, he suffered from depression of spirits. 
 He left a daughter, who was weak-minded. 
 
 For several generations the Sheridan family were no- 
 torious for their ne'er-do-well qualities.^ Thomas Sheridan, 
 Sfrandfather of the author of ' The School for Scan- ^ 
 
 11, , . T T P bHERIDAN 
 
 dal, was a strange, mercurial person, possessed or 
 an ' extraordinary gift for occasional poetry,' but careless, 
 eccentric, and ever the butt of fortune,' — always struggling 
 with debt — the victim of perpetual failure. He died of 
 asthma. The only one of his children of whom anything is 
 known, ' Tom,' the actor, was a man of ability, but like his 
 father, thriftless, and, according to Boswell, had ' a Quixotic 
 mind.' This erratic personage, who was ruined by his own 
 extravagance, did little for himself, but, by his marriage 
 with Miss Chamberlane, he presented to the world Richard 
 Brinsley Sheridan, the dramatist. Tom's wife was, like him- 
 self, a neuropathic subject. Her father, the Rev. Mr. 
 Chamberlane, sank into imbecility and left behind him a 
 weakly, ailing family, who died in their prime. A son, the 
 Rev. Walter Chamberlane, was a poet, and was given to 
 'absent-mindedness,' with reference to which peculiarity 
 various anecdotes are told. The mother of Richard Brinsley 
 Sheridan was the eldest of this family. As a child she 
 had a paralytic affection which induced permanent lameness. 
 Gifted, or cursed, with a ' strangely sensitive temperament,' 
 she wrote verses, and a novel that had much success in its 
 own day. From a memoir by her granddaughter. Miss 
 Alicia Lefanu, it appears that Mrs. Sheridan was, all her life, 
 subject to ' fainting fits ' and ' absent-mindedness,' and that 
 she was ' often a sufferer from her health.' She died at 
 forty-two. The day before her death she became speechless, 
 probably from paralysis, but a post-mortem examination, it is 
 ' Percy Fitzgerald : Li res of the Sheridans. 
 
 I 
 
114 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 stated, revealed the presence of ' four internal maladies, each 
 of which must have proved fatal.' 
 
 From the pathological point of view, the union of this 
 nervous and suffering lady with the thriftless and eccentric 
 Tom Sheridan could not but be disastrous. Richard Brins- 
 ley Sheridan was a dunce at school, and a weakly boy ; but 
 he had hardly attained to manhood before he launched out 
 in the true Sheridan style. His thriftlessness and extrava- 
 gance are well known. He abandoned himself to riotous 
 living without a moral check of any kind. ' There was 
 hardly a single person,' says Fitzgerald, ' with whom he had 
 ever been intimate that he did not alienate or injure.' That 
 he ran away with Miss Linley was the smallest of his moral 
 offences. She became a most unhappy wife. Sheridan wore 
 her out with his ' unreasonableness and unintelligible folly.' 
 Within a few weeks of her death he married again, the 
 victim on this occasion being a Miss Ogle, whom he won by 
 love-letters copied from those previously addressed by him to 
 Miss Linley. The second wife was as much to be pitied as 
 the first. As he advanced in years Sheridan's vices became 
 more and more intolerable. He drank to excess ; his friends 
 cut him dead ; he became a declasse, miserably poor, if not in 
 absolute want ; his debts were ' la mer a boire.' At the age 
 of sixty-six he was seized with epileptic tits, in which he died. 
 His genius was of the most unpainstaking kind. ' The Rivals ' 
 he dashed off in six weeks at the age of twenty- three ; the 
 ' School for Scandal,' his masterpiece, dates from his twenty- 
 fifth year. With ordinary restraints his career would have 
 been a brilliant and honoured one, but this was not a condi- 
 tion of his genius. If he ever had any moral compunctions 
 as to anything, they were merely imj^ulses of the moment, 
 too ephemeral to pass into acts. 
 
 The Linley family, with whom Sheridan allied himself 
 by marriage, appears to have been as unsound as his own. 
 Mrs. Sheridan's father was a musician and. composer, who 
 became imbecile. His sons were ' a compound of musical 
 gifts and eccentricity ! ' One of them, Thomas Linley, who 
 was accidentally drowned at twenty-two, was a prodigy as a 
 composer and violinist, and was declared by Mozart to be a 
 
THE COLERIDGE S 115 
 
 true genius. The daughters, beautiful and fascinating, sang 
 like nightingales. All the family died young, Mrs. Sheridan 
 falling a victim to consumption. By his marriage with Miss 
 Elizabeth Linley, Sheridan had several children, only one of 
 whom, Tom, left descendants. Short-lived himself, for he 
 died at forty-seven, the son appears to have had the good for- 
 tune to marry healthy blood in the person of Miss Callender, 
 who saved the direct Sheridan line from extinction. The 
 family born to this couple comprised the Hon. Mrs. Norton, 
 and one of their grandchildren is the present Lord DufFerin. 
 Throughout both the Sheridan and Linley stock nerve dis- 
 order and genius are found side by side. 
 
 The father of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Rev. John 
 Coleridge, was eccentric and absent-minded, and died sud- 
 denly at sixty-one. Anecdotes illustrative of his ^ 
 peculiarities will be found in all the poet's biogra- 
 phies, and need not be repeated here. Coleridge's mother was 
 an uneducated woman, simple m her habits, and long-lived. 
 To the medical expert, eccentricity in life and sudden death 
 — the latter being due almost invariably to apoplexy or 
 failure of the heart's action — are eloquent indications of 
 nerve disorder, and in the family of an individual so afflicted, 
 morbid symptoms are naturally to be looked for. In the 
 Coleridge family such symptoms are not wanting. The Rev. 
 John Coleridge had three daughters by a first wife, and nine 
 sons and one daughter by a second. Of the lives and deaths 
 of the first family there is no record ; the second, of which 
 ' S. T. C was the youngest member, was certainly not 
 robust. Five of the poet's elder brothers, and his only sister, 
 were in their graves before he was twenty-one, and the history 
 of the surviving members of the family, though meagre, is 
 significant. Luke Coleridge, dying at twenty-four, left a son, 
 William Hart Coleridge, afterwards Bishop of Barbadoes, who 
 had to resign his see ' through ill-health ' at forty-two, and 
 who ' died suddenly ' at fifty ; while of the family of the poet's 
 brother James, Hartley Nelson Coleridge died at forty- five of 
 spinal paralysis, and a daughter, Mrs. Patteson, of a ' wasting 
 illness.' The issue of James Coleridge possessed the necessary 
 vigour to survive and even to become prolific ; but another 
 
 I 2 
 
116 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 brother, the Rev. Edward, had no children by a first wife, 
 and by a second had a son and daughter, who died childless ; 
 while a third brother, George, left a son, who died unmarried. 
 Upon Samuel Taylor Coleridge himself the family heri- 
 tage of nervous instability appears to have descended in a 
 specially aggravated form. As a child he was weakly, self- 
 absorbed, and morbidly imaginative. In his fifth or sixth 
 year, in consequence of some quarrel with a brother, he ran 
 away from home and passed the whole night, a night of rain 
 and storm, on a bleak hill side, where he was found at day- 
 break, numbed in every limb. The same kind of morbid 
 impulse caused him afterwards to run away from college and 
 enlist as a private soldier, and later still to betake himself to 
 Malta for no intelligible reason, leaving his friends in igno- 
 rance of his fate, and his wife and children dependent upon 
 charity. From his earliest years he was also extremely pre- 
 cocious. ^ I never thought as a child/ he says, ' never had 
 the language of a child.' By his eleventh year, according to 
 his son and biographer, the Kev. Derwent Coleridge, he was 
 ' already a poet, and yet more characteristically a metaphy- 
 sician.' Coleridge's own account of the matter is that ' at 
 a very premature age, even before my fifteenth year, I had 
 bewildered myself in metaphysics and in theological contro- 
 versy,' particularly with reference to ' fixed fate, free-will, 
 and fore-knowledge absolute.' The poet's youth and early 
 manhood were the only period of his life during which he 
 enjoyed a truce from bodily and nervous ailments. This 
 Ijlessed interval, as he calls it, appears to have lasted some 
 ten or twelve years. At the age of thirty his health was 
 completely broken by gout, and bodily suffering drove him to 
 the use of opium. He lived to be sixty-two, but the latter half 
 of his life was a wreck. In personal appearance Coleridge 
 was far from prepossessing. ' His whole figure and air,' says 
 Carlyle, was ' flabby and irresolute, expressive of weakness 
 under the possibility of strength.' He hung loosely upon 
 his limbs, with knees bent, and in a stooping attitude. In 
 walking he shuffled rather than stepped. Dorothy Words- 
 w^orth remarked that he had bad teeth, and De Quincey says 
 he had in his later years a lateral curvature of the spine — 
 
THE COLEPJDGES 117 
 
 both indications of a scrofulous constitution. * After death,' 
 wrote his daughter Sara, ' his body was opened, according to 
 his own earnest request. The causes of death were suffi- 
 ciently manifest from the state of the vital parts, but that 
 internal pain from which he suffered more or less during his 
 whole life was not to be explained, or only by that which 
 medical men call nervous sympathy.' It is a pity no record 
 has been kept of the condition of the brain, where, possibly, 
 the secret lay. 
 
 There is, however, another record open to us in the fate 
 of Coleridge's offspring, where the morbid characteristics of 
 genius are so clearly written, that he who runs may read. 
 Coleridge married Sara Fricker, sister of Mrs. Southey. As 
 !Mrs. Southey became insane, and as another Fricker died of 
 paralysis, it is obvious that the marriage was a most undesir- 
 able one in a physiological sense. Whether the Coleridge 
 or the Fricker heredity was the more to be dreaded it is 
 impossible to say ; but the blend of the two proved singularly 
 disastrous to Hartley Coleridge, the first-fruit of this ill-starred 
 union, who with great gifts combined great vices, and under 
 the load of both sank into an early grave. Hartley Coleridge 
 was a poet with more than a dash of insanity in his compo- 
 sition. He was never quite responsible for his actions. As 
 a child he was even more precocious than his father. At five 
 years of age he was a deep thinker, and was already in an 
 agony of doubt as to the reality of existence ; while seated 
 on somebody's knee he would pour forth the strangest meta- 
 physical speculations and poetic inventions. Between fact and 
 fiction he was apparently unable to discriminate. He imagined 
 a cataract bursting forth in a field near his home and forming 
 an island, in which a community grew up ; and this region 
 gradually attained in his mind the dimensions of a new 
 continent, with a people and a system of government of its 
 own. He called it Ejuxria. Derwent Coleridge, in his 
 memoir of Hartley, says : ' The history and geography of 
 Ejuxria were at one time as familiar to me, to say the least 
 of it, as any other portion, I was about to say, of the habit- 
 able globe.' From Hartley's vivid description Derwent 
 knew the generals and statesmen of Ejuxria by name ; he 
 
118 THE IXSAMTY OF GENIUS 
 
 witnessed the jar of faction, traced the course of sedition, saw 
 changes of government and the growth of pubhc opinion. 
 In a word, Hartley's hallucinations had all the features of a 
 living reality, and he was able to convey a similar impression 
 of it to others. He grew ' angry and mortified ' if the literal 
 truth of his words was doubted. ' His usual mode of introduc- 
 ing the subject,' says his biographer, 'was, "Derwent," calling 
 me by name (for these disclosures in later years were made 
 to me alone), " I have had letters and papers from Ejuxria." 
 Then came his budget of news with appropriate reflections, 
 his words flowing on in an exhaustless stream, his counte- 
 nance bearing witness to the inspiration — shall I call it ? — 
 by which he was agitated. Nothing could exceed the se- 
 riousness of his manner and, doubtless, of his feelings. He 
 was, I am persuaded, entirely unconscious of invention.' ^ 
 It would be difficult to find a more striking example of aii 
 insane hallucination than this conception, which possessed 
 the mind of Hartley Coleridge for so many years. Nor was 
 this the only figment of his brain. As a boy he was accus- 
 tomed to spin to his companions endless romances embodying 
 a great variety of personages, his language on such occasions 
 being as vivid as it was flowing. ' His sensibility was 
 intense, and he had not the wherewithal to control it. He 
 was liable to paroxysms of rage, self-accusation, and other 
 painful emotions, during which he bit his arm or finger 
 violently.' In his fits of depression he had hallucinations of 
 hearing. To his friend, Chauncey Hare Townshend, he said, 
 with reference to his hypochondriacal tendencies, ' I have 
 even heard a voice — not a creation of the fancy, but an 
 audible and sensuous voice, foreboding evil to me.' Along 
 with these manifestations of insanity Hartley Coleridge dis- 
 played intellectual and poetic powers of a high order, and he 
 also had the physical energy required to turn them to 
 account. His misfortune was that, in a still greater degree 
 than his father, he was destitute of the power of self-control. 
 He took to drinking, and led an irregular and spasmodic 
 existence till his death, which occurred from an attack of 
 bronchitis at fifty-two. 
 
 ' Derwent Coleridge : Memoir of Hartley Coh-ridge. 
 
THE COLERIDGES 119 
 
 The genius which cannot regulate itself is not very dis- 
 tinguishable from insanity. Hartley Coleridge's brain was 
 always teeming with ideas. These appear to have found 
 but incomplete expression in the poems which he threw off 
 alaiost without effort. In repose ' his countenance was stern 
 and thoughtful in the extreme, indicative of deep and pas- 
 sionate meditation, so much so as to be at times almost stavt- 
 ling.' 'Judging from his note-books and miscellaneous papers, 
 the quantity, variety, and quality of the thoughts which 
 passed through his brain in his latter years,' says his brother, 
 ' would surely have ranked him among the most copious and 
 instructive, as well as delightful, writers of his age had he 
 exerted his resolution or possessed the faculty of combining 
 his materials on any considerable scale or on any given plan.' 
 The vice of Hartley Coleridge's organisation betrayed itself 
 in his stunted stature, which barely exceeded five feet, and 
 in his prematurely aged gait and appearance ; his hair was 
 latterly quite white. 
 
 Sara, the only daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in- 
 herited a feeble constitution, and with it, not only some of her 
 father's poetic genius, but also his fondness for metaphysical 
 inquiry. There is a close analogy between her case and that 
 of her brother Hartley. ' Nervous sensitiveness and morbid 
 imaginativeness,' she remarks, ' set in with me early.' She fell 
 into a ' wasting illness ' and died at forty-nine. During the last 
 ten years of her life she was ' unchangeably depressed.' She 
 married her cousin Hartley Nelson Coleridge, another sufferer 
 from the evil heritage of the Coleridge blood, whose death 
 from spinal paralysis has already been noted. The son who was 
 born of this fatal marriage, Herbert Coleridge, was afilicted 
 with stammering, and died of consumption at thirty-one. 
 Derwent Coleridge, Hartley's younger brother, inherited the 
 longevity of his paternal grandmother, dying at eighty- three. 
 In his case the neuropathic tendency of the family assumed 
 the form of ' constant attacks of acute neuralgia.' 
 
 Very similar to that of Charles and Mary Lamb was the 
 association of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, except that 
 throughout his long life — he died at eighty-four — Words- 
 worth's intellect was never derano^ed. Evidence of the neuro- 
 
120 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 pathic element in his composition is afforded by the history of 
 his family, and cliiefiy by the insanity of Dorothy Wordsworth, 
 -., who, like Mary Lamb, was poetical and in the 
 
 closest sj^mpatny with her brother s pursuits. 
 Wordsworth's father was a man of ' great force of character ' 
 — a phrase which occurs with remarkable frequency in the 
 family history of the insane. What it means precisely in the 
 present instance cannot be gathered from biographical re- 
 cords, but if no neurotic characteristics existed in the poet's 
 father, who died suddenly at forty-two, of what is said to have 
 been 'inflammation of the lungs,' there is an unmistakable un- 
 soundness to be traced to his mother, who died at thirty-one 
 of consumption. Wordsworth attributed his mother's decline 
 to her having caught cold from being put to sleep in a friend's 
 ' best bed-room ; ' but, as the consumptive taint subsequently 
 appeared in his own children, it probably existed in the family 
 before the incident of the bed-room occurred. De Quincey's 
 description of Dorothy Wordsworth testifies to the strain of 
 insanity in the Wordsworth blood: 'Her eyes were not soft, 
 nor were they fierce or bold ; but they were wild and start- 
 ling, and hurried in their motion. Her manner was warm 
 and even ardent ; her sensibility seemed constitutionally 
 deep, and some subtle fire of impassioned intellect apparently 
 burned within her, which, being alternately pushed forward 
 into a conspicuous expression by the irresponsible instincts of 
 her temperament, and then immediately checked in obedience 
 to the decorum of her sex and age and her maidenly con- 
 dition, gave to her whole demeanour and to her conversation 
 an air of embarrassment, and even of self-conflict, that was 
 almost distressing to witness. Even her very utterance and 
 enunciation often suffered in point of clearness and steadiness 
 from the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility. At 
 times the self counter-action and self-baffling of her feelings 
 caused her even to stammer, and so determinedly to stammer 
 that a stranger who should have seen her and quitted her in 
 that state of feeling would certainly have set her down for 
 one plagued with that infirmity of speech as distressingly as 
 Charles Lamb himself.' The same writer further remarks : 
 ' Miss Wordsworth was too ardent and fiery to maintain the 
 
WORDSWORTH 121 
 
 reserve essential to dignity ' — in short, slie was ' tlie creature 
 of impulse ' with 'a self-consuming fire of thought.' 
 
 Dorothy Wordsworth's poetic nature found expression in 
 many passages of her diary, and she also wrote verses of a 
 high order of merit. Physically her energy was prodigious ; 
 she was accustomed to walk twenty or thirty miles a day. In 
 her fiftieth year her intelligence began to give way, a severe 
 illness so prostrating her in body and mind that, according to 
 Principal Sliairp, she ' never recovered from it.' Three years 
 afterwards an attack of brain fever supervened, leaving ' her 
 intellect painfully impaired and her bright nature perma- 
 nently overclouded.' It was not, however, until she was fifty- 
 six that, in Wordsworth's euphemistic phrase, his sister be- 
 came ' a confirmed invalid.' Loss of memory was the earliest 
 characteristic of her disease, and she gradually fell into im- 
 becility, which continued till her death at eighty-six. In her 
 benighted condition she was accustomed to repeat the favourite 
 small poems of her brother, as well as a few of her own. What 
 is still more remarkable, her faculty for poetic composition 
 remained, several pieces composed during her state of mental 
 darkness finding a place in her biography.^ At least one 
 other member of the Wordsworth family showed signs of the 
 poetic temperament. Concerning the seafaring brother who 
 went down with his ship off the Bill of Portland in 1804, 
 Coleridge wrote on one occasion to Miss Wordsworth : 
 ' Your brother John is one of you — a man who hath solitary 
 usings of his own intellect, deep in feeling, with a subtle tact 
 and swift instinct of true beauty.' Wordsworth himself says 
 that his brother John became a ' silent poet,' and was known 
 among those of his own craft as ' the philosopher.' In 
 Wordsworth's offspring the neuropathic taint unmistakably 
 appears. One of his children, Kate, had a stroke of paralysis 
 at the age of four, her left side being disabled. Some months 
 afterwards she was discovered in a speechless condition in bed 
 and suffering from convulsions, in which she died. Words- 
 worth's favourite daughter Dora grew to womanhood, with a 
 character which Sara Coleridge described as ' most peculiar — 
 a compound of vehemence of feeling and gentleness, sharpness 
 
 * Edmund Lee : Dorothy Wordsworth, the Story of a Sister's Lave. 
 
122 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 and lovingness, which is not often seen ; ' and at forty-three 
 she died of consumption. 
 
 Kobert Burns believed that poets had a ' stronger imagi- 
 nation, more delicate sensibility, and a more ungovernable 
 Burns ^^* ^^ passions ' than other men. He spoke from 
 experience ; in the words above quoted he faithfully 
 describes his own characteristics. But while he had some- 
 thing more, he had also something less than other men. His 
 ballads notwithstanding, he had no aptitude for music. Both 
 the poet and his brother Gilbert took lessons in music, but, 
 says their teacher, ' Robert's ear in particular was remarkably 
 dull ; it was long before I could get them to distinguish one 
 tune from another.' ^ Burns's mother lived to old age without 
 any notable ailment. His father, however, died of consump- 
 tion, and was distinguished in life, says the poet in one of his 
 letters, ' for a headlong, ungovernable irascibility.' Here we 
 have explanation enough of the nerve-disorder of the son. 
 The poet, in a letter, says : ' My constitution and frame were 
 aJ) origine blasted with a deep incurable taint of melancholia 
 which poisons my existence.' As a young man, according to 
 his brother Gilbert, he not only suffered from depression of 
 spirits but ' was almost constantly afflicted in the evenings 
 with a dull headache, which at an after period of his life was 
 exchanged for a palpitation of the heart, and a threatening 
 of fainting and suffocation in his bed in the night-time.' 
 With reference to these ailments Lockhart observes : ' I 
 have heard from an old acquaintance of the bard who often 
 shared his bed with him at Mossgiel, that even at that early 
 period, when intemperance had surely nothing to do with the 
 matter, those ominous symptoms of radical disorder in the 
 digestive system — the palpitation and suffocation of which 
 Gilbert speaks — were so regularly his nocturnal visitants that 
 it was his custom to have a great tub of cold water by his 
 bedside into which he usually plunged more than once in the 
 course of the night, thereby procuring instant, though short- 
 lived relief.' ^ Like Edgar Allan Poe, Burns fell a victim to 
 drunkenness, and although his death at thirty-seven was im- 
 mediately due to cold — the result of a drinking bout — we may 
 ' Currie's Memoir. * Lockhart : Life of Burns, 
 
BUENS 123 
 
 conclude with Lockhart that the ' irritable and nervous bodily 
 constitution,' inherited from his father, together with the ' ex- 
 hausting excitement of an intensely poetical temperament/ 
 was incompatible with length of days. Burns's sensibility was 
 extreme. Once in Edinburgh, in the presence of Walter Scott, 
 then a boy. Burns was shown a print representing a soldier 
 lying dead in the snow, with his dog sitting in misery be- 
 side him ; and the simple picture so affected him that he shed 
 tears. Scott, who relates the incident, further remembers 
 that Burns's eye was large and dark, and that it glowed — 
 ' literally glowed ' — when its owner spoke with feeling or in- 
 terest. There was one thing that Burns loved as passionately 
 as poetry — woman. ' In love,' says his brother Gilbert, and 
 the passion began with him at fifteen, ' the agitations of his 
 mind and body exceeded anything of the kind I ever knew.' 
 Gilbert lived to the age of sixty-seven, but a younger brother 
 died early, and although the poet had four sons I am not 
 aware that there are any descendants of his at the present day. 
 The family of Walter Scott, whose pathological history 
 stands out clearly in his own autobiographical notes and in 
 Lockhart's admirable life of him, was permeated by gp,Q„™ 
 nerve disorder. Scott's paternal grandfather, a farmer 
 and dealer, was ' extremely active, quick, keen, and fiery in 
 his temper,' and he married a woman whose character is 
 vaguely indicated by the fact that she had a brother described 
 by Scott as a ' weak, silly man.' Of the children born to this 
 couple, the one with whom w^e have more particularly to do, 
 Scott's father, also named Walter, died in his seventieth year 
 ' after a succession of paralytic attacks, under which mind 
 as well as body had by degrees been laid quite prostrate.' 
 Unlike his father, this Walter Scott, although a lawyer, was 
 a man of much simplicity of character, and devout. He 
 married Anne Rutherford, daughter of an eminent physician. 
 This lady, the novelist's mother, died also of paralysis at an 
 advanced age, losing suddenly the use of speech and of one 
 side ; her brother, Dr. Rutherford, died of gout in the stomach 
 after showing a partial failure of memory ; while her sister, 
 from some unknown cause, ' expired suddenly without a groan 
 and without suffering.' That a robust family could be born 
 
'124 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 to such a couple was, of course, an impossibility. Tliey had 
 twelve children, of whom six perished in infancy, and, writing 
 fifty years later, Lockhart sorrowfully observed that of the 
 remaining six four had left no descendants. 
 
 Sir Walter had four brothers and one sister, concerning 
 whom he has left on record some interesting facts. The eldest 
 brother, Robert, was in the army. ' His temper,' says the 
 novelist, ' was bold and haughty, and to me was often 
 chequered with what I felt to be capricious tyranny. In other 
 respects I loved him much, for he had a strong turn for 
 literature, read poetry with taste and judgment, and com- 
 posed verses himself which had gained him great applause 
 among his mess-mates. ... In bad humour he kicked and 
 cuffed without mercy.' This brother died of paralysis. The 
 second, John Scott, was also in the army, aud died a young man. 
 Anne Scott, the novelist's only sister, was of a delicate con- 
 stitution and died at twenty-nine. ' Her temper,' he observes, 
 ' like that of my brother, was peculiar, and in her, perhaps, it 
 showed more odd from the habits of indulgence which her 
 nervous illnesses had formed. But, at least, she was an affec- 
 tionate girl, neither devoid of talent nor of feeling, though 
 living in an ideal world which she had formed to herself by 
 force of imagination.' Thomas, the third brother, emigrated 
 to Canada, where he had a son and two daughters, who do 
 not appear to have left descendants. In Sir Walter's youngest 
 brother, Daniel, the inevitable ne'er-do-well of the family, 
 who treads upon the heels of genius, crops up. With a 
 marked ' aversion to labour,' or, rather, ' indolence,' ' he had 
 neither the vivacity of intellect,' says Sir Walter, 'which 
 supplies the want of diligence, nor the pride which renders 
 the most detested labour better than dependence or contempt. 
 His career was as unfortunate as might be augured from this 
 unhappy combination, and after various unsuccessful attempts 
 to establish himself in life he died on his return from the 
 West Indies.' Concerning Daniel, Lockhart supplies some 
 further particulars. ' The story is, shortly,' says the bio- 
 grapher, ' that the adventurer's habits of dissipation proved 
 incurable, but he finally left Jamaica under a stigma, which 
 Sir Walter regarded with utter severity. Being employed 
 
SCOTT 125 
 
 against a refractory or insnrgenr. body of negroes, he had ex- 
 hibited a lamentable deficiency of sjDirit and conduct. He 
 returned to Scotland a dishonoured man, and though he found 
 shelter and compassion from his mother, his brother would 
 never see him again. Nay, when soon after, his health, shat- 
 tered by absolute indulgence, gave way and he died as yet a 
 young man, the poet refused either to attend his funeral or 
 to wear mourniug for him like the rest of the family.' Twenty 
 years afterwards, however, Scott spoke to Lockhart in terms 
 of great and painful contrition for the austerity with which 
 he had conducted himself on that occasion. Like others of 
 his class, the unfortunate young man was a victim to the law 
 of heredity ; science, recognising that his faults were those of 
 an inherited organisation, does him the justice that his own 
 family denied him. 
 
 The paralytic ailment of his parents declared itself in 
 Scott's case in infancy. At the age of eighteen months he 
 felt a sudden loss of power in his right leg, and for the 
 remainder of his life he was lame. During youth and man- 
 hood his nerves appear to have been dormant, but both 
 paralysis and apoplexy were the afflictions of his later years. 
 At the age of fifty, the novelist, writing to a friend with 
 reference to the work on which he was then engaged, says, 
 ' Peveril will, I fear, smell of the apoplexy.' This letter, 
 adds Lockhart, ' contains the first allusions to the species 
 of malady that ultimately proved fatal to Sir Walter Scott. 
 He, as far as I know, never mentioned to any one of his 
 family the symptoms he here speaks of. But long before 
 any serious apoplectic seizure occurred, it had been suspected 
 by myself, and by others of his friends, that he had sustained 
 slight attacks of that nature and concealed them.' Three 
 years later, in his journal, Scott speaks of feeling ' a tremor 
 of the head, the pulsations of which become painfully sen- 
 sible, a disposition to causeless alarm, much lassitude, and 
 decay of vigour and activity of intellect.' An odd optical 
 delusion also occurred to him. ' I have of late,' he writes, 
 * been accustomed for the first time to the use of spectacles. 
 Now, when I have laid them aside to step into a room dimly 
 lighted out of the strong light which I use for writing, I 
 
12G THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 hav^e seen, or seemed to see, the rim of the same spectacles 
 which I have left behind me. At first the impression was so 
 lively that I put my hands to my eyes, believing that I had 
 the actual spectacles on at the moment ; but what I saw was 
 only the eidolon or image of the said useful servants.' More 
 alarming was the hallucination of sight which occurred to 
 Scott on hearing of Byron's death. He thought, for a 
 moment, that he saw the image of his deceased friend, but 
 on examination it proved to be nothing but the folds of some 
 drapery. It was while Scott was writing the ' Tales of a 
 Grandfather,' at fifty-eight, that his first alarming stroke of 
 paralysis occurred. It rendered him speechless for ten 
 minutes, and thenceforward his letters continued to drop hints 
 as to the imminence of a recurrence of that ailment or apo- 
 plexy. His gloomy anticipations were soon realised. Re- 
 peated shocks of paralysis weakened him to such an extent, 
 that he sank into a state of mental torpor, and, apoplexy 
 supervening, caused his death at sixty-one. 
 
 The curse that overhangs the family of the man of genius 
 fell with its wonted severity upon the offspring of Scott. 
 He had two sons and two daughters. The former died as 
 young men, childless. The elder daughter, Anne, laboured, 
 for years, under a ' miserably shattered ' constitution, looking 
 and speaking like one ' taking the measure of an unmade 
 grave,' and finally succumbed to brain fever. Sophia, the 
 younger, who became Mrs. Lockhart, died, like her sister, in 
 what ought to have been the prime of womanhood, after a 
 long ' illness ' — most probably consumption — 'which she bore 
 with meekness and fortitude.' Mrs. Lockhart left two 
 children, Walter and Charlotte; the former died young, 
 without issue, and Charlotte, who became Mrs. Hope, suc- 
 ceeded to Sir Walter's estate at Abbotsford, but of her three 
 children only one, a daughter, survived the period of child- 
 hood. ' The poet's ambition to found a family,' says Lock- 
 hart, ' sleeps with him.' 
 
 No poet was ever born in more prosaic surroundings 
 
 than Keats. His father was a stableman, his mother 
 
 a livery-stable keeper's daughter. The elder Keats 
 
 was killed by falling from a horse at the age of thirty-six, 
 
KEATS 1^57 
 
 and nothing is known of his parentage ; but there is evi- 
 dence enough that the poet derived his constitution mainly 
 from his mother. Prodigal in her tastes, passionately fond 
 of amusement, and, at the same time, ' saturnine in disposi- 
 tion,' Mrs. Keats suffered from rheumatism, and died of con- 
 sumption — a neuropathic subject to the tips of her fingers. 
 As a child Keats was ' violent and ungovernable,' and mani- 
 fested emotional extremes, being one moment convulsed with 
 laughter and the next bathed in tears. He was dwarfish in 
 figure, barely five feet high, but his passions were so strong 
 that he had to calm his nerves with laudanum. Lord 
 Houghton saw him once in a state of physical excitement so 
 intense, that it ' might have appeared to those who did not 
 know him to be one of fierce intoxication.' He had a 
 ' swooning admiration ' for Fanny Brawne, to whom he wrote 
 passionate love letters. When out of this vein he was 
 plunged in despondency. On one occasion he wrote : ' The 
 world is too brutal to me ; I am glad there is such a place as 
 the grave — I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get 
 there.' The prophecy was too true. During his short life 
 Keats was ' almost delirious ' at times with his mental and 
 bodily sufferings, and his agitation under the attacks of the 
 critics is said by Shelley to have resembled insanity. No 
 organisation could have been more responsive than his to 
 outward influences. ' The humming of a bee, the sight of a 
 flower, the glitter of the sun,' it is said, ' made his nature 
 tremble ; then his eye flashed, his cheek glowed, and his 
 mouth quivered.' He died at twenty- five, of consumption. The 
 same disease carried off his brother Thomas in early manhood, 
 but his sister Fanny attained the age of eighty-six. Both 
 these members of the family were as undistinguished as their 
 ancestry, among whom no biographer has discovered the 
 smallest trace of eminence. 
 
 Moore lost his memory some years before his death, which 
 occurred at seventy-two. All his ^family, daughters and sons, 
 predeceased him — Anne at five (as the result of a ,. 
 fall, though, had she lived, said the doctors, it could 
 only have been as an ' invalid from the bad state of her in- 
 ward parts '), Anastasia Mary at seventeen, Olivia in infancy, 
 
128 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 John at nineteen ('his constitntion,' according to Lord John 
 Eussell, ' being too delicate to carry him on to manhood'), 
 and Thomas at twenty-seven. The last named, who was the 
 eldest son, belonged to the ne'er-do-well class. Lord John 
 Russell says he ' was not physically strong, and had little 
 restraint over himself;' his wild and dissipated life terminated 
 in consumption. 
 
 'All biographies begin with genealogy,' says Bulwei 
 Lytton, ' and with reason, for many of the influences that 
 BuLWEE sway the destiny that ends not with the grave, are 
 Lytton already formed before the mortal utters his first 
 wail in the cradle.' ^ There never was a truer word spoken, 
 though it may be doubted whether Bulwer Lytton, who was 
 proud of his ancestry, grasped its full import as regards him- 
 self. His maternal grandfather, Richard Warburton Lytton, 
 was eccentric. The unbalanced condition of his mind 
 revealed itself in an extraordinary capacity for acquiring 
 languages ancient and modern. He wrote a drama in 
 Hebrew, intending it for the stage. This work he afterwards 
 burned in despair because, as he told a friend, he could not 
 find Jews sufficiently versed in Hebrew to act it. The friend 
 pertinently observed, ' And if you did, where on earth would 
 you find an audience sufficiently versed in Hebrew to under- 
 stand it ? ' The old scholar was extremely short-sighted, 
 mismanaged his affairs, quarrelled with and lived apart from 
 his wife, and died of an apoplectic seizure. His daughter, 
 the novelist's mother, had a shy, sensitive temper, great self- 
 will, and a passionate fondness for poetry. There was some- 
 thing morbid in the long estrangement she set between 
 herself and her distinguished son on account of his marriage. 
 On the paternal side of Bulwer Lytton's family there was 
 also a strong neuropathic strain. His father, Colonel Bulwer, 
 suffered from gout, of which he died suddenly. Two uncles 
 were ' eccentric' Colonel Bulwer, wdth his ' powerful self- 
 willed nature,' appears to have merited the same description. 
 The marriage of which the novelist was born was an ex- 
 tremely ill-assorted one. ' At first,' says Bulwer Lytton, 
 ' though my father's temper was of the roughest, yet he was 
 * Life and Remains of Edward Bubvcr, Lord Lytton. By his Son. 
 
BULWEE LYTTON 129 
 
 very much in love, and love lias a good-humonr of its own. 
 But gradually the temper rose superior to the love, and gout, 
 to which from early youth my father had been occasionally 
 subjected, now fixed upon premature and almost habitual 
 residence. He bore pain with the fierce impatience common 
 to the strong when they suffer, and it exasperated all the 
 passions which, even in health and happiness, that powerful 
 and fiery organisation could but imperfectly control.' The 
 mother's constitution, always delicate, also began to give 
 way ; her nerves were shattered, and ' to the dejected mind 
 was added the enfeebled frame.' It was in her darkest hour 
 that Bulwer Lytton was born. As a child he was weakly 
 and delicate, and for some reason — no doubt a morbid 
 caprice — his father always regarded him with a special 
 aversion. At school the future author had a reputation for 
 precocity and cleverness, and composed verses. He was only 
 nine years of age when his master wrote to Mrs. Bulwer : 
 ' Your son has exhausted all I can teach him. His energy is 
 extraordinary. He has a vital power which demands a large 
 field. He has it in him to become a very remarkable man.* 
 
 Exuberant natures with a morbid tinge are subject to 
 strong reactions. In early manhood Bulwer Lytton's dis- 
 position took ' a morbid and even a dangerous inclination.' 
 He had frequent ' fits of great melancholy and dejection,' and 
 these moods were followed by impatient cravings for excite- 
 ment. From the restlessness due to his great physical activity 
 be sought relief in smoking, and all his works from the age 
 of twenty-two were composed under the soothing influence 
 of tobacco. At the same time his irritability was sometimes 
 such as to render him ' absolutely unapproachable.' Al- 
 though never robust, he had a devouring energy for work, 
 and even in his early married days so incessantly was he 
 occupied, that his wife seldom saw him for five minutes till 
 two or three in the morning. A nervous pain in the ear 
 caused him great suffering, and long before he was thirty his 
 sensitiveness had become so morbidly acute that, to a visitor, 
 he ' seemed like a man who had been flayed and was sore all 
 over.' Ordinary worries were, to his exasperated brain, like 
 friction to highly inflamed flesh. Hence the miseries and 
 
 K 
 
130 TriE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 scandal of his married life. The brutality of his father as a 
 husband appears to have been far surpassed by his own. 
 His outbursts of temper were such, that on one occasion he 
 kicked his wife while she was near her confinement, and on 
 another, ' springing upon her like a tiger, made his teeth 
 meet in her left cheek.' ^ Concerning the ear-ache above 
 referred to, Lord Lytton writes of his father : ' To frequent 
 and severe recurrence of that pain he was subject till middle 
 age, and his public and social life was greatly affected by the 
 deafness it induced. When he was about forty, an abscess 
 revealed itself in the ear from which he had thus suffered 
 ever since the age of sixteen. He was then told by the aurists 
 that any attempt to stop the discharge from the abscess 
 might prove fatal. In his seventieth year, after an exceed- 
 ingly painful and prolonged attack of ear-ache, the discharge 
 stopped of its own accord, and a few days after, he was dead.' 
 The characteristics of Macaulay were great physical 
 activity, which expended itself in walking exercise, a mental 
 ■KT.^ATTT *^ vehemence and self-confidence to match, and a pro- 
 
 MACAULAY . i/>it-ati 
 
 digious memory. An uncle, Uolin Macaulay, was a 
 remarkable linguist, and Zachary Macaulay, father of the 
 historian, devoted his life to the suppression of the slave 
 trade with a zeal little short of fanaticism, a mental quality 
 which, as I have elsewhere shown, is closely associated with 
 nerve disorder. Macaulay was a wonder-child, remembering 
 without eftbrt all that he read. This faculty never deserted 
 him. He knew ' Paradise Lost ' and the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' 
 by heart. Poems read through once he could recall forty 
 years afterwards without the omission of a single word ; the 
 contents of a single page he could take in at a glance. ' To 
 the last,' says his biographer,^ ' he could read books more 
 quickly than other people skimmed them, and skimmed 
 them as fast as anyone else could turn the leaves.' From 
 the age of fifty he suffered from confirmed asthma, and at 
 fifty-nine he died from stoppage of the heart's action. 
 
 The Bronte sisters were consumptive, deriving their un- 
 sound constitution from a father who was dangerously 
 
 ' X?/e of Lady Rosina Lytton : a Vindication. 
 • G. 0. Trcvel^an : Life <f Macaxday. 
 
THE BRONTES 131 
 
 ^ eccentric/ Himself a writer and versifier, the Rev. Patrick 
 Bronte was tyrannical to his children, and was accustomed 
 to carry about with him a loaded pistol, which he fired off in 
 moments of temper. Another mania of his was gjjQjjrpg 
 always to dine alone ; and his habits were otherwise 
 solitary and peculiar. As in the case of George III., his 
 insanity entailed early blindness. All the children born to 
 this unamiable cleric were short-lived but strangely gifted. 
 A daughter, who died at eleven, was, before her death, able to 
 discuss the political questions of the day. The three sisters 
 Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte, who have rendered the 
 family famous, were much alike in constitution, and all 
 showed poetical and imaginative talent of a high order. 
 Charlotte suffered from nerves and depression, her biographer, 
 Mrs. Gaskell, noting the similarity of her brooding tendencies 
 to Cowper's. On one occasion she had an hallacination of 
 hearing, a voice seeming to recite to her some unknown lines 
 of poetry. She was extremely weak-sighted, and suffered 
 severely from neuralgia and sleeplessness. She died at 
 thirty-nine, of consumption. A few years before her death 
 she married, but left no children. Emily and Anne, con- 
 sumptive also, died at thirty and twenty-nine, the latter 
 suffering from asthma as well. In their brother, Bramwell 
 Bronte, we have another example of the ne'er-do-well who 
 dogs the footsteps of genius. Bramwell had a talent both 
 for poetry and painting, but he was deeply tainted with 
 vicious habits, took opium, drank to excess, and had repeated 
 attacks of delirium tremens. The sisters were deeply distressed 
 at his ' frantic folly,' and regarded him as ' hopeless.' This, 
 indeed, he proved to be, losing all his situations througli 
 vice or culpable negligence. He died at thirty-one of con- 
 sumption. All the members of the family were as undersized 
 as they were precocious and clever. The same remark applies 
 to Maria Edgeworth, who, like Charlotte Bronte, suffered 
 from weak eyes and was the daughter of an eccentric father. 
 Charles Dickens was a ' puny, sickly boy, subject to 
 attacks of violent spasm, which disabled him for ^ 
 any active exertion.' He outgrew his feebleness, 
 however, and as a young man showed extraordinary vivacity 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 and force of character. In early manhood he had nothing to 
 complain of physically beyond ' a little weakness now and 
 then and a slight nervousness.' As he advanced in years he 
 became restless and irritable. His married life was ' a dismal 
 failure.' Neuralgic pains interfered with his work, and he 
 suffered from sleeplessness. Ultimately both gout and in- 
 cipient paralysis attacked him. In his fifty-sixth year he wrote 
 to a friend : ' My weakness and deadness are all on the left 
 side, and if I don't look at anything I try to touch with the 
 left hand I don't know where it is. Last Sunday I found 
 myself extremely giddy, and extremely uncertain of my sense 
 of touch both in the left leg and the left hand and arm.' 
 In the following year Sir Thomas Watson reported upon 
 Dickens's condition in the following terms : ' After unusual 
 irritability he found himself giddy with a tendency to go 
 backward and to turn round. Afterwards, desiring to put 
 something on a small table, he pushed it and the table forward 
 undesignedly. He had some odd feeling of insecurity about 
 the left leg, as if there was something unnatural about his 
 heel, but he could lift and he did not drag his leg. Also he 
 spoke of some strangeness of the left hand and arm ; he 
 missed the spot on which he wished to lay that hand unless 
 he carefully looked at it, and he felt an unreadiness to lift 
 his hands towards his head, especially the left hand, when, 
 for instance, he was brushing his hair. . . The state thus 
 described showed plainly that Charles Dickens had been on 
 the brink of an attack of paralysis of his left side, and possibly 
 of apoplexy.' Dickens also mentioned to his medical adviser 
 that he sometimes lost or misused a word, and that he forgot 
 names and numbers. Meanwhile he suffered from repeated 
 attacks of gout. At fifty-eight he died from effusion of 
 blood upon the brain. Forster, from whom these particulars 
 are derived,^ is strangely reticent about the novelist's parentage 
 and connections, but the elder Dickens appears to have been 
 a thriftless man, and the existence of the ne'er-do-well member 
 of the family is admitted, though the details of the case are, 
 as usual, hushed up. The ne'er-do-well was Dickens's brother 
 Frederick, to whom, on his death, the novelist thus alluded : 
 * Forster : Life of Charles DicTiens. 
 
DICKENS , 133 
 
 ' It was a wasted life, but God forbid that we should be hard 
 upon it, or upon anything else in this world that is not 
 deliberately and coldly wrong.' 
 
 Both of George Eliot's parents appear to have contributed 
 to her peculiar organisation, her father being a ' man of 
 extraordinary determination of character,' and her George 
 mother ' a woman with an unusual amount of Kliot 
 natural force,' but of an ailing habit. In childhood the 
 novelist suffered from a ' low general state of health and 
 great susceptibility to terror at night ; ' and, according to her 
 biographer,^ the liability to have ' all her soul become a 
 quivering fear ' remained with her through life. At school 
 she showed great aptitude for English composition and 
 music, and as an example of her sensitiveness it is related 
 that after playing she would go and throw herself down in a 
 flood of tears. Fits of depression beset her in womanhood, 
 and from her thirtieth year she was a martyr to headaches. 
 In her diaries and correspondence occur such jottings as the 
 following : 1849 (at the age of thirty), ' terrible headaches ; ' 
 1850, ' lost whole weeks from headache, system shattered ; ' 
 1852, *pity me ! I have had headache for four days inces- 
 santly;' 1853, 'a crop of very large headaches, rheumatism 
 in the right arm;' 1854, * I have got into a labyrinth of 
 headaches and palpitations.' In her latter years some dis- 
 order of the kidneys manifested itself, but the immediate 
 cause of her death was a cold. A sister of George Eliot's 
 married a surgeon and lived a homely life ; and a brother 
 was content to be, like his father, a land agent. 
 
 Sydney Smith's father was eccentric to the point of in- 
 sanity. ' He was a man of considerable ability, endowed 
 with great force of character and a keen sense of Sydney 
 humour, but his disposition was selfish and his Smith 
 temper capricious ; he was impulsive in his movements and 
 arrogant in manner. He seems to have had a mania for 
 doing rash and unaccountable things.'^ One of these un- 
 accountable things was to leave his newly-wedded wife at 
 the church door and rush off to America, returning to her 
 
 ' J. W. Cross : Life of George Eliot. 
 2 Stuart J. Reid : Life of Sydney S/nith, 
 
134 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 only after lie liad spent some j^ears in random excursions up 
 and down the world. He lived to be eighty-eight. Sydney 
 Smith's three brothers were, like himself, remarkably pre- 
 cocious, though, unlike him, they died comparatively early. 
 One became an Indian judge and an ' Oriental scholar,' having 
 a great facility for acquiring languages. Sydney Smith had 
 gout and heart disease. His eldest son at twenty-four suc- 
 cumbed to a ' long and painful illness.' 
 
 Another great humorist, Thomas Hood, belonged to a 
 consumptive family. An elder brother, James, was thought 
 „ to be the more promising youth. James was 
 
 artistic, fond of literature, and a good linguist. 
 He died, however, at an early age, a victim to consumption, 
 which also carried off his mother and two sisters. Thomas 
 Hood's life was one of much physical suffering ; he had 
 rheumatism, breast spasms, heart disease, a disordered liver, 
 smd other complications, oP which he died at forty- six. 
 
 De Quincey's father had a long period of ill-health, and 
 died at thirty-nine. His mother's religious prepossessions 
 
 De l^d her to a ' gloomy narrowness and austerity.' 
 QuiNCEY The famous opium-eater was himself of stunted 
 growth, being barely 5 feet 3 inches high, was short- 
 sighted, and took to opium as a relief from neuralgia and 
 general nervous irritability. He had great aptitude for 
 languages, being able to talk Greek fluently at fifteen, was 
 fond of music, slovenly in his dress, and cared nothing for 
 money, which he was all his life incapable of handling. In 
 his later years he was subject to great vicissitudes of tem- 
 perament and spirits, being frequently depressed and phy- 
 sically torpid, which condition, however, was not incompatible 
 with a ' frightful recurrence of long ago imagery and veriest 
 trifles of the past.' A brother, William, who died at sixteen, 
 was a boy of ' remarkable character and energy, incessantly 
 writing and inventing.' Consumption appeared among the 
 members of De Quincey's family. 
 
 Thackeray died suddenly at fifty-two. He looked well 
 
 Thackeray ^^^ strong enough to have lived twenty years 
 
 longer, but for the last fourteen years of his life 
 
 he was continually ailing and was subject to certain painful 
 
BALZAC 135 
 
 spasms, which were probably the immediate cause of his 
 death. ^ His father, an Indian Civil Servant, also died 
 suddenly. 
 
 All his life Wilkie Collins was a sufferer from his nerves, 
 to calm which he was accustomed to take laudanum in im- 
 mense doses. His head was mis-shapen. On the Wilkie 
 right side there was a congenital swelling, and he Collins 
 was accustomed to say that Nature, in his case, had been a 
 bad artist, having depicted his forehead ' all out of drawing.' 
 He had gout and was otherwise in bad health for many years. 
 The beginning of his last illness, which came when he was 
 sixty-five, was a stroke of paralysis. Wilkie Collins's paternal 
 grandmother died in a fit after prolonged suffering from 
 ' infirmities of body and mind.' His father was William 
 Collins, the Eoyal Academician, who died of heart disease, 
 and there was also a faculty for painting in his mother's 
 family. 
 
 Although he attained the age of seventy-seven, Robert 
 Browning had a curiously weak heart. Robert Buchanan 
 writes of him : ' More than once at a time when 
 he was in his prime, it was impossible to find at ^^^^^'^^^g^ 
 his wrist any pulsation whatever, or a pulsation so slow and 
 apparently feeble as to be scarcely noticeable.' In his latter 
 years the poet also suffered from asthma. There is some 
 obscurity about Browning's descent, but his father, although 
 engaged in commerce, possessed the significant gift of verse- 
 writing. In boyhood, Browning showed some disposition to 
 be a painter. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, his wife and a 
 poetess, was always weak and ailing, and died of a ' decline.' 
 By Sarah Coleridge she was described as a ' little hard- 
 featured woman, with long dark ringlets, a pale face, and a 
 plaintive voice.' 
 
 In Balzac there was a converging heredity of nerve 
 disorder. His maternal grandfather died of apoplexy, and 
 his mother is described as a woman of ^ great ^ 
 vivacity of mind, untiring activity, and extra- 
 ordinary firmness ' — phrases which, in the circumstances, are 
 of some significance to the pathologist. On the father's 
 * Anthony Trollope : Life of Thaclieray, 
 
136 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 side there was a pronounced strain of insanity. The elder 
 Balzac was an avocat at Tours, ' where,' says his daughter, 
 who has published the novelist's correspondence, ' his 
 originality was proverbial, and manifested itself both in 
 word and deed.' Although perfectly well in body, he took it 
 into his head one day to lie in bed, and this he did con- 
 tinuously for twenty years thereafter, receiving his friends 
 meanwhile, and even taking a part in public affairs. To 
 everybody's surprise he got up one morning at half-past 
 four, dressed himself — for he had always had his clothes 
 kept in readiness — and went about his business as if nothing 
 had happened. Among other peculiarities the elder Balzac 
 had an extraordinary memory. This faculty the novelist 
 inherited along with a feeble constitution. At school Balzac 
 had an epileptic seizure, which so alarmed his teachers that 
 they urged his parents to take him home. The illness was 
 to them inexplicable, because he could not be accused or 
 over-studying, being, in fact, a ' dull scholar.' Balzac does 
 not seem to have had a return of this malady, which his 
 sister, in her biography, curiously attributes to a ' sort of 
 congestion of ideas ; ' for, although he cut a poor figure in 
 the class at school, he was, it appears, an omnivorous reader. 
 The weakness of his constitution finally assumed the form of 
 hypertrophy of the heart — a disease which predisposes to 
 congestion of the brain. Of this aifection of the heart he 
 died at fifty-one, leaving no offspring. 
 
 Balzac's literary energy was enormous. He owned to 
 ' two immense desires — to be celebrated and to be loved ' — 
 and both of these he realised by dint of brain force alone ; 
 for physically he was the most insignificant of men, being 
 barely five feet high. He was absorbed in his characters, 
 and for weeks and sometimes months at a time he would 
 not only disappear entirely from view, but all trace of him 
 would be lost. At such times it was his whim to live in 
 some garret under an assumed name — a proceeding not 
 always necessitated by his pecuniary means. On one occa- 
 sion he presented a play to the manager of the Odeon — 
 for he dabbled for a time in dramatic authorship, though 
 for the most part unsuccessfully. ' Where shall I apprize 
 
ALFRED DE MUSSET 137 
 
 you of the rehearsals ? What is your address ? ' inquired 
 the manager. Balzac, being then in one of his eccentric 
 moods, flatly refused the information. Ultimately it was 
 agreed that a messenger should be sent every morning 
 to a spot in the Champs Elysees where, ' underneath the 
 twentieth tree from the Arc cle I'Etoile on the left,' he would 
 see a man pretending to look for a bird. To this man he 
 would proffer a certain password, and on receiving the due 
 reply he would hand him the message from the theatre. 
 Passwords were a favourite device with Balzac ; it was his 
 custom to exact them even from the most intimate friends 
 who called to see him when his abode happened to be known. 
 Letters he received under such whimsical names as the 
 "Widow Durand. The same species of eccentricity he im- 
 ported into his methods of work. His usual hours of sleep 
 were from six in the evening until midnight. Then he 
 would bathe, don the white robe of a Dominican friar, pose 
 a black skull cap on his head, and, under the influence of 
 coffee and by the light of a dozen candles, would work 
 incessantly till he could work no more — from twelve to 
 twenty hours at a stretch. His work was done mainly on 
 proof sheets, the original ' copy ' of even his longest novels 
 being at the most an outline, dashed off in a few nights of 
 feverish anxiety. To no other member of Balzac's family 
 was the gift of a creative imagination vouchsafed. One 
 sister, who outlived him, published nothing but a meagre and 
 colourless sketch of his life ; another died young ; and his 
 only brother Henri was a ne'er-do-well, who sought his 
 fortune abroad and failed to And it. 
 
 The father of Alfred de Musset died of gout. He was a 
 man of ' stern and decided character.' A cousin of the poet 
 on the same side committed suicide. His mother's Alfred de 
 family appears also to have been characterised by Musset 
 some nervous instability, his maternal grandfather having a 
 prodigious memory, which enabled him at an advanced age 
 to recite whole comedies by heart. With these credentials 
 of a vicious heredity, Alfred de Musset started early upon a 
 career of dissipation. He had the three weaknesses pro- 
 verbially associated in all languages — women, wine, and play. 
 
1C8 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 The first lie developed almost in boyhood, conceiving a 
 passionate attachment for a young cousin ; at eighteen he 
 regularly drank more than was good for him, and was a 
 confirmed gambler. ' At the same time,' says his brother, 
 who has written his life, ' he had an incredible activity of 
 mind. Often he would write as many as fifty verses on 
 leaving some late supper.' His gaiety alternated with fits 
 of depression, in which it was his whim to don an old and 
 ragged suit of clothes. In Italy, where he suffered one of 
 his keenest chagrins d'amour, he had an attack of brain fever, 
 and the disorder of his nerves for some time after was such 
 that he could not speak of his troubles without falling into 
 syncope. On one occasion a disposition to commit suicide 
 appears to have been checked by the chance circumstance of 
 his receiving an invitation from Rachel, the actress, to spend 
 some days with her alone. 
 
 While recovering from an illness induced by his excesses 
 he had some strangely vivid hallucinations, testifying to 
 the morbid sensibility of his brain. Four little genii, with 
 wings, seemed to him to be rearranging the articles on his 
 work-table : bottles and other objects marched to and fro 
 of their own accord. After the genii had put matters, as 
 they seemed to think, in the state in which he had left 
 them, the poet exclaimed, ' That is not right ; there was 
 some dust here and there.' Instantly there appeared a 
 little man about three inches high carrying on his back a 
 vessel of some sort with a tap, which he turned, and from 
 which flowed a jet of fine dust as he walked, speedily 
 bringing about the desired condition of things on the table. 
 This vision was so forcible to De Musset, at the moment, that 
 he had to question his brother who was present in order to 
 distinguish real from imaginary objects, and while it was in 
 progress he analysed his sensations precisely as if he had had 
 a genuine spectacle before him. Symptoms of heart disease 
 manifested themselves in De Musset soon after his thirtieth 
 year. He also suffered terribly from sleeplessness, and had 
 frequent attacks of syncope. Under these combined evils he 
 died at forty-seven. George Sand, in her volume ' Elle et 
 Lui,' describes a strange scene with Alfred de Musset in the 
 
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 139 
 
 Forest of Fontainebleau, where the poet's visions, cries of 
 despair, ecstatic joy, and nervous terror betrayed a nervous 
 sensibility bordering upon absolute delirium. Some time 
 before his death he was so worn with passion and debauchery 
 that, according to Maxime du Camp, a lady who had come 
 to admire the man of genius was moved to exclaim as he 
 passed out of the room — the wreck of his former self — 
 ' Pauvre gargon ! ' 
 
 From about his twenty-third year Gustavo Flaubert was 
 an epileptic, and his nervous attacks rendered him morose 
 and unsociable during the remainder of his life. 
 Previous to his paroxysms he was accustomed to ^^^^^^^'^ 
 say that he had ' a flame ' first in one eye then in the other, 
 and that everything appeared to him under a yellow hue. 
 This he called his golden vision. For months at a time, in 
 dread of an attack, he would not go out of doors. A year or 
 two before the malady set in, Flaubert's intelligence and 
 intellectual power were observed to develop enormously, and 
 Maxime du Camp believes that it was during this exceptional 
 period that the future chief of the realistic school of novelists 
 laid in his stock of observation.^ Afterwards Flaubert's 
 memory became fitful ; he lapsed into a dreamy, indolent 
 state which could not be shaken off without an effort, and he 
 was at times so petulant and irritable that a trifle upset him. 
 ' I have seen him,' says his friend and biographer, ' run about 
 the room uttering cries because his penknife did not happen 
 to be in its ordinary place.' Maxime du Camp naively 
 observes that, but for his nervous malady, the author of 
 ' Madame Bovary ' would have taken a higher place in 
 literature than he did. Eeaders of these pages will hardly 
 be of this opinion. Without his malady and its clarifying 
 effect upon the brain, Flaubert would probably have been an 
 avocat at Rouen — the position to which he was destined by 
 his father. It was in one of his convulsive attacks that he 
 died at the age of fifty-nine. In his youth he had an admirable 
 physique, being tall, broad-shouldered, ruddy, and blond. As 
 a law student in Paris he was full of energy and enthusiasm 
 
 * Maxime du Camp : Souvenirs Litteralres. 
 
(140 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 for literature ; but he had no passion for the fair sex, to 
 whom, indeed, throughout his life he appears to have 
 cherished an absolute repugnance. Like most neuropathic 
 subjects, Flaubert was accustomed to pass rapidly from a 
 state of exaltation to one of dejection without apparent cause. 
 He was a most laborious writer, the question of style and 
 literary form pre-occupying his mind incessantly to a degree 
 that was positively painful to himself. The novelist's father 
 was a medical man of ' remarkable energy and force of 
 character ; ' a sister died from an attack of puerperal mania. 
 
 The exuberant imagination of Alexandre Dumas the 
 elder is generally thought to have been derived from the 
 negro blood in his veins. There is no physiological ground 
 for such a supposition. Mulattos and quadroons — it was to 
 the latter class that Dumas belonged — are not uncommon, 
 but they are by no means distiuguished for imagi- 
 native power. The germ of the great romancer's 
 genius is to be traced rather to the eccentricity of his grand- 
 father, a French noble, who at fifty suddenly sold his 
 ancestral estates and exiled himself to the West Indies, 
 where almost immediately he married a full-blooded negress 
 of San Domingo. The existence of a legal contract in this 
 case has been questioned ; but there can be no doubt that 
 the same ancestor, on returning to France twenty years 
 later, after the death of his black consort, committed at the 
 age of seventy-four a similar mesalliance in marrying his 
 housekeeper. The San Domingo negress had an only son, 
 who was subsequently known as General Dumas. This 
 dashing soldier, the novelist's father, was celebrated for his 
 courage and his enormous physical strength. It was said 
 that he could crush a horse to death between his legs. He 
 had a vehement temper and a want of restraint which ulti- 
 mately brought him into disgrace with Napoleon. About 
 this time he was also physically disabled for service by an 
 apoplectic seizure, which destroyed or impaired his hearing. 
 In retirement his constitution was further weakened by a 
 troublesome disease, which would appear to have been gout, 
 and of this he died at forty-four. 
 
 Shortly before his death General Dumas had married 
 
DUMAS — GOETHE 141 
 
 a young woman, by whom he left in his turn an only 
 son, the author of 'Monte Cristo.' The alliance was 
 physiologically unsound, for Madame Dumas, the novelist's 
 mother, was subject to epileptic fits — she had one which 
 attracted public attention at the performance of her son's 
 first play at the Theatre Franpais — and she died of apoplexy. 
 In the aggressive, vainglorious, extravagant, and even ridi- 
 culous life of Alexandre Dumas there is evidence of a want 
 of mental balance apart from his great creative faculty. In 
 his latter years he became imbecile, and, unfortunately, he did 
 not lay down his pen until he had partly ruined his great 
 reputation. In his sixty-eighth year, whilst being removed 
 from Paris on the eve of the siege, he was ' quite helpless 
 and almost unconscious of what was going on about him,' 
 and in the same state of darkness a few months later his 
 brilliant and romantic care r came to a close. Alexandre 
 Dumas' one son and namesake, the author of ' La Dame aux 
 Camelias,' presents the rare example of genius passing in a 
 direct form from parent to child. 
 
 Goethe's mother died of apoplexy, and the nervous un- 
 soundness of her constitution revealed itself in the great 
 mortality of her offspring. Three of the poet's QQj^rpjjj. 
 brothers and one sister died in childhood. Another 
 sister Cornelie lived to be twenty-seven, when she suddenly 
 expired from no known cause. Goethe's mother, writing of 
 the event, says, ' the flash and the stroke were one.' Cornelie 
 is described by Goethe in his autobiography as an ' incom- 
 prehensible being, with wonderfully brilliant eyes, while the 
 lineaments of her face, neither striking nor beautiful, indi- 
 cated a character which was not and could not be at union 
 with itself.' Goethe had on one occasion a visual halluci- 
 nation of a remarkable kind. He saw a spectral figure of 
 himself on horseback.^ At all times he possessed a curious 
 faculty of visualisation, which is intimately associated with 
 hallucinations of sight. ' When I closed my eyes and de- 
 pressed my head,' he observes, ' I could cause the image of 
 a flower to appear in the middle of the field of vision ; this 
 
 * Goethe : Aiis weineni Zeben, etc. 
 
142 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 flower did not for a moment retain its first form, but un- 
 folded itself, and developed from its interior new flowers, 
 formed and coloured, or sometimes green leaves. These 
 were not natural flowers, but of fantastic form, although 
 symmetrical as the rosettes of sculpture. I was unable to 
 fix any one form, but the development of new flowers con- 
 tinued as long as I desired it without any variation in the 
 rapidity of the changes. The same thing occurred when I 
 figured to myself a variegated disc. The coloured figures 
 upon it underwent constant changes, which extended pro- 
 gressively from the centre towards the periphery, exactly like 
 the changes in the kaleidoscope.' 
 
 Positive insanity is to be found in the family of Victor 
 Hugo. This affliction befel the poet's elder brother Eugene, 
 who died at thirty-seven in a lunatic asylum, where he was 
 confined for many years. As a child Eugene Hugo was de- 
 scribed by his mother as being vif com7ne la foudre ; he had 
 Victor poetical tastes, and achieved some distinction at school 
 Hugo for his eff'usions in verse. The first outbreak of his 
 insanity occurred at Victor Hugo's marriage, the eccentricity 
 which had for some time been growing upon him suddenly 
 changing into an abiding incoherency of speech and action. 
 Apparently the malady was inherited from the paternal side. 
 Judging from his memoirs. General Hugo, the poet's father, 
 possessed obstinacy and other angularities of character 
 amounting to eccentricity. He fell into disgrace with his 
 military superiors, separated from his wife, and passed his 
 declining years in profuse scribbling — biography, fiction, and 
 drama pouring forth from his restless pen. Victor Hugo's 
 mother, for her part, had also some peculiarities, being, in 
 particular, energetic and sensitive, with a pronounced taste 
 for Voltaire's tragedies, of which, as a girl, she learnt long 
 tirades by heart. As a woman she had indifferent health, 
 and her death was sudden. If she did not contribute to, 
 she probably did not correct, the eccentricity transmitted 
 by the poet's father. 
 
 Victor Hugo's own angularities of character were suflfi- 
 ciently pronounced, althoagh, unlike those of his brother 
 Eugene, they appear to have kept within the bounds of 
 
VICTOR HUGO 143 
 
 reason. Concerning Eugene, there is a significant pas- 
 sage in one of the biographies of Victor Hugo. ' The two 
 brothers, so intimately associated, appeared to have been 
 destiaed for the same existence ; they had the same amuse- 
 ments, the same masters, the same poetical aspirations, the 
 same restless activity ; they had never left each other a 
 moment until the death of their mother. Suddenly Fate 
 separated them, and threw the one into the dazzling light 
 and turmoil of fame, the other into gloom and isolation. ' ^ 
 Of Victor Hugo's children, Charles, the eldest, and the trans- 
 lator of Shakespeare, died suddenly and mysteriously in the 
 house of his mistress ; Francois fell a victim to consumption ; 
 Adele is confined in a lunatic asylum. The condition of the 
 last-named is deplorable, and presents so eloquent a testi- 
 mony to the evils that genius carries in its train that I 
 cannot refrain from quoting the description given of her 
 malady by a friend to whom I have applied for information 
 on the subject : — ' Adele has passed her life in asylums, and 
 since the death of Victor Hugo has been confined in a 
 private institution at Suresnes. There she will probably 
 remain till her death. She is not violent, but idiotic, putting 
 sand and pebbles in her mouth instead of food. Victor Hugo 
 was in the habit of seeing her at regular intervals, but the 
 spectacle became too painful to him, and for some years 
 before his death he had ceased his visits.' A grandson of 
 Victor Hugo, George Hugo, has recently been placed in 
 ' perpetual tutelage ' as being unfit to manage his affairs. A 
 grand-daughter is described as ' flighty ' (etourdie). 
 
 Homer is reputed to have been blind. Sophocles was 
 accused by his sons of being unable to manage his affairs. 
 Moliere was epileptic, and left a daughter who was childless. 
 Voltaire had apoplectic attacks. Montesquieu became blind, 
 and Lesage deaf. Bossuet suffered from fits, in which he 
 lost the power of speech and hearing. Madame de Stael 
 was eccentric and addicted to opium, and at her death was 
 found to have a peculiar conformation of the skull. Dante, 
 whose reputed skull exhibits an abnormal development of 
 
 ' Victor Hugo ; Haconte j^ar un Temoin de sa Vie, 
 
144 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the left side and two swellings of the frontal bone,^ died 
 SLiddenl}^, and his family became extinct in the second or 
 third generation. Petrarch's constitution at sixty-four was 
 ' entirely worn out ; ' he had several paralytic seizures and 
 died of apoplexy. La Bruyere at fifty became suddenly deaf, 
 and soon afterwards died of apoplexy. There was a marked 
 strain of literary ability in Corneille's family, his brother 
 Thomas and his nephew Fontenelle both achieving distinc- 
 tion. Racine's father died at twenty-eight, and his mother 
 at twenty-nine. He was of an irritable and sensitive tem- 
 perament, and, after a somewhat dissipated youth, became 
 excessively pious. Ben Jonson had hallucinations, and died 
 of paralysis, Dryden was gouty and deaf. Pope was de- 
 formed, deriving his rickety constitution apparently from his 
 father, who expired ' without a groan.' The mother of the 
 poet Savage was insane. Rogers's memory decayed to such 
 an extent that he was accustomed to ask his servants whether 
 he knew persons whose names he heard. Richardson died of 
 apoplexy after suffering during the latter part of his life 
 from ' nervous attacks.' Fielding's constitution was shattered 
 by gout at forty, and he had a son paralysed. Henry Kirke 
 White — like Chatterton a marvellous boy — was epileptic and 
 died of consumption. Porson, the ' Greek scholar,' had a 
 stupendous memory and great physical activity, combined 
 with an irresistible craving for stimulants. Niebuhr, who 
 lost both parents when a child, was constitutionally feeble. 
 Gibbon was deformed. De Foe had an attack of apoplexy 
 about his fiftieth year, suffered from gout and stone, and 
 died at seventy ' in a lethargy.' Heine became paralysed at 
 forty-seven. Schiller's father died of gout. The poet him- 
 self had a delicate frame, suffered from weak eyes, and 
 passed through a melancholic period during which he was 
 suspected of insanity. 2 He died at forty-seven, and a post- 
 mortem examination showed that his lungs and most of the 
 important organs of his body were seriously impaired. Hal- 
 lam, the son of an over-anxious mother, belonged to a family 
 in which there was great mortality, his own children dying 
 
 ' Lombroso. ' Palleske. 
 
GERARD DE NERVAL 145 
 
 in the prime of life. Gerard de Nerval, long intermittently 
 insane, hanged himself to a lamp-post. Theophile Gautier 
 died of paralysis. Prevost Paradol shot himself, following 
 the example of his father, who committed suicide in the same 
 manner. 
 
146 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 NEUROPATHIC ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE— EXTRAORDINARY MOR- 
 TALITY OF HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS— CHARACTER OF HIS FATHER 
 AND MOTHER— CONJECTURES RESPECTING GILBERT, RICHARD, AND 
 EDMUND SHAKESPEARE — THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF SHAKESPEARE'S 
 RETIREMENT — NEW INTERPRETATION OF THE KNOWN FACTS OF HIS 
 DEATH— THE SIGNATURES TO HIS WILL AS EVIDENCE OF A PARA- 
 LYTIC ATTACK — UNFITNESS OF HIS OFFSPRING — PROOF OF PARALYSIS 
 IN HIS GRAND-DAUGHTER 
 
 In any attempt to explain the conditions of genius it is im- 
 possible to avoid a reference to Shakespeare. A theory of 
 genius which did not accord with the ascertained facts in the 
 life of the greatest poet that the world has seen would 
 assuredly be unworthy of confidence. I purpose, therefore, 
 dealing with Shakespeare from the pathological point of view, 
 a task which, despite the immensely painstaking and far- 
 reaching character of modern research, is now undertaken 
 for the first time. Formidable, indeed, are the difficulties in 
 the way, the known events of Shakespeare's career and of his 
 family history being meagre in the extreme. Towards the 
 close of last century Steevens gave the substance of a 
 biography of Shakespeare in the following words: — 'AH 
 that is known with any degree of certainty concerning 
 Shakespeare is that he was born at Stratford- on- A von, 
 married, and had children there, went to London, w^here he 
 became an actor, wrote poems and plays, returned to Strat- 
 ford, made his will, died, and was buried.' If to this sum- 
 mary are added a few dates and a little contemporary history, 
 the whole authentic record of Shakespeare's life stands re- 
 vealed. The only phrase in his actual handwriting that has 
 come down to us consists of the w^ords ' by me,' prefacing one 
 of the three signatures to his will, and the one passage from 
 his pen in which he speaks in irroprid persona^ that is to say, 
 
SHAKESPEARE 147 
 
 neither as a dramatist nor as a poet, but as a man, is the 
 fulsome dedication of ' Venus and Adonis ' to the Earl of 
 Southampton. No biographer can piece together the scattered 
 fragments of the poet's life without the aid of conjectures 
 and hypothetical interpretations for which there is little or 
 no warrant, and no exception can be made in this respect of 
 the works of Halliwell-Phillipps and Karl Elze,^ in which the 
 latest results of Shakespearean research are embodied. 
 
 Still, there are facts in the poet's life, which although 
 long known, acquire in the light of the present investigation 
 a new significance, and these I will briefly set before the 
 reader. The first circumstances calling for attention are the 
 extraordinary mortality of Shakespeare's brothers and sisters, 
 and his own comparatively early death. The poet was one 
 of a family of eight, of whom only his sister Joan attained old 
 age. Here is the testimony of the ofl&cial register : — 
 
 £garet't'"'i562H-<J'"'"'-^y- 
 
 William 
 
 1564 died 1616 aged 52. 
 
 Gilbert „ 
 
 1566 „ 1611-12 „ 46. 
 
 Joan „ 
 
 1569 „ 1646 „ 77. 
 
 Anne „ 
 
 1571 .. 1579 „ 8. 
 
 Richard „ 
 
 1573-4 „ 1612-13 „ 39. 
 
 Edmund „ 
 
 1580 „ 1607 „ 27. 
 
 Clearly this is not a healthy stock, the average life of 
 its members, with all the advantage of the second Joan's 
 patriarchal age, being less than thirty-two years. What 
 then becomes of the sententious remark of Halliwell-Phillipps, 
 that it is ' not very likely that a woman unendowed with an 
 exceptionally healthy and vigorous frame could have been 
 the parent of a Shakespeare ? ' ^ This is quite in the customary 
 vein of biography, in which it is assumed, often in flagrant 
 contradiction to the facts, that the man of genius is necessarily 
 a fine animal. 
 
 The general unfitness of Shakespeare's family for the 
 battle of life would, in all probability, be explained by the 
 
 ' Halliwell-Phillipps: OutUnesofthe Lifeof Shahesjyeare. Sixth edition, 
 1886. Karl Elze : Mllliavi Skakesj^ieare : A Literary Biography. London, 
 1888. 
 
 •■^ Outlines, p. 28. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 physical condition of their parents and ancestors, could a 
 record of this be found; but unfortunately on this subject a 
 Cimmerian darkness prevails. Nothing is known of John 
 Shakespeare and Mary Arden, the poet's immediate pro- 
 genitors, except that the former died in 1601 after a reverse 
 of fortune, and the latter in 1608. These dates indicate for 
 both parents a tolerably good age, but, judging by the 
 mortality of their offspring, neither can have been normally 
 sound. Joan's extremely long life as a member of a generally 
 short-lived family is precisely what might be expected from 
 such neuropathic conditions as determined the early death of 
 Keats and his brothers, whilst enabling their sister Fanny to 
 exceed the age of four score. As has been shown in a pre- 
 ceding chapter, an established inequality in the nervous 
 system may signify either a depression or an exaltation of 
 the vital forces, with a short or a long life accordingly. 
 Through Joan alone, by her marriage with William Hart, the 
 hatter, was the Shakespeare blood transmitted beyond the 
 third generation. 
 
 No trustworthy indication can be found of John Shake- 
 speare's character. With his wife he obtained a considerable 
 amount of property, and as a successful tradesman of some 
 sort he became one of the magnates of the Stratford Corpora- 
 tion. About five and twenty years before his death, however, 
 the prosperity of the family began to decline, and in the year 
 1586 John Shakespeare's affairs were desperate. From this 
 position he appears to have been latterly rescued by his dis- 
 tinguished son. The probability is that his health broke 
 about fifty, and that from that period he led a rather shiftless 
 existence. Of Mary Arden all that can be gathered is that 
 she was her father's favourite daughter ; at all events, he 
 seems to have so regarded her in his will, made when he was 
 ^ sick in body.' The expression ^ sick in body ' rather implies 
 that Robert Arden's illness was a lingering one, and his 
 special provision for Mary, his youngest daughter, may have 
 been a token of gratitude for her nursing. Although Robert 
 Arden was a well-to-do farmer, it is gratuitous to assume, as 
 Halliwell-Phillipps does, that because one of her sons was 
 Shakespeare, Mary Arden possessed a ' romantic tempera- 
 
SHAKESPEARE 149 
 
 ment ' and the ' highest form of subjective refinement.' Such 
 assumptions the principles of heredity do not justify. It is 
 the besetting sin of the biographer in this, as in so many 
 cases, to recognise the law of heredity only to misapply it. 
 Farm life in Mary Arden's day was rude in the extreme. She 
 probably worked in the fields, ate her food with her fingers, 
 washed herself once a week in a pail, and slept at night on 
 the floor on sacks or straw. Among Robert Arden's effects, 
 as disposed of by will, there was only one bed. 
 
 Shakespeare's three brothers, Gilbert, Richard, and 
 Edmund, can have possessed none of their brother's ability. 
 They were probably weak and ailing men. They are not 
 known to have married; if they did marry they can have left 
 no descendants, seeing that while the poet, in his will, makes 
 bequests to the children of his sister Joan, there is no mention 
 of other nephews or nieces. There is evidence that Gilbert 
 was a haberdasher by trade ; he is so described in a bail bond 
 where he became surety to a clockmaker of Stratford for the 
 sum of 19Lj but he does not appear to have been in business 
 for himself. His signature is extant, and is that of a neat 
 though not a fluent penman. According to the rules of 
 graphology it denotes a man of a methodical and parsimonious 
 turn, melancholic, destitute of vanity, and rather feeble in 
 resolution. The signature of Thomas Quiney, the poet's son- 
 in-law, on the other hand, would be interpreted as that of a 
 person who thought a great deal of himself, and who was at 
 once very attentive to his dress and appearance and fond of 
 display in other ways. I give this evidence for what it may 
 be worth. 
 
 Graphology contains no doubt a substratum of truth, 
 though it may not yield results as definite as those its votaries 
 claim for it. It is well known that insanity betrays itself 
 occasionally in the handling of the pen, and scientifically I 
 should expect that any depression or exaltation of the motor 
 centres for the wrist and the fingers, or of the associated 
 visual or auditory centres of the brain, would affect the cha- 
 racter of the handwriting in respect of its neatness or sloven- 
 liness, its simplicity or its exuberance. No one accepting 
 the rules of graphology could say that Gilbert's handwriting 
 
150 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 was that of a man of a lively or sanguine disposition. Its 
 ' finals ' are stunted, it is bare of all ' flourish,' the cross-stroke 
 of the ^ t ' is very small ; over or through the last syllable of 
 the surname there is a curious line which, beginning thick, 
 tapers to a point, and the signature shows a general tendency 
 to droop. 
 
 Of Richard Shakespeare, nothing is known beyond the 
 dates of his baptism and funeral at Stratford. The youngest 
 brother Edmund died in London, where he was a ' player.' 
 His age, twenty- seven, is a fatal one for those who have in- 
 herited the seeds of decline or consumption ; and if I may 
 add my guess to the many others that have been made 
 concerning Shakespeare's family, consumption was the dis- 
 ease he probably died of. On the other hand, the greater 
 ages of Gilbert and Richard point to a more lingering 
 form of nerve-disorder. In 1698 Dowdall was told by the 
 parish clerk of Stratford that ' Shakespeare was the best of 
 his family ' — a phrase implying that the poet's brothers were 
 not much respected in their native town. Can Richard have 
 been the ne'er-do-well who so often figures in the family of 
 men of genius ? There is no evidence that he ever left 
 Stratford. Gilbert, who was enterprising enough to go to 
 London, appears to have been the more responsible and 
 trustworthy of the two brothers, inasmuch as he was entrusted 
 by William with the carrying out of an important legal 
 transaction on his behalf in 1602, 
 
 It has been doubted whether the Gilbert Shakespeare, 
 whose funeral is recorded as taking place at Stratford on 
 February 3, 1611-12, was the poet's brother. The precise 
 description is ' Gilbertus Shakespeare, adolescens.' The 
 ' adolescens ' is a curious word to apply to a man of forty- 
 six. Can it be the parish clerk's Latin for bachelor ? Or 
 does it signify that a son of Gilbert's w^as then buried ? 
 Shakespeare mentions no brothers in his will, and the natural 
 inference is that they were then all dead. On the other 
 hand, there is a tradition favouring the supposition that 
 Gilbert did not die in 1611-12. ' One of Shakespeare's 
 yoanger brothers,' says Oldys, who wrote about a hundred 
 years later, ' would, in his younger days, come to London to 
 
SIIAKESPEAEE 151 
 
 visit his brother Will, as he called him, and be a spectator of 
 him as an actor in some of his own plays. This custom, as 
 his brother's fame enlarged and his dramatic entertainments 
 grew the greatest support of our principal if not of all our 
 theatres, he continued, it seems, so long after his brother's 
 death as even to the latter end of his own life. The curiosity 
 at this time of the most noted actors to learn something from 
 him of his brother was great. They justly held him in the 
 highest veneration, and it may well be believed, as there 
 was besides a kinsman and descendant of the family who 
 was then a celebrated actor among them, this opportunity 
 made them greedily inquisitive into every little circumstance, 
 more especially in his dramatic character, which his brother 
 could relate of him. But he, it seems, was so stricken in 
 years, and possibly his memory so weakened with infirmities 
 which might make him pass the easier for a man of weak 
 intellect, that he could give them but little light into their 
 inquiries, and all that could be collected from him of his 
 brother Will in that station was the faint, general, and 
 almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a 
 part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate 
 a decrepit old man he wore a long beard, and appeared so 
 weak and drooping and unable to walk that he was forced to 
 be supported and carried by another person to a table at 
 which he was seated among some company who were eating, 
 and one of whom sang a song.' ^ If Gilbert Shakespeare 
 did not die at the time specified, apparently he became of 
 weak intellect. 
 
 The cause of Shakespeare's death — a matter of some im- 
 portance to the present inquiry — has been the subject of 
 much ingenious speculation. There is, however, a point of 
 view from which it has never yet been considered. I refer 
 to the peculiar character of the signatures the poet affixed to 
 his will on his death bed. Examined in the light of medical 
 experience, and taken in conjunction with the manifest un- 
 soundness of the Shakespeare family, and notably with a 
 remarkable failure of memory on the poet's part in the 
 drawing up of his will, these signatures appear to me to be 
 * Outlines, etc. The part referred to is that of Adam in ' As You Like It.' 
 
152 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 very significant, and to establisli almost beyond a doubt 
 the nature of Shakespeare's last illness. Concerning this 
 illness, the only substantial report we possess is an entry 
 in the diary of the Rev. John Ward of Stratford, made in 
 the year 1663 in the following terms: — 'Shakespeare, 
 Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and itt 
 seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour 
 there contracted.' 
 
 As there is no fever properly so-called which can be 
 contracted by drinking, the reverend diarist's charitable 
 assumption is clearly of no medical value. So much has 
 been generally recognised. It is surprising, however, that 
 while such a conscientious authority as Halliwell-Phillipps 
 seeks to palliate or condone the drinking, he should un- 
 liesitatingly accept the hypothesis of the fever, which stands 
 upon a much less valid basis, and that he should furthermore 
 strain and distort the indubitable circumstances of the case 
 in order to make out that the particular kind of fever of 
 which Shakespeare died was that arising from insanitary 
 conditions, namely typhus or typhoid. This theory being 
 the one now generally accepted both in England and 
 Germany (where Elze has followed the English biographer's 
 lead), it may be worth while to show in a few words why it 
 is not scientifically acceptable. On January 25, 1616, a 
 draft of Shakespeare's will was prepared under the direction 
 of a lawyer named Collins, and was left in the rough, ap- 
 parently for some emendation, the testator being then in 
 legal phrase in 'perfect health and memory.' Halliwell- 
 Phillipps thinks these words ought to be accepted literally, 
 and not as a legal formula, but there is a curious proof in 
 the body of the document that whatever Shakespeare's bodily 
 health at the time may have been, his memory was by no 
 means perfect ; for, in ordering bequests to be made to his 
 nephews, the children of Joan, he was unable to recollect the 
 name of the second boy, Thomas. The provision runs thus : 
 — ' Item, I give and bequeath unto her (Joan's) three sons, 
 
 William Hart, Hart, and Michael Hart five pounds 
 
 apiece,' etc. 
 
 That is to say, the testator's memory failed him when he 
 
SHAKESPEARE 153 
 
 wished to name his nephew Thomas, whom he was doubtless 
 in the habit of seeing every day, and the lawyer accordingly 
 left a blank in his draft. This is a striking circumstance, 
 and one that may help to explain various other omissions 
 and irregularities in the will so freely commented upon by 
 the biographers. However, Shakespeare was clearly in no 
 anxiety about his health at this time, for the draft of the 
 will was left untouched for two whole months, during which 
 time the marriage of the poet's daughter Judith with Thomas 
 Quiney took place. 
 
 Suddenly, in the latter part of the month of March, the 
 household at New Place was plunged into a state of alarm. 
 Shakespeare was thought to be dying. The draft of the 
 will was brought to his bedside, and there it was signed in 
 its rough state with a few verbal alterations made on the 
 spur of the moment. The word January was struck out of 
 the date, and the word March written in, while the day of 
 the month, the 25th, was allowed to stand. It is clear, 
 therefore, that on or immediately before March 25, 1616, 
 Shakespeare had an attack of something which was thought 
 to be eminently dangerous — so much so that no time was 
 lost in getting the will signed in its draft form, although 
 the preparation of a clean copy would only have been the 
 matter of an hour or two. But Shakespeare did not die the 
 day the will was signed. He lived for four weeks and a 
 day, his death occurring on April 23 ! This is not the 
 course of typhus fever, the third or fourth week of which 
 from the beginning is usually the fatal period. Nor are the 
 early symptoms of that disease of the alarming character 
 which would have induced a methodical lawyer to have a 
 draft will signed talis qualis. The business was so hurriedly 
 carried through that the blank space left for Thomas Hart's 
 Christian name was not filled up, but may still be inspected 
 by the curious at Somerset House. 
 
 In order to support the theory of fever as the result of 
 the insanitary condition of Stratford, Halliwell-Phillipps 
 assumes that in the will 'the alteration of the day of the 
 month was overlooked,' as, otherwise, 'there would be at 
 least a singular and improbable coincidence.' Why should 
 
154 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the coincidence be so singular and improbable ? The 25th 
 of March was a Monday, and the 25th of January a Friday. 
 That because the draft of a will is made on a Friday the 
 testator should not fall ill on a subsequent Monday, which 
 happens also to be the 25th day of a month, is surely a • 
 strong, not to say unwarrantable assumption. Coincidence 
 must extend to greater lengths than that before it can be 
 rejected on its own demerits. • It is probable,' adds the 
 biographer, ' that the melancholy gathering at New Place 
 happened somewhat later than the 25th of March, the fourth 
 week being generally the most fatal period of typhus fever. 
 We may, at all events, safely assume that if death resulted 
 from such a cause on April the 23rd the seizure could not 
 have occurred much before the end of the preceding month.' 
 Thus, because the Rev. John Ward enters in his diary a bit 
 of foolish, and possibly malicious gossip, concerning Shake- 
 speare's death forty years after the event, and uses the word 
 ' fever,' which was then applied to almost every complaint of 
 an unknown character, a theory of the poet's last illness is 
 constructed requiring for its acceptance the falsification of 
 serious and authentic documentary evidence ! 
 
 If this is the most plausible theory of Shakespeare's death 
 that finds currency at the present day, it cannot be wrong 
 to suggest another more in harmony with the facts. First, 
 let us glance at the pathological circumstances of the case, 
 as illustrated by the law of heredity, which no biographer of 
 the poet has yet invoked. We have seen that Shakespeare's 
 brothers and sisters, with one exception, exhibit the con- 
 ditions of a strongly neuropathic family, unfit to live a life 
 of the normal span, or to engender healthy descendants. 
 Three sisters die in childhood, one brother in early man- 
 hood, and two others in what ought to be the prime of life, 
 or, assuming Oldys's narrative to be well founded, one of 
 these brothers passes into a state of imbecility. They none 
 of them leave descendants. Joan, alone, by virtue of an 
 exceptional organisation, has children approaching the ordi- 
 nary standard of fitness, and even in her case, as the pedigree 
 of the Hart family shows. ^ the Shakespeare blood has a hard 
 ' French : Shake S2Jeara7ia Geiiealogioa, 
 
SHAKESPEAEE 155 
 
 struggle to survive. Of the Harts in the first generation 
 there are three sons and a daughter, namely, William, an 
 actor, and probably the kinsman of the poet referred to by 
 Oldys, dying at thirty-nine, Thomas at fifty-six, Mary at 
 four, and Michael at ten. Thomas alone has children by his 
 marriage with a v7oman of whom nothing is known except 
 that her name was Margaret, and that she died twenty-one 
 years after her husband, namely in 1682. Almost imme- 
 diately the advantages of this infusion of presumably healthy 
 blood into the Shakespeare stock begin to be seen. George, 
 a grandson of Joan, attains the age of sixty-six, and has the 
 good fortune to select in his turn a long-lived and presumably 
 healthy wife, by whom he has a numerous and healtliy 
 family, descending lineally to the present generation. The 
 last known survivor was a George Hart of Birmingham, who 
 emigrated to Australia in 1864. In the third generation of 
 Harts the death of one of its members, Shakespeare Hart, a 
 plumber, is recorded at the advanced age of eighty-one. 
 Judging from the prolific character of the Harts — for old 
 age alone is no criterion of soundness — healthy conditions 
 appear by this time to be restored to the family, but as 
 health comes in at the door genius flies out by the window. 
 Throughout their nine recorded generations the Harts are 
 a family of utter mediocrities, plying the humblest callings, 
 and for the most part miserably poor. Of the female de- 
 scendants of Joan Shakespeare nothing is known ; they 
 intermarried with men of common names and common 
 position, and are hopelessly lost in the seething ocean of 
 humanity. 
 
 The few personal references to Shakespeare that have 
 come down to us from Ben Jonson and others throw little 
 light upon his physical condition. He appears to have been 
 genial and well liked, and he was familiarly called ' Will ' by 
 his associates. Hypochondria, therefore, was clearly not one 
 of his characteristics, at all events in his early days, as it 
 probably was of his brother Gilbert. Further than this 
 contemporary evidence does not go. That Shakespeare's 
 health broke down, however, at forty-eight, or thereabouts 
 — about the same period as his father's — may be inferred 
 
156 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 from the curious fact that althoug^h in March 1612-13 he 
 purchases a dwelling-house in Blackfriars, he, about the 
 close of the same year, makes up his mind to retire definitely 
 to Stratford, where his apparently gloomy forebodings are 
 so far fulfilled that in little more than three years he is dead. 
 There is no evidence, moreover, that after his forty-eighth 
 year he wrote a single line of play or poem. Now, without 
 ill-health is it likely that Shakespeare in the height of his 
 reputation, and in the flower of his age, would withdraw 
 from the literary pleasures of London and break with his 
 congenial associates in order to bury himself in a dull, un- 
 attractive town like Stratford ? It is variously surmised 
 that his withdrawal to Stratford did not necessarily cut off 
 his connection with London society, and that he wished to 
 live the life of a country gentleman. In view of the diffi- 
 culties and hardships of travelling in those days the first 
 supposition can hardly hold good ; the second gains some 
 plausibility from the terms of his will, which betrays his 
 ambition to found a family upon the principle of entail, but, 
 without some overpowering physical cause the cacoefhes scri- 
 hendi of the born poet is not in the ordinary course of things 
 to be suppressed at forty-eight. 
 
 The 'merry meeting' with Drayton and Ben Jonson 
 probably took place about February 10, when Shakespeare's 
 daughter, Judith, was married to Thomas Quiney. It is 
 extremely unlikely on any medical hypothesis that it could 
 be the cause of the poet's death, two months and a half later. 
 What the facts really point to is this — that shortly after the 
 merry meeting Shakespeare had an illness of some sort, 
 attributed by the gossips to his drinking bout, but not of a 
 sufficiently serious character to raise any question of the will, 
 and that on March 25 the attack was suddenly renewed in 
 such a grave form that his death was thought to be immi- 
 nent. On the face of it, this illness looks like successive 
 shocks of nerve disorder — the first slight, the second serious 
 and so shattering that death ensued in a month, the interval 
 being in all probability marked by further attacks and 
 periods of unconsciousness. On this assumption the partial 
 
SHAKESrEARE 157 
 
 loss of memory alluded to in connection with the drawing utd 
 of the will becomes remarkably significant, such an in- 
 firmity being the almost invariable precursor of paralysis or 
 apoplexy. 
 
 There remains the evidence of Shakespeare's death-bed 
 signatures, which, so far as I know, have not hitherto been 
 critically examined from the medical point of view. The 
 will is written on three sheets of paper, on each of which the 
 testator's signature appears. On the first sheet the name is 
 almost illegible ; it is written at the left-hand bottom corner, 
 where the paper is partially worn away, and it cannot now 
 be reproduced without a considerable amount of touching up. 
 Malone and Steevens have doubted whether it is Shakespeare's 
 handwriting at all. On this point I offer no opinion. Two 
 clear and undoubted signatures remain, and they are suffi- 
 cient for my purpose. Here they are in fac-simile, repro- 
 duced from the original document in the archives of Somerset 
 House : — 
 
 Shakespeare's condition when he penned these signatures 
 must have been one of extreme nervous agitation. Brought 
 to death's door from fever, he might from physical exhaustion 
 have written in this fashion. But he was not at death's 
 door ; he had four weeks longer to live, and the conclusion 
 is forced upon us that his ailment was a prostration of the 
 nervous system. What was the nature of this prostration ? 
 ' In the precursory stage of disease of the brain,' says Forbes 
 Winslow, ' a tremulous state of the muscular fibre is occa- 
 sionally observed. In one remarkable case, for nearly a fort- 
 
158 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 night previously to any acute head symptoms, the patient was 
 observed to have a tremulous state of the hand. He appeared 
 at the time otherwise in good health. This condition of the 
 muscles was succeeded by violent paroxysmal attacks of 
 headache, causing the patient to scream from the intensity 
 of the pain. He subsequently died paralytic. A post-mortem 
 examination revealed a malignant tumour in the substance 
 of the brain.' In another case the muscular tremor which 
 attacked the patient's mouth and tongue was followed by a 
 \i)lent epileptic convulsion. He had a succession of epilep- 
 tic fits at varying intervals for a period of twelve months, 
 when his mind became deranged, and in this state he died 
 two years after the first epileptic seizure. Forbes Winslow 
 has observed this state of tremulousness in several cases of 
 acute and chronic softening of the brain, as well as in general 
 paralysis. 
 
 The circumstances of Shakespeare's death would accord 
 with a paralytic or epileptic seizure of the kind here referred 
 to. There is also something to be said in favour o^ 2'^iralysis 
 agitcmis, or ' shaking palsy.' Parkinson tlius describes this 
 ailment, upon which he is the chief authority : ' The first 
 symptoms perceived are a slight sense of weakness, with 
 proneness to trembling in some particular part, sometimes in 
 the head, but most commonly in one of the hands and arms.' 
 The evil gradually extends until the patient ' seldom expe- 
 riences any suspension of the agitation of his limbs,' but 
 temporary relief is obtained in any particular limb ' by 
 suddenly changing the posture.' After this the disease may 
 become more vehement, until a fatal result ensues. The 
 progress of ' shaking palsy ' seems rather too slow to account 
 for such an attack as that which brought the lawyer with 
 the draft copy of the will to Shakespeare's bedside. On the 
 other hand, while we know on the authority of the players 
 that the poet in his prime wrote with such ease, that they 
 ' scarce received from him a blot ' — that is, scarcely a correc- 
 tion — * in his papers,' there is evidence of a considerable 
 unsteadiness in his hand three years before the fatal seizure. 
 In 1612-13 — and in the very month of March — he signed 
 documents relating to the purchase of the property in Black- 
 
SITAKESPEAEE 159 
 
 friars. Appended is a fac-simile of his signature on that 
 
 occasion : — 
 
 
 This is not a firm hand ; it has the cramped air which might 
 result from the writer's attempt to suppress a palsied tremor. 
 Thomas Carlyle had ' shaking palsy,' and the following sig- 
 nature of his, traced while he was suffering from that ail- 
 ment, may be compared with Shakespeare's : — 
 
 ■=11^,^ C^L (C^<U^ , (^^9 
 
 On the whole, it appears tolerably certain that in his latter 
 days Shakespeare was a victim to nerve disorder. 
 
 That the poet shared to some extent the physical dis- 
 ability of his brothers is the natural inference to be drawn 
 from the fate of his direct descendants. His only son 
 Hamnet died in his twelfth year. His daughter Judith had 
 three sons, who, however, all died early — (1), Shakespeai'e 
 Quiney at one year ; (2), Richard at twenty-one ; and (3), 
 Thomas at eighteen. Susannah had one daughter, Elizabeth, 
 who was twice married, but by both husbands was childless. 
 Thus vanished the poet's dream of founding a family ; the 
 careful provisions of his will, which he imagined would affect 
 generations to come, became null and void in less than a life- 
 time. There may, of course, have been some taint in the 
 family of Anne Hathaway, the mother of Shakespeare's 
 children, also in the Quiney and Hall blood. The supposi- 
 tion is not borne out, however, by such facts as are known. 
 The Hathaways appear to have been a prolific family ; and 
 although they are strangely overlooked in Shakespeare's will 
 (with the exception of Anne, who received his ' second best 
 bedstead '), they are remembered many years afterwards in 
 the will of his granddaughter. Thomas Quiney, again, is 
 
160 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 known to have been alive about the age of sixty-seven, and, 
 what is more important, to have had numerous nephews and 
 nieces. Finally, Dr. Hall died at sixty, not of a lingering 
 illness apparently, but of some infectious disease, for he was 
 hastily buried the day after. It is true that, according to 
 his ' Select Observations,' he was afflicted a few years before 
 with a slight delirium ; but as this affection appears to have 
 been cured by ' a pigeon cut open alive ' and applied to his 
 feet to ' draw down the vapours,' it can hardly have been 
 serious. 
 
 There is hardly sufficient ground for the conjecture put 
 forth in some quarters that Shakespeare was lame. The 
 principal evidence in favour of it occurs in Sonnet XXXVII., 
 where the poet thus speaks of himself : — 
 
 As a decrepit father takes delight 
 To see his active child do deeds of youth, 
 So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite, 
 Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. 
 
 Is this metaphorical, or is it put forward as a statement of 
 fact ? Scott has adopted the latter supposition in ' Kenil- 
 worth,' where Shakespeare is playfully alluded to as a ^ halt- 
 ing fellow.' Elze thinks it would be an ' exceedingly strange 
 coincidence ' if Shakespeare had to be classed with Scott and 
 Byron as a Hhird lame poet.' On that score, however, no 
 reader of the present volume is likely to share his opinion. 
 At the same time, no contemporary allusion to Shakespeare's 
 lameness has been discovered, while by Aubrey and others 
 he is spoken of as a man of good parts and ' good shape.' 
 Yet this is not conclusive, for Byron, despite his lameness, 
 was accounted a handsome man, at all events, by the Coun- 
 tess Guiccioli. It has also to be considered that Shakespeare, 
 as an actor, had curious limitations, suggestive of some 
 physical infirmity. He appears to have been employed on 
 the stage chiefly to represent old men, such as Knowell in 
 ' Every Man in his Humour,' when he was still young, and 
 Adam in ' As You Like It.' He is further believed to have 
 played the ghost in ' Hamlet,' for the embodiment of which, 
 of course, in the dim light of the scene a little lameness 
 
SHAKESPEAKE 161 
 
 would not disqualify Mm. The testimony as to Shakespeare's 
 physical infirmity, however, is altogether more curious than 
 convincing. I give it merely for the sake of completeness ; 
 it is in no sense required to sustain the theory of genius as a 
 form of nerve disorder. 
 
 Quite in accordance with this theory is the fact that 
 Shakespeare's surviving daughters, the eldest of whom lived 
 to be sixty-six, and the younger seventy-seven, appear to 
 have been very ordinary, not to say poor, specimens of 
 womankind. Both were virtually illiterate. Judith, who 
 made her mark on the register of her marriage, must have 
 been either very plain, or of an unamiable disposition. At 
 the time of her marriage she was thirty-two, and her hus- 
 band, Thomas Quiney, a vintner, was not only her junior by 
 four years, but was not of good family, or particularly well- 
 to-do. This would imply either that Judith was capricious 
 in her rejection of previous offers of marriage, or that, despite 
 her father being a man of means, no acceptable offers were 
 made to her. Moreover, according to Halliwell-Phillipps, 
 ' there was some reason for accelerating the nuptials ' between 
 the parties, for they were married without a licence, an 
 irregularity for which a few weeks afterwards they were 
 fined and threatened with excommunication by the ecclesi- 
 astical court at Worcester. Susannah made a better match. 
 Dr. Hall, whom she married in her twenty-fifth year, was a 
 man of good social standing ; and, unlike her sister, Mrs. 
 Hall was able to append her name to the marriage register. 
 She also obtained a favourable epitaph, in which it was 
 recorded in the conventional language of tombstone flattery 
 that she was ' witty above her sex.' Unfortunately, this is 
 all that can be told to her credit. Dr. Hall at his death left 
 some interesting manuscripts for the press. So far from his 
 widow setting any store upon these, however, she sold them 
 in a heap to one James Cooke, from whose account of the 
 transaction it appears that she did not even recognise her 
 husband's handwriting, or trouble to make herself acquainted 
 with what he had written. It is small wonder that such 
 daughters should have preserved none of their father's books 
 or papers. 
 
 U 
 
102 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 To the fortuitous circumstance of Cooke's purchase in 
 1642 we owe an invaluable piece of information, tending to 
 establish the neuropathic condition of Shakespeare's family. 
 The manuscript notes of Dr. Hall, published in 1657, consist 
 of reports of cases of illness attended by the writer from the 
 year 1617 downwards. Had they begun but a year earlier, 
 they must have told us something of Shakespeare's illness 
 and death. As it is, they record that the poet's daughter, 
 Susannah, had attacks of ' scurvy,' also ' miserable pain in 
 her joints, so that she could not lie in her bed, insomuch as 
 when any one helped she cried out miserably ' — the disease 
 being evidently rheumatism or gout. Furthermore, Eliza- 
 beth Hall, the poet's grandchild and last descendant, is 
 shown to have suffered from paralysis. ' At the close of the 
 year 1624 Elizabeth, my daughter,' says Dr. Hall, ' was 
 vexed with tortura oris^ or convulsion of the mouth. At the 
 same time she suffered from inflammation of the eyes. She 
 was cured by January 5, 1624-5, but in the beginning of 
 April she went to London, and returning homewards the 
 22nd of the said month, she took cold, and fell into the said 
 distemper on the contrary side of the face ; before it was on 
 the left side, now on the right, and although she was griev- 
 ously afflicted with it, yet by the blessing of God she was 
 cured in sixteen days. In the same year. May 24,' adds Dr. 
 Hall, ' she was afflicted with an erratic fever ; sometimes she 
 was hot by the sweating, again cold, all in the space of half 
 an hour, and thus she was vex't oft in a day.' ^ It is a 
 remarkable proof of the indifference which has hitherto been 
 shown to the pathological aspect of genius that Halliwell- 
 Phillipps, who in his ' Outlines ' collected, as he imagined, 
 every available scrap of information bearing upon Shake- 
 speare, should have neglected the all-important evidence of 
 Dr. Hall's Medical Case Book. 
 
 ' Select Observations on Eviglish Bodies : or Cures hoth Emperical and 
 Uistoricall performed \ipon very eminent Persons in Besperate Biseases. 
 First written in Latine by Mr. John Hall, Physician, living at Stratford- 
 vjnin-Avon, in Warwiekshire, where he was very famous, as also in the 
 Covnties adjacent. . . . Now put in EnyUsh for common benefit by James 
 Coolie, Practitioner in Physick and Chirnrgery. London, 1G57. 
 
163 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MUSICAL AND ARTISTIC FACULTIES ALLIED TO INSANITY — EX- 
 AMPLES IN BACH, HANDEL, MOZAET, BEETHOVEN, AND MENDELS- 
 SOHN — ABSOLUTE INSANITY OF DONIZETTI AND SCHUMANN— NERVE 
 DISORDER AMONG THE OLD MASTERS — MICHAEL ANGELO ECCENTRIC 
 — REYNOLDS'S BLINDNESS AND DEAFNESS — FLAXMAN DEFORMED— 
 THE INSANITY OF ROMNEY, COSWAY, HAYDON, AND LANDSEER — 
 turner's CONDITION IDIOTIC — NEUROPATHIC CHARACTER OP THE 
 ACTOR'S GENIUS— EXAMPLES IN EDMUND KEAN, JUNIUS BRUTUS 
 BOOTH AND RACHEL 
 
 Pathologically speaking, music is as fatal a gift to its 
 possessor as the faculty for poetry or letters ; the biographies 
 of all the greatest musicians being a miserable chronicle 
 of the ravages of nerve-disorder, extending, like the Mosaic 
 curse, to the third and fourth generation. The genealogy 
 of the Bach family has been traced for a period g^^n 
 of over 200 years. The founder of the family was 
 a baker named Veit Bach, who, in the sixteenth century, 
 settled in Saxe-Gotha. He played the guitar, and taught 
 music to his two sons. From these sprang numerous descen- 
 dants, who not only cultivated music, but made it their 
 means of livelihood, filling a number of official posts as 
 organists or town musicians in Germany. Many of them, 
 of course, were mediocrities, but one or two Bachs in every 
 generation gained at least some local distinction. At first 
 sight the growth of this highly musical family, which 
 numbered at one time about 200 members, might be taken 
 to prove the feasibility of producing by means of heredity a 
 specially gifted race of men. If they did not marry in and 
 in, the male Bachs, in many cases, chose musical wives, and 
 music seemed with them to run in the blood. On a closer 
 examination of the family history, however, the prospects of 
 
 M 2 
 
164 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 a successful breeding of musical geniuses on the system 
 adopted with Derby winners and prize oxen, not only 
 diminish, but become reduced to the vanishing point. Of 
 the great majority of the Bachs little or nothing is known 
 beyond the dates of their births and deaths. Yet the meagre- 
 ness of the record does not disguise the growing ravages of 
 nerve-disorder in their midst, the evil culminating at the 
 point where the musical genius of the family is at its greatest, 
 namely in the person of Sebastian Bach. 
 
 One of the grandsons of old Veit Bach was blind, as well 
 as eccentric enough to be the subject of many strange stories ; 
 other Bachs appear to have been addicted to drunkenness, 
 and Spitta, the historian of the family, makes a regretful 
 allusion to the sickness and general misery with which the 
 several generations of Bachs had to contend.^ Christopher 
 Bach, grandfather of Sebastian, died at forty-eight ; he was 
 a court musician, and his wife, herself the daughter of a 
 musician, died the same year. Of his three sons, two were 
 twins, John Ambrosius and John Christopher, born evidently 
 of the same ovum, seeing that they had exactly the same 
 temperament, suffered from the same disorders, and were so 
 remarkably alike that even their wives could not distinguish 
 them except by their clothes. Moreover, they died within 
 two years of each other, and about the same early age as 
 their father, whose feeble constitution they no doubt inherited. 
 A sister of theirs, the aunt consequently of Sebastian, was an 
 idiot.2 John Christopher had a sickly family, some of whom 
 suffered from weakness of the eyes. It was John Ambrosius, 
 however, who became the father of the most illustrious 
 member of the family in whom, observes Spitta, ' the genius 
 
 » Spitta : lAfe of John Sebastian Bach. 
 
 2 At the burial of this hapless girl, whose life may be said to have 
 been sacriticed on the altar of genius, the officiating clergyman preached 
 from the text, ' For unto whomsoever much is given of him shall much be 
 required,' and pointed out the strange distribution of human wealth and 
 talents, saying: — 'Our sister, who now rests in the Lord; was a simple 
 creature, not knowing her right hand from her left ; she was like a child. 
 If, on the contrary, we look at her brothers, we find them gifted with a 
 good understanding, and with an art and skill which make them respected 
 and listened to in the schools and in all the township, so that through 
 them the Master's work is praised.' 
 
BACH AND HANDEL 165 
 
 of the Baclis, after having diffused itself more or less widely 
 through whole generations, culminated and exhausted itself.' 
 
 In Sebastian Bach the fatal inheritance of nerve-disorder 
 first betrayed itself by short-sightedness in his youth. At 
 sixty-five he became totally blind ; a year later he was 
 stricken with apoplexy, from which he died. Strange to say, 
 ten days before his death, his sight was suddenly restored, 
 from which it may be concluded that his blindness arose, 
 not from a defect of the retina or a decay of the optic nerves, 
 but from some disturbance of the visual centre of the brain, 
 which the apoplexy temporarily corrected. Sebastian Bach 
 was twice married, and had no fewer than twenty children. 
 One of these was an idiot boy, who was thought for a time to 
 have ' great genius.' Four other sons were musically gifted. 
 With the whole family nerve-disorder played havoc. The 
 eldest and most gifted son, Wilhelm Friedemann, was a man 
 of obstinate and sombre disposition — more than half insane. 
 He was said to be ' unable to adapt his style to circumstances.' 
 During many years he depended for existence on the bounty 
 of his friends, and died in extreme misery. Only a few of 
 Bach's twenty children survived him, most of them indeed 
 dying in childhood. One alone left issue, and with the death 
 of Sebastian's solitary grandson, Wilhelm, court musician at 
 Berlin, in 1846, the family of the great composer became 
 extinct — a melancholy example of the unfitness of genius to 
 perpetuate itself, or even to hold its own in the battle of 
 life. 
 
 That a direct inheritance of musical gifts is essential to 
 the constitution of musical genius is disproved by the case of 
 Handel, whose family was of the respectable burgher jj . „j^„j^ 
 stamp, and wholly unconnected with art. Handel's 
 musical bent in childhood was indeed sternly repressed by 
 his parents. Yet he contrived to overcome all the obstacles 
 in his path, and by the age of eight^or nine was a composer. 
 The mental constitution which carried with it the gift of 
 music, he appears to have derived from his mother, who was 
 subject to paralytic seizures, in one of which she lost her 
 sight. About the age of fifty Handel was himself struck 
 down with paralysis, which so seriously unhinged his mind 
 
1G6 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 that for over a year he had to live in retirement.^ The 
 effects of the malady are still to be seen in his changed 
 handwriting ; in dating one of his compositions, moreover, 
 he makes the mistake of a whole year. It was a few years 
 after this period that the ' Messiah ' was given to the world. 
 Handel w^as always impetuous and choleric, and his nerves 
 were too irritable to endure the sound of tuning, so that the 
 musicians who performed in his orchestra were careful to 
 tune their instruments before his arrival. Like his mother, 
 lie lost his eyesight, and during the last few years of his long 
 life — he died at seventy-fiv^e — was totally blind. Although 
 well grown and distinguished in appearance, he never mar- 
 ried, and it is noteworthy that, despite his musical ear, he 
 never acquired a command of English, but spoke a jargon 
 compounded of German, English, French, and Italian. 
 Handel's mother had three other children, of whom only one, 
 a daughter, left issue, and of the five members of the second 
 generation it was again one daughter alone who transmitted 
 the Handel blood, which had thus a hard struggle to survive. 
 'None of these members of the family gave any proof of the 
 possession of artistic gifts, so that among his relatives Handel, 
 as a musician, stands alone. 
 
 Like Bach, Mozart was the son of a musician, and may 
 be said to have imbibed music with his mother's milk. For 
 Mozart ^^^ acquirement of the art he showed astonishing 
 aptitude, and at the age of four or five was able 
 to compose. Mozart's father died of gout ; his mother also 
 succumbed to some nerve-disease apparenth^ of an epileptic 
 character, attended by convulsions, delirium, and prolonged 
 insensibility. The oifspring of such a couple could not be 
 physically strong. Both Mozart and his only sister Marianne, 
 who also displayed considerable ability as a musician, al- 
 though destitute of the inventive faculty, suffered much from 
 ill-health. Soon after the age of thirty the composer broke 
 down mentally and physically. During the composition of 
 the ' Eequiem ' he laboured under the delusion that he w^as 
 being poisoned, frequently swooned away, and became par- 
 tially paralysed. Afterwards he fell into a delirious state, 
 ' Hockstro : lAfe of Handd. 
 
MOZART AND BEETHOVEN 1G7 
 
 in which he still occupied himself with the ^ Eequiem/ 
 blowing out his cheeks to imitate the trumpets and drums. 
 In his thirty-sixth year he died of inflammation of the brain. 
 The nerve disorder of the sister does not appear to have 
 attacked any vital part of her system. She lived to an 
 advanced age, but ten years before her death she became 
 blind. Mozart's head was too large for his body, which was 
 of stunted growth. Towards the close of his life he indulged 
 in ' convivial excesses,' frequenting the society of ' low and 
 unprincipled persons.' He left two sons, both of whom 
 practised music, but with little success. 
 
 The eccentricities of Beethoven bordered upon insanity. 
 He was constantly changing his lodgings, and, although 
 miserably poor, had sometimes three or four places -r, 
 of abode to pay for at one time. He was always 
 absent-minded and unpractical. Litigious and troublesome 
 in disposition, he alienated both relatives and friends. He 
 was in constant ill-health, and had some constitutional weak- 
 ness of the eyes. From the age of thirty he gradually lost 
 his hearing, and in his later years was completely deaf. 
 Despite these afflictions he continued to play and compose, 
 though sometimes ' he would unconsciously lay his left hand 
 flat upon the key-board of the piano, and thus drown in dis- 
 cordant noise the music to which his right hand was feelingly 
 giving expression.' The music he wrote during the latter 
 half of his life was never heard by him in the ordinary sense 
 of the word; it was conceived and perfected solely in his 
 imagination. This is a feat which to a mind of ordinary 
 calibre would be utterly impossible. Beethoven was most 
 ungainly in his manners and habits. He was only five feet 
 four inches in height, his head was unusually large, his hair 
 bushy, and always in a state of wild disorder. He died at 
 fifty-six, it is said of dropsy, which, however, is rather a 
 symptom of some fatal malady than a malady in itself. More 
 probably the vital functions were impaired through a de- 
 terioration of the brain. A post-mortem examination was 
 made by one Joseph Wagner, who reported in the following 
 terms : — ' The auditory nerves were shrivelled and marrow- 
 less, the arteries running along them being stretched as if 
 
168 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 over a crow-quill. The fourth ventricle of the brain was 
 filled with blood, and the brain substance was in this part of 
 a much firmer consistence than the rest. Generally the brain 
 was soft and watery, but its convolutions appeared twice as 
 deep as usual, and much more numerous. The skull was 
 throughout very compact and about half an inch thick.' 
 Beethoven never married. His ailments he appears to 
 have derived from his father, a tenor singer, who became a 
 drunkard. 
 
 No family could present more distressing conditions of 
 nerve-disorder than that of Mendelssohn, where deformities, 
 Mendels- blindness, apoplexy, paralysis, and epilepsy are 
 soHN found in unbroken sequence.^ Moses Mendelssohn, 
 grandfather of the composer Felix Mendelssohn, was a 
 hunchback ; he stammered, and also suffered constantly from 
 violent headaches which nothing could relieve. At fifty-seven 
 he died of apoplexy. He wrote verses in his youth, and 
 afterwards achieved celebrity by his philosophical works. 
 To this feeble, ailing, and insignificant specimen of humanity 
 three sons and three daughters were born, most of whom 
 appear to have inherited some species of nervous affection. 
 The eldest son Joseph became a successful banker. As a 
 boy, according to a letter of his father's, he showed ' great 
 stubbornness and want of gentleness,' and was ' always of 
 that temperament which would ten times rather break than 
 bend.' At about his father's age he died ' painlessly and 
 suddenly.' He had two children, of whom one died young, 
 and the other left no issue. Abraham, the second son of 
 Closes and the father of the composer, was also an active and 
 (Miergetic man of business, and of a hard and severe nature. 
 He became blind, and, like his elder brother, died suddenly, 
 no one supposing him to have more than a slight cold. His 
 age at death was fifty-nine. Nathan, the youngest, outliving 
 his brothers by a good many years, also died ' painlessly and 
 suddenly,' leaving a family who had pronounced musical 
 tastes. Although the cause of death in these cases is not 
 specified, the recorded symptoms point to apoplexy or to 
 some nervous affection of the heart. Not less afflicted in 
 • Rockstro : Life of Mendelssohn. Henschel : Die Familie Mendelssohn. 
 
MENDELSSOHN 169 
 
 their way were the daughters of Moses Mendelssohn. 
 Henrietta was deformed and never married, while Dorothea 
 and Recha were somewhat disordered as to their passions, 
 the former deserting her first husband to elope with a lover, 
 and the latter being divorced. It is noteworthy that Dorothea 
 had ' literary and poetic abilities,' and that Recha was also 
 ' intellectually clever ' but ' a very sickly woman.' 
 
 In Felix Mendelssohn there was, as has been observed in 
 the case of Walter Scott and other great men, a converging 
 heredity of nerve-disorder, Abraham Mendelssohn having 
 married a woman ' of an excitable nervous organisation and 
 prone to heart disease.' Leah Solomon, mother of the com- 
 poser, excelled alike as a linguist, a musician, and an artist, 
 and was also ' very lively and witty.' She died suddenly 
 of ' spasm of the lungs.' By her marriage with Abraham 
 Mendelssohn she had four children — Fanny, Felix, Rebecca, 
 and Paul. Both Fanny and Felix had a decided predilection 
 for music in childhood ; the others were not so gifted. All 
 were of feeble constitution. Fanny was of stunted growth, 
 slightly deformed (having one shoulder higher than the 
 other), and was weak-sighted. She was subject to alarming 
 fits of bleeding at the nose, one of which lasted thirty-six 
 hours. At forty-two she was seized with paralysis while 
 seated at the piano, and died a few hours afterwards ' from a 
 rush of blood to the head.' She was very ' lively, sensitive, 
 and fond of the beautiful in all things.' 
 
 Felix, the composer, who in his short life — for he died at 
 thirty-seven — made the name of Mendelssohn illustrious, was 
 wayward as a boy. Writing to him at this period, his father 
 observed : — ' You have never been able to divest yourself of a 
 tendency to austerity and irascibility, suddenly grasping an 
 object and as suddenly relinquishing it, and thus creating for 
 yourself many obstacles from the practical point of view.' Like 
 Handel and Mozart, Mendelssohn was extremely susceptible 
 to discordant sounds. The national melodies of Wales, as per- 
 formed by itinerant musicians during his visit to the Princi- 
 pality in 1829, threw him into a frenzy. ' No national melodies 
 for me,' he wrote. ' Ten thousand devils take all nationalities.' 
 The airs of the country were to his ear ' infamous, vulgar, 
 
170 THE INSxVNITY OF GENIUS 
 
 out-of-time trasli,' and, he added, ' I am getting mad, and I 
 must leave off writing till by-and-by.' By the age of thirty- 
 five his health was ' hopelessly impaired.' This was soon after 
 the composition of ' Elijah.' Rockstro remarks that Mendels- 
 sohn then appeared to be working himself to death. During 
 the rehearsals of ' Elijah ' he had a ' worn look ' which it was 
 distressing to witness. He next fell into a state of physical 
 and nervous exhaustion, and was ' irritable to the last degree.' 
 From this condition he never recovered. On hearing of his 
 sister Fanny's death he fell down in a faint. Putting his 
 hand to his head some time afterwards, he said mournfully, 
 * What is the good of planning anything ? I shall not live.' 
 The prediction was all too true. There is little doubt but 
 that at this period Mendelssohn's mind was unhinged. His 
 ' habits changed,' and he ' dreaded all contact with the 
 public' Epileptic symptoms appeared. He had shivering 
 fits and headaches followed by periods of unconsciousness, 
 and these attacks increased in violence until death super- 
 vened. Like his sister Fanny, Mendelssohn was undergrown. 
 He was quick-tempered, lithe, and mercurial ; his features 
 were animated and expressive. Some of his vital forces, 
 however, were deficient, for before his death, in what ought 
 to have been the flower of his manhood, he began to be grey 
 and bald. Rebecca suffered terribly from neuralgia, the pain 
 being such that during her attacks she had to be held down 
 in bed. At forty-nine she died of apoplexy. Paul escaped 
 the family heritage of an early and sudden death ; the un- 
 specified malady that carried him off involved ' long and 
 severe suffering,' which is no doubt referable to a deeply- 
 impaired constitution. 
 
 In Donizetti and Schumann nerve-disorder attained the 
 proportions of insanity. Both these composers also became 
 T. ^ paralysed. Donizetti, who composed his nume- 
 
 DONIZETTI A ^ . ' A . 
 
 rous works with marvellous ease and rapidity, was 
 during his latter years confined in a lunatic asylum. He 
 died at fifty, leaving a son, like himself, insane. Schumann's 
 insanity manifested itself in his youth, when fits of melan- 
 cholia beset him, accompanied by suicidal impulses. After- 
 wards he had hallucinations, hearing spirit voices, melodies, 
 
DONIZETTI AND SCHUMANN 171 
 
 and harmonies, and having perturbations of smell and taste.' 
 For years he dreaded being shut up in a lunatic asylum, and 
 this was eventually his fate. He died at forty-six. The heritage 
 of nerve-disorder in Schumann's case appears to have been 
 exceptionally strong. There were no musical aptitudes in 
 the family ; but his father, although engaged in trade, had 
 strong literary and poetic aspirations, and ' died in the prime 
 of life of a disease of long standing ; ' while the composer's 
 mother ' fell into an exaggerated state of romance and sen- 
 timentalism, combined with sudden and violent passions and 
 an inclination to singularity.' Three brothers all died in 
 early manhood, while a sister fell into an ' incurable gQjjrjMANN 
 melancholy ' followed by dementia, and died in her 
 twentieth year. Physically Schumann was of middle stature, 
 inclining to stoutness. He was calm and dignified, but not 
 particularly intellectual in appearance, although his head was 
 square and firm, broadening in a marked manner at the 
 temples. A post-mortem examination was made with the 
 following results : — 
 
 The traverse folds marking the fourth cavity of the 
 brain were numerous and finely fashioned, and various 
 abnormal characteristics in the cerebral substance were 
 revealed, namely — 
 
 I. Distended blood-vessels, especially at the base of the 
 brain . 
 
 II. Ossification of the base of the brain and abnormal 
 development of the normal projections in the shape of a new 
 formation of irregular masses of bone, which partially pierced 
 the external hard covering of the brain with their sharp 
 points. 
 
 III. Concretion and degeneration of the soft coverings of 
 the brain and unnatural growth of the vascular covering and 
 the rear portion of the cerebrum. 
 
 IV. A considerable atrophy of the whole brain, which 
 weighed about seven ounces (Prussian Troy weight), less 
 than is usual in a man of Schumann's age.^ 
 
 Wagner's origin is obscure. He has told us, however, 
 that his father, who occupied a humble position, died very 
 ' Wasilowski : Life of Itohert Sclnima/iii. - Ibid. 
 
172 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 early — the year in which the composer was born. ' I hardly 
 know,' says Wagner, ' for what I was originally intended. 
 Wagnek ^^^^ know that I heard one evening a symphony 
 of Beethoven's, that I thereupon fell ill of a fever, 
 and that when I recovered I was — a musician.' His tastes 
 in the first instance were literary and dramatic, but he was 
 a wild and disorderly boy, and infected with the wildest 
 mysticism. At the beginning of his musical period he 
 had ' while half dozing a day vision, in which fundamental 
 thirds and fifths appeared to him incarnate.' Curiously 
 enough, with all his genius for music, he was never able to 
 acquire executive skill on the piano. For many years he suf- 
 fered from hypertrophy of the heart, which was also Balzac's 
 complaint. It was of this disease that he died. ' The most 
 striking thing in Wagner,' says one of his biographers,^ 
 ' was the extraordinary energy that animated his frail (chetif) 
 body, with its disproportionately large head and brow. This 
 disproportion made him look smaller than he was in reality. 
 He had a violent temperament ; both in gaiety and anger he 
 was tempestuous, and his wife was constantly on the watch 
 to prevent or to repair the results of his uncontrollable 
 actions.' ' Impatient, nervous, irritable, he seemed to take 
 pleasure in rending in pieces men and things,' is another 
 description given of him. He had a strange mania for silks 
 and satins — a mania which increased with age. It was in 
 these fabrics that he arrayed himself when about to compose, 
 and in travelling he always carried about with him sufficient 
 material of this kind to decorate his apartments, the room 
 in which he died being upholstered in pink and pale blue 
 satin. 
 
 Gliick, avaricious and addicted to drink, died of apoplexy. 
 Paganini, an inveterate gambler, was epileptic and con- 
 sumptive. Weber lapsed into melancholia, and died of con- 
 sumption at forty-two. The same malady carried off Herold 
 at the same age. Rossini had a cousin an idiot, and at times 
 laboured under the hallucination that he was miserably 
 poor.^ Schubert's constitution was worn out at thirty-one. 
 Bellini succumbed at thirty-three to an ^ internal disease.' 
 ' Jullien. ^ Lombroso. 
 
MICHEL ANGELO 173 
 
 Balfe died of astlima. Chopin was consumptive. The father 
 of Berlioz was ' weakly in body and melaucholic,' while his 
 mother was ' fervently pious.' Gounod describes his brother- 
 musician in the following terms : — ' With Berlioz every 
 impression and every feeling was carried to extremities ; he 
 only knew joy and sorrow at the pitch of delirium : as he 
 said of himself, he was a volcano.' In the latter portion of 
 his life Berlioz suffered excruciatingly from -' neuralgia in 
 the intestines,' and his death was preceded by epileptiform 
 fits.i 
 
 What has been said of music applies equally to the sister 
 arts. Many of the greatest painters, sculptors, and engravers 
 are but names to us ; they live in their works, and Michel 
 have otherwise no personal history. All the avail- Angelo 
 able evidence, however, points clearly to the existence of 
 nerve-disorder as a fundamental element of genius in relation 
 to colour and form. The publication in 1856 of the letters 
 contained in the Buonarroti archives threw some light upon 
 the previously obscure personality of Michel Angelo,^ who, in 
 consequence, is better kuown to us than any of the artists 
 of his period. And it would be difficult to choose a more 
 representative name, for the great sculptor also excelled as a 
 painter, and was given to the writing of poetry as well. 
 Like so many great men, unfortunately, he dwindles on 
 acquaintance. The family correspondence does not show 
 him to advantage. His suspiciousness, his irritability, and 
 his want of calm judgment were the causes of infinite trouble 
 to himself and his friends. These characteristics of the 
 ' insane temperament ' he appears to have inherited from his 
 father — a ' man of narrow intellect and hasty temper, un- 
 reasonable, and unjust.' Some of the artist's greatest works 
 were achieved while he was afflicted with severe nervous 
 ailments. About the age of fifty-six he is described as 
 suffering from sleeplessness, weak sight, pains in the head, 
 and giddiness. Having been injured in a fall, he shut him- 
 self up in his room and refused all assistance, the surgeon 
 being compelled to force his way to his bedside. If this was 
 
 ' Life and Letters of Berlioz. 
 
 ^ C. Heath Wilson : Life of Michel Angelo. 
 
174 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the act of a sane man nothing but a morbid condition of 
 mind could explain the artist's petulant and violent letters 
 and his frequent explosions of temper. One of his letters, 
 undated, but addressed to a friend to whom he was much 
 indebted and, indeed, warmly attached, is so incoherent that 
 he could not have been in his senses when he wrote it. It 
 is such a letter as might emanate from Bedlam. 
 
 * Messer Luigi,' says the writer, ' you suppose that I shall 
 reply to you as you wish, but it may well be to the contrary. 
 You give me what I never requested. Truly you do not sin 
 in ignorance, sending it to me by Hercules, being ashamed 
 to give it to me yourself. He who has snatched me from the 
 grave may censure me, but I don't know which weighs most 
 on me, censure or death. In short, I pray and conjure you 
 by the true friendship existing between us that you destroy 
 that print and burn the other impression, and that if you 
 make a profit out of me you will not make others do likewise. 
 If you make of me a thousand pieces I will do as much not 
 of you but of your affairs.' 
 
 The signature to this communication is not the least 
 curious part of it. It runs thus : — 
 'Michel Angelo Buonarroti, 
 
 Not painter, sculptor, or architect, 
 But what you will. But not a drunkard 
 As I told you at home.' 
 On the death of a lady to whom he was much attached 
 Michel Angelo is said to have ' lost all control over himself.' 
 He had an innate turn for art, which he adhered to notwith- 
 standing that his father and uncles had recourse to blows to 
 divert him from it as a boy. With the insane temperament 
 he inherited from his father longevity, both dying at the age 
 of ninety. The artist left no offspring, and, although many 
 children were born to his brothers, few lived. ' It is not our 
 fate,' wrote Michel Angelo, ' to multiply in Florence.' None 
 of these brothers displayed any artistic gifts ; they were, 
 indeed, men of very little capacity, and ' frequently played 
 an unsatisfactory part in the family history.' Leonardo was 
 infirm and of a pious disposition ; Giovanni Simone was the 
 
EEYXOLDS ] 75 
 
 ne'er-do-well of tlie family. Only one brother, Buonarroti, 
 had surviving issue. 
 
 From the biographical sketches of other old masters some 
 significant facts may be culled. Giorgione, remarkable for 
 his big body and big head, lived an extravagant life, and 
 was notorious for his love adventures ; Tintoretto died of an 
 
 * incurable disease of the stomach ; ' Paul Veronese left a 
 gifted son, who died at twenty-six ; Botticelli at sixty-four 
 was completely broken down in health, and ' hobbled about 
 on crutches ; ' Leonardo da Vinci's right arm became para- 
 lysed ; Rubens died of gout, which attacked him. at fifty; 
 Raphael, addicted to sexual excesses, died at thirty-seven ; 
 Albert Dllrer was consumptive ; Claude Lorraine succumbed 
 to gout ; Salvator Rosa sank into imbecility ; Benvenuto 
 Cellini had hallucinations of sight in the form of ecstatic 
 visions ; Vandyck was melancholic, and died at forty-one of 
 
 * disappointment ; ' Watteau was also melancholic, his early 
 death being attributed to ' deception in love.' ^ 
 
 Coming to English artists of the first rank, we meet with 
 nerve-disorder in all its forms, not excepting mental derange- 
 ment, and in one distinguished case — that of j. 
 Turner — idiocy, or a condition nearly approaching 
 it. Between the parentage of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and 
 that of Sir Joshua Reynolds there is a curious similarity. 
 The painter's father, like the poet's, was a clergyman and 
 schoolmaster ; he was also ' an absent man ' and ' remarkable 
 for his taciturnity.' ^ It is no surprise in these circumstances 
 to learn that at the height of his fame Sir Joshua had a 
 stroke of paralysis, and that some time afterwards, while 
 engaged upon a portrait, he felt a sudden decay of sight in 
 his left eye. Under the latter affliction he laid down the 
 pencil, never to take it up again. His sight gradually 
 darkened, and in a few weeks his lefb eye was totally blind. 
 From similar causes, no doubt, the painter long suffered from 
 deafness. Paralysis was not, however, the malady which 
 was destined to end his days. He had an enlargement of 
 the liver — a disease which perplexed the best physicians of 
 
 * Dohme : Kunst und Kiinstler des Mitt el- alters iind der Neuzeit. 
 2 Northcote : Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
176 TIIE IxVSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the time, but which is now known to be in relation with 
 the medulla oblongata. From this we may conclude that 
 the disturbance of function which had occasioned para- 
 lysis, deafness, and blindness of the left eye invaded yet 
 another portion of the cerebro-spinal system before proving 
 fatal. Sir Joshua, despite his social success, never married, 
 and he otherwise appears to have indulged in what in any 
 sanely constituted man of his position would have been an 
 unaccountable eccentricity, namely, meanness in small money 
 matters. ' In his household,' says Allan Cunningham, ' he 
 was close and saving ; while he poured out his wines and 
 spread out his tables to the titled or the learned, he stinted 
 his domestics to the commonest fare and rewarded their 
 faithfulness by very moderate wages.' He was ' prudent in 
 the matter of pins, a saver of bits of thread, a man hard 
 and parsimonious.' Public opinion pictured him close, cold, 
 cautious, and sordid ; and an exhibition of his ' old masters,' 
 which he set up in the Hay market ostensibly for the benefit 
 of a servant, excited a suspicion, because of his well-knowQ 
 love of gain, that he was a partaker in the profits. — Hogarth 
 died of a sudden nervous spasm — probably angina fedoris. 
 
 The parentage of John Flaxman is obscure, his father 
 having been a maker and seller of plaster casts in a humble 
 „ way, and nothing being known of his mother 
 
 except that her name was Lee — a common gipsy 
 patronymic. What the father of English sculpture inherited 
 in a physical sense was a rickety, misshapen body which, in 
 his early years, needed the support of crutches. As a child 
 Flaxman was not expected to live ; but au alert and tenacious 
 spirit animated the puny frame, and after the perils of boy- 
 hood were past, he proved himself capable of sustaining the 
 fatigue of incessant industry. Always drawing, the sickly 
 youth became a precocious exhibitor and prize-winner. His 
 health improved so much that he was able to lay aside his 
 crutches, but he remained high-shouldered to deformity, his 
 head always looked somewhat too large for his body, and he 
 had an awkward sidelong gait. In religion he held stubborn 
 and eccentric views. He was a believer in the Swedenborgian 
 mysticism, and his opinions on this, as, indeed, on most 
 
PLAXMAN AND MOELAND 177 
 
 subjects, were inflexibly rigid. In art, of course, he was an 
 enthusiast. His genius was exclusively for form. With no 
 model before him he had, even as a lad, instinctively grasped 
 the true principles of Greek design, and he may be said to 
 have recovered the art of combining ideal grace of form and 
 the rhythmical composition of lines with spontaneousness 
 and truth of pose and gesture. Flaxman married, but left no 
 offspring. The immod'ate cause of his death at seventy-one 
 was a cold. An elder brother, William, of whom nothing 
 is knov/n except that he also was a modeller, died at 
 forty-two. 
 
 Other forms of artistic nerve- disorder — for it is only pos- 
 sible to give a selection of cases — are illustrated by Morland, 
 Fuseli, Lawrence, Liverseege, Wilkie, Maclise, i^jqjjland 
 Dore, and Meissonier. Unlike Reynolds, Lawrence, 
 and many distinguished painters, George Morland came of 
 an artistic family. His grandfather was a painter, his father 
 also. The latter was what is known as a failure in life — a 
 fact to which we may trace the germ of Morland's genius. 
 This manifested itself early. At five or six years Morland 
 drew wonderfully. He received no regular instruction. 
 From the age of sixteen he was a drunkard, a spendthrift, a 
 loafer about town, with the vulgarest tastes. Destitute of 
 ambition, he worked only to supply the necessities of the 
 hour. He painted with remarkable rapidity and. often under 
 the influence of intoxication, yet his pictures, observes Allan 
 Cunningham, want nothing that art can bestow. His habits 
 of debauchery obtaining the upper hand, he sank into the 
 lowest state of destitution, while his personal character 
 became an object of general contempt. At thirty-nine he 
 was struck by paralysis. He recovered partially, but would 
 often fall back senseless in his chair, and sometimes sank 
 into sleep with his palette and brush in his hand. In his 
 fortieth year he died, from the effects ^of swallowing an un- 
 usual quantity of spirits, in utter wretchedness and penury. 
 
 Fuseli was of ' diminutive stature and crabbed disposi- 
 tion,' and was all his life an eccentric, filled ^ 
 with fiery impatience and untamable enthusiasm, 
 which, before he took to the easel, found vent through 
 
178 THE INSANITY OF GENII'S 
 
 literary and poetic channels. His style both in writing and 
 painting was exaggerated and distorted, but always vigorous 
 aud animated. A consuming energy was his characteristic. 
 To his friends and pupils his oddities, his jests, and his 
 biting sarcasm were a constant source of amusement. He 
 was subject to hts of despondency, and 'from these it was 
 difficult and even dangerous to arouse him,' a violent ex- 
 plosion of temper being the usual result. In dispute he was 
 eager, fierce, and unsparing, and he was too often morose 
 and unamiable even with his best friends. The beautiful he 
 saw chiefly with his mind's eye, for he was very near-sighted, 
 and was obliged to stud}^ the effects of his pictures and to 
 touch and retouch them with the help of an opera glass. 
 For this reason, probably, his colouring Las a kind of super- 
 natural hue, well suited to beings of the spiritual world 
 though not to those of flesh and blood. He died suddenly, 
 but at an advanced age. 
 
 Sir Thomas Lawrence rivalled and, indeed, surpassed Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds in tact, suavity, and courtliness of manner, 
 although in pecuniary matters so unlike his dis- 
 AWRENCE ^jjjg^iigi^ed predecessor in the chair of the Royal 
 Academy that, despite his vast earnings and the fact that he 
 remained unmarried, he was always in want of money. It 
 is remarkable that Sir Thomas was one of sixteen children, 
 nearly all of whom died in infancy, inheriting their instability 
 of constitution from a ne'er-do-well father, w^ho became suc- 
 cessively attorney, poetaster, spouter of odes, actor, revenue 
 officer, farmer, and publican, and prospered in none of these 
 callings. The early history of the painter is painfully 
 mingled with the fortunes of his father. He was exhibited 
 as an infant prodigy, and at five years of age spouted 
 poetry and took portraits for the delectation of the rustics in 
 his father's bar-parlour. At twelve he was an established 
 portrait painter at Bath, at three and twenty a London 
 celebrity. Everything and everybody conspired to make 
 him a coxcomb, for personally he was very handsome, and he 
 was especially a ' ladies' man,' but his native good sense 
 never deserted him except where money was concerned. 
 Towards his sixtieth year his health became uncertain ; he 
 
WILKIE AND MACLISE 179 
 
 had frequent headaches, and was liable to be overtaken by 
 drowsiness in company — a symptom of brain disorder — and 
 soon afterwards he died of heart disease. 
 
 The son of a harsh and cruel father who held a subordinate 
 situation in a Manchester cotton factory, Liverseege was born 
 weak and deformed. Afflicted with asthma from Liver 
 his cradle, he was of peevish disposition, but he was seege 
 also thought to be quick in comprehension and eager for 
 knowledge. He taught himself to draw and soon made, a 
 livelihood by his portraits, which he afterwards quitted for 
 more poetic subjects. During his brief and troubled exist- 
 ence, for he died at twenty-nine, he had alternate fits of 
 melancholy and exaltation, and was always more or less ail- 
 ing. A sudden nervous seizure of some kind cut short, in 
 his case, a career of singular promise. 
 
 David Wilkie, ' the raw, queer Scotchman ' of Jackson's 
 description, was all his life, and despite his great success, a 
 modest, diffident man, with little cultivation of ^. 
 manners, and wholly insensible to the charms and 
 blandishments of the fair sex. Nervous ill-health weighed 
 upon him from early manhood ; and from before his fortieth 
 year he was a confirmed invalid, going from place to place 
 consulting one physician after another, and trying endless 
 remedies all to no purpose. One symptom of his condition 
 was a loss of the power of attention. This he recovered to 
 some extent, though his later works are all inferior to his 
 earlier ones. Hay don found him at forty looking ' thinner 
 and more nervous than ever ' — his * keen and bushy brow, 
 irritable, eager, and full of genius.' Returning by steamer 
 in the Mediterranean from an Oriental tour, Wilkie had a 
 nervous seizure ' which rendered his speech incoherent,' and 
 to which he rapidly succumbed at the age of fifty-six. 
 
 Daniel Maclise was born of very humble parents, of whom 
 nothing is known. Even the precise^ date of his birth is a 
 mystery. He had two brothers, one of whom died j^j^^^lise 
 with an ' undermined constitution,' the other at- 
 tained some eminence as a singer. One sister married ; 
 another ' loved her brother Daniel so intensely that nothing 
 would induce her to separate from him' — a circumstance 
 
 N 2 
 
180 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 recalling the devotion to their brothers of the demented Mary 
 Lamb and Dorothy Wordsworth. For some years this sister 
 was an invalid. IMaclise's health was also unsatisfactory. 
 About the age of thirty, when beginning to be famous, he 
 wrote to a friend : — ' I am really and truly unwell ; it may 
 be hypochondria, a return of my old ailment, but I was pro- 
 hibited dining out. I fell down at the door of my painting- 
 room, and have had the most unquiet nights from palpitating 
 fevers.' Latterly Maclise's habits became very solitary and 
 sedentary, and about the age of sixty he died of consumption, 
 unmarried. 
 
 David Roberts, the Royal Academician, who began life 
 as a house-painter, and who won his way to fame without 
 any systematic instruction, had a marvellously retentive 
 memory and a rapid execution. These gifts he paid for in 
 his sudden death from apoplexy. — To this complaint Gustave 
 Dore succumbed. — Another wonderfully rapid worker was 
 John Phillips, who was also originally a house-painter and 
 who died from paralysis. — Meissonier, who suffered much 
 from gout, was physically very active, for ever on the move, 
 but hardly more than five feet high, with a large leonine head 
 and great beard, set on a small body and supported by 
 diminutive legs. 
 
 The degeneration of artistic genius into true insanity is 
 exemplified by Romney, Cosway, Haydon, and Landseer. 
 Romney's father was a carpenter, and although suc- 
 cessful in business was recognised to be ' something 
 of a dreamer in curious projects and expensive plans' — a 
 description which prepares us for the discovery of an un- 
 balanced condition of mind in the son. The artistic genius 
 of Romney had its usual concomitants of extreme nervous 
 sensibility and waywardness. Hypochondria marked him 
 for its own. According to his friend Hay ley, the painter 
 laboured under a frequent dread that his talent would utterly 
 desert him, and in the height of his fame his depression was 
 such that he thought of relinquishing his art altogether. 
 Romney in his letters speaks of his own ' distempered mind 
 and body,' and in view of his friend's inexplicable fits of de- 
 pression Hay ley remarks : — ' What can be more truly pitiable 
 
ROMNEY AND COSWAY 181 
 
 tlian to see great talents rendered frequently inactive by 
 those wonderful variations in the nervous system that throw 
 a shadowy darkness over the mind and fill it with phantoms 
 of apprehension ! ' About the age of sixty Romney had a 
 paralytic stroke which affected both his eye and his hand, 
 and from this time impairment of his faculties proceeded 
 rapidly. He built a whimsical dwelling at Hampstead, act- 
 ing as his own architect ; but this indulgence of an eccentric 
 fancy brought him neither rest nor satisfaction. His dejec- 
 tion increased, and although he still busied himself with his 
 paints and brushes, it was noticed that his skill had departed. 
 By-and-by he ceased to recognise his friends or relatives, 
 and thenceforward until his death at sixty-eight remained, 
 as Hayley puts it, ' in that state of existence which is infi- 
 nitely more afilicting to the friends who behold than to the 
 mortal who endures it.' An elder brother of Romney's ' gave 
 such proofs of genius in art as made his early death regretted.' 
 By a wife whose existence he never acknowledged in London, 
 and whom he neglected for nearly forty years, Romney left a 
 son, who lived long enough to become a clergyman. In his 
 youth the painter displayed a taste both for music and 
 mechanics. For art he had an inborn aptitude ; he was put 
 to his father's trade, that of a carpenter, but began painting 
 without having any models before him or receiving any 
 artistic instruction whatever. 
 
 Very similar, in an artistic sense, was the origin of Cos- 
 way, whose taste for drawing, which made him the foremost 
 miniature painter of his day, asserted itself in boy- ^ 
 hood and in the face of the gravest difiiculties. As 
 a suite to certain ' infirmities ' from which his father suffered, 
 Cosway had a paralytic stroke which deprived him of the use 
 of his right hand. Upon this hallucinations followed. These 
 happily were of a pleasing order. Sometimes he would startle 
 his friends by stating with a serious air that he had just had 
 an interview with Praxiteles and Apelles, and that to the 
 English Academy the former recommended a closer study of 
 the human figure, the latter a less gaudy style of colour. 
 Once as he sat at the dinner of the Royal Academy he turned 
 to one of his fellow Academicians and said, ' Pitt while he 
 
182 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 lived discouraged genius; lie has seen his error now. He 
 ]\T,id me a visit this morning and said, " Cosway, the chief 
 fault I committed on earth was in not encouraging your 
 la'ent." ' ' I have heard Cosway,' says another friend, ' relate 
 conversations which he held with King Charles I. (then dead 
 lor 150 years) so seriously that I firmly believe he considered 
 everything he uttered to be strictly true.' According to 
 Ilazlitt, Cosway professed to have held conversations with 
 luore than one person of the Trinity, and to be able to talk 
 with his lady at ^lantua through some fine ventricle of the 
 senses, as we speak to a servant downstairs through an ear- 
 pipe. The afflicted painter died at an advanced age, childless. 
 The ' clamorous, frenzied life ' of Haydon is one of the 
 saddest in the anuals of art. Inheriting a double strain of 
 insanity, first from an eccentric father, who in re- 
 cording his birth in a diary, added that the wind 
 at the time was W.S.AV., and secondly from a mother who 
 suffered from mental derangement, and who died of angina 
 pectoris^ Haydon, besides his artistic genius, had two charac- 
 teristics enormously in excess, a burning enthusiasm for art 
 and a prodigious vanity. Folly, extravagance, and lawsuits 
 had well-nigh ruined the family, and it is noted that Hay don's 
 paternal grandmother was a woman ' of great energy and 
 violent prejudices.' The painter suffered from suppressed 
 gout. In his youth he was threatened with blindness, but 
 this danger passed off, leaving him a prey chiefly to his own 
 inordinate ambition and self-will. He was apprenticed to 
 the bookselling business of his father, but his tastes were all 
 for drawing. ' I hated day-books, ledgers, and cash-books,' 
 he says in his autobiography; 'I hated standing behind the 
 counter, and insulted the customers. I hated the town 
 (Plymouth) and the people in it. I rose early and wandered 
 by the sea ; sat up late and pondered on my ambition, and 
 my whole frame convulsed when I thought of being a great 
 painter.' In this passage we have the key to Haydon"s 
 nature. Sent to London with 20/. in his pocket to make his 
 way, he imagined that he was destined to revive all the 
 ancient glories of painting, and worked with such energy 
 that his gums were ' sore from the clenched tightness of his 
 
IIAYDON AND LAXDSEER ISB 
 
 teeth.' His fieiy zeal at first only brought him disappoint- 
 ment, his pictures being received with an indifference which 
 to the impetuous young painter was ' agonising.' Success 
 came by-and-by, though it profited him little. Out of the 
 exhibition of some of his huge canvases he made large sums 
 of money, but he was, nevertheless, constantly struggling 
 with debt and addressing passionate prayers to the Almighty 
 for protection. The vulgar necessities of daily life appear 
 to have had a maddening effect upon Haydon's fervid soul. 
 Repose he never found. ' My brain seems to require constant 
 pressure to be easy, and my body incessant activity.' Three 
 years later, disappointed with the result of an exhibition of 
 his pictures, and suffering from a mental excitement which 
 is vividly reflected in the following entry in his diary : — 
 ' Slept horribly — prayed in sorrow and got up in agitation ' 
 — he took a pistol and tried to shoot himself, failing in which 
 attempt he cut his throat. A post-mortem examination re- 
 vealed a long-standing irritation of the brain. There were 
 innumerable bloody points throughout the cerebral substance, 
 and the enveloping membrane was thickened and adherent. 
 
 Throughout the Landseer family the artistic faculty pre- 
 dominated. John Landseer, the father, was an engraver 
 whose angularities of character enabled him to wage 
 a prolonged quarrel with the Royal Academy. In ^^"^^^^ 
 consequence of the comparative failure of his efforts to raise 
 the professional status of engravers, ' disappointment,' it is 
 said, ' preyed u|x>n his mind so deeply ' that he turned his 
 attention from the practice of his ]Di'ofession to the study of 
 archasology. He was also an attractive lecturer. Crabb 
 Robinson described him as ' animated in his style,' adding 
 that his ' animation was produced by indulgence in sarcasm 
 and in emphatic diction.' In the absence of medical details, 
 John Landseer's character may be said to be significantly 
 indicated in these accounts of him. - Two of his sons, Thomas 
 and Charles, attained distinction as artists; two daughters 
 also possessed artistic tastes. The third son. Sir Edwin 
 Landseer, sketched from childhood. At six or seven he drew 
 a cow from life, and constantly busied himself with his sketch- 
 book in the fields thereafter. Like most great men, he was 
 
184 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 thus a precocious genius. One of his first drawings of a dog 
 was done at the age of thirteen. As an example of the extra- 
 ordinary manual dexterity he acquired, it is related of him 
 that at an evening party he with a pencil in each hand drew 
 simultaneously and without hesitation the head of a stag and 
 that of a horse, both full of his characteristic energy and 
 spirit. About his fifty-eighth year symptoms of the insanity 
 which darkened the close of Sir Edwin Landseer's life attracted 
 attention. The eccentricity of a picture entitled ' A Kind 
 Star' alarmed his friends. This was exhibited in 1859, and 
 showed a Spirit with a star in its hair bending over a dying 
 stag. In the following year his ' Flood in the Highlands ' 
 seemed to promise a restoration of his powers, but the promise 
 was not fulfilled. Always a man of ' extreme nervous sus- 
 ceptibility,' the painter ' had hints,' says his biographer,^ 
 ' that the human mind and the body which surrounds it are 
 mortal. He was constitutionally subject to nervous depres- 
 sion, but these attacks accumulated force as years went on, 
 and threatened the end which came with all its pain fulness.' 
 Landseer died at sixty-nine, leaving no one to inherit his 
 name, the last bearer of which was a surviving maiden sister. 
 Turner stands alone as an example of a surpassing faculty 
 for colour, combined with the lowest intellectual powers. 
 Hogarth, according to Walpole, was a man of a 
 UKNER i gross and uninformed mind.' Nollekens never 
 had any notion of spelling or grammar. Reynolds himself 
 is said to have been deficient in scholastic attainments. But 
 Turner, as regards the general cast of his mind, was little 
 fibove the level of the idiot. His mother, always a woman of 
 tierce and ungovernable temper, became insane and had to 
 be placed in confinement ; his father was a loquacious barber, 
 mean and dwarfish-looking, and without much st ibility of 
 character. To this most unlikely couple there a^' pears to 
 have been no other child born than the most renowned 
 landscape painter of England. Turner as a boy was impene- 
 trably dull ; there was only one thing he was found to do 
 well, and that was, during the period of his apprenticeship 
 in an architect's office, the washing in of blue skies and 
 * F. G. Stephens. 
 
TURNER 185 
 
 orange gravel walks in architectural drawings. Here his 
 innate faculty for colour first showed itself. This, by degrees, 
 led to his becoming a student at the Academy, but he does 
 not seem to have profited much by the teaching he there 
 received. His genius, indeed, was remarkably slow in de- 
 veloping. Probably it would never have been recognised at 
 all had there not arisen an eminent critic who could see 
 visions of beauty in canvases which to the uneducated eye 
 looked like inchoate masses of colour. It is, indeed, acknow- 
 ledged that some of Turner's works are ' fitful dreams, night- 
 mares of beauty rather than distinct images ; ' but this is said 
 to be the ' vision of the poet which, although perhaps less 
 definite, yet often catches further glimpses of truth and beauty 
 than ordinary sight can attain.' There is no doubt that 
 Turner's reproductions from Nature are at least untruthful 
 in outline. As pictures of real places — Kilchurn Castle and 
 Ben Cruachan, for example — they are absolutely misleading. 
 The colour sense was Turner's forte. With this he possessed 
 an extraordinary executive skill. His small hand was so 
 delicate that he could draw with a degree of refinement 
 astonishing even to opticians ; his arm was so steady that he 
 painted on upright canvases without the support of a maul- 
 stick, while his constitutional strength was such that he 
 could work fifteen hours at a stretch without fatigue, and eat 
 anything regardless of digestion. The only moral character- 
 istic that he appears to have had in excess was avarice ; he 
 was saving even in the matter of half-pence, and haggled 
 with dealers like a Jew pedlar. For the rest, he fell infi- 
 nitely below mediocrity. The mastery of English grammar 
 was beyond him, he could never write or speak like a person 
 of education, while his manners were slovenly, awkward, un- 
 coneiliatory — boorish in the extreme. When he attempted 
 to explain himself on the subject of art his words were mere 
 gibberish. Here is an example of his philosophical obser- 
 vations, which the reader is invited to make sense of if he 
 can: — 
 
 They wrong virtue enduring difficulties, or worth in the bare 
 imitation of nature, all offers received in the same brain ; but 
 where these attempts rise above mediocrity it would surely not 
 
186 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 be a little sacrifice to those v/lio perceive the value of the success 
 to foster it by terms as cordial tliat cannot look so easy a way as 
 those spoken of convey doubts to the expecting individual. For 
 as the line that unites the beautiful to grace and these otferings 
 forming a new style not that soul can guess as ethics. Teach 
 them of both but many serve as the body and the soul, and but 
 presume more as the beacon to the head-land which would be a 
 warning to the danger of mannerism and the disgustful.^ 
 
 Yet, in this strangely muddled brain there appears to 
 have been some occasional stirring of the poetic sense. His 
 bad spelling and defective grammar notwithstanding, Turner 
 appealed to the muses. ' Lead me along,' he sighs in one 
 passage, ' with thy armonuous verse.' The result was always 
 ludicrous. Much of his poetry, in fact, is sheer nonsense, 
 like the following verse which may stand as an example : — 
 
 If then my ardent love of thee is said with truth 
 Agents the demolition of thy house forsooth, 
 Broke through the trammels doubts and you my rhyme 
 Roll into being since that fatal time.^ 
 
 By way of explaining Turner's habitual sullenness, 
 moroseness, and unsociability, it has been said that in his 
 youth he was crossed in love. Remembering the strain of 
 insanity in his composition, we may dismiss as groundless a 
 story in support of which no biographer has been able to 
 bring forward a particle of evidence. The mental constitu- 
 tion of the great colourist was, plainly speaking, that of the 
 congenital idiot in whom, as we have already seen, there is 
 often a special development of faculty. Ruskin places Turner 
 among the seven supreme colourists of the world, the other 
 six being in his estimation Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, 
 Tintoretto, Correggio, and Reynolds. It certainly needs an 
 abnormally constituted eye to appreciate Turner's colour, 
 particularly his scarlet shadows in combination with white 
 lights. That such shadows exist in nature, although they 
 remained to be discovered by Turner, Ruskin asserts ; ^ but 
 the ordinarily constituted mind will be content to regard 
 
 • P. G. Hauierton : Life of Thirncr. '^ Ihlcl. 
 
 3 iiuskin : Modern Painters, Part IX. Chap. XI. 
 
EDMUND KEAN 187 
 
 them either as a technical device of the painter's for obtaining 
 a false brilliance or as an aberration of the visual sense. The 
 latter years of his long life Turner passed in misanthropic 
 seclusion in a house in Queen Anne Street, which he allowed 
 to fall into the last stage of dilapidation. When friends 
 called here they would sometimes find him ' quite dizzy with 
 work ; ' it is believed that to other sordid vices he added 
 drinking. His eccentricities were quite of the insane order. 
 AVhen Maclise called to tell him of Haydon's suicide, Turner 
 scarcely stopped painting, but merely growled out between 
 his teeth, ' He stabbed his mother, he stabbed his mother.' 
 ' Good heavens,' said Maclise, so excited that he was prepared 
 for any new horror, ' you don't mean to say, Turner, that 
 Hay don ever committed a crime so terrible ! ' Still Turner 
 made no reply, but slowly chanted ' He stabbed his mother, 
 he stabbed his mother.' Nothing but this could his startled 
 friend wring from him. The biographers suppose Turner to 
 have meant that Haydon had injured the Royal Academy, 
 but it is more reasonable to conclude that the words were an 
 insane ' tic ' such as is often to be found in the speech of 
 lunatics. 
 
 The actor's art is not perhaps accorded as high a place 
 in popular estimation as music, painting, and the literary 
 faculty. Nevertheless, its pathological aspect, as Edmund 
 illustrated by the lives of the greatest actors, esta- Kean 
 blishes its identity of origin with the other forms of genius 
 w^e have been considering. From both j)arents Edmund 
 Kean inherited a strain of insanity. His maternal great- 
 grandfather, Henry Carey, a composer of songs and a 
 humourist of some repute, led a ne'er-do-well life, became 
 blind, and hanged himself. Henry Carey's son, George, was 
 a man of the same unsettled habits. Actor, musician, and 
 itinerant lecturer by turns, he lived a life of continued 
 hardship and struggle, his greatest talent being for the 
 unprofitable business of mimicry. Nance Carey, George's 
 daughter, and mother of the tragedian, proved in turn a 
 worthy bearer of the family name. At fifteen she joined a 
 company of strolling players, and the connection she formed 
 soon after with Edmund Kean, the tragedian's father, was 
 
188 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 of the same fortuitous and unstable character as the family 
 fortunes. She had no motherly affection, for she deserted 
 her child three months after his birth, and only claimed him 
 some years later, when there seemed a prospect of making 
 a paltry profit out of his appearances on the stage. 
 
 Turning now to the paternal descent of the great actor, 
 we find, if possible, a blacker record. Edmund Kean the 
 elder was one of three brothers. Aaron was a drunkard ; 
 Moses was a tailor by trade, but earned his bread chiefly as 
 a mimic, and had a wooden leg which probably had a neuro- 
 pathic history if we but knew it, amputation being sometimes 
 resorted to in severe rheumatic affections. With or without 
 these collateral indications of nerve-disorder, there can be no 
 doubt as to the constitutional infirmities of the third brother 
 Edmund, father of the tragedian, with whom we are more 
 immediately concerned. Early in life he was known as a 
 fluent speaker at debating societies, although his calling was 
 that of a clerk ; and, after his acquaintance with Nance 
 Carey, he drank heavily, lost whatever social position he had 
 had, and finally sank into hopeless insanity, in which state 
 he met his death by falling or throwing himself from the 
 roof of a house into the street. In the trao-edian's daily life 
 as well as in his genius his mother's thriftlessness and his 
 father's insanity were faithfully reflected. Kean not only 
 drank heavily but committed strange acts, such as getting 
 up at three o'clock in the morning, sending for a hackney 
 coach, placing inside it a dog, a pair of pistols, a bottle of 
 brandy, and two lighted candles, and gravely telling the 
 coachman to drive ' to hell.' ^ He was constantly disgracing 
 himself with the public by failing in his engagements through 
 drunkenness or inattention. Visiting an American lunatic 
 asylum, he walked out with some friends upon the roof, and 
 after admiring the prospect, rushed suddenly to the edge, 
 exclaiming, ' I'll make a leap ; it is the best end I can put 
 to my life.' With difficulty he was restrained from giving 
 effect to his words. By the age of thirty- seven the tragedian's 
 health, mental and bodily, was shattered, his memory began 
 
 ' Molloy : Life and Adventures o-f Edmund Kean. 
 
JUNIUS ERUTUS BOOTH 189 
 
 to play him false, even the extreme sensibility which was so 
 long his unfailing characteristic occasionally deserted him, so 
 that he walked through his parts ' with moveless muscle and 
 glazed eye ' like a man in the last stage of exhaustion. He 
 lingered, however, a few years longer, acting to the last. In 
 the midst of a performance of ' Othello' at Covent Garden he 
 fell down insensible and was carried off the stage. From 
 this attack he never recovered. It was found that his mind 
 was unhinged, and in this condition death overtook him at 
 the age of forty-six. 
 
 The great tragic genius of Junius Brutus Booth was as 
 nearly allied to insanity as Kean's. Similar eccentricities 
 marked his public and private life, though he does ^ 
 not appear to have been addicted to drinking. 
 When not in the humour to act he would disappear without 
 a word of warning, leaving the managers who had engaged 
 him in serious difficulties. In playing ' Richelieu ' on one 
 occasion he suddenly halted, tripped over to one of the 
 characters, the priest Father Joseph, and, seizing him in his 
 arms, waltzed with him round the stage, to the amazement 
 of the house and the horror of the manager, who had the 
 curtain dropped on this mad prank. Booth then disappeared 
 and was not seen by his friends for some days. At thirty- 
 five his eccentricities culminated in true insanity, the first 
 outbreak of which occurred in the midst of a performance. 
 In playing a tragic part at Boston, U.S.A., he suddenly 
 dropped into a colloquial tone, and d propos of nothing said, 
 ' Upon my word I don't know.' To the murmurs of the 
 house he responded with a ringing laugh. The manager 
 then rushed from behind the scenes and led him off, whilst 
 he shouted ' I can't read — I am a charity boy — I can't read — 
 take me to the lunatic asylum.' For some time after this 
 incident Booth was an undoubted maniac. His mental 
 aberration was, however, marked by- lucid intervals in which 
 he continued to act. While at sea off Charleston he jumped 
 overboard, saying he had a message for an actor who had 
 drowned himself near the spot some years before. He was 
 rescued with difficulty and afterwards carefully watched. In 
 a more or less demented condition he lived till the age of 
 
190 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 firt3'-six, dying then of a cold. His insanity lie transmitted 
 to his son, Wilkes Booth, who assassinated President Lincoln. 
 
 The Kenible family exhibit a considerable variety of 
 The. nerve-disorder, whence inherited there is nothing 
 Kembles to show, save that the mother of Mrs. Siddons and 
 of John Philip Kemble was a woman of ' severe character.' 
 Old Roger Kemble and his wife Sarah, strolling actors, had 
 a large family, of whom Mrs. Siddons was the most gifted. 
 This great actress was a woman of extreme sensibility. She 
 had occasional fainting fits, and suffered from sciatica and 
 nervous depression. She was popularly said to be ' mad ' — 
 a rumour which she took occasion pointedly to contradict. 
 Unquestionably she had a somewhat unbalanced mind, being 
 accustomed, artist-like, to attribute every adverse opinion and 
 every slight to deep-seated and malignant animosity. Before 
 the age of fifty physical weakness unfitted Mrs. Siddons for 
 acting, but she lived to an advanced age, and died of ery- 
 sipelas. In her family consumption appeared, two of her 
 children dying of that complaint. John Philip Kemble, the 
 tragedian, and the most famous brother of Mrs. Siddons, was 
 a man of strange moods, who took opium and drank wine, it 
 is said, ' in pailfuls.' He had asthma, but a graver nerve 
 disorder seized him ultimately, in the shape of paralysis, of 
 which he died. Charles Kemble, inferior to his brother, but 
 still an actor of repute, became deaf before he attained the 
 age of forty. Another brother, Stephen Kemble, was noted 
 for his excessive stoutness — a defect which also characterised 
 Mrs. Siddons in her later years. Fanny Kemble attained 
 some distinction as an actress, but other members of the 
 family showed little or no aptitude for the boards. 
 
 In the case of Mrs. Curtis, youngest sister of Mrs. Siddons, 
 nerve disorder assumed what is commonly thought to be a 
 discreditable form ; she was lame, eccentric, incorrigibly im- 
 moral, and generally a ' disgrace ' to the family. At the same 
 time she had poetic and literary ability. While Mrs. Siddons 
 was at the height of her fame, the poor ne'er-do-well issued 
 a volume of miscellaneous poems, some of which she had 
 wiitten at the age of fourteen, and others ' under a com- 
 plication of difljcidties.' She also wrote romances. On one 
 
THE KEMELES AND RACHEL 191 
 
 occasion she added to her notoriety by attempting to poison 
 herself in Westminster Abbey. But for lier lameness it was 
 thought slie would have cut a respectable figure on the stage. 
 Although known as the ' notorious Mrs. Curtis,' she was 
 acknowledged to possess ' uncommon intellect.' She lived 
 till the age of seventy-four, making the family uneasy all 
 their lives, though latterly she was pensioned by Mrs. Siddons. 
 Rachel, the greatest tragic actress of the French, or in- 
 deed of any stage, was born of Jewish pedlars named Felix, 
 
 and sang or recited in the streets as a child. She ^.^^^ ^^ 
 1 11 1 • T • 1 T 1 Rachel 
 
 was abnormally thm and pigeon-breasted, but, as 
 
 an actress, her coal-black eyes glowed with passion and she 
 had a something in her manner which made her silence even 
 more expressive than words. The family were of a singularly 
 mean and sordid disposition, and exploited Rachel in a shame- 
 less manner throughout her short but brilliant career. The 
 great tragedienne was a ' bundle of nerves.' On the stage 
 she was once seized with a fit of hysterics so violent and so 
 prolonged that her reason was thought to be in danger. Her 
 sister Rebecca died of consumption, and to this disease Rachel 
 herself, after frequently failing in her engagements owing to 
 ' ill-health,' succumbed at the age of thirty-seven. She was 
 subject to fits of an epileptic character, and some time before 
 her death was haunted by the vision of a giant's hand crush- 
 ing in her chesc. This was sometimes accompanied by an 
 auditory hallucination, a voice saying to her, ' You shall die 
 here, under my hand.' Rachel possessed no ear for music, 
 being unable to distinguish time or tune; but she had a 
 great passion for gambling. On the point of heredity it is 
 to be noted that Rachel's father was subject to ' ungovernable 
 fits of anger,' and that her mother was of a ' sharp, grasping, 
 covetous nature ' — defects which are acknowledged in the 
 friendly sketch of the actress's life written by Madame de 
 
 B . 
 
 In not a few cases the genius of eminent actors has been 
 coupled with neuropathic symptoms. Peg Woffington died 
 of paralysis. — Monrose, the best Figaro of his day, developed 
 insanity on the stage while playing his favourite character. — 
 Mdlle. Mars, an inveterate gambler, died in a prolonged state 
 
102 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 of delirium which was attributed ignorantly to her use of 
 hair dye. — Talma possessed the power of vividly picturing his 
 audience to himself as unclothed skeletons.^ — The beautiful and 
 fascinating Rose Cheri belonged to a mad family. — Augustine 
 Brohan was threatened with blindness. — Frederick Lemaitre 
 drank heavily. — Aimee Desclee developed a strong religious 
 vocation. — Robson, a pigmy in stature, drank himself to 
 death. And Charles Kean inherited the nerve-disorder of 
 his father in the form of gout. 
 
 ' This curious faculty of Talma's was possessed by a medical man of 
 Wigan's acquaintance who died of brain disease. In any large assembly 
 his imagination gradually and slowly went on removing one article of 
 clothing after another from all the persons present, then their integuments, 
 then layer after layer of muscles, then the viscera, and at last left them 
 all bare skeletons dancing before his eyes. 
 
193 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CDMMANDEES AND STATESMEN AS NEUROPATHIC SUBJECTS— ALEXANDER 
 THE GREAT — JULIUS CESAR— MARLBOROUGH— CLIVE— NAPOLEON — 
 AND WELLINGTON — THEIR PARALYTIC AND EPILEPTIC TENDENCIES 
 — THE PROPHETICAL MISSIONS OF MAHOMMED AND JOAN OF ARC — 
 CHARACTERISITCS OF CHARLES V. AND FREDERICK THE GREAT — 
 UNSOUNDNKSS OF THE CROMWELL BLOOD — THE PITTS, FATHER AND 
 SON — INSANE TENDENCIES OF THE FORMER — WARREN HASTINGS'S 
 PARALYSIS — brougham's EXTRAVAGANCE AND IRRESPONSIBILITY — 
 THE NEUROPATHIC STRAIN IN BEACONSFIELD 
 
 A COMMON impression prevails that, be tlie weaknesses of 
 genius what they may, they are manifested exclusively in men 
 possessing literary and artistic faculty ; but an examination 
 of the facts shows such a belief to be erroneous. Great 
 distinction is achieved in war and statesmanship under the 
 same conditions as in literature and art ; there is a morbid 
 development of certain portions of the brain entailing a 
 hyper-sensitiveness or an impoverishment of other portions 
 with results that are disastrous either to the individual him- 
 self, or, by the operation of heredity, to his offspring and 
 connections. In all the military commanders of the world 
 of absolutely the first rank, a class so limited in number that 
 they may almost be reckoned upon the fingers of one hand, 
 the existence of such conditions is clearly proved upon the 
 evidence of history. 
 
 The parentage of Alexander the Great was of a most 
 unpromising character. His father Philip was violent in 
 temper, and given over to drunkenness and Alexander 
 debauchery ; his mother Olympias was a disso- ^"^ Great 
 lute, ungovernable woman, who is said, previous to his birth, 
 to have had a remarkable vision of her son's greatness. 
 Alexander was himself addicted to orgies, in one of which he 
 died in his thirty-second year, but the neuropathic nature of 
 his genius was shown more particularly by an affection of the 
 
 o 
 
194 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 muscles of the neck, which from birth compelled him to incline 
 his hend to one side, and by the circumstance that a brother 
 of his, put to death by order of Olympias, was an idiot. 
 
 On the authority of Suetonius we learn that Julius 
 Ca3sar towards the close of his life became subject to 
 Julius epileptic fits. This is confirmed by Plutarch, who 
 CJ2SAR states that while the battle of Thapsus was being 
 fought CaBsar fell into convulsions. Two years after the close 
 of his African campaign, and at the age of fifty-six, Ctesar 
 was murdered. As repeated attacks of epilepsy impair the 
 mental powers, it is possible that the daggers of Brutus and 
 Cassius saved the dictator from a worse fate, that of lapsing 
 into insanity. 
 
 From boyhood Marlborough was subject to headaches, 
 giddiness, and what was called 'fever' — complaints which 
 Marl- affected him greatly before and after the battle of 
 BOROUGH Blenheim, his correspondence at the period contain- 
 ing frequent reference to his bodily sufferings. After his 
 return to England in 1716 at the age of sixt3^-six, paralysis 
 deprived him for a time of speech ; and a series of epileptic 
 attacks subsequently reduced him to a state of great bodily 
 and mental debility. He was never himself again, he spoke 
 with difficulty, and both his memory and understanding were 
 impaired. At seventy-six his nervous attacks increased in 
 violence and carried him off.^ The hereditary influences 
 which conduced to Marlborough's disorders are indicated in 
 the fact that his father was a man of letters, and that his 
 sister Arabella was a woman of dissolute character. In his 
 own offspring neuropathic conditions were very marked, the 
 evil tendencies of the Churchill blood having been aggravated, 
 probably, by Marlborough's marriage with a woman of vehe- 
 ment temper. Marlborough's only son died in boyhood, a 
 daughter Elizabeth died at twenty-six, and another daughter, 
 Anne Countess of Sunderland, at twenty-nine, after having 
 been ' long afflicted with a tedious disorder.' On Marlbo- 
 rough's death his title and honours descended to his daughter 
 Henrietta, wdiose son became the Marquis of Blandford. 
 This young man, though married, died childless at thirty- 
 ' Coxe : Life of Marlhoroiujh. 
 
CLTVE 1U5 
 
 two, and on tlie death of Henrietta the title and honours 
 passed to the Sunderland line, in which they have since 
 remained. 
 
 The hereditary influences that determined the career of 
 Clive are obscure, though his own individual life shows them 
 to have been of the usual neuropathic character.^ Clive 
 His father, a country attorney, appears to have been 
 a thriftless person, consistently unsuccessful in life, and the 
 future conqueror of India, by dint of that metamorphosis of 
 heredity which has been so frequently illustrated in these 
 pages, came into the world accordingly with a disposition of 
 great impetuosity and waywardness. At school Clive was 
 inordinately addicted to fighting, and was described by an 
 uncle in a letter as flying into a temper upon every trifling- 
 occasion. He was also full of daring and adventure. Sent 
 out to a writership in the East India Company's service, he 
 proved irritable and impatient of control, and had fits of low 
 spirits in which, as a lad, he twice attempted to kill himself, 
 his life being saved only through his pistol missing fire. In 
 a duel with a comrade he displayed an extraordinary degree 
 of nerve ; he had called an officer a cheat, and when, having 
 missed his aim, he stood at his adversary's mercy, he shouted 
 ' Shoot and be damned, I said you cheated and I say so 
 still.' The officer declaring the young man to be mad, threw 
 away his weapon and there the matter ended. Clive's tempera- 
 ment called for strong and constant excitement, and this he 
 eventually found in war. Of moral scruples he had none ; 
 it is known that he stooped to forgery in order to circumvent 
 a native opponent. At forty years of age Clive had con- 
 quered India and acquired a world-wide reputation. Yet 
 in the height of his success he suffered from great depression 
 of spirits, and his letters betoken a morbid, restless mind. 
 He had a painful gouty rheumatic affection, to relieve which 
 he took opium in large doses. With the untold wealth he 
 had acquired in India, Clive indulged in extravagances that 
 covered him with ridicule, ordering, for example, the costliest 
 clothes, among other things a court suit, ' lined with parch- 
 ment so that it might not wrinkle.' With everything at his 
 ' Gleig : L\fc of dice. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE INSANITY OF GENIL^S 
 
 command apparently to make life worth living, riches and 
 reputation without stint, he committed suicide at the age of 
 forty-nine. Olive's book learning, according to his friendly 
 biographer Gleig, was a mere blank. He had a harsh and 
 heavy countenance, and his general manner in society was 
 sullen and reserved. Lady Olive survived her husband a 
 great many years, and her son, the first Earl of Powis, died 
 at eighty-hve. 
 
 There is nothing discoverable in the ancestry of Napoleon 
 that foreshadowed his greatness except an excessive mortality, 
 and the fact that his mother, Lsetitia Ramolini, was a woman 
 of ' strong character,' although illiterate, evincing firmness in 
 certain matters, but in others, says the Duchesse d'Abrantes, 
 ^ an extravagant obstinacy.' Both the Emperor's parents were 
 left orphans at an early age. Oharles Bonaparte, his father, 
 was a Corsican functionary of humble position, who died at 
 thirty-nine of a cancerous affection of the stomach inherited 
 from his father, who died about the same age. This also was 
 the disease to which Napoleon himself succumbed, at little 
 more than fifty. From boyhood Napoleon was irritable, 
 obstinate, morose, splenetic and domineering, always more 
 feared than loved. The sketches given of him by Bour- 
 rienne ^ and other observers reveal a disposition alternately 
 sullen and impulsive, and lacking in all consideration for the 
 feelings of others. ' His anger,' says the Duchesse d'Abrantes, 
 ' was frightful, and though I am no coward I could never 
 look at him in his fits of rage without a shudder.^ His smile, 
 it appears, was correspondingly winning. At school the only 
 -^ branch of study for which Napoleon showed any 
 
 special aptitude was mathematics, though he had 
 some taste also for history and geography. To the last he 
 was unable to spell correctly, while his handwriting was an 
 unreadable scrawl, bearing in every slur and dash the traces 
 of an impetuous temperament. Constant, his valet, who has 
 written his memoirs, says that owing to his natural impatience 
 and hastiness of manner Napoleon never attempted to shave 
 without severely cutting himself. 
 
 * Boiirrienne : Memoires snr Napoleon. 
 
 ' D'Abiant^s: Souvtnirs historiques sur Napoleon, 
 
NAPOLEON 197 
 
 In an interesting study of Napoleon's handwriting,^ the 
 Abbe Michon, a graphologist, maintains that the Emperor's 
 passionate vehemence and impenetrable dissimulation both 
 stand revealed in the manner in which he wielded his pen. 
 The furious illegibility of the Emperor's manuscript, the ap- 
 parently unconscious leaps and bounds of the Imperial pen, 
 convince Michon that Napoleon possessed the insane tempera- 
 ment. This conclusion he draws more especially from the 
 strange abnormal form and excessive development of the 
 letter jp in Napoleon's handwritiug. The Abbe states — and 
 in this he is supported by medical authority — that the 
 writing of the partially deranged usually exhibits some 
 similar sign which he calls la petite hete, this sign generally 
 consisting of a nervous, disordered, unusual stroke which 
 falls fatally and spontaneously from the pen. Pascal, whose 
 imagination, as already stated, was so far out of gear that 
 he always saw an abyss yawning at his side, and whose 
 writing in his later years Napoleon's most resembles, used 
 an extravagant and accusing g. No doubt ' insane hand- 
 writing ' is due to a morbid excitability of the motor centres, 
 particularly those of the wrist and hand. 
 
 What, we may now inquire, is the direct evidence of 
 a neuropathic condition in Napoleon himself? Brierre de 
 Boismont^ relates the following, which he heard from a 
 friend to whom it was told by General Rapp : — 'In 1806 
 General Rapp on his return from the siege of Dantzig, having 
 occasion to speak to the Emperor, entered his study without 
 being announced. He found him so absorbed that his entry 
 was unperceived. The general seeing the Emperor continue 
 motionless, thought he might be ill, and purposely made a 
 noise. Napoleon immediately roused himself, and without 
 any preamble seizing Rapp by the arm, said to him, pointing 
 to the sky, " Look there, up there ! " The general remained 
 silent, but on being asked a second time, he answered that 
 he perceived nothing. " What," replied the Emperor, '' you 
 do not see it? It is my star, it is before you, brilliant." 
 Then, becoming animated, he cried out : " It has never 
 
 * Michon r Napoleon I. d'apres son ecritnre. 
 2 Brierre de Boismont : De& HaUucinations. 
 
198 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 abandoned me, I see it on all great occasions, it commands 
 me to go forward, and it is a constant sign of my good for- 
 tune." ' Another authority, the historian of the Russian cam- 
 paign, General Segur, mentions Napoleon's star. Cardinal 
 Fesch was begging him in 1811 to desist from his futile 
 warfare, when the Emperor took him by the hand, led him 
 to the window, opened it, and said, ' Do you see that star ? ' 
 ' No, Sire,' replied the Cardinal. ' Look again,' insisted the 
 Emperor. ' Sire, there is no star visible,' was the answer, 
 to which Napoleon rejoined, ' I see it ' Whereupon the 
 tistonished Cardinal lapsed into silence, imagining that 
 Napoleon intended to convey that his ambition extended 
 even to the heavens.^ This independent testimony in Rapp's 
 favour is all the more convincing from its motiveless cha- 
 racter, neither the Cardinal nor the historian having a theory 
 of hallucinations to propound. 
 
 These stories of a guiding star of Napoleon's are rather 
 unconvincing as they stand. There are unquestionable facts, 
 however, that support them. Bourrienne says Napoleon 
 ' frequently gave an involuntary shrug of his right shoulder 
 which was accompanied by a movement of his mouth from 
 left to right.' Meneval, who succeeded Bourrienne as the 
 Emperor's private secretary, refers to the same peculiarity. 
 While dictating, Napoleon, according to Meneval, ' ex- 
 perienced a sort of " tic," consisting in a movement of his 
 right arm, which he twisted while pulling with his hand the 
 lining of the cutf of his coat.' ^ This testifies to an abnormal 
 excitability of the nerve cells in the motor area of the brain. 
 A similar excitability in the visual or auditor)^ area would 
 tend to produce hallucinations of sight or hearing, and would 
 account for the visions above described. It was persistently 
 reported during Napoleon's lifetime that he was subject to 
 attacks of epilepsy, though Bourrienne declares that during 
 the eleven years he was with him he never observed any 
 symptom of that malady. While it is significant that such 
 reports should have been circulated at a time when no sus- 
 picion could be entertained of the relations existing between 
 
 * Segur : Hhtoire de Napoleon et de la Grande Armee. 
 2 Meneval : jS'ajjolcou cL Alarie Lotilne. 
 
NAPOLEON 199 
 
 Napoleon's genius and the epileptic habit, evidence of grave 
 nerve-disorder on the Emperor's part is not wanting. Cor- 
 visart, his physician, told Madame de Remusat that Napoleon's 
 awakening from sleep was generally melancholy, and appeared 
 painful, a ad that not unfrequently he had convulsive spasms 
 in the stomach which made him vomit. ^ As bearing upon 
 the question of epilepsy, it may be remarked, that during the 
 Russian campaign, according to Segur, Napoleon's memory 
 became temporarily affected, particularly as to names and 
 dates. For a time he was constantly confusing one person 
 with another, and making odd mistakes as to the period of 
 events. His strange fits of apathy, it is said, also attracted 
 the attention of his generals. This, it is important to observe, 
 was long after Bourrienne had ceased to be on confidential 
 terms with the Emperor. 
 
 Nerve-disorder revealed itself unmistakably in Napo- 
 leon's brothers and sisters. Joseph Bonaparte had paralysis ; 
 Lucien was extremely short-sighted ; Louis during the 
 greater part of his life was an invalid, his infirmities, says 
 the Duchesse d'Abrantes, giving him the appearance of au 
 old man before his time ; Caroline, like the Emperor, had 
 cancer in the stomach ; Pauline died of consumption. Alone 
 among the family, Jerome lived to old age. The cause oi 
 death in all cases has not been recorded. But the curious 
 dissimilarity in the character of the various members of the 
 Bonaparte family is not without significance from the neu- 
 rotic point of view. In extreme contrast to the Emperor, 
 Joseph and Lucien were fond of literature ; Louis was a mild, 
 easy, good-natured man ; Jerome was a spendthrift ; Paulino 
 was vain, capricious, unchaste, and generally foolish. Ano- 
 malies of physical growth are also to be noted in the family. 
 While the Emperor was short and thick-set, Lucien was tall 
 and thin, with legs, says the Duchesse d'Abrantes, like a field 
 spider ; the one brother had an excessively large head, the 
 other a small one. Pauline was extremely graceful ; Caroline, 
 on the other hand, was ill-made, walked badly, and was un- 
 dignified in her manners. Almost all the Emperor's nephews 
 and nieces were very hasty-tempered. This is the testimony 
 * Kemusat : Mcvwires. 
 
200 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 of the Ducliesse d'Abrantes, who adds : * I have known 
 
 Achille Murat (son of Caroline) so violently overcome by 
 
 strong passion as to be thrown into convulsions.' The last 
 
 piece of evidence I can offer as to Napoleon's nerve-disorder, 
 
 is the early death of his only legitimate son, the offspring of 
 
 iMarie Louise. This poor young man, in whom the Emperor 
 
 had centred his hopes of founding a dynasty, died at twenty, 
 
 of what is described as a ' premature decay.' As a child, he 
 
 was, like his cousins, self-willed and liable to strong fits of 
 
 passion. Metternich visited him on his deathbed. ' It was 
 
 a heartrending sight,' says the old diplomatist.^ 'I have 
 
 never seen a more mournful picture of decay.' 
 
 Wellington was epileptic. His father, the Earl of Mor- 
 
 nington, was distinguished for his musical tastes, and an 
 
 elder brother had some poetic faculty. Durinf? 
 Wellington tut n- , 5 , , '^ . xi 
 
 Wellingtons career as a statesman, aiter the 
 
 battle of Waterloo, his fainting fits were repeatedly a subject 
 of alarm to the nation ; ^ and it was an attack of epilepsy that 
 caused his death. In reference to the Duke's condition 
 ' The Times ' remarked : ' Of late years increasing infirmities 
 — manifest though energetically resisted — the treacherous 
 ear, the struggling utterance and the tottering step, all told 
 their tale, and suggested even a fear that the greatest man 
 of his age might live to illustrate the decay from which no 
 greatness is secure.'^ Longevity, a characteristic of Welling- 
 ton's mother, w^ho died at ninety, persisted in the family, 
 but it is noteworthy that Wellington's elder brother left no 
 issue by either of two wives, and that his eldest son and 
 direct heir was childless. 
 
 Turenne, the greatest of French generals before Napoleon, 
 had a weak constitution in boyhood, was a dull scholar, im~ 
 patient of restraint, and showed dogged perseverance. He 
 stuttered, and was subject to a convulsive movement of the 
 shoulders. — Prince Eugene, who commanded the Imperial 
 army of Austria at twenty-five, was deformed, — Gustavus 
 Adolphus, shot in battle at thirty-eight, left a daughter, 
 Christine, Queen of Sweden, who was of masculine habits 
 
 * "Metternich : Ncmoires. ^ Greville : Memoirs, 
 
 3 The Itntcs, September 1(5, 1852. 
 
MAHOMMED 201 
 
 and eccentric, and his great-aunt Cecilie led a dissolute and 
 rambling life. — Charles XII., the son of an obstinate, harsh, 
 and despotic father, began his wars at eighteen, and during 
 the stormy life which he ended on the battle-field at thirty- 
 seven displayed extraordinary courage, self-will, and cruelty. — 
 Runjeet Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire, whose father 
 died at thirty, began his military career at seventeen, ac- 
 quired large dominion, and at fifty could not stand without 
 support, his health being said to be broken by excesses and 
 low indulgence. 
 
 The prophetical missions of Mahommed and Joan of Arc, 
 although belonging to a different order of mental phenomena 
 from the foregoing, are equally traceable to physical causes. 
 It need hardly be said that the ideas expressed to insane 
 people by visionary characters are really their own. Blake 
 conversed with his spirits not in words, but, as he expressed 
 it, by ' intuition and magnetism.' Having summoned up the 
 figure of Richard III., he was requested to ask the tyrant 
 whether he could justify the numerous murders committed 
 by him in the course of his life. The reply was immediate. 
 ' Your question,' said Blake to his interlocutor, ' has already 
 reached him. We have no need of words ; this is the answer 
 a little fuller than he has given it me, as you do not under- 
 stand the language of spirits. He says, that what you call 
 murder and carnage is nothing, that in butchering fifteen or 
 twenty thousand people no harm is done, because the im- 
 mortal part of them is not only preserved, but passes into a 
 better world. A murdered man who reproached his murderer 
 with killing him would be guilty of ingratitude, seeing that 
 the latter procures him a more comfortable abode, and a more 
 perfect existence.' Many epileptics are able to call up their 
 hallucinations at will. They think of an object and it straight- 
 way appears before their eyes, or their unuttered thoughts are 
 translated into audible speech. 
 
 A hundred millions of men now living upon the earth 
 believe that Mahommed was sent by God, and that his visions 
 were a revelation of the divine truth. Yet nothing can be 
 more certain, scientifically speaking, than that the founder of 
 Islam possessed no other source of inspiration than the morbid 
 
202 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 workings of his brain. We need not on that account deny 
 Mahommed the credit of sincerity. There is no doubt that he 
 was, in a great measure, sincere, and as much may 
 be said of all great religious teachers and prophets, 
 both before his time and since. Traditions relating to Mahom- 
 med w^ere industriously collected and recorded during the first 
 three centuries of his era, and we have consequently a tole- 
 rably complete view of the prophet as a man. His parentage 
 was not sound. His father, Abdullah, died at twenty-five, 
 and his mother appears to have been a woman of nervous 
 temperament. Frequently in a half-waking condition she 
 fancied she was visited by spirits, and she died when Ma- 
 hommed, her only child, was six years of age. In boyhood 
 Mahommed had several epileptic seizures, the first occurring 
 when he was four years of age, and causing great alarm to 
 his nurse, who thought he w^as possessed by an evil spirit. 
 These fits were afterwards regarded by the prophet and his 
 disciples as of supernatural origin in accordance with a 
 prevalent belief in the East. As a young man Mahommed 
 showed great inactivity, and inaptitude for the ordinary 
 duties of life. Until the age of twenty-five, when the widow 
 Kadyjah chose him for a husband, he lived upon the charity 
 of his relatives, and was reduced to the necessity of pasturing 
 sheep, a humble occupation among the Arabs. After marriage 
 he devoted himself to ascetic exercises and religious specu- 
 lations, based upon the notions of Christianity which had 
 penetrated into Arabia. His temperament was nervous and 
 melancholic. He was generally low-spirited, pensive, and rest- 
 less. About the age of forty he began to have visions and to 
 hear spiritual voices. More than once he attempted suicide, 
 and his friends were alarmed at the state of his mind. He 
 himself thought he was possessed by a jinn or spirit. ' I 
 hear a sound ; I see a light,' he said to his wife. ' I fear 
 there is a jinn in me.' Kadyjah went to consult a wise man. 
 On returning she was told by Mahommed that the Angel 
 Gabriel had appeared to him and told him that he was not pos- 
 sessed by a jinn. Subsequently it was a vision of Gabriel that 
 determined Mahommed to declare his prophetical mission. 
 Walking on the hill near Mecca one day, he heard a voice 
 
JOAN OF ARC 203 
 
 from heaven, and looking upwards he beheld Gabriel sitting 
 with crossed legs upon a throne between heaven and earth. 
 The an^el cried out to him, ' Oh Mahommed, thou art in 
 truth the messenger of God and I am Gabriel.' After this, 
 came to him at short or long intervals the revelations set 
 forth in the Koran. Tradition speaks of his being at such 
 times either in a swooning or prostrate condition. ' Inspira- 
 tion descendeth upon me,' he explained in two ways. ' Some- 
 times the revelation is communicated to me by Gabriel 
 as by one man unto another, and this is easy ; at other times 
 it affecteth me like the ringing of a bell, penetrating my very 
 heart, and rending me as it were in pieces, and this it is 
 which grievously afflicteth me.' Ayesha, his favourite wife 
 after the death of Kadyjah, saw beads of perspiration on his 
 brow as he received an inspiration on a very cold day. 
 OtJiman, according to another tradition, related the follow- 
 ing : ' When speaking to Mahommed one day he remarked 
 that the prophet's eyes turned towards heaven and then to 
 the right. His head moved as if he were speaking. After 
 some time he turned to Othman and his face was then covered 
 with sweat. Othman asked what was the matter, whereupon 
 he repeated a verse of the Koran which had just been re- 
 vealed to him.' Habitually the paroxysms may have been 
 slight, but some of them were undoubtedly severe, as when 
 the prophet ' fell heavily to the ground and snorted like a 
 camel.' Besides the devout spirit, Mahommed displayed many 
 of the qualities of a military commander, managing his affairs 
 with tact and skill, and undergoing privation and danger 
 with unflagging courage. It may be supposed that the 
 cerebral disorder which produced Mahommed's visions tended 
 in the la.tter half of his life to develop his erotic sensibility, 
 and to give his religious system the sensual cast which dis- 
 tinguished it. Until his forty-ninth year the prophet con- 
 tented himself with one wife ; afterwards he had a dozen, 
 and received inspirations justifying ^the successive additions 
 to his harem . 
 
 Hallucinations were at the bottom of the achievements of 
 Joan of Arc. This heroine lived in credulous times ; her 
 countrymen were longing to throw ofi' the English yoke, 
 
204 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 and believed that she had a mission to lead them to victory, 
 and her manifest sincerity inspired them with an invincible 
 
 Joan courage. How did she come by her mission ? 
 
 OF Arc Supernatural voices and visions began to manifest 
 themselves to her about the age of thirteen, a critical period 
 in girlhood, when mental and physical disorders are not in- 
 frequent. She seldom heard voices without seeing a light, 
 and when visited by the angels Gabriel, St. Catherine, and 
 Michael, she was Mssed by these celestials, and felt that they 
 had a good odour. Thus she had hallucinations of hearing, 
 sight, touch, and smell. At her trial Joan maintained the 
 reality of her apparitions. ' I saw them,' she said to her judges, 
 ' as plainly as I see you, and when they retired from me I wept, 
 and much I wished that they would take me with them.' No 
 one, whether friend or foe, seems to have thought Joan insane, 
 and it is, of course, a well-established fact that hallucinations 
 of all the senses may exist without intellectual derangement. 
 The judges who condemned her to be burnt evidently be- 
 lieved that she was being deceived by evil spirits, who took 
 the form of angels and saints. Had she lived in these days, 
 poor Joan would have had a different fate ; she would have 
 been treated by doctors of medicine, not doctors of divinity ; 
 but happily the brain-disorder which brought her to the 
 stake gave her also the fortitude to endure her martyrdom 
 unflinchingly. 
 
 Statesmen and administrators of genius present the same 
 characteristics as great commanders. The Romanoff dynasty 
 became neuropathic soon after its accession to the Russian 
 throne in IGlo. Alexis, son of Michael, who died at sixteen, 
 had by a first wife Feodor, Ivan, Sophia, and several other 
 daughters. By a second wife he had Peter and Natalie. 
 Feodor, who kept the throne for five years, was weak-minded, 
 and Ivan positively imbecile, the latter being almost blind, 
 
 Peter unsteady in his gait, given to stammering, and 
 THE subject to convulsions. On the death of Feodor his 
 
 Great gister Sophia tried to make Ivan the Czar, in order 
 to rule in his name. She w^as a woman of superior talents, 
 a good writer, and a poet. She was also inordinately am- 
 bitious, but had to give way to the irresistible force of will of 
 
PETER THE GEEAT AND CILVrxLES V. 205 
 
 her younger brother Peter, afterwards surnamed the Great 
 Thus, of the children of Alexis two were weak-minded, and 
 two had genius. Peter was afflicted from infancy with ner- 
 vous attacks which degenerated into epilepsy. Excitement 
 often brought on these seizures, one of which is said to have 
 lasted three days. Peter had six sons, five of whom died in 
 childhood. The survivor. Prince Alexis, was a drunkard, 
 and so much given to insubordination and excesses of every 
 kind, that his father had him put to death. Peter the Great 
 was succeeded by his wife Catherine, who was followed by 
 Peter IL, son of the unfortunate Prince Alexis. With this 
 youth, who died young, the male line of the Romanofi's 
 became extinct. 
 
 Charles V., in his day the most powerful ruler of Europe, 
 was a son of the insane Juana, sister of Catherine of Arragon. 
 Insanity had long been in the family, Juana's grandmother, 
 Isabella, having been demented, and her father, Ferdinand, 
 melancholic. Juana was kept in confinement for many years, 
 being under the delusion that she was possessed by evil spirits. 
 She was also deformed. In this poor lunatic's son adminis- 
 trative genius reached its highest expression. Charles V. 
 had indeed a double heritage of insanity, as there are traces 
 of that disorder also in the family of his father, the Archduke 
 Philip. In his youth Charles V. was epileptic, qjjarles V 
 His fits appear to have ceased about the time of his 
 marriage, but he remained subject to violent headaches, and 
 had gout from the age of thirty. He was subject to melan- 
 choly, he stammered, was bald early, his lower jaw was longer 
 than the upper, and he had bad teeth, the sign of a scrofu- 
 lous taint. With these defects he combined great physical 
 strength and activity, extraordinary mental power and versa- 
 tility of intellect. At fifty-six bad health compelled him to 
 retire, and two years later he died. By a Flemish lady 
 Charles V. had an illegitimate daugliter, who became regent 
 of the Low Countries. She inherited the Emperor's gouty 
 diathesis, and was a woman of masculine character. By 
 Octavio Farnese she became the mother of Alexander of 
 Parma, a man of eccentric genius, and undoubtedly the 
 greatest general of his time. The legitimate descendants of 
 
20G THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Charles V. did not inherit their father's abilities. The eldest 
 son, Philip II., was weakly, gloomy, severe, obstinate, and 
 superstitious. By a marriage with his niece, Philip II. had 
 Philip III., a man of feeble and indolent character. Another 
 grandson of Charles V., Don Carlos, exhibited w^eak or un- 
 equal intelligence, and a fitful and turbulent character. He 
 ■was five years old before he could speak, and afterwards he 
 articulated badly ; he had the long protruding chin of his 
 grandfather, the great Emperor, he was unintelligent, his 
 beard was slight, and he was deficient in virility. In Philip 
 IV., who composed a tragedy, the nerve- disorder of the family 
 manifested itself in a taste for literature and the fine arts. 
 The eldest son of this monarch had convulsions, and died early. 
 His younger son became Charles II., a poor rickety, epileptic 
 creature, deficient in intelligence, so malformed in his lower 
 jaw that he could not masticate his food, twice married, but 
 childless. Such was the last descendant in the male line of 
 the ruler of Germany and Spain, the greatest European 
 potentate of the sixteenth century.* 
 
 The father of Frederick the Great was eccentric to the 
 point of insanity. Macaulay's description of him makes 
 Frederick this sufficiently clear. ' The nature of Frederick 
 THE Great William was hard and bad, and the habit of 
 exercising arbitrary power had made him frightfully savage. 
 His rage constantly vented itself to right and left in curses 
 and blows. When his Majesty took a walk every human 
 being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a 
 menagerie. . . . But it was in his own house that he was 
 most unreasonable and ferocious. His palace was a hell and 
 he was the most execrable of fiends, a cross between Moloch 
 and Puck. His son Frederick and his daughter Wilhelmina 
 were in an especial manner objects of his aversion. His own 
 mind was uncultivated. He despised literature. The business 
 of life according to him was to drill and be drilled.' Again, 
 ' his parsimony degenerated into sordid avarice ; his taste for 
 military pomp and order became a mania. While the envoys 
 of the Court of Berlin were in a state of such squalid poverty 
 
 ' The neurosis of the Roj^al Family of Spain has been carefully tabulated 
 by W. W. Ireland in his work The Blot npoJi the Brain. 
 
FEEDEFJCK THE GREAT £07 
 
 as moved the laughter of foreign capitals, while the food 
 placed before the princes and princesses of the blood royal 
 was too scanty to appease hunger, and so bad that even 
 hunger loathed it, no price was thought too extravagant for 
 tall recruits.' ^ In view of the metamorphoses of heredity it 
 is no surprise to learn that the great Frederick, son of this 
 monster, was born with 'an exquisite ear for music, and 
 performed skilfully on the flute,' and that he wrote prose and 
 verse abundantly. It was by the merest chance, the cast of 
 Nature's die, so to speak, that Frederick did not become a 
 man of letters or a musician. As it happened, the qualities 
 predominated in his brain that made him, as soon as the 
 opportunity presented itself, ' a tyrant of extraordinary 
 military and political talents, of industry more extraordinary 
 still, without fear, without faith, and without mercy.' While 
 there was a wide ditference between father and son as re- 
 spected extent and vigour of intellect, ' the groundwork of 
 the character,' adds Macaulay, ' was the same in both. To 
 both were common the love of order, the love of business, the 
 military taste, the parsimony, the imperious spirit, the temper 
 irritable even to ferocity, the pleasure in the pain and humi- 
 liation of others. But these propensities had in Frederick 
 William partaken of the general unsoundness of his mind, 
 and wore a very different aspect when found in company with 
 the strong and cultivated understanding of his successor.' 
 To the last, amid all the cares of State, Frederick retained 
 his passion for music, for reading, for writing, and for literary 
 society. His conversation was lively, his manners to those 
 whom he desired to please were even caressing. But he had 
 a bad heart which betrayed itself in a taste for severe 
 practical jokes, ' a nature,' as Macaulay observes, ' to which 
 the sight of human suffering and human degradation is an 
 agreeable excitement.' 
 
 Oliver Cromwell did not come of a sound stock, nor was 
 his own offspring long-lived or prolific. His father, Robert 
 Cromwell, died prematurely, while an uncle, Oliver, qp^q^j^^ll 
 was a gay spendthrift who dissipated a considerable 
 amount of property. It is stated that the Protector's father 
 ' Macaulay : Essay, Frederick the Great. 
 
208 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 was ' a sickly man judging by tlie languor of his counte- 
 nance ' ^ as shown in a contemporary portrait. By Robert 
 Cromwell's marriage with Elizabeth Seward, he had, besides 
 Oliver, two sons who died early, a daughter Elizabeth, who 
 never married, another daughter Anna, who died at forty- 
 two, and yet another daughter whom a ' lingering illness ' 
 carried off at fifty-one. Elizabeth Seward, the Protector's 
 mother, was one of a family of seven, of whom only herself 
 and a brother, Thomas Seward, survived. Thomas appears 
 to have been weak-minded ; at all events, Oliver Cromwell 
 petitioned for a commission in lunacy against this maternal 
 uncle, whom he believed to be incapable of managing his 
 property. The Protector is said to have led in his youth a 
 low boisterous dissolute life, and his letters seem to prove it. 
 Apart from Koyalist prejudices, such a career is what might 
 well result from the neuropathic tendencies of his constitu- 
 tion. More importance may certainly be attached to this tis 
 evidence of the constituent elements of his genius than to 
 the vision he is said to have had as a boy, namely, that of a 
 gigantic figure pulling aside the curtains of his bed and 
 telling him he would live to be the greatest personage in 
 England. According to a document in Thurloe's State Papers, 
 Oliver Cromwell's temper was ' exceedingly fiery.' Sir Philip 
 Warwick says he was of good stature, but his countenance 
 was ' swollen and reddish, and his voice harsh and untun- 
 able.' Among the Protector's distempers gout is mentioned. 
 Thurloe speaks of his being dangerously sick in consequence) 
 of ' the retirement of the gout out of his foot into his body.' ^ 
 The cause of his death at fifty-nine was ague, a maladj^ the 
 exciting causes of which are still unknown, but which is 
 obviously of a nervous character. For some days before his 
 death, his fits were so frequent as to be almost continuous. 
 
 By his wife, Elizabeth Bourchier, who appears to have 
 been a woman of sound constitution, Cromwell had a large 
 family, in whom, however, the evil influence of the Cromwell 
 blood is apparent. Eichard, who succeeded his father in the 
 
 ' Noble : Memoirs of the Protectoral Honse of Crowrvell. 
 2 Memoirs of the Protector and of his Son. By Oliver Cromwell, a de- 
 scendant of the family. 
 
CROMWELL 209 
 
 Protectorate, was a weak creature ; Henry, the second son, 
 who became Lord Deputy of Ireland, stated in a letter to 
 his father that he seldom enjoyed good health for twenty-foar 
 hours together. He died at forty-seven of stone, a complaint 
 associated with gouty and rheumatic tendencies.^ Four of 
 Cromwell's children predeceased him, including a grown-up 
 daughter, Elizabeth, otherwise Mrs. Claypole, who appears 
 to have died in a state of religious hypochondria, if not down- 
 right insanity. Mrs. Claypole had some internal complaint 
 which none of her doctors understood. General Fleetwood, 
 in a letter to Henry Cromwell, says it gave rise to ' great 
 pains in the bowels and vapours in the head.' Mrs. Claypole 
 on her death-bed reviled her father bitterly, and the scene, which 
 occurred not long before his own death, is said to have im- 
 pressed him greatly. Dr. Bates says : ' In her hysterical fits she 
 much disquieted him by upbraiding him sometimes with one of 
 his crimes, sometimes with another according to the furious dis- 
 tractions of her disease.' This daughter died at twenty-seven ; 
 she had several children, none of whom, however, left issue. 
 
 The general ' unfitness ' of Cromwell's offspring is not a 
 little remarkable, and may be taken to prove the existence, 
 among them, of an acute degree of nerve disorder. Of the 
 many children born to the Protector's sons and daughters, 
 all but one either died young or were barren. Richard's 
 eldest son, Oliver, was very weakly, and died at forty-nine, 
 unmarried. At the age of twenty-one he made a will, 
 showing that he was not then in good health. Three of 
 Richard's daughters died in infancy, and one at the age of 
 twenty. Another daughter remained unmarried, probably 
 from ill-health or deformity ; and another, though married, 
 was childless. Henry, the Protector's second son, had seven 
 sons and daughters, all with one exception childless. This 
 exception was Henry, among whose ten children only one, 
 aofain, left issue. The survivor in this case was Richard. 
 He had seven sons and daughters, of whom again but one, 
 Thomas, had offspring — a phenomenon occurring for the 
 third time in three successive generations. A daughter of 
 Thomas's marrying an apothecary had a large and prolific 
 
 * Dejerine. 
 
 P 
 
•210 THE INSxVNITY OF GEXIUS 
 
 ffimily ; and to this obscure but worthy couple is due what- 
 ever of the Cromwell blood may survive in England at the 
 present day. Oh the female side of the House of Cromwell 
 matters were still worse. We have seen that the Protector's 
 daughter Elizabeth had a barren family ; another, Bridget, 
 who became Lady Fleetwood, was in similar case ; and yet 
 another daughter Mary, Lady Fauconberg, who ' greatly re- 
 sembled her father in person,' and who in the decline of 
 life is said to have been ' pale and sickly,' was herself child- 
 less. Such a record of sterility and physical worthlessness 
 as the Cromwell blood presents is only to be found in con- 
 nection with insanity or genius. 
 
 In statesmanship no greater names are to be found than 
 those of the Pitts, father and son. Of the pai-entage of the 
 elder Pitt, better known as the Earl of Chatham, 
 the biographers have little to say, but contemporary 
 records enable us to class him among the most afflicted of 
 great men. From boyhood he was cruelly tormented with 
 gout, and in his later life the fluctuations of this disease 
 became a matter of state importance. Gout appears to have 
 alternated in his case with true mental aberration. While 
 he was in one of his strange moods, Lady Chatham wrote 
 that 'no improvement could be expected in his lordship's 
 health until he could have a fit of the gout.' On one 
 occasion, according to Lord Mahon, Chatham suflTered ' a 
 dismal and complete eclipse of his powers for upwards of a 
 year.' There was ' no morbid illusion of the fancy, but an 
 utter prostration of the intellect.' ^ Junius, in one of his 
 early letters, refers to Chatham as a lunatic brandishing a 
 crutch. For a time Chatham's political opponents thought 
 his malady was feigned, but Horace Walpole afterwards ad- 
 mitted that his great adversary's nerves were in a shattered 
 condition. ' Added to the frenzy of his conduct,' writes 
 Walpole,^ ' a new circumstance raised again suspicion of there 
 being more of madness in his case than mere caprice and 
 impracticable haughtiness ; he had himself put into the hands 
 of Dr. Addington, a regular physician it is true, but originally 
 
 * Mahon : History of England. 
 
 * Walpole : Memoirs of the Reign of George III. 
 
CHATHAM 211 
 
 a mad doctor, who was selected as proper to the disease. . . . 
 So long did Lord Chatham remain without a fit of the goat, and 
 so childish and agitated was his whole frame, that if a word 
 of business was mentioned to him tears and trembling im- 
 mediately succeeded.' At this time the great minister not 
 only did not see his subordinates, but did not even receive 
 letters. Walpole was persuaded of the reality of his mad- 
 ness by his eccentric proceedings on the estate left him by 
 Pynsent, trees being planted by torchlight ' because his 
 peremptory and impatient temper could brook no delay.' 
 Chatham's sickly and uncertain appetite was never regular. 
 ' Hence a succession of chickens was boiling and roasting at 
 every hour, to be ready whenever he should call.' Even in 
 active Parliamentary life the disordered state of his intel- 
 lect occasionally betrayed itself. In arranging to have 
 the subject of the East India Company brought before the 
 House of Commons, he passed over all his ministers, with 
 whom he assumed a sullen and mysterious attitude, and fixed 
 his choice upon a noisy, purse-proud, illiterate demagogue 
 named Beckford, who was a general laughing-stock. The 
 whole political world was thrown into a ferment by this 
 proceeding. In the midst of the confusion Chatham pro- 
 claimed himself gouty and retired to the country. On 
 returning after some time he shut himself up in the Castle 
 Inn at Marlborough, and remained there some weeks. 
 ' Everybody who travelled that road,' says Macaulay, ' was 
 amazed by the number of his attendants. Footmen and 
 grooms dressed in his family livery filled the whole inn, and 
 swarmed in the streets of the little town. The truth was, 
 that the invalid had insisted that during his stay all the 
 waiters and stable-boys of the Castle should wear his livery.' 
 Walpole records that after executing a letter of attorney 
 giving full power to his wife, Chatham ' began singing.' 
 Again, having sold an estate to Thomas Walpole, he wanted 
 it back, and his discourse, it is said, ' grew very ferocious ' 
 on the subject. Many other incidents in Chatham's career 
 suggestive of a disordered intellect could be quoted. His 
 fatal nervous attack came as he was attempting to address 
 the House of Lords. ' He fell down in a fit of apoplexy, 
 
212 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 says Walpole, 'with strong convulsions and slobbering at the 
 mouth,' and never recovered. 
 
 With his father's gout William Pitt inherited his father's 
 genius for administration and debate, excelling his elder 
 brother at all points. Probably there was a double 
 heredity of nerve disorder in this case, inasmuch as 
 Lady Chatham suffered in her later years from a ' painful 
 disorder.' Pitt was active and studious, and his abilities 
 displayed themselves early. At fourteen he wrote a tragedy. 
 In this there was no love : the whole plot was political, one of 
 the principal personages being a faithful servant of the Crown, 
 the other an unprincipled conspirator. Already his health 
 was very weak. His progress in learning, however, was ex- 
 traordinarily rapid ; he had so peculiar a discrimination in 
 seizing the meaning of an author that, as his tutor observed, 
 he never seemed to learn, but only to recollect. At the age 
 of twenty -five Pitt had not only made a great name in 
 Parliament but was Prime Minister. ' He was then,' says 
 Macaulay, ' the greatest subject that England had seen during 
 many generations. His flither had never been so powerful, nor 
 Walpole, nor Marlborough.' Youth as he was, he had brought 
 into order the finances of the country, and he had decided and 
 settled for seventy years the most anxious aud perplexing of 
 all questions — the principle of English government in India. 
 Yet he was not dazzled by his success, but continued to be 
 a great worker. In the prime of manhood his health caused 
 anxiety ; he had severe headaches and drank a great deal of 
 port wine. Ultimately his malady took the form of ' flying 
 gout,' of which he died at forty-seven, unmarried. Nerve- 
 disorder betrayed itself in other members of Lord Chatham's 
 family. Pitt's elder brother married, but left no issue, the 
 title l3ecoming extinct on his death. A sister. Lady Mahon, 
 died at twenty-five, leaving three daughters, of whom one 
 was the notorious Lady Hester Stanhope ; another, though 
 married, died childless, and the third left a family. Another 
 sister of Pitt's died in childbed of puerperal fever, a malady 
 of a nervous character. 
 
 Lady Hester Stanhope, grand-daughter of the great Lord 
 Cliatham, was eccentric, but is said to have had an ' inborn 
 
WAEREN HASTINGS AND BEOUGHAM 213 
 
 quickness of discernment, as well as a satirical tongue.' At 
 the age of thirty-four she left England for the East, and estab- 
 lished herself among the semi-savage tribes on Mount Lebanon. 
 She adopted the garb of a Mahonanedan chieftain, and by force 
 of character obtained a great ascendency over the rude races 
 around her, by whom she was revered as a prophetess. 
 Among these people she died, with no European near her. 
 
 The greatest of Indian administrators, Warren Hastings, 
 was of delicate constitution and stunted growth.^ His 
 father, Pynaston Hastings, the son of a clergyman, Waeren 
 was a ne'er-do-well, very improvident and volatile. Hastings 
 This unpromising youth married a butcher's daughter named 
 Warren, whom he reduced to the greatest destitution. She, 
 herself, was probably not too soundly constituted, for soon 
 after giving birth to her eminent son she died. On the 
 subject of his parentage Warren Hastings was always reti- 
 cent, there being nothing in it, as he thought, to be proud 
 of. No life, indeed, could have begun more inauspiciously 
 than that of the first Governor-General of Bengal. Warren 
 Hastings was sent to a charity school, where he first displayed 
 the great industry, and the vivid and active imagination, 
 which carried him to the pinnacle of fame. All his life he 
 was subject to frequent attacks of illness. Despite his ail- 
 ments he lived to a great age, but in his latter years, 
 paralysis declared itself in his right side ; he had also 
 staggering fits, and hallucinations of hearing, his ears, as he 
 records in his diary, being filled sometimes with slow music, 
 sometimes with 'confused sounds of a distant multitude.' 
 In the end his mental powers failed him to some extent, and 
 at his death the organs of deglutition were paralysed. Twice 
 married, he left only two children, both by his first wife ; one 
 died in childhood, the other in early youth. In his paralytic 
 period Warren Hastings developed a taste for the composi- 
 tion of poetry which Macaulay ignorantly ridicules. 
 
 In Lord Brougham great accomplishments were com- 
 bined with eccentricities that bordered upon insanity.^ He 
 
 ' Gleig : Memoirs oftJie Life of Warren Hastings. 
 
 2 * An Apoloio-y for Lord Brougham on Physical Grounds.' By D. D 
 Tuke, M. D. Journal of Mental Science, 1869. 
 
214 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 was irritable, restless, and insatiably vain. These cliarac- 
 teristics lie probably derived from both parents, for while 
 his father was noted for his ' originality,' his 
 mother was a woman of ' remarkable intellect.' 
 As a young barrister of twenty-two. Brougham's conduct was 
 thought to show a tendency to madness, and his friends 
 ^vere uneasy about him. Afterwards, his career, until he 
 became Lord Chancellor, was brilliant indeed, though marked 
 by many fantastical acts, explicable only on the ground of 
 mental derangement. The ' Edinburgh Review ' complained 
 of ' the outrages he was in the habit of perpetrating, not 
 only on dignity but decency ; his w^earisome self-laudation, 
 his grotesque extravagances, his capriciously malevolent and 
 eccentric selection of the objects of his antipathies. . . . 
 From the end of the session, 1831,' said this organ, 'through 
 his wild visit to Scotland, and for many months afterwards, 
 liis mind was clearly oft' its balance ; his temper became for 
 a time uncontrollable, his perception of facts and of reason- 
 ing gradually disordered.' ' The Times ' charged him with 
 drunkenness, and another newspaper ascribed his eccen- 
 tricities to opium-eating. Lord Campbell considers that 
 Brougham's mind was ' very seriously affected.' During the 
 latter half of his long life, 'this impetuous and formidable 
 aaventurer,' as 'The Times' called him, was not entrusted 
 with office. Before his death his mind gave way altogether. 
 lie had a gaunt, ungainly figure, and the basis of his manifold 
 attainments seemed to be a strong memory, and an extra- 
 ordinary power of application. 
 
 Washington exhibited an extreme development of the 
 osseous system, and lost his teeth early — signs of a rickety 
 constitution. He left no issue. — Richelieu had a sister in- 
 sane, and a brother who was extremely pious. — Edmund 
 Burke had ' an imperious and uncontrollable temper ; ' he 
 fell into general debility accompanied by loss of muscular 
 energy and weakness of sight, and his one son died of con- 
 sumption. — Szechenyi, the Hungarian patriot, founder of the 
 Magyar Academy, leader of the Revolution of 1848, promoter 
 of the navigation of the Danube, and of other public works 
 of great utility, died in a lunatic asylum.— The great Conde 
 
BEACONSFIELD 215 
 
 family were dwartish, and ravaged by nerve-disorder in various 
 forms. — Charles James Fox, a lad of extraordinary promise, 
 became a man of mark in the House of Commons at twentv- 
 five, and was notorious for his drinking bouts, his gambling, 
 and his amours. He was poetic, and had a violent temper. 
 By his wife he had no issue, but he left an illegitimate son 
 who was an idiot, deaf and dumb, and who died at fifteen. 
 — Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert Walpole, suffered from 
 gout. — Sir S. Romilly, eminent as a law reformer, committed 
 suicide. — The Canning family were distinguished for their 
 sensitive and irritable temperaments. — Palmerston died child- 
 less, as did also his brother, the title becoming extinct. — 
 Cavour, after a series of apoplectic seizures producing an 
 unwonted irritability of manner, died of congestion of the 
 brain. — Beaconsfield's paternal grandmother lived to be 
 eighty ' without indulging in a tender expression.' As the 
 result of her 'insane temperament,' her son Isaac d'Israeli, 
 besides being ' dreamy, eccentric, and poetic,' suffered from 
 weakness of sight. The same strain manifested itself in 
 Isaac d'lsraeli's son Benjamin, afterwards Lord Beaconsfield. 
 In early manhood he had fits of giddiness, which he described 
 as like a consciousness of the earth's rotation. Once he fell 
 into a trance, from which he did not recover for a week.^ 
 Gout was his chief ailment. 
 
 ' Froude : Life of Lord Beaconsfield. 
 
 If we may trust the autobiographical details given in his novel, 
 Contarini Fleming, Beaconsfield was well acquainted with the insanity or 
 genius. 'I have sometimes,' he writes, ' half believed, although the sus- 
 picion is mortifying, that there is only a step between his state who deeply 
 indulges in imaginative meditation and insanity; for I well remember 
 when I indulged in meditation to an extreme degree, that my senses ap- 
 peared sometimes to be wandering. I cannot describe the peculiar feeling 
 I then experienced, for I have failed in so doing to eminent surgeons and 
 men of science with whom I have conversed respecting it, and who were- 
 curious to become acquainted with its nature. But I think it was that I 
 was not always assured of my identity or even existence, for I have found 
 it necessary to shout aloud to be sure that I lived ; and I was in the habit 
 very often at night of taking down a volume, and looking into it for m v 
 name, to be convinced that I had not been dreaming of myself. At these 
 times there was an incredible acuteness, an intenseness in my sensations. 
 Every object seemed animate, and, as it were, acting upon me. The only 
 way that I can devise to express my general feeling is, that I seemed to be 
 conscious of the rapid whirl of the globe.' 
 
216 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC GENIUS — THE ECCENTRICITIES OP 
 SOCRATES— INSANITY OF BACON'S MOTHER— HIS BROTHER ANTHONY 
 DEFORMED — INSANITY OF SWEDENBORG AND AUGUSTE COMTE — 
 CARLYLE AND HIS ANCESTRY — NERVE DISORDER OF COPERNICUS, 
 GALILEO, AND KEPLER— ISAAC NEWTON'S INSANITY — THE HER- 
 SCHELLS— JAMES WATT — HUMPHRY DAVY — FARADAY— THEIR CHA- 
 RACTERISTICS AND AILMENTS — MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES OF NERVE 
 DISORDER AMONG MEN OF SCIENCE- THE ARITHMETICAL AND CHESS- 
 PLAYING FACULTIES — THE DARWIN FAMILY — ERASMUS DARWIN'S 
 ECCENTRICITIES— INSANITY OF ONE OF HIS SONS— THE WEDGWOODS 
 — CHARLES DARWIN'S DESCENT — THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF COMMER- 
 CIAL GENIUS, PHILANTHROPY, PIETY, AND CRIMrNALITY— NEUROPA- 
 THIC ASPECTS OF PIETY IN LUTHER, BUNYAN, GEORGE FOX, AND 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN — NE'ER-DO-WELLISM AND GENIUS 
 
 There remains to be considered the important class of men 
 of genius whose labours are philosophical and scientific. 
 Some fifty years ago the French physiologist Lelut 
 wrote a treatise to prove that on the showing of his 
 disciples Socrates suffered, if not from insanity, at all events 
 from sensorial hallucinations ; ' and an examination of the facts 
 of the case in the light of modern science goes to establish 
 the truth of Lelut's contention. Socrates believed himself to 
 be attended by a familiar spirit whose voice he heard. There 
 is hardly in Plato a single dialogue where the ' demon ' is not 
 spoken of. By literary students this has been accepted as 
 a figurative expression, but the philosopher's habits of life, 
 as recorded, are in perfect harmony with the hallucination 
 theory. Among the singQlarities of Socrates, Lelut enume- 
 rates his wearing the same mantle in all seasons, walking 
 barefooted on ice, and dancing and jumping alone without 
 apparent reason, leading in the eyes of the vulgar the oddest 
 kind of life, having no occupation but that of peroratiiiu* 
 ill public places, pursuing everybody with his irony, aud 
 
 ' Lelut : Du Dvmon de Socratc. 
 
SOCRATES AND 73ACON 217 
 
 accepting notliiiig from his disciples or friends, but asking 
 without hesitation for a coat when he needed one. Socrates 
 had long reveries or ecstatic fits ; and it often happened to 
 him to stop suddenly in the midst of a walk or a conversa- 
 tion, sa3dng that he heard the voice of his familiar. Clearly 
 the father of philosophy was an eccentric, though his insa- 
 nity may have been for the most part of a purely sensorial 
 character. 
 
 The mother of Lord Bacon is believed for some years 
 before her death to have been insane.^ When Bacon was 
 about thirty-eight, her health was said to be ' worn.' No 
 letters of hers appear to have been written after this date, 
 and only an occasional reference to her existence „ 
 in Bacon's correspondence shows her to be alive. 
 Spedding says : ' The supposition which seems to me most 
 probable is that she lost the command of her faculties some 
 years before her death, and that the management of her affairs 
 was taken out of her hands.' In Bishop Goodman's ' Court of 
 King James,' it is stated that Bacon's mother became ' frantic 
 in her age.' In connection with this rumoured insanity it is 
 important to find that Bacon's elder brother Anthony was lame 
 throughout life, that at fourteen his eyesight w^as in danger, 
 that he was always in a ' sickly state of body,' and that he died 
 at forty-three.^ Other collateral evidence as to Bacon's neuro- 
 pathic condition exists. His mother's sister marrying William 
 Cecil gave birth to Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, who 
 was of weakly constitution, cold-hearted, selfish and deformed, 
 but the ablest minister of his time. The philosopher's only 
 brother Anthony was a man of some distinction, and it may 
 be noted that of six children whom Bacon's father had by a 
 first and presumably sound wife none attained eminence. 
 The maternal heritage of nerve-disorder manifested itself 
 unmistakably in Bacon's life. His health was always trouble- 
 some. He was so frequently absent from the Council in 
 the Star Chamber that people began to doubt whether he 
 would prove equal to his work. A contemporary writer says 
 of him : — ' His infirmity is given out to be gout. . . . But 
 
 ^ Spedding: L\fe of Fran ch Bacon. 
 * JJictiuiiary of Natioual Biuf/ra^jhy. 
 
218 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 in trutli the genenil opiDion is that he hath so tender a con- 
 stitution both of body and mind that he will hardly be able 
 to undergo the burden of so much as his place requires.' ^ 
 Gout may very well have been the complaint from which 
 Bacon suffered, and which he so often alludes to as his 
 ' sickness.' He died of an accidental chill, and left no off- 
 spring. 
 
 The character of Swedenborg is a specially interesting 
 study from the neurotic point of view. Swedenborg was not 
 Sweden- only an epileptic but at times an irresponsible maniac 
 BORG who, nevertheless, in his writings exhibits much 
 subtle philosophical insight. Emerson calls him one of the 
 mastodons of literature. Swedenborg's father was a ' bustling, 
 energetic turbulently self-conscious man,' pious but keen in 
 money matters, and possessing ' great energy of character.' 
 That such qualities betray the presence of nerve-disorder we 
 have frequently seen. Whether the evil influence was con- 
 tributed to by the sage's mother there is no saying. Women 
 of her class were accustomed to wear a top-knot, and it is 
 related of her that a calf being born with something like a 
 top-knot on its head, she ' took her own and her girl's hoods and 
 threw them into the fire.' This was not, perhaps, a very sane 
 proceeding, but she appears to have been for the most part a 
 gentle and unassuming woman. As a boy Swedenborg was 
 able to suspend his breathing, and his disciples supposed this 
 to imply a power of entering the spirit world while still in 
 the flesh. Until his forty-sixth year he studied and specu- 
 lated largely about astronomy, anatomy, magnetism, and 
 kindred subjects. The manner of his becoming a prophet 
 was this : One night in London after he had dined heartily, 
 a kind of mist spread before his eyes, and the floor of the 
 room seemed to become covered with toads and other hideous 
 I'eptiles. ' I was astonished,' he relates, ' having all my wits 
 about me, and being perfectly conscious. The darkness gra- 
 dually passed away. I now saw a man sitting in a corner 
 of the chamber. As I had thought myself alone I was 
 greatly frightened, when he said to me " Eat not so much." 
 Mv si"fht as^ain became dim, and when I recovered I found 
 
 * Spedding. 
 
. SAVEDENEOKG AND COMTE 219 
 
 m^'self alone in the room.' The following night the same 
 thing occurred, except that the man said to him, ' I am God 
 the Lord, the Creator and redeemer of the world, and I have 
 chosen thee to unfold to men the spiritual sense of the 
 Holy Scriptures. I will myself dictate to thee what thou 
 shalt write.' 
 
 Thenceforward Swedenborg abandoned all worldly learn- 
 ing, and laboured only in spiritual things. Previous to this, 
 as shown by his diary, he had wonderful ecstatic dreams, dis- 
 tressing visions of temptations, persecutions, and sufferings. 
 Some of these dreams were of a sensual character, and 
 sensuality appears to have been his strongest passion. A 
 break in Swedenborg's diary occurs when he had an attack 
 of acute mania. This occurred while he was lodging in 
 Fetter liane, London, about his fifty-sixth year. Brock ner, 
 his landlord, found him foaming at the mouth and declaring 
 that he was the Messiah in person. In the street he pulled 
 off his clothes and rolled in the gutter. The outbreak 
 occurred in connection with an epileptic seizure, and from 
 this period onward Swedenborg's delusions were all of an 
 insane character. He believed that the second coming of the 
 Messiah had taken place in his own person, and that his 
 existence was largely passed in the spiritual world. With 
 a profound belief in himself he, nevertheless, showed con- 
 siderable artfulness in evading attempts on the part of 
 believers to put his miraculous powers to the test, alleging 
 that the requests made to him were not sufficiently important 
 to jiistify him in troubling the Almighty. His death was due 
 to paralysis and apoplexy. 
 
 One of the most vigorous thinkers of modern times, 
 Auguste Comte, founder of Positivism, fell into a state of 
 insanity, and for nearly a year was confined in Auguste 
 Esquirol's asylum. This occurred in 1826. Two Comte 
 years later Comte published his ' Cours de Philosophie Posi- 
 tive,' the ' fruit of fourteen years' labour.' 
 
 Kant in his declining years became imbecile. — Descartes 
 had hallucinations of hearing, thinking himself followed about 
 by an invisible person, who entreated him to continue his 
 researches. — Hegel's sister was insane. — Leibnitz was gouty, 
 
220 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 and subject to fits of giddiness. — Schopenhauer's father com- 
 mitted suicide in a fit of melancholia ; an uncle was demented, 
 and tlie philosopher himself was subject to strange manias 
 and impulses. — James Mill was consumptive. — John Stuart 
 Mill, a prodigy of learning in his youth, died childless, 
 although his wife had issue by her first husband. 
 
 As to Thomas Carlyle's parentage we have copious infor- 
 mation in his 'Reminiscences.'^ The astonishing force and 
 Carlyle originality of his character had a distinctly neuro- 
 pathic origin. On the paternal side, his ancestry 
 and connections were marked by the insane temperament, 
 and also suffered from some of the allied forms of nerve-dis- 
 order. The grandfather was a ' fiery, irascible, indomitable 
 man, full of irregularities and unreason.' With his brother 
 he maintained a bitter feud for many years — a very charac- 
 teristic outcome of insane tendencies. Carlyle's father was 
 a man of the same stamp, possessing ' great vehemence of 
 insight, and a piercing emphasis of wisdom.' He was un- 
 educated, had no appreciation of poetry, but was a man of 
 action. ' We had all to complain,' says Carlyle, ' that we 
 durst not freely love him. His heart seemed as if walled in. 
 My mother has owned to me that she could never understand 
 him.' That sturdy, angular figure of whom Carlyle writes 
 with a curious awe-struck, wondering reverence, is however 
 to be understood by the physiologist through the medium of 
 his brothers and sisters. John the eldest brother had asthma, 
 and was a ' sickly pallid man,' who died at forty-seven, 
 leaving two sons and a daughter, ' none of whom came to 
 anything but insignificance.' Francis, whom Carlyle re- 
 membered as having a tremulous palsied voice, was of cheer- 
 ful demeanour, a quaint sociable man, and left two sons who 
 prospered. Tom, the youngest brother, was ' fiery, passionate, 
 and self-secluded,' dying at forty. All these uncles of the 
 sage of Chelsea, small farmers or artisans, were evidently 
 men of a peculiar endowment. Carlyle's aunt Fanny was 
 likewise a woman of ' singular vehemence, inflexibility and 
 energy — all uncultivated and ill-directed ; ' while another 
 aunt, Margaret, died of consumption at twenty-seven. From 
 ' Cail'vle: ILiniulscenccs. 
 
CARLYLE 221 
 
 boyhood, Carlyle himself was a martyr to dyspepsia and 
 general ill-health. His irritability appears to have been 
 excessive, and he sufi'ered terribly from sleeplessness. In 
 his diary he speaks of himself thus: 'Nerves all inflamed 
 and torn up, body and mind in a hag-ridden condition.' He 
 possessed, however, that great basis of knowledge a most 
 retentive memory. For many years before his death, his 
 right hand was palsied.^ Carlyle's marriage was a barren 
 one, and its painful discords may have been due to the fact 
 that his wife was, equally with himself, a sufferer from nerve- 
 disorder, which took the form of a keen and sarcastic wit, a 
 turn for poetry and great self-will, as well as paralysis and 
 sudden death. 
 
 In science, the lives of the greatest men, from Copernicus 
 to Darwin, yield strong evidence of the existence of nerve 
 disorder as an element of genius. The astronomers early 
 have been signal sufferers. Copernicus died of Astrono- 
 apoplexy, and before his death was ' paralysed both ^^^^ 
 in body and mind.' He never married. Tycho Brahe in his 
 latter days — he died at fifty-four — became weak-minded. He 
 was of a sanguine temperament, but irritable and obstinate. 
 He was one of a family of ten, none of whom became eminent, 
 but his youngest sister, Sophia, is said to have been an accom- 
 plished mathematician. Galileo, the son of a musician and 
 piiilosopher, had, from his youth, a ' chronic disorder accom- 
 panied with acute pains in his body, and loss of sleep and 
 appetite.' As this attacked him at intervals during his life, 
 it was probably gout. He fell into a state of melancholia, 
 during which he felt ' as if he were being incessantly called 
 by his daughter.' This daughter died suddenly. Galileo 
 himself finally became blind, and also completely deaf. 
 Kepler was the son of a man of good family, who ruined 
 himself by his own misconduct, 'and died of apoplexy, while 
 his mother had peculiarities of temper.' The astronomer was 
 sickly as a child, and died at sixty of a ' violent fever accom- 
 panied by a brain disease, which baffled the skill of his 
 physicians, but which was thought to have been produced 
 by over-study.' By a first wife, Kepler left a son and a 
 * Tyndall: Fortnightly Reciew for January 1890. 
 
222 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 daughter wliose fate is unknown ; by a second wife he had 
 three sons and two daughters who all died young. ^ 
 
 Isaac Newton, an only child, was so diminutive at birth 
 that it is said ' he might have been put into a quart mug.' 
 Very little is known of his parents. His father, a 
 farmer, died at thirty-seven, from some unknown 
 cause ; his mother afterwards married a clergyman named 
 Barrett, and had several children, none of whom became 
 eminent. From this circumstance, and his father's early 
 death, it may be concluded that the neuropathic influence 
 in Newton's case was on the paterual side. No reasonable 
 doubt can be entertained that Newton's mind gave way, and 
 that temporarily at least he had some of the delusions of in- 
 sanity. Sir David Brewster, his biographer,^ is very angry 
 at the suo;2festion, but the facts are too strono- for him. In 
 the MSS. left by Huygens there occurs the following note : — 
 
 ' On May 29, 1G94, Mr. Colin, a Scotchman, informed me 
 that eighteen months ago, the illustrious geometrician Isaac 
 Newton had become insane, either in consequence of his 
 intense application to his studies, or from excessive grief at 
 having lost by fire his chemical laboratory, and several manu- 
 scripts. When he came from the Archbishop of Cambridge, 
 he made some observation which indicated an alienation of 
 mind. He was immediately taken care of by his friends, 
 who confined him to his house and applied remedies by 
 means of which he has now so far recovered his health, as to 
 begin to understand his " Principia." ' 
 
 Huygens also mentioned the matter in a letter to Leibnitz 
 under date June 8, 1694, in the following terms: 'I do not 
 know if you are acquainted with the accident which has 
 happened to Mr. Newton, namely that he has had an attack 
 of phrenitis, which lasted eighteen months, and of which 
 they say that his friends have cured him by means of reme- 
 dies, and keeping him shut up.' 
 
 As the burning of Newton's laboratory and papers hap- 
 pened before 1684, it could have had no immediate connec- 
 tion with his illness, and in any case would be a very far- 
 
 * Brewster : The Martyrs of Science. 
 2 Brewster : Life of Sir Isaac Nemton, 
 
ISAAC NEWTON 223 
 
 f tolled explanation of liis state of mind. Concerning tliisj, 
 we have direct evidence in Newton's own correspondence. 
 On September 13, 1693, when fifty-one years of age, he 
 wrote the following strange letter to Pepys : — 
 
 ' Some time after Mr. Millington had delivered your 
 message, he pressed me to see you the next time I went to 
 London. I was averse, but he was pressing, and I consented 
 before I considered what I did. For I am extremely troubled 
 at the embroilment I am in, and have neither ate nor slept 
 well this twelvemonth, nor have I my former consistency of 
 mind. I never designed to get anything by your interest 
 nor by King James's favour, but I am now sensible that I 
 must withdraw from your acquaintance, and see neither you 
 nor any of my friends any more, if I may but leave them 
 quietly. I beg your pardon for saying I would see you again, 
 and rest 
 
 ' Your most humble and most obedient servant, 
 
 'Is. Newton.' 
 
 This letter threw Pepys into consternation. He wrote 
 to Millington, to ask what it meant, saying : ' The letter 
 has put me into great disorder, lest it should arise from that 
 which of all mankind I should least dread from him, and 
 most lament for — I mean a discomposure in head or mind, or 
 both.' To Pepys, Millington replied in the following terms : — 
 
 ' I was, I must confess, very much surprised at the in- 
 quiry you were pleased to make about the message that Mr. 
 Newton made the ground of his letter to you. For I was 
 very sure I never received from you, or delivered to him, any 
 such.' 
 
 Millington saw Newton on the subject. ' Upon his own 
 accord, and before I had time to ask him any question,' 
 continues Millington in his letter to Pepys, ' he told me 
 that he had written to you a very^ odd letter at which he 
 " was much concerned," and that he had done it under the 
 influence of a " distemper that seized his head, and kept him 
 awake for five nights together." Further, he desired that 
 I would reply to you on the subject, and beg your pardon, 
 he being very much ashamed he should be so rude to a 
 
224 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 person for whom he hath so great an honour. He is now 
 very well,' says Millington in conclusion, ' though I fear he 
 is under some small degree of melancholy.' 
 
 While under his ' distemper,' Newton, on September 16, 
 1693, also wrote the following to Locke : — 
 
 ' Sir, — Being of opinion that you endeavoured to embroil me 
 with women and by other means, I was so ntuch affected wit!- 
 it as that when one told me you were sickly and would not 
 live, I answered, " 'Twere better if you were dead." I desire 
 you to forgive me this uncharitableness, for I am now satisfied 
 that what you have done is just, and I beg your pardon for 
 having had hard thoughts of you for it, and for replying that 
 you struck at the root of morality in the principles you ex- 
 pounded in your book, and designed to pursue in another book, 
 and that I took you for a Hobbist. I beg your pardon also for 
 saying that there was a design to sell me an office or to embroil 
 me. — I am your most obedient and unfortunate servant, 
 
 ' Is. Newton.' 
 
 Locke wrote Newton a magnanimous reply which called 
 forth the following : — 
 
 ' Sir, — The last winter by sleeping too often by my fire I got 
 an ill habit of sleeping, and the distemper, which this summer 
 has been epidemical, put me further out of order. So that when 
 I wrote to you I had not slept an hour a night for a fortnight to- 
 gether, and for five days together not a wink. I remember I 
 wrote to you, but what I said of your book I remember not. If 
 you please, send me a transcription of that passage. I will give 
 you an account of it if I can. — I am your most humble servant, 
 
 'Is. Newton.' 
 
 That these letters should never have been suspected by 
 such a man as Sir David Brewster to contain indications of 
 mental aberration on the part of the writer, shows how deeply 
 rooted is the prejudice that genius is a strong and well- 
 balanced condition of mind. After this period Newton was 
 never himself again. His letters to Flamsteed on the lunar 
 theory, written two years subsequently, exhibit a strange in- 
 coherence, and Professor de Morgan thinks that from the 
 time of Newton's settling in London (he was appointed 
 
ISAAC NEWTON 225 
 
 Master of the Mint in 1696) 'his judgment underwent a 
 gradual deterioration.' ^ While his distemper was incubating, 
 that is to say about his forty-ninth year, he began to concern 
 himself w^ith the prophecies of Daniel and other theological 
 questions, and to these he latterly gave himself up altogether. 
 The part which piety plays in cases of mental aberration has 
 elsewhere been dealt with. Newton lived to extreme old age, 
 and died of stone — a disease belonging to the gouty diathesis. 
 He never married, and was } opularly believed to have a 
 positive aversion to female society. As further evidence of 
 neuropathic conditions on his father's side, one may point to 
 the lamentable unfitness of the offspring of Newton's paternal 
 uncle Robert. Sir Isaac's full cousin John was a carpenter, 
 afterwards a gamekeeper, and this man's son, who became 
 Sir Isaac's heir, was a youth of the most dissolute habits. 
 One day wdiile drunk, this scion of the house of Newton fe] 1 
 down with a tobacco pipe in his mouth, and the stem of the 
 pipe sticking in his throat caused his death at the age of 
 thirty. Ten years before this event a clergyman named 
 Mason alluded to Newton's heir as a ' poor representative of 
 a great man ; ' adding very wisely, ' but this is a case that 
 often happens.' Of course we know nothing of the influence 
 which female heredity may have exercised in this case. 
 
 The native aptitude of the elder Herschell for astronomical 
 research appears to have been a variation upcn the musical 
 tastes of his family — a species of metamorphosis the 
 familiar enough to the student of heredity, and Herschells 
 having its basis in some inequality of nerve or brain func- 
 tion. The father of William Herschell was a musician, and 
 everyone of the family, except the eldest daughter, possessed 
 marked musical ability. Of the astronomer's brothers, three 
 were professional musicians; he himself in boyhood was 
 an excellent performer on the oboe and the violin. The 
 father had a paralytic seizure, an^ also developed an 
 asthmatical affection. Caroline Herschell shared her brother 
 William's scientific tastes, and assisted him in his astro- 
 nomical pursuits. From her diary ^ we gather some in- 
 
 1 De Morgan : Newton, Ms Friend and Ids Niece. 
 
 ^ Memoirs of Caroline Herschell. By Mrs. John Herschell. 
 
 Q 
 
22G THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 teresting facts in the family history. The sister who was 
 unmusical was of a peculiar disposition. She married a 
 man named Griesbach, but afterwards returned to her 
 father's house. ' My sister/ says Caroline, ' was not of a 
 very patient temper, and could not be reconciled to have 
 children about her.' Dietrich, one of the musical brothers, 
 appears to have caused his family some anxiety by his ne'er- 
 do-well habits. About the age of fifty he was broken both 
 in health and fortune, and his family appear to have been a 
 sore disappointment to Caroline, who in her later, years took 
 up her abode with them in Germany. Caroline describes 
 Dietrich as suffering from peevishness and weak nerves. 
 Some painful details as to the Griesbach family, which might 
 have been instructive from the heredity point of view, appear 
 to have been suppressed in Caroline's published correspondence 
 — a dis-service of a kind which the biographer of a great man 
 too frequently renders to his readers. Caroline was at one 
 time in danger of losing her sight, and she and her brother 
 William, during their long residence in England, suffered 
 from frequent illnesses. The nature of these is not always 
 specified, but in her diary Caroline, nearly forty years before 
 her death — she lived to be ninety-two — says she feels as if 
 she would be an invalid for life, and speaks of her brother 
 as suffering from constant fits of giddiness and low spirits. 
 William's death occurred at eighty-two, ' after twenty years 
 of nervous suffering.' The exact cause is not recorded, but 
 Caroline's end was due to ^ cramps and rheumatic com- 
 plaints.' William Herschell married a woman who suffered 
 from gout. 
 
 This alliance, unfortunate from the physical point of view, 
 resulted in the birth of one son, a genius also. Herschell the 
 3"0unger continued his father's astronomical studies, in which 
 he achieved similar distinction. He was also a highly accom- 
 plished chemist, and to his other gifts he added a dee]i 
 poetic feeling. Curious sensorial hallucinations accompanied 
 the younger Herschell's genius, as we gather from a lecture 
 on ocular spectra delivered by him on one occasion before a 
 scientific institute.^ He often saw faces in the dark, some- 
 * Sir Julin Herschell: FavvlUar Lectures on Scioitifc Suljccts. 
 
THE HERSCIIELLS 227 
 
 times ten or a dozen appearing in succession, for the most 
 part unpleasing though not hideous, and always h iving some 
 general resemblance to each other. Landscape i also pre- 
 sented themselves to his inner vision, much more rarely- than 
 the faces, but much more distinctly. ' I was sitting one 
 morning very quietly at my breakfast table,' he says, ' doing 
 nothing and thinking of nothing, when I was startled by a 
 singularly shadowy appearance at the outside corner of the 
 field of vision of the left eye. It gradually advanced into 
 the field of view, and then appeared to be a pattern in straight, 
 angular forms, very much in general aspect like the drawing 
 of a fortification, with some suspicion of faint lines of colour 
 between the dark lines. It appeared to advance slowly from 
 out of the corner until it spread all over the visual area, and 
 passed across to the right side, where it disappeared. I 
 cannot say how long it lasted, but it must have been a minute 
 or two.' 
 
 Several years afterwards the same geometrical spectrum 
 presented itself to Sir John Herschell again. He adds : ' I 
 have mentioned this experience to several persons, but have 
 only met one to whom it has occurred. This was a lady of 
 my acquaintance, who assured me that she had often ex- 
 perienced a similar affection, and that it was always followed 
 by a violent headache, which was not the case with me.' 
 Another waking vision of Sir John Herschell's was a ' round, 
 deep purple, feebly luminous, spot, dying gradually away 
 •into darkness at the borders.' Various circular and geome- 
 trical forms often presented themselves to him. Once in the 
 evening, while passing the site of a building that had been 
 demolished, he was amazed to see the structure still standing 
 projected against a dull sky. ' Being perfectly aware,' he 
 adds, 'that it was a mere nerve impression, I walked on, 
 keeping my eyes directed to it, and the perspective of the 
 building appeared to change with the change in the point of 
 view as it would have done if real.' Such impressions are to 
 the visual centre of the brain what voices or other sounds 
 would be to the auditory centre ; they are, in fact, a true 
 hallucination. Sir John Herschell was fortunate enough to 
 marry a lady who gave him a numerous, and apparently 
 
 ft 2 
 
228 TIIE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 healthy, family, in whom, however, his genius was not con- 
 tinued. 
 
 In the family of James Watt, genius was foreshadowed in 
 the inventor's grandfather, Thomas Watt, who was a teacher of 
 , mathematics and ' an oddity,' and who had a weakly 
 
 offspring. Three of Thomas Watt's children died in 
 infancy, and a daughter at eighteen. Two sons survived, of 
 these one died at fifty unmarried : the other, by his marriage 
 with a woman named Agnes Muirhead, was the father of the 
 inventor of the steam engine. In the absence of precise 
 information as to the physical character of James Watt's 
 parents, I can only note again the great mortality occurring 
 in their offspring, three of the inventor's brothers and sisters 
 dying in childhood, another brother at twenty-three, James 
 Watt himself being the sole survivor in manhood of a 
 family of five. The man who was destined to revolutionise 
 the mechanical world was a born mathematician. Almost 
 before he could read he was occupied with mechanical pro- 
 blems ; he was of an abstracted and contemplative nature, 
 and physically an invalid. In his youth the ' agony he 
 suffered from continued and violent headaches,' says Mrs. 
 Campbell, ' often affected his nervous system, and left him for 
 days, even weeks, languid, depressed, and fanciful ; at those 
 times there was a roughness and asperity in his manner that 
 softened with returning health. . . . He was alternately 
 very active or apparently very indolent, and was subject to 
 continual fits of absence. ' ^ Again, as a young man he 
 suffered from ' violent rheumatism and gnawing pain in his 
 back, and weariness all over his body.' He had a good ear 
 for music, and before occupying himself with the steam 
 engine acquired some notoriety as a constructor of musical 
 instruments. His health was always troublesome. In addi- 
 tion to his headaches he complained, about the age of thirty- 
 four, of having fits of ' laziness, stupefaction, and confusion 
 of ideas,' while his memory was accustomed to fail him in an 
 alarming fashion. At forty-nine he wrote to a friend : ' My 
 health is so bad that I do not think I can hold out much 
 longer ... I cannot help being dispirited, because I find my 
 ' Muirhead: JJfe of James Wait. 
 
HUMPHRY DAVY AND FARADAY 229 
 
 head fail me so much.' Despite his ailments Watt lived 
 to the age of eighty-three. He married a Miss Miller, by 
 whom he had several children. Among these, nerve-disorder 
 manifested itself strongly. A son and a daughter died in 
 early life of consumption, another son James never married, 
 but was a recluse and peculiar in his habits, and with his 
 death at seventy-nine the Watt family perished. 
 
 Like the younger Herschell, Humphry Davy combined 
 with his scientific genius a strong poetic feeling.^ The 
 neurotic condition is traceable in his family Humphey 
 through one or two generations. Grandmother Davy 
 Davy was a woman of ' fervid and poetical mind ; ' her son, the 
 great chemist's father, died of a ' decline,' while his wife was 
 carried off by some nervous illness. In his youth Humphry 
 Davy, who thus appears to have had an evil heritage from both 
 parents, was healthy and active enough. He learnt only by 
 fits and starts, but was blessed with a most retentive memory. 
 His imaginativeness developed itself early. In his youthful 
 diaries he speaks of being ' pursued at night by horrible 
 images.' ' After reading a few books,' he says, ' I was seized 
 with a desire to narrate, and I gradually began to invent and 
 to form stories of my own.' As he became eminent his 
 health declined ; it was then that the hereditary weakness 
 of his constitution revealed itself. He suffered from his eyes ; 
 he had rheumatism in his right hand and arm, and generally 
 a 'wretched condition of body.' Attacks of paralysis and 
 apoplexy supervened, causing his death at fifty-one. He 
 married the ' most amiable and intellectual woman he had 
 ever known,' but left no offspring. 
 
 Faraday, after a brilliant career which he began as an 
 errand boy, also died childless, and, like Humphry Davy, 
 was much shattered by nerve-disorder, although he p^jj^^^y 
 lived to the age of seventy-five.^ He was of the 
 humblest parentage ; his father was a blacksmith, and to the 
 last his poor old mother, who was illiterate, never understood 
 anything of her son's achievements in science. On the 
 father's side an hereditary transmission of nerve-disorder is 
 
 • Life of Sir HumjjJiry Davy. By his brother John Davy, M.D, 
 2 Bence Jones ; Life of Michael Faraday. 
 
2C0 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 apparent. The elder Faraday died at forty-nine, and a few- 
 years before his death he wrote : — ' I am sorry to say I have 
 not had the pleasure of enjoying one day's health for a long 
 time. Although I am seldom off work for a whole day 
 together, yet 1 am under the necessity through pain of 
 being from work part of almost every day.' An uncle 
 of Faraday's died at twenty-four. Giddiness and loss of me- 
 mory attacked Faraday before his fiftieth year. A course 
 of lectures which he delivered were afterwards so completely 
 obliterated from his memory that he delivered them again the 
 following year without a suspicion that they were not new. 
 Ultimately he became paralysed. 
 
 Joule, who discovered the mechanical equivalent of heat, 
 was deformed, and died of disease of the brain. — Ampere, 
 Tnathematician, electrician, and philologist, was eccentric. He 
 was self-taught, and had a most tenacious memory. — Volta's 
 skull was abnormal in shape, and he had a son insane. 
 — Linne, impetuous in character, was gouty and apoplectic, 
 and ultimately became weak-minded. — Cuvier died of a ner- 
 vous affection, and his children of brain disease. — Augustin 
 de Candolle, a botanist of distinction, had water on the 
 brain in his youth and was poetic ; while De Jussieu, the head 
 of an eminent botanical family, became blind. — Albert von 
 Haller, the father of modern physiology, was rickety and 
 gouty, and belonged to an hereditarily pious family. — Harvey, 
 who discovered the circulation of the blood, was gouty, hot- 
 tempered, and occasionally eccentric. — Swammerdam fell into 
 religious melancholy. — Zimmermann, the son of a nervous 
 mother and an ailing father, was hypochondriactil in his 
 youth, and became in his latter years completely demented ; 
 his son was also insane, and a daughter died of consump- 
 tion. — Lamarck became blind. — Cardan had delusions of 
 persecution, with hallucinations of hearing, smell, and taste. 
 His father had been insane, and Cardan in turn transmitted 
 insanity to his children.* This is indeed a remarkable case. 
 Cardan was one of the most distinguished men of the six- 
 teenth century, revealing throughout his works ' an intel- 
 lect of rare subtlety and force,' and occasionally letting fall 
 
 • Lombroso. 
 
THE AKITHMETICAL FACULTY 231 
 
 ' hints of scientific principles so profound, looked at 'in the 
 light of after years, that he himself cannot at all have even 
 guessed at their significance.' ^ Voices told him to write his 
 books. He is said to have been a stupid boy, and to have 
 remained impotent till the age of thirty-four. — Of Charles 
 Lyell, the eminent geologist, Charles Darwin wrote in 1875 : 
 ' I cannot say that I felt his death much, for I fully expected 
 it, and have looked for some little time at his career as 
 finished. I dread nothing so much as his surviving with im- 
 paired mental powers.' — Sedgwick, to whom geology is also 
 much indebted, was a sufferer from rheumatic gout and 
 inflammation of the eyes. — In the family of Smeaton, civil 
 engineer, brain disease was hereditary. He died of paralysis. 
 — The same affection in the form of shaking palsy attacked 
 George Stephenson, the railway engineer, whose mother was 
 ' a delicat boddie an varry flighty.' — Telford, whose genius 
 for engineering manifested itself along with a taste for writ- 
 ing verses, lost his hearing. 
 
 The marvellous arithmetical faculty of the American 
 calculating boy Zerah Colburn, who was exhibited in Europe 
 in the early part of the present century, may be Zeraii 
 comprised in the scientific category. This prodigy Colburx 
 was the son of a carpenter, and began his arithmetical feats 
 in childhood. The first manifestation of his power is thus 
 described : — ' When about one month under six years of age, 
 his father being employed at his joiner's bench, Zerah was on 
 the floor playing with the chips of wood. Suddenly he 
 began to say to himself 5 times 7 is 35, 6 times 8 is 48, 
 and so on. His father's attention becoming arrested by 
 hearing this from a child who had only had six weeks' attend- 
 ance at the district school, he left his work and began to 
 examine him in the multiplication table. He thought it 
 possible that Zerah had learnt his sums from other boys, 
 but finding him perfect in the table his attention was more 
 deeply fixed and he asked the product of 13 multiplied by 
 97, to which 1261 was instantly given in answer. ^ For the 
 manipulation of numbers the boy, in short, was found to have 
 
 * CJmmhcrH' EncycloprpMa, Ed. 1888. 
 
 • Zeraii Colhurn : ^leinuir. 
 
232 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 innate gifts of a most exceptional kind. The matter became 
 noised abroad, and lie was exhibited on tour. At the age 
 of six, when asked the number of seconds in eleven years, 
 he answered in four seconds 364,896,000. Being asked . 
 how many hours there were in 38 years two months and 
 seven days, he answered in six seconds 334,488. At eight 
 years of age he was brought to London, and tested by 
 mathematicians who were surprised and disconcerted by the 
 rapidity and correctness of the boy's solutions to the most 
 difficult problems. He had the power of at once answering 
 questions to which no known rules applied, and he discovered 
 properties in numbers till then unsuspected. 
 
 Being questioned as to the principle upon which he pro- 
 ceeded, the boy declared that he did not know how the 
 answers came into his mind. Strangely enough, his power, 
 instead of improving with practice, gradually faded away, 
 and before he was old enough to explain himself it had com- 
 pletely left him. Its neurotic character is indicated by the 
 fact that the elder Colburn became insane, and died of con- 
 sumption. There was also deformity in the family, the boy 
 and some of his near relatives being six -fingered. After the 
 disappearance of his arithmetical faculty, Zerah Colburn found 
 ureat difficulty in earning a livelihood. He subsequently 
 became a pious itinerant Methodist preacher, and died at the 
 age of thirty-six of a ' decline.' 
 
 Paul Morphy, the most brilliant of chess-players, who in- 
 vented combinations on the chess-board previously unknown, 
 Paul began his chess career in boyhood and attained the 
 :Morphy height of his fame as a very young man. About 
 the age of thirty he became insane. 
 
 The genealogy of Charles Darwin, author of the ' Origin 
 of Species,' illustrates many of the neuropathic aspects of 
 Erasmus genius, from insanity downwards. It will bear re- 
 Darwin lating in some detail, for, unlike many men of genius 
 v>hose lives are obscure and imperfectly recorded, Darwin is 
 intimately known to us through his own memoirs and the 
 fall biographical accounts which have been published of his 
 family for three generations.^ To take first the paternal side 
 * Lije of Erasmus Uarwin^ by E. Krause, with a notice by Charles Darwin. 
 
THE DARWINS 233 
 
 of Darwin's ancestry. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of 
 Charles, and himself a man of genius, philosopher, poet, and 
 physician, was noted for the great size of his frame, his phy- 
 sical energy, and the vividness of his imagination. Of all his 
 characteristics, says Charles Darwin, ' the incessant activity 
 of his mind was perhaps the most remarkable.' He had a 
 special taste for poetry and mechanics. According to his son 
 Robert, he was apt to be ' violent in anger.' Miss Seward 
 adds that he ' stammered greatly ' in his speech. He was 
 clumsy in his movements, and is also said to have suffered 
 from lameness, but, as this is ascribed to a carriage accident, 
 it need not be insisted upon, notwithstanding the well-known 
 fondness of the biographer for explaining everything accord- 
 ing to his lights. 
 
 Miss Seward tells us of a freak once indulged in by Eras- 
 mus Darwin, which savours a little of insanity. At a picnic 
 party, after luncheon, he surprised his companions by suddenly 
 stepping from the boat into the middle of the river Trent ; he 
 then swam ashore in his clothes, and walked coolly over the 
 meadows towards the town of Nottingham, where he was 
 afterwards discovered in the market-place, ' mounted upon a 
 tub in his wet clothes haranguing the mob in an extremely 
 sensible manner on sanitary arrangements, and without his 
 usual stammer.' Charles Darwin is persuaded that this 
 narrative is ' largely the work of Miss Seward's imagination,' 
 and that probably his grandfather, who was a great advocate 
 of teetotalism, drank at the lunch ' something as weak which 
 was really strong,' and so become ^ half tipsy.' This hypo- 
 thesis is a difficult one to maintain in face of the fact that 
 Erasmus Darwin was a medical man, who would not readily 
 be deceived as to what he drank. Besides, Miss Seward does 
 not write in a vindictive spirit, and there is nothing inherently 
 improbable in her narrative. Quite the contrary, when we 
 remember that another philosophical physician of Erasmus 
 Darwin's own time, and one equally eminent with himself, 
 namely, Zimmermann, lapsed into a state of complete insanity. 
 
 Memoirs of the Life of Erasmus Darwin, by Anna Seward. Life and Letters 
 of Charles Darnnn, by his son, F. Darwin. Life of Josiah Wedgwood, by E. 
 Meteyard. ^ Groujj of L^iKjlishnien, by E. Meteyard, etc. 
 
234 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Charles Darwin admits, in fact, that the owner of the boat, 
 having been appealed to on the subject, said ' something 
 similar ' to Miss Seward's account did happen. 
 
 In his latter years, according to Miss Seward, Erasmus 
 Darwin displayed ' the irritability, the disingenuous arts, and 
 the jealousy of other reputations,' so often found in great 
 minds. This charge the Darwin family indignantly deny, but 
 surely there is nothing to be surprised at if an ancestor, to 
 whom they concede the qualities of genius, should be shown 
 to have some of the defects of that condition. Erasmus Darwin 
 died suddenly in his arm-chair, after a shivering fit, at seventy. 
 The doctors differed as to the cause of his death, but his son 
 Robert, a medical man, believed it to be an affection of the 
 heart. Erasmus Darwin was twice married ; it is from his 
 first wife, a Miss Howard, that the author of the ^ Origin of 
 Species' was descended. This poor lady, for many years an 
 invalid, died at the early age of thirty. She told Miss 
 Seward: 'The maladies of my frame were peculiar; the 
 pains in my head and stomach, which no medicine could 
 eradicate, were spasmodic and violent, and required stronger 
 measures to render them supportable while they lasted than 
 my constitution could sustain without injury.' 
 
 Of such a union it was hardly possible that a soundly 
 constituted family could be born. There w^ere three sons. 
 Erasmus the younger committed suicide at forty in a state of 
 insanity ; Charles, who stammered like his father, and who 
 also had a strong taste for poetry and mechanics, died at 
 twenty of accidental blood poisoning ; the remaining son 
 Robert, who lived to a great age, became a successful medical 
 man, and by his marriage with Miss Wedgwood was the 
 father of Charles Darwin. As to the insanity of Charles 
 Darwin's uncle Erasmus the younger, who was a solicitor, 
 there appears to be no doubt. He drowned himself in a stream 
 at the bottom of the garden. ' It is known,' says Charles 
 Darwin in commenting upon the event, ' that a change of 
 disposition generally precedes insanit}^, and Erasmus, from 
 being an excellent man of business, had become dilatory to 
 an abnormal degree. He was evidently conscious himself of 
 some mental change, for he purchased, six weeks before his 
 
JOSIAII WEDGWOOD 235 
 
 death, the small estate of the Priory near Derby, where he 
 intended, though only forty years old, to retire from business, 
 or, as his father expressed it, to sleep away the remainder of 
 his life.' Miss Seward asserts that when the body was found, 
 the father said in a low voice, ' Poor insane coward.' Charles 
 Darwin doubted the truth of this, but the remark was surely 
 not an unnatural one. 
 
 Robert Darwin was of enormous size, standing six feet 
 two inches, and weighing twenty-four stone. This was not 
 the only, though it was the most conspicuous, evidence in his 
 case of an abnormality of the nervous system, by which, as 
 we have seen, the nutrition or growth of the body is regulated. 
 He suffered from gout. He was a good man of business, and 
 contrived to amass a fortune in his medical practice. He 
 also had ' curious intuitions,' which he could not explain, and 
 an extraordinary memory. In marrying Miss Wedgwood, 
 daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, he, like his father, formed an 
 alliance which must have fostered rather than corrected the 
 neuropathic tendencies of the Darwin blood. On its own 
 account the genealogy of the mother of Charles Darwin 
 merits attention. It has the additional advantage, however, 
 of making us acquainted with a man whose achievements 
 entitle him to an independent place in this book, namely, 
 Josiah AVedgwood, the creator of British pottery as an art. 
 
 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the 
 births, marriages, and deaths of the Wedgwoods fill half the 
 parish registers of Burslem. The family was Josiah 
 prolific, and a.pparently prosperous through Wedgwood 
 several generations, but its history begins with Josiah. In 
 this, the fourth generation of the Staffordshire potters, by a 
 coincidence for which the reader will be prepared, genius and 
 nerve disorder unmistakably manifested themselves side by 
 side. The evil appears to have been slowly preparing. Already 
 in the third generation there were neurotic symptoms in the 
 family. Thomas Wedgwood, father oT Josiah, made a deathbed 
 will, in which, while providing for a younger daughter, he 
 sternly prohibited his eldest daughter Ann from sharing in his 
 estate. Unforgiveness on a death-bed, like those prolonged and 
 bitter family feuds originating in a trifle, of which the world 
 
236 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 occasionally hears, is a frequent sign of the insane tempera- 
 ment. Nor does the wife of Thomas appear to have been 
 particularly sound. She is described as a ' small and delicately 
 organised woman of unusual quickness and sensibility.' Of 
 the children born to this couple Josiali was the youngest. 
 They exhibited forms of nerve-disorder, ranging from genius 
 to idiocy. Thomas, brother of Josiah, left his affairs in a 
 ' sadly unsettled state.' Miss Meteyard says he was an ' in- 
 competent, careless man,' and one of his sons was weak-minded. 
 Writing of this nephew of his, Josiah (who, like the typical 
 biographer, is ready with a reason for the thing he describes) 
 fays : ' The shock he received from his father's death, and 
 the foolish education and behaviour of his mother, made him 
 for some time quite an idiot. . . . He will never be qualified 
 to do any business, and what we shall do with him I do not 
 know.' A second son, brother of the idiot, was ' as unwilling 
 as he was incapable of being taught or managed to any good 
 purpose.' Kichard Wedgwood, another brother of Josiah's, 
 died of ' a long course of drinking and irregular living.' A 
 son of Eichard's, as the result of a worn-out constitution, 
 died early. 
 
 Two ne'er-do-well brothers, and three ne'er-do-well 
 nephews in the family of a man of genius, is a large allow- 
 ance. It is true that the genius of Josiah Wedgwood was 
 of no common order. It was many-sided. Pottery, when he 
 took it up, was a rude and barbarous manufacture ; he raised 
 it to the dignity of an art. He was a man of much general 
 culture. He also accumulated a vast fortune, promoted 
 public works, and exercised a princely liberality. For these 
 achievements a heavy price of bodily suffering had to be paid. 
 Josiah Wedgwood became lame in boyhood ; some years 
 afterwards his leg, being increasingly troublesome, had to be 
 amputated. Before his fortieth year he began to have spectra 
 in the eyes ; he also suffered from constant headaches and 
 sleeplessness. It is well known that pain can be felt in an 
 amputated limb, the explanation being that the severed 
 nerves continue to convey sensation to the brain, which has 
 no knowledge, so to speak, of its habitual communications 
 from the limb in question being interrupted. It is as if the 
 
THOMAS WEDGWOOD 2o7 
 
 wire of tlie door-bell were cut midway, and tlie short end 
 pulled as usual. For twenty years after the amputation 
 Josiah Wedgwood felt severe pain in what he called his ' no- 
 leg.' He died of mortification of the jaw at sixty-five. 
 
 Given a man of such feeble physique as Josiah Wedgwood, 
 it is evidently important in the interests of the unborn 
 generation, that if he marries at all, he should Thomas 
 choose as his wife a woman normally constituted, Wedgwood 
 or at least nervously sound. This Josiah Wedgwood did not 
 do. He married a Miss Sarah Wedgwood, a distant cousin 
 of his own, who appears to have had a share of the family 
 disorder ; and seeing that she became afflicted with a ' severe 
 rheumatic affection,' together with what were called ' fever 
 fits ' and ague, the offspring of this union were necessarily 
 born to a heritage of suffering. A daughter, Mary Ann, 
 became paralysed and blind, but died in childhood. Less 
 fortunate was a son Thomas Wedgwood, whose manhood, 
 through disease, was rendered an indescribably weary burden 
 to him. It was not until his thirty-fourth year that he was 
 relieved from his pain. His mental powers were of a very 
 high order ; indeed, Thomas Wedgwood is himself entitled to 
 rank as a man of genius, although his ill-health and his early 
 death cut short the promising scientific researches in which 
 he was engaged. Before his twentieth year he was prying 
 into the secrets of nature, particularly in relation to the pro- 
 blems of light and heat, and he was the virtual discoverer 
 of photography. For ten or twelve years before his death, 
 however, he could do little but suffer, bodily and mentally. 
 His brief life shows what terrible evils genius may bring 
 in its train. Who can read without being moved to pity of 
 the vain yearnings after health and strength of this poor 
 young man, to whom his immense fortune was only a mockery ? 
 He travelled, he was always buying new estates, he tried 
 opium, he thought of bhang, nothing procured him relief. 
 Dr. Robert Darwin, who attended him, anticipated that his 
 life would close in frenzy or paralysis, and paralysis it was 
 which carried him off in the prime of manhood. He was 
 remembered by one of his nieces as a 'tall, pale, sickly 
 gentleman, moving feebly with the aid of a stick,' for with 
 
238 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 his brnin affection he combined an incurable disease of the 
 stomach. 
 
 Another of Josiah Wedgwood's sons, John, had infirmity 
 without the solace of genius. He was a hypochondriac, and 
 a restless traveller. A daughter Catherine by her marriage 
 with a Unitarian preacher, named Willett, became the grand- 
 mother of the eminent physician, Sir Henry Holland ; it was 
 the other daughter Sarah who married Dr. Robert Darwin. 
 This lady died comparatively early ' after a long decline,' 
 but not until she had given birth to Charles Darwin. Thus 
 we see that the great biologist, whose discovery of the 
 principle of Natural Selection has revolutionised modern 
 thought, was sprung both on the paternal and the maternal 
 side from an insane and paralytic stock, in whom the great 
 neuroses alternated not only with genius but with the special 
 maladies of the drunkard and the ne'er-do-well. 
 
 Charles Darwin, with his heavy heritage of nerve-disorder, 
 lived an ailing life. ' For nearly forty years,' says his son, 
 Charles ' he never knew one day of the health of ordinary 
 Darwin men. . . . His life was one long struggle against 
 the weariness and strain of sickness.' He had his ' bad days,' 
 when he suffered from ' swimming in the head.' He had a 
 peculiar stammer on the first word of a sentence. ' I can 
 only recall this,' says F. Darwin, 'with words beginning with 
 W. Possibly he had a special difficulty with this letter, for 
 I have heard him say that, as a boy, he could not pronounce 
 W, and that if sixpence were offered him to pronounce 
 "white wine " he would pronounce " rite rine." ' ' Swimming 
 in the head,' or giddiness, is most probably an affection of 
 the cerebellum. ' The malady exhibits itself,' says Forbes 
 Winslow, ' at all periods of the day, and in all possible 
 positionsof the body. . . . I have known cle.'gy men attacked 
 w4iilst preaching in the pulpit, merchants when engaged at 
 the desk, or on the Stock Exchange, barristers whilst ad- 
 dressing Courts of Law.' Attacks of giddiness, as we have 
 seen, were a premonitory symptom of Dean Swift's insanity. 
 They may be experienced for years and ' frequently terminate, 
 says Clutterbnck, ' in apoplexy or palsy from the extension of 
 the disease in the brain.' Difficulties of articulation are, also, 
 
THE MONEY-MAKING FACULTY 239 
 
 of course, indications of brain disorder. Severe fainting fits 
 attacked Charles Darwin in liis latter years. The chief 
 affliction of his life was dyspepsia; his death was due to 
 angina pectoris. He married a cousin, Miss Emma Wedg- 
 wood, daughter of one of the sons of the great Josiah. 
 
 In Charles Darwin's brother, Erasmus Alvey Darwin, we 
 have the contre-coup of genius. ' His health from boyhood,' 
 says Charles, ' had been weak, and as a consequence he 
 failed in energy. His spirits were not high, sometimes low, 
 more especially during early and middle manhood.' Carlyle 
 refers to this Erasmus as a ' most diverse kind of mortal,' with 
 'health so poor,' that it 'quite doomed him to silence and 
 patient idleness.' ^ Miss Julia Wedgwood thought his mind 
 had the same kind of playfulness, the same lightness of 
 touch, the same tenderness, perhaps the ' same limitations ' 
 as that of Charles Lamb.^ A sad but suggestive com- 
 parison ! 
 
 Several minor descriptions of genius remain to be men- 
 tioned. Men who amass wealth or who initiate and suc- 
 cessfully carry out great commercial schemes are not usually 
 accounted geniuses, but there is no doubt that the qualities 
 of mind which bring them to the front are in many cases 
 identical in their origin and nature with the literary or 
 artistic gifts. That is to say, they are the result of an ex- 
 altation or depression of certain brain-areas and are associated 
 with the various ailments incident to an instability of the 
 cerebro-spiual system. It is necessary, however, to discrimi- 
 nate as to the means by which wealth is acquired. A 
 lucky speculation is not necessarily a proof of mental capacity 
 on the part of the speculator ; and large fortunes are made by 
 persons who accidentally obtain a monopoly of some com- 
 modity for which there is a general demand. In such cases 
 no genius need be presumed. Skill, foresight, and industry, 
 however, are native qualities of mind, for the absence of 
 which no training can compensate ; they are important 
 constituents of the business faculty. Avarice, again, which 
 frequently goes to the amassing of wealth, is a distinctly 
 neuropathic characteristic. 
 
 1 Revniriscences. - Sjwctator, September H, 1881. 
 
240 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Side by side with legal, poetic, musical, and literary gifts, 
 the parsimonious spirit crops up with curious frequency in 
 the biographies of the famous North family, who, dating from 
 the reign of Queen Elizabeth, were illustrious through several 
 generations. Francis North, the Lord Keeper of James II., 
 was one of a family of five brothers and one sister. The 
 father of these brothers wrote poems ; he was also ' economi- 
 cal.' In the sons the latter characteristic appears in various 
 forms. The Lord Keeper was crafty and designing. Macaulay 
 accuses him of selfishness, cowardice, and meanness. There 
 is no doubt, however, but that his abilities were very varied, 
 and of a high order. Besides studying the law, he 'pursued 
 his inquiries into all iugenious arts, history, humanity, 
 and languages, whereby he became not only a good lawyer 
 but a good historian, politician, mathematician, natural phi- 
 losopher and musician in perfection.' He is said to have 
 been always fanciful about his health. Roger North, brother 
 of the Lord Keeper, wrote excellent biographies of the family 
 and was musical. 
 
 Dudley North, another brother, contrived to make a 
 large fortune in the Levant and, retiring to England, be- 
 came a noted financier. The financial career of the latter 
 began at school when he trafficked with other boys; he 
 afterwards cheated sadly, and even his brother Roger allows 
 that ' as to all the mercantile arts and stratagems of trade 
 which could be used to get money from those he dealt with 
 he was no niggard.' He was ver)^ energetic and a great 
 swimmer. Macaulay admits that Dudley North was ' one of 
 the ablest men of his time.' In another brother, John North, 
 Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, we discover the neuro- 
 pathic taint which produced these excessive abilities. As a 
 boy John North was of a ' nice and tender constitution,' and 
 affected with a 'non-natural gravity' for his years. He 
 became penurious and hoarding, but was a thinker of great 
 earnestness and a remarkable Greek and Hebrew scholar. 
 According to the jargon of the biographer who so persistently 
 mistakes efi'ects for causes, study ruined his health. ' His 
 flesh became strangely flaccid and soft, he was weak and 
 shuffling, often crossing his legs as if he were tipsy; his 
 
AVAEICE AND PRODIGALITY 241 
 
 sleep was seldom or never easy, but interrupted with unquiet 
 and painful dreams, his active spirit had rarely any settle- 
 ment or rest.' Finally, he had a stroke of paralysis, of which 
 he died at thirty-eight. The sister, Mary North, afterwards 
 Lady Spring, had a prodigious memory. According to her 
 brother Roger, she used to recite ' by heart prolix romances 
 with the substance of speeches and letters as well as passages, 
 and this with little or no hesitation, but in a continual series 
 of discourses — the very memory of which is to me at this 
 day very wonderful.' ^ The Lord Keeper's eldest son and 
 successor in the family title was a nonentity, but his daughter, 
 Dudleya North, inheriting her uncle John's characteristics, 
 ' emaciated herself with study, whereby she had made familiar 
 to her not only the Greek and Latin, but the Oriental lan- 
 guages.' She died not long after the birth of her first child, 
 and the child speedily followed her to the grave. 
 
 Through the alliance of heiresses with noble families, 
 some indirect evidence is furnished of the neuropathic cha- 
 racter of the money-making faculty. The heiresses who win 
 a title are generally the daughters of men who have made 
 large fortunes in trade, and, as books of the peerage show, 
 there is a well-marked tendency on their part to sterility, 
 about one-fifth having no male children at all, a third one 
 child, and three-fifths two children only. For various 
 reasons, however, one of which is the possible unsoundness 
 of the husbands of these heiresses, trustworthy statistics on 
 the subject are not obtainable. 
 
 It is more important to note that the money-making 
 faculty alternates, as we should naturally expect it to do, with 
 prodigality, and the usual functional disorders in families 
 where a neuropathic taint exists. Men of genius are not 
 necessarily thriftless. Perhaps the majority are so, but 
 Reynolds and Turner were avaricious, Shakespeare contrived 
 to retire early with a competence, Josiah Wedgwood built 
 up one of the largest fortunes in the world, and the Darwins 
 were excellent men of business. On the other hand, Byron, 
 Coleridge, and Scott, were incapable of handling money, 
 while Corneille, according to his nephew De Fontenelle, had an 
 ' Roger North : Lives of the Norths. 
 
 B 
 
242 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 incapacity for business, which was only equalled by his 
 aversion to it. Frequently a father laboriously amasses a 
 fortune, which his son as recklessly squanders. The phe- 
 nomenon, a common one in social life, is explained by the 
 variations of heredity. As between father and son, there is 
 a shifting, so to speak, of the nervous centre of gravity with 
 a consequent modification of faculty, such as we see in the 
 families of men of genius. But just as among the accidents 
 of variation a man of genius may have a son who is gifted 
 also, so the successful man of business may likewise have a 
 son of his own calibre. 
 
 Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, a 
 gouty and eccentric subject, had brothers in trade who 
 amassed large fortunes. The Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer 
 families comprised bankers of great ability. Heine's father 
 was an improvident person, always struggling with misfor- 
 tune. His uncle Solomon, on the other hand, starting in life 
 with ' only a pair of leather breeches and sixteen groschen 
 in the pocket of them,' rose to the highest place in the 
 financial world, and died a millionaire. Anatole Demidofl' 
 who married into the Napoleon family, and who was notorious 
 under the Second Empire for his extravagance and debauch- 
 eries, belonged to a trading family in St. Petersburg, from 
 whom he inherited an enormous fortune, and with it paralysis. 
 His brother, Paul Demidotf, also a celebrity in Parisian 
 society, was accounted half mad. Amid his eccentricities 
 and cruelties, however, Paul Demidoff was singularly im- 
 pressionable to the sufferings occasioned by infirmity and 
 poverty, and spent thousands of pounds yearly in philan- 
 thropic acts. 
 
 As with avarice, so with philanthropy. It is a consti- 
 tutional characteristic, and its connection with an unstable 
 
 ^ condition of the cerebro-spinal system is readily 
 shown. Howard, the prison reformer, was a sickly 
 child. The son of a pious upholsterer, he was himself strongly 
 imbued with the religious spirit, but this did not prevent 
 him from being excessively self-willed and tyrannical in his 
 own household.^ In his youth he was thought to be con- 
 ' SloughLon: Hoivard the 1 kilant'lirGi^lst 
 
PIlTLAXTIir.OPY 248 
 
 sumptive, and lie had attacks of what the biographer calls 
 ' nervous fever ; ' but his death was due to some contagious 
 disease contracted in his wanderings. The philanthropist 
 left a son who was an inveterate drunkard, and who finally 
 became insane and had to be placed under restraint. This 
 young man, of whose mother nothing is known, except that 
 she died in childbed, ended his days in a lunatic asylum at 
 thirty-four. In his own person Howard exhibited eccen- 
 tricities unaccountable to his friends. It is related that in 
 Venice, during a hard winter, he took it into his head to ' go 
 about the streets without boots or gaiters, with no great coat, 
 and sometimes even no cravat on,' to the amazement of the 
 natives. The cruelty exercised by the philanthropist in his 
 domestic relations has always been a subject of perplexity 
 to his admirers. But they have succeeded in explaining it 
 away to their own satisfaction. ' He had a theory of family 
 discipline,' observes Stoughton, ' which, however conscien- 
 tiously formed, will be approved by only a few in the present 
 day. His idea of obedience was not the submission of love, 
 but a subjugation of will through the influence of fear, or 
 through the force of authority. But,' adds this reverent 
 apologist, ' we see in his case not parental unkindness, not 
 insensibility, not a hard, severe, ungenerous mind, — only a 
 misjucljment, an umvise opinion.' Quite so! But insensi- 
 bility and misjudgment belong to the same order of mental 
 phenomena as insanity itself. There can be no doubt that 
 Howard's domestic tyranny was as much the outcome of a 
 disordered brain or nervous system as his philanthropy. 
 
 Nield, a prison reformer who followed in Howard's foot- 
 steps, is also said to have been ' somewhat eccentric' An- 
 other notable worker in the same field, Sarah Martin, was, 
 in her latter days, ' greatly afflicted.' Similarly George 
 Moore, ' merchant and philanthropist,' one of the worthies 
 whose life has been written by Smiles, suffered at times from 
 ' intense pains in the head,' and felt his nervous system to 
 be ' much shattered.' — John Ellis, a working shoemaker of 
 Norwich, who had a passion for establishing reformatory 
 schools, presented a strange, uncouth, unkempt figure, 
 shambling in gait, and with a style of speech that could 
 
 K 2 
 
244 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 only be described as a half-inaudible mumble. He worked 
 at his i^hilanthropic projects night and day. He had also a 
 turn for mechanical invention. At eighty years of age, in a 
 fit of religious melancholy, he committed suicide by thrusting 
 his head into a leather-cutting machine. 
 
 William Wilberforce, the great enemy of the slave trade, 
 was all his life a valetudinarian. ' His frame from infancy 
 AViLBEE- was feeble, his stature small, his eyes weak — a fail- 
 FORCE iug which, with his many rich mental endowments, 
 he inherited from his mother.' ^ An unusual thoughtfulness 
 for others is said to have marked his earliest childhood. 
 Piety descended upon his mother in her later life. Wilber- 
 force exhibited some religious leanings in boyhood, but 
 these gave place at college and at the opening of his Parlia- 
 mentary career to a degree of worldliness, upon which, in 
 after years, ' he could not look back without unfeigned re- 
 morse.' He was then intellectually clever, ready-witted, an 
 accomplished singer, and a good mimic. At the age of 
 twenty-six he became suddenly alive to his state of sin and 
 corruption, and thereafter was a changed man, so much so, 
 that he made a ' frank avowal of his altered views ' to those 
 with whom he had hitherto lived in levity and thoughtless- 
 ness. During his life, Wilberforce's nervous condition ex- 
 pressed itself in occasional ' seizures ' of so alarming a 
 character that, for hours, he was ' utterly insensible.' Like 
 many neuropathies, however, he lived to a great age, leaving 
 two sons, whose inherited piety carried them into the church. 
 
 The relation of fervid piety to certain states of the cerebro- 
 spinal system has been referred to in a preceding chapter. 
 Further examples of this are furnished by Luther, Bunyan, 
 George Fox, and Cardinal Newman. Luther was a man of 
 powerful imagination, subject to nerve-affections, which he put 
 down to the devil. ' This toothache and earache 
 (neuralgia) that I am always suffering from,' he 
 writes, ' are worse than the plague. When I was in Coburg I 
 was tormented with noise and buzzing in my ears, just as 
 though some wind were tearing through my head. The devil 
 had something to do with it.' He also complained of giddiness. 
 • L\fe of Wilberforce. By his son. 
 
VISIONS 245 
 
 He sometimes saw tlie devil, but more frequently heard him. 
 In fact, the devil and he were upon the most familiar terms. 
 ' Once in our monastery at Wittenberg,' says the great re- 
 former, ' the devil, interrupting my studies, came into my cell 
 and thrice made a noise behind the stove, j iist as though he 
 were dragging some wooden measure along the floor. As I 
 found he was going to begin again, I gathered my books 
 together, and got into bed.' On another occasion he says : 
 ' I heard the devil above my cell walking in the cloister, but 
 as I knew it was the devil, I paid no attention to him and 
 went to sleep.' 
 
 John Bunyan was a violent, passionate boy. He says of 
 himself that for lying and swearing he had no equal ; and the 
 disorder of his brain is attested by the 'fearful ig^j^y^j^ 
 dreams and visions ' to which, at this period, he was 
 subject. He saw evil spirits in monstrous shapes, orgies of 
 devils, archangels, and what not. Apparently these visitations 
 kept his evil nature in check, or he thought they did. They 
 suddenly ceased when he was aboat seventeen. God then 
 left him to himself as he puts it, and gave him over to his 
 own wicked inclinations ; whereupon he fell into all kinds of 
 vice and ungodliness without further restraint. Among the 
 young tinker's acquaintances there was an ale-house-keeper 
 who had a half-witted son. For the amusement of his guests, 
 this ale-house-keeper used to torment the lad so . as to make 
 him curse his father, and wish the devil had him. ' The 
 devil did, at last, have the ale-house-keeper, and rent and 
 tore him till he died.' ' I,' says Bunyan, who relates this inci- 
 dent as a miracle, ' was an eye and ear- witness of what I here 
 say. ... I saw the father himself possessed, his flesh being 
 gathered up in a heap about the bigness of half an egg, to 
 the unutterable torture and affliction of the old man.' They 
 attempted to smoke the devil out, but he would not come, 
 and he afterwards carried the sufferer put of the world. 
 
 In Bunyan's conversion this miracle appears to have 
 played an important part. Yet we can now see that it was 
 a simple case of epilepsy ; the father of the half-witted son 
 having a convulsive seizure which proved fataL About the 
 age of twenty Bunyan's visions returned, but they assumed 
 
2-16 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 a beatific character. He heard spiritual voices and saw Christ 
 Himself looking down upon him from the sky ; and the 
 exalted mental condition of which these hallucinations were 
 the outcome, made him in due time not only a fervid preacher, 
 but the author of the ' Pilgrim's Progress.' Of Bunyan's 
 ailments nothing is known ; but one of his children was blind. 
 
 It was in a vision that the founder of Quakerism, George 
 Fox, like Francis d'Assisi, and other holy men, received the 
 consecration of the Spirit. In the early days of his mission 
 his visions were frequent ; in these he nearly always heard 
 the voice of the Lord, and on one occasion he records, ' the 
 creation gave anotlier smell to me than before beyond what 
 words can utter.' Every crazy impulse that passed through 
 his mind he regarded as an inspiration from on high. 
 
 In the family of John Henry Newman, the musical 
 
 faculty and a strong strain of ne'er-do-wellism were associated 
 
 „ , with intense reliofious convictions. Newman's father 
 Newman , .^ . . , , ^ -o ^ 
 
 was an enthusiastic musician, but thriltless and 
 
 unsuccessful in business. The ne'er-do-wellism existed 
 strongly in his youngest brother, Charles Newman, who was 
 eccentric and apparently destitute of all moral principle. 
 This person was accounted a disgrace to the family. While 
 emerging from his teens he renounced all his relatives on the 
 ground that they were too religious. He w^as sent to a 
 German university, but left it without offering himself for 
 examination, a step he explained by saying that the judges 
 would not grant him a degree because of the offence he had 
 given them by his treatment of faith and morals in an essay 
 which they had styled teterrima (' most abominable '). Julius 
 Hare, a clergyman, to whom he was known, used to make 
 excuses for the religious and moral obliquities of this member 
 of the Newman family on the ground of ' partial insanity.' ^ 
 
 Peligious conversion presents some instructive features to 
 the psychologist. One of the most rapturous cases of con- 
 version on record is that of a young woman in her twentieth 
 year, a disciple of Wesley's, whom she calls her ' dear and 
 most honoured father in Christ.' The change in her condition 
 
 ' Covtempnrary Ilf'riP7i\ September 1800: 'Cardinal Newman and hli 
 Conteaiporaiius.' l>y Wili'rcd Mc^neil. 
 
PIETY 247 
 
 began witli a violent agony of about four hours' duration. 
 '■ Then,' says the patient, ' I began to feel the Spirit of God 
 bearing witness with my s]:)irit that I was born of God. Oh, 
 mighty, powerful, hapjiy change ! The love of God was shed 
 abroad in my heart, and a flame kindled there with paiiis so 
 violent, yet so very ravishing, that my body was almost torn 
 asunder. I sweated ; I trembled ; I fainted ; I sang. Oh, I 
 thought my head was a fountain of water. I was dissolved 
 in love. My beloved is mine and I am his. He has all 
 charms ; he has ravished my heart ; he is my comforter, my 
 friend, my all. He is now in his garden feeding among the 
 lilies. Oh, I am sick of love. He is altogether lovely, the 
 chiefest among ten thousand. Oh, how Jesus fills; Jesus 
 extends, Jesus overwhelms the soul in which He dwells.' ^ 
 
 Experiment has shown that exaltation of this kind can 
 be produced by hachisch.^ Moreau of Tours, who experimented 
 upon himself with that drug, has left his sensations on record. 
 ^ It is really happiness,' says this writer, ' which is produced 
 by hachisch, and by this I imply an enjoyment entirely moral 
 and by no means sensual as we might be induced to suppose. 
 This is surely a very curious circumstance, and some remark- 
 able inferences may be drawn from it — this, for instance, 
 among others, that every feeling of joy and gladness even, 
 when the cause of it is exclusively moral, may be nothing 
 else than sensations purely physical developed in the interior 
 of the system. For the hachisch-eater is happy, not like 
 the gourmand, the famished man, or the voluptuary who has 
 satisfied his appetite, but like him who hears tidings of great 
 joy, the miser counting his money, the gambler successful in 
 play, or the ambitious man whose hopes are realised.' In 
 cases of religious conversion there would seem to be a 
 profound disturbance of the different sensory and motor 
 centres of the brain ; and it is more than probable that this 
 occurs only in organisations which are naturally excitable, 
 and at the same time deficient in memories of a corrective 
 kind, and therefore peculiarly open to the contagion of 
 
 ' Southey : Life of Wesley. 
 
 * Moreau : Du Hachisch et V Alienation Mentale. 
 
248 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 example. If so, the most vigorous proselytising is likely to 
 be successful only in a certain proportion of cases, many 
 persons being condemned by their organisations to remain 
 insensible to the most rousing appeals from the palpit or the 
 platform. 
 
 The passages italicised in the statement of Wesley's 
 convert, above quoted, testify to the existence of a purely 
 physical process in the brain and nervous system, and it is 
 curious to note how the sexual organisation is called into play 
 without the sufferer's knowledge. The erotic influence is not 
 so clear in this case, however, as in that of an ecstatic young 
 woman observed by Moreau, who has left copious accounts of 
 her experience where she evidently confounds her carnal 
 appetites with the ' Divine Love.' One passage of Mdlle. 
 X.'s confessions may be quoted : ' During my long hours of 
 sleeplessness in the night,' she observes, ' my beloved Saviour 
 began to make Himself manifest to me. Pondering over the 
 meditations of St. Franyois de Sales in the Song of Songs, 
 I seemed to feel all my faculties suspended, and crossing my 
 arms upon my chest, I awaited in a sort of dread what might 
 be revealed to me. ... I saw the Redeemer veritably in the 
 flesh. . . . He extended Himself beside me, pressed me so 
 closely that I could feel His crown of thorns and the nails in 
 His feet and hands, while He pressed His lips over mine, 
 giving me the most ravishing kiss of a divine Spouse, and 
 sending a delicious thrill through my entire body.' ^ 
 
 A derangement of the sexual sense is common in insanity, 
 especially in female patients. In the days of a belief in 
 witchcraft many poor women, labouring under hallucinations, 
 confessed to having commerce with the devil. Male converts 
 are less subject than female to such erotic influences, though 
 the excesses alleged to occur at the love feasts of certain 
 sects may be assigned to this cause. All ' conversions,' how- 
 ever, appear to be essentially neurotic in their nature, 
 exhibiting during their fervid period the same tendency to 
 fluctuate as ordinary hallucinations. 
 
 John Wesley's younger brother Charles, a valetudinarian 
 through the greater part of his long life, in consequence, it 
 ' Moreau : La PsycJwlogie Morbide. 
 
EELIGIOUS CONVEESION 249 
 
 was believed, of having ' injured his constitution by close 
 application and excessive abstinence at Oxford,' had two sons 
 who, by a familiar metamorphosis of heredity, were ' among 
 the most distinguished musicians of their age.' ^ The musical 
 performances of these young men were held by some of their 
 pious friends to be ' dishonourable to God.' Their father was 
 less bigoted. In a letter to his brother he said : ' I am clear 
 without doubt that my son's concert is after the will and 
 order of Providence.' When John Wesley printed this letter 
 after his brother's death, he added in a note : * I am clear of 
 another mind.' It is almost pathetic to reflect that the piety 
 which urged John Wesley to this uncharitable conclusion 
 was, in a scientific sense, of the same genesis as the artistic 
 accomplishment he censured. Among the early leaders of 
 the Methodist revival movement nerve-disorder manifested 
 itself strongly. John Oliver was seized with a spirit of 
 fanaticism as a boy, and afterwards became a starring 
 preacher. He was afilicted with a scrofulous disorder, in- 
 herited from a father who had 'a most violent temper.' 
 Grimshaw in his unconverted state, according to Southey, 
 ' was certainly insane.' Afterwards he was always more or 
 less eccentric. His change of mind, which was not till he 
 had been ten years in Holy Orders, was ' preceded by what 
 he supposed to be a miraculous impression upon his senses,' 
 probably a neuropathic affection, and ' the only son of this 
 singular man became a drunkard, notwithstanding that he 
 had been favoured with a religious education,' says his father's 
 biographer, ' and had been prayed for by some of the holiest 
 men in the land.' Oiie of Wesley's pupils was a young man 
 named Hall. He was, for a time, very pious, and married 
 one of Wesley's sisters. By-and-by, Hall fell into strange 
 moods and fancies. ' He publicly and privately recommended 
 polygamy as conformable to nature, preached in its defence, 
 and practised as he preached. Soon he laid aside all preten- 
 sion to religion, professed himself an infidel, and led the life 
 of an adventurer and a profligate at home and abroad, acting 
 sometimes as a physician, sometimes as a priest, and assuming 
 any character according to the humour or the convenience of 
 * Southey : Life of Wesley. 
 
250 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the day.' After some years, however, his piety returned, and 
 he died in the odour of sanctity. There was much nerve- 
 disorder in the ranks of the eminent Protestant Divines who 
 flourished in Europe from the Reformation down to the close 
 of the last century. Middleton's lives ^ abound in examples. 
 Wicklifi'e died of paralysis, Melancthon's health required con- 
 stant care, and Calvin was thin and consumptive. George 
 Herbert, who was consumptive, and subject to frequent 
 ' fevers ' and other infirmities, appears to have grown more 
 pious as he became more stricken ; he was also a poet. 
 Philip Henry, called the ' heavenly Henry,' was weakly as a 
 child, and was subject to great excitement in the pulpit, where 
 ' he sweated profusely as he prayed fervently ; ' he died of 
 apoplexy. Harvey, who died at thirty, was such a weakly, 
 puny object that his father did not like his becoming a 
 minister, lest his stature should render him despicable. 
 Hervey was weakly, and was terribly emaciated before his 
 death. Guise became lame and blind. Toplady struggled 
 constantly against ill-health, until he succumbed at thirty- 
 eight. 
 
 A noteworthy circumstance from the physiological point 
 of view is, that not a few of Middleton's worthies were, like 
 Bunyan, irregular and wild to begin with, piety supervening 
 upon prodigality in strict accordance with pathological prin- 
 ciples. Some of them in their youth were given to drunken- 
 ness and profanity, others to licentiousness. Allowing for 
 the exaggerated view which a religious biographer would 
 naturally take of worldly proclivities, the ' conversion ' of these 
 good and gracious men is an instructive detail in mental 
 science. Further evidence of the essentially pathological 
 nature of religious enthusiasm is to be found in the fact that 
 the children of extremely pious parents often turn out badly. 
 Upon this, as upon so many other matters that seem to tell 
 against his protege, the biographer is curiously, one might 
 almost say dishonestly reticent, but the fact is one of common 
 observation, and is quite in accordance with the principle of 
 the metamorphosis of heredity. The direct transmission of 
 piety from father to son appears to be in pretty much the 
 ' Middlcton : Miof/rajjJna EvangcUca. 
 
CRIMINALITY 251 
 
 same ratio as tliat of epilepsy or any other special affection 
 of the nervous system. Matthew Henry, son of Philip above 
 mentioned, was devout from infancy, and precocious. At 
 three years of age he could read and even comment upon the 
 Bible. He was weakly when young, and is said to have 
 further injured liis constitution by ' fervent preaching ' and 
 overstudy. The mother of George Herbert was a woman of 
 ' extraordinary piety.' Other examples might be quoted, but, 
 generally speaking, piety appears to be the result of indirect 
 transmission ; the biographer with the best intentions in the 
 world being unable in the majority of cases to employ more 
 definite phrases with reference to the parentage of his subjects 
 than that the father was a wortliy man, the mother an excellent 
 woman, and so forth. Of George Herbert's brothers one was 
 a sceptical writer, the second a renowned duellist, and the 
 third a dashing naval officer — the two latter showing that 
 courage, like so many forms of genius, depends upon a con- 
 genital want of mental balance. The jumpings, contortions, 
 and shoutings of the converted at revival meetings, are only 
 the physical outcome of violent cerebral action. Just as anger 
 makes a man walk sharply up and down a room and throw 
 his arms about, so strong religious emotion passing into the 
 motor area of the brain induces violent and aimless move- 
 ments of the limbs, and the emission of senseless sounds. 
 Much the same effect is produced by the excitement of battle, 
 as savao^e war-dances and the excesses of civilised soldierv 
 testify. 
 
 It is startling enough to find that, not only the ' lunatic 
 and the poet,' but the successful merchant, the philanthropist, 
 •and the fervidly pious person ' are of imagination all compact.' 
 What shall be said if, to the list, be added the criminal ? 
 Yet, in sober truth, there is every reason to believe that the 
 habitual criminal owes his characteristics to the same set 
 of causes as the types above named. He, too, is a man of 
 genius in the sense that he is differently constituted from his 
 neighbours. That criminality is congenital is shown by an 
 overwhelming mass of evidence collected by Lombroso, 
 Dugdale, and other investigators of the present day. In a 
 large proportion of cases, criminals have abnormal skulls 
 
252 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 and brains approacliing the idiotic type ; they are epileptic, 
 alcoholic, and otherwise afflicted with nerve-disorder in a 
 high degree ; physical malformations and sensory defects are 
 frequent among them. The progenitor of the infamous 
 Jukes family in America, whose genealogical tree has been 
 made out for seven generations, and who now number nearly 
 six hundred individuals, all more or less, stained with crime, 
 was evidently of the neuropathic temperament. He is de- 
 scribed as a ' hunter and fisher, a hard drinker, jolly and com- 
 panionable, averse to steady toil, working hard by spurts and 
 idling by turns, becoming blind in his old age and entailing 
 his blindness upon his children and grandchildren.' In the 
 Jukes family * harlotry,' among other vicious proclivities, is 
 shown to be largely due to heredity, there being among 
 women of the Jukes blood over 20 per cent, more harlots than 
 among other women of the same class intermarrying or coha- 
 biting with the Jukes. 
 
 Like men of genius, criminals show a considerable in- 
 equality of faculty. They are often excessively vain and 
 excessively addicted to venereal pleasures. While remark- 
 ably shrewd, too, in some respects, they are just as obtuse 
 in others. ' Some young criminals,' says Barwick Baker, 
 ' appear to have scarcely the power of determining between 
 good and evil. Yet, strange to say, there are among 
 them boys whom almost any schoolmaster would class as of 
 remarkably high intelligence, their arithmetic, their know- 
 ledge of Scripture, their answers, not merely as to facts but as 
 to reasoning, being very far above the average of boys of their 
 age. ... In the case of the passionate, the bad, or the 
 idiot,' this writer adds, ' it does not seem as if punishment 
 would have much effect.' ^ The truth is that punishment 
 operates as a deterrent only in cases where there is no great 
 departure from normal conditions ; the criminal propensity 
 may be so strong as to be ungovernable, in. which case it 
 may be classed as a true insanity. 
 
 Closely related to criminality is the ne'er-do-wellism which 
 
 » Lombroso : Z' U'o7no delinqimite. Dugdale : The Juhen ; a Studij in 
 Cnme^ Paiq)erism, and Heredity. Barwick Baker : War with Crime. 
 
NE'ER-DO-WELLISM 253 
 
 is so constantly found in the families of distinguished men. 
 This condition has been shown to occur in an aggravated form 
 in near relations of Newton, Southey, Campbell, Scott, the 
 Brontes, Mrs. Siddons, William Herschell, Warren Hastings, 
 Josiah Wedgwood, Balzac, and Dickens. It is the border- 
 land between crime and genius. 
 
254 TnE INSANITY OE GENIUS 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ME5I0EY AS AN ELEMENT OF GENIUS— AUTOMATIC ACTIVITY OP THE 
 BRAIN — CREATIVE GENIUS AS DISTINGUISHED FROM TALENT — 
 DREAMS OP EMINENT MEN — WAKING VISIONS —INSPIRATION — ITS 
 PHYSICAL BASIS — THE IMPULSE TO PRODUCE — ACTIVE AND SLUG- 
 GISH GENIUSES— LITERARY STYLE— METRE AND CADENCE AS 
 SENSORI-MOTOR EFFECTS — THE VISUAL ELEMENT IN LITERA- 
 TURE — WIT AND PUNNING — THE ARTISTIC FACULTY AS AN ASSO- 
 CIATED SENSORY AND MOTOR ENDOWMENT — EXAMPLES IN MUSIC 
 AND PAINTING — ACTING CONSIDERED AS A MOTOR SUSCEPTI- 
 BILITY — ITS INDEPENDENCE OP INTELLECT— MILITARY GENIUS AND 
 EPILEPSY — BRAIN-MECHANISM OP THE ORATOR, THE STATESMAN, 
 THE PHILOSOPHER, THE MAN OF SCIENCE, THE PHILANTHROPIST, 
 THE RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIAST, THE MAX OF BUSINESS, THE NE'ER- 
 DO-WELL, THE MISER, AND THE CRIMINAL 
 
 The external manifestations of genius having been set 
 forth in some detail, there remains to be considered its action 
 in the individual, with special reference to the character of 
 his work. This brings us back to the subject of brain- 
 structure, where alone the solution of such problems as 
 reason, judgment, imagination, and inspiration is to be 
 sought. As we have seen, there are many grounds for be- 
 lieving that our sensations are represented by so many 
 groupings of nerve-cells and fibres in the brain, that ideas 
 consist of organic cohesions or associations among such 
 groupings, and that the so-called exercise of reason, judgment, 
 or will is an automatic struggle for predominance between 
 revived and associated impressions, one set of which finally 
 asserts itself, and is translated into action. If all brains 
 were constituted alike, all men would think and feel alike. 
 But this is not so. As there are diversities of brain- 
 structure, so there are diversities of intelligence and intellect. 
 Before a sight, a sound, or a touch can become an idea, it 
 
BirORTANCE OF MEMORY ^Z5 
 
 must be coupled with other sensations or movements to 
 which it is in some way rehited ; there must be a cohesion 
 formed between the present sensation and a group more or 
 less extensive of past sensations ; and just in proportion as 
 these associations are readily established and far-reaching, 
 will the person's ideas be simple or complex. The individual, 
 therefore, is clever or stupid, sharp or dull, according to the 
 receptivity of his centres of sense and the facility with which 
 in these, hosts of associated feelings can be summoned np. 
 The centres of the sensations which accompany muscular 
 action and which form in part the basis of our ideas of move- 
 ment would appear to be distinct from the motor centres 
 themselves and to be merely associated with these. The de- 
 struction of the motor centres in the gray matter paralyses 
 the power of execution, but not the ideal conception of the 
 movement itself. For a dog with its motor centres destroyed 
 has a distinct notion of the movements desired when asked to 
 give a paw, though it makes only ineffectual struggles to 
 comply with the demand. Nevertheless, highly developed 
 and susceptible motor centres necessarily re-act upon our 
 sensations and thus assist in the production of thought. 
 
 If an ordinary man were to be suddenly equipped with 
 the brain of a Shakespeare, he could not for many years be 
 as witty or as wise as his prototype, because he would have 
 no fuud of past experience or observation to go upon. He 
 would have to accumulate his knowledge before he could 
 apply it. A good memory is an essential element of genius. 
 Macaulay's memory is proverbial. Ben Jonson's must have 
 been nearly as good, for until he was forty, as he tells us, 
 he could repeat all that he had ever written and whole 
 books that he had read. Niebuhr, the historian, restored 
 from recollection a large book of accounts that had been ac- 
 cidentally destroyed in one of the public offices of Denmark. 
 Gibbon, Pascal, Leibnitz, Burke, and many other eminent 
 men, are noted for their memories. It is said that Tbe- 
 mistocles could call by their names the 20,000 citizens of 
 Athens, and that Cyrus knew the name of every soldier in 
 his army. 
 
 The nerve-cells of the brain are not merely retentive, 
 
256 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 tliey may also be spontaneously active, and without any ex- 
 ternal stimulus throw into all sorts of shapes and combina- 
 tions the existing material of thought. This is the secret of 
 the hallucinations of insanity, and there is no doubt that the 
 same excitability of the nerve-cells of various regions of the 
 brain is the cause of what is called creative genius. A cho- 
 leric temperament like Walter Savage Landor's represents a 
 rapid discharge of nervous energy. Many men of genius are 
 of very active habits, and an excess of energy in the motor 
 area of their brain is no doubt a necessary condition of their 
 productiveness. If the sensory centres alone are active, the 
 individual will pass his life amid visions and reveries which 
 he will not exert himself to give to the world in the shape of 
 poetry, fiction, or art. On the other hand, activity may be 
 confined to the motor regions, in which case we have a fussy, 
 bustling personage, whose energy expends itself to no purpose, 
 having no basis of observation to work upon. In order that 
 genius may incontestably assert itself, there must be a special 
 excitability of both the sensory and motor areas of the brain. 
 The energy so manifested may be rapid and temporary, or slow 
 and persistent. In the former case we have men of brilliant 
 achievements, like Shelley, Byron, and Brougham ; in the 
 latter, slow and laborious workers like Wordsworth and 
 Flaubert. When the spontaneous activity of the nerve-cells 
 is great the condition of the brain is a morbid one ; whence 
 the close relationship of genius to insanity. 
 
 The following notes by a medical man of the course of an 
 insane patient's ravings, illustrate most aptly both the sponta- 
 neous generation of ideas in the brain and the mechanical 
 process whereby one train of thought is associated with 
 another : — ' Bring the tea — tea comes from China — wall of 
 China — wall miw, muraille, difference between them in French 
 — French habits — habit a coat — long-tailed coats for soldiers 
 — jackets — division of Spaniards into jacquitos and habitos — 
 civil war — murder of Cabrera's mother — mother a widow — 
 widows — suttee — cremation — Inquisition — Catholic faith — 
 Pope of Eome — Capitol — Tarpeian Rock — mode of punishing 
 criminals — Central Criminal Court — Court of Victoria — 
 visit to the King of France — Queen Bess — female sovereigns 
 
ORIGIN OF HALLUCINATIONS 257 
 
 — lady who tliouglit herself Mary Queen of Scots — Highland 
 dress not ancient — introduced by an Englishman — English- 
 men all over the globe — Colonies best resource of the poor — 
 Poor Law — introduced by the Whigs — Whigs and Tories — 
 origin of the names — surnames from trade — state of trade — - 
 Board of Trade — Board of Green Cloth — green — composition 
 of light — polarisation — Poland — sympathy with Poland — 
 nerves and muscles — poisoning from mussels — poisoning — 
 new style of novel writing — printing has superseded writing 
 —printing reports — cannon — attack on Afghanistan — Pro- 
 gress of British Empire — Emperor — Napoleon — snows of 
 Russia — Russian leather — binding — Bodleian Library.' ^ 
 And in the delirious rapidity of thought, peculiar to the 
 insanity that arises from over-excitability of the nerve-cells, 
 not only is the patient unable to control his ideas, but his 
 mechanism of articulation is strained to the uttermost by the 
 rapidity of its action. 
 
 Nicolai, whose hallucinations have already been referred 
 to, found that the figures he saw before him came and went 
 without his being able to control them. ' The phantasms,' 
 he remarks, ' appeared to me involuntarily, as if they had 
 been presented externally like the phenomenon of nature, 
 though they certainly had their origin internally.' Similar 
 observations were afterwards made by a medical man named 
 Bostock, to whom, after a period of nervous prostration, figures 
 like those of Nicolai appeared. What chiefly struck Bostock 
 was that the figures which were best defined and longest 
 visible were such as he had no recollection of having pre- 
 viously seen. ' For about twenty-four hours,' he says, ' I had 
 constantly before me a human figure, the features and dress 
 of which were as distinctly visible as those of my real ex- 
 istence, and of which, after many years, I still retain the most 
 lively impression ; yet neither at the time nor since have I 
 been able to discover any person previously known to me 
 who resembled it.' It is proved by the experience of hypnotic 
 patients that many impressions are made upon our senses of 
 which we are unconscious, and no doubt Bostock at some 
 time or other saw the figure he speaks of. He may have 
 
 ^ Wigan. 
 
 S 
 
258 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 seen, indeed, only the component parts of it, for the spon- 
 1 aneous action of the nerve-cells is capable of blending several 
 past impressions into one, as when an insane patient sees 
 tioating before him portions of human faces and bodies which 
 suddenly combine to form a grotesque and impossible whole. 
 All images and ideas that pass through the mind are neces- 
 sarily either revivals in whole or in part of actual sensory 
 impressions, or of their induced effects. An image may rise 
 before us different from anything we have actually seen, but 
 it will be found to have been suggested by something in our 
 past experience through the faculty whereby we discriminate 
 the like and the unlike. 
 
 Dreams, in all their variety, are the product of the 
 automatic action of the brain. ' The degree of the soul's 
 creativeness in sleep,' says Lamb, ' might furnish no whimsical 
 criterion of the quantum of poetic faculty resident in the same 
 soul waking.' The remark is absolutely just. A brain well 
 stored with impressions will always furnish richer dreams 
 than one which is less susceptible. It was only a Coleridge 
 who could have dreamt the poem of Kubla Khan. Coleridge's 
 account of the origin of this poem is as follows : — ' In the 
 summer of the year 1797, the author, then in ill-health, 
 retired to a lonely farmhouse on the confines of Somerset and 
 Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition an 
 anodyne had been prescribed, from the effect of which he fell 
 asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the 
 following sentence in Purchas's Pilgrimage : — " Here the 
 Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately 
 garden thereunto, and thus ten miles of fertile ground were 
 enclosed with a wall." The author continued for about three 
 hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, 
 during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he 
 could not have composed less than from 200 to oOO lines, if 
 that, indeed, can be called composition in which all the 
 images rose up before him as things, with the parallel produc- 
 tion of the correspondent impressions without any sense or 
 consciousness of effort. On waking he appeared to himself 
 to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his 
 pen, ink, and paper instantly and eagerly wrote down the 
 
DEE A MS 259 
 
 lines that are here preserved.' Before he had transcribed 
 much of his poem, Coleridge was called away, and on resuming 
 his task some time afterwards he found to his mortification 
 that, ' with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines, 
 all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of 
 a stream into which a stone is thrown.' 
 
 Southey's dreams are remarkable for their originality, and 
 show what wild work may go on in a brain which is morbidly 
 excitable. They are all such conceptions as might originate 
 with a madman. For example : He dreamt that he met a 
 human head which had been so born, without any body 
 belonging to it. Afterwards he thought he was in a castle 
 where there were several such heads, well born and enjoying 
 respect and all the comforts that could be given them. They 
 were sustained by odours, and had all the pleasures of taste, 
 but swallowed nothing, and they had power enough of motion 
 to turn themselves as they liked. Equally fantastic wa,g the 
 dream that he had been left a legacy of ten thousand pounds on 
 condition that he should never wear breeches, pantaloons, 
 trousers, or any description of that masculine garb, and that 
 he was deliberating whether to adopt Moorish or Highland 
 dress, though afraid the former would not be allowed. The 
 following is pictorial ly vivid : 
 
 ' I thought a fiend and a good spirit were shooting arrows 
 at each other, many of which fell near me, and I gathered 
 them, and endeavoured to shoot at the fiend also, who was 
 very little, but never could get them to fit the bow. The 
 good spirit at last heaped coals and peat upon the head of his 
 enemy, so as to bury him completely till he, by the fieriness of 
 his nature, kindled them and they blazed and burned, burning 
 him who yet could not be consumed.' 
 
 And here are all the elements of a romance : — 
 
 ^ To my great surprise I discovered that my wife had a 
 former husband living. He was either by birth or descent a 
 Spaniard, but in the English army. He had been dotingJy 
 fond of her, and she of him, till in some action he received a 
 musket ball in his leg, which, as long as it remained there, 
 rendered him feeble, and he would not suffer it to be extracted 
 because some old woman had told him it would be fatal. 
 
 8 2 
 
2G0 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Upon tliis he abandoned his wife. I now, however, under- 
 stood that he was perfectly recovered. The way I learnt this 
 was by seeing a Spanish grammar, so philosophically and ably 
 arranged as to make me inquire for the anonymous author, 
 who proved to be this person. Upon questioning Edith she 
 said it was all true. ... I asked her if I should write to him 
 or find him out. She said no, because she still felt a regard 
 for him which he did not deserve.' 
 
 Dr. Johnson says : ' I was often during sleep engaged in 
 controversial discussions, and whilst recognising that my 
 antagonist occasionally had the best of the conflict, I entirely 
 forgot that my own arguments as well as those advanced by 
 my opponent were supplied by myself.' Newton is alleged 
 to have solved a subtle mathematical problem while sleeping, 
 and Condorcet recognised in his dreams the final steps in a 
 difficult calculation which had puzzled him through the day. 
 Hartley Coleridge's dreams were intensely painful. ' There 
 are figures always at me in my dreams,' he writes, ' hooting, 
 pelting, spitting at me, stopping my way, setting all sorts of 
 hideous, scornful faces at me, oppressing me with indescrib- 
 able horrors, to which wakiug life has no parallel.' Shelley 
 also had vivid and distressiag dreams, which he has not left 
 on record. 
 
 Apart from actual hallucinations there are waking experi- 
 ences as vivid and as fantastic as any dreams. Examples of 
 what Galton calls the visualising faculty prove how, by the 
 automatic activity of the nerve-cells of the brain, conscious 
 and unconscious memories are worked up into new and 
 startling combinations. ' When passing a shop in Tottenham 
 Court Road,' says a correspondent, ' I went in to order a 
 Dutch cheese, and the proprietor, a bullet-headed man whom 
 I had never seen before, rolled a cheese on the marble slab of 
 his counter, asking me if that one would do. I answered yes, 
 left the shop, and thought no more of the incident. The 
 following evening on closing my eyes I saw a head detached 
 from the body rolling about slightly on a white surface. I 
 recognised the face, but could not remember where I had seen 
 it, and it was only after thinking about it for some time that 
 I identified it as that of the cheesemonger who had sold me 
 
WAKING VISIONS £01 
 
 the clieese on the preceding day. I may mention that I have 
 often seen the man since, and that I found the vision I saw 
 was exactly like him, although, if I had been asked to describe 
 the man before I saw the vision, I should have been unable to 
 do so.' 
 
 Still more remarkable is the recorded experience of a well- 
 known clergyman. Whenever he shuts his eyes and waits he 
 is sure in a short time to see before him the clear imaare of 
 some object or other, but usually not quite natural in its 
 shape. It then begins to change from one form to another, 
 and continues to do so as long as he cares to watch it. One 
 of these initial images seen by him was a cross-bow. This 
 was immediately provided with an arrow remarkable for its 
 pronounced barb and superabundance of feathering. Some 
 person, but too indistinct to be recognised except in the 
 hands, appeared to shoot the arrow from the bow. The single 
 arrow was then accompanied by a flight of arrows from right 
 to left, which completely occupied the field of vision. These 
 changed into falling stars, then into flakes of a heavy snow- 
 storm ; the ground gradually appeared as a sheet of snow, 
 where previously there had been vacant space. Then a well- 
 known rectory, fish pond, walls, etc., all covered with snow, 
 came into view most vividly and clearly defined. The rectory 
 suggested a bed of tulips. These all vanished, except one, 
 which gradually became denuded of its petals until only the 
 stump was left. And so on. When this process is in full 
 activity the writer says he feels as if he were a mere spectator 
 at a diorama of a very eccentric kind, the succession of 
 images refusing to be modified or interfered with by the 
 will. The same writer gives another example. He thought 
 of a gun. The stock immediately came into view, the metal 
 plate and wood-work being very distinct. As he was scru- 
 tinising it, the stock oscillated up and down and crumpled 
 up, turning into something like a tuning fork. He then 
 proceeded to examine the lock and get it well into view, the 
 rest of the gun disappearing. It turned out to be an old- 
 fashioned flint-lock. It immediately began to nod backwards 
 and forwards in a manner suggestive of the beak of a bird 
 pecking. Consequently it became forthwith converted into 
 
 I 
 
262 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the head of a bird with a long curved beak, the knob on the 
 lock becoming the head of the bird. He then looked to the 
 right, expecting to see the barrel, but the snout of a saw-fish, 
 with the tip distinctly broken off, appeared instead. He had 
 not thought either of a flint-lock or of a saw-fish, both came 
 spontaneously.^ 
 
 In all minds of a creative turn some process like that 
 above described is constantly going on, though it may not 
 always come within the scope of consciousness. The old 
 material of thought is being constantly moulded afresh. Old 
 material it is, inevitably. Nothing absolutely new ever is or 
 can be evolved by the automatic action of the sensory centres, 
 which, from their nature, can only be concerned with impres- 
 sions already received in one form or another from the outer 
 world. Hence the highest conceptions of genius must have 
 some actual basis of observation to go upon, and the richer a 
 person's stores of observation, the more retentive of their im- 
 pressions his various sensory centres are, the better he is 
 equipped for the creative operations of the intellect. In all 
 De Quincey's visions ^ the reader can perceive how fragments 
 of conscious memories in his brain are worked up into fan- 
 tastic images, each with a power of seemingly endless growth 
 and self-reproduction due to unconscious memories. The 
 visions of the English opium-eater are those of a man who 
 has read history and who has a literary knowledge of the East; 
 they are revivals of images and conceptions that have passed 
 through his bi-ain in his waking hours. For the function of 
 opium is to arouse not only known, but all sorts of un- 
 known, that is to say, forgotten or unsuspected, nerve-group- 
 ings in the brain — memories which have never been vivid or 
 consistent enough to make us conscious of them. These 
 lie buried in the living tissue of the cerebral substance, but 
 are ready to be revived, like invisible ink, in due season. 
 The dreams of the opium-eater necessarily take shape from 
 his own sensory impressions ; they are portions of his past 
 sensory impressions, conscious or unconscious, recalled into a 
 state of activity. To have the visions of a De Quincey one 
 
 ' Galton : Inqviry into Human Facnltj/. 
 
 ^ De Quincey: Cunfasioiis of an English OpUiin-catcT. 
 
INSriRATION 263 
 
 must have the general reading and knowledge of a De 
 Quincey. The reveries of the illiterate Malay sailor to 
 whom De Quincey once gave a dose of his drug, would differ 
 from those of the author of the ' Confessions ' almost as 
 widely as the dreams of the rabbit in his warren differ from 
 those of the fox in his hole. There would be an entirely 
 distinct order of cerebral memories aroused in each case. 
 
 The mysterious gift of inspiration, essential to all literary 
 and artistic genius, is evidently nothing but the automatic 
 activity of the nerve-cells of the brain — a phase of that 
 morbid condition which finds its highest expression in in- 
 sanity. For this reason inspiration can never carry us 
 beyond the limits of experience. Milton's archangels are 
 only disguised men. They are animated by purely human 
 motives, and their warfare is based upon the strategy of 
 human battles ; while the poet's conception of the universe is 
 in accordance with the Ptolemaic system, which was generally 
 accepted in his day. If the most highly gifted writer of 
 fiction attempted to describe the inhabitants of another planet, 
 he would inevitably draw upon his experience of human or 
 animal life. The Deity himself has a human shape assigned 
 to him by the loftiest imaginations.^ When Milton wrote 
 * Paradise Lost ' he was blind, but the imagery he employed 
 in it was that which he had stored up while he had the use 
 of his eyesight ; it is very largely visual. Had he been born 
 blind, the poem would not have been written or must have 
 taken a wholly different shape. Again, Dante wrote in an 
 age when tortures were commonly practised by rulers ; hence 
 his conception of hell and purgatory, which he would inevit- 
 ably have modified had he been writing at the present day. 
 
 The difference between genius and talent may be thus 
 defined. In genius there is a spontaneous morbid activity of 
 the nerve-cells and fibres of the brain whereby new combina- 
 tions of sensory impressions and memories are constantly 
 being formed. This condition is identical in kind with that 
 
 * In Paradise Lost Eaphael tells Adam that God * did wisely ' not to 
 divulge his secrets to be scanned by those who ought rather to admire, and 
 that if they choose to conjecture, he has perhaps left the fabric of the 
 universe to their disputes in order that they may ' move his laughter ' by 
 their quaint opinions. 
 
204 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 v>"hicli obtains in certain forms of insanity ; but whereas in 
 the latter case the nerve-connections or memories which 
 enable the patient to keep in touch with his surroundings 
 are weakened or destroyed, in genius such connections re- 
 main intact. Hence, while the lunatic's actions are uncon- 
 trolled by past or present experiences, owing to his having 
 no sufficient basis of comparison to go upon as between the 
 real and the ideal, the man of genius, with similar concep- 
 tions seething in his brain, is held in check by his actual per- 
 ceptions, and is more or less auienable to ordinary human 
 motives. Talent, on the other hand, implies a great extension 
 of the basis of comparison owing to the multiplicity of the 
 memories which may be aroused by a given stimulus ; the 
 nerve- connections existing between the various centres are 
 very complete and active, but there is little spontaneous 
 activity in the nerve-cells, and consequently little of the 
 creative faculty. Originality of thought is a characteristic 
 of talent as well as of genius, and is due to a wider faculty 
 of discrimination between the like and the unlike ; a more 
 extensive nerve-connection than exists in average brains. 
 In the superior forms of genius there would seem to be pre- 
 sent all the conditions of talent with a spontaneous overflow 
 of nerve-energy . in addition. Owing to the complexity of 
 the brain-functions, however, there is room for infinite shades 
 or degrees of both genius and talent. Both states of mind, 
 when in excess, are probably morbid. Genius is unquestion- 
 ably so, entailing as it does the same instability of the 
 nervous system and being attended by the same train of 
 functional disorders as positive insanity. 
 
 It is a characteristic of the creative mind that its possessor 
 is, in some sort, impelled to produce. He cannot help him- 
 self, he is the victim of his organisation. ' The author,' said 
 Beaconsfield on one occasion, ' is a being with a predisposition 
 which is irresistible, a bent which he cannot in any way avoid, 
 whether it drags him to the abstruse researches of erudition 
 or induces him to mount into the fervid and turbulent atmo- 
 sphere of imagination.' ^ This is proved by the early ex- 
 
 ' Beaconsfield • S^iccch at tlie Anniversary of the Royal Literary Fund, 
 1868. 
 
GENIUS AND TALENT 265 
 
 periences of many men of genius, who have followed their 
 bent despite unfavourable surroundings and often in the face 
 of violent opposition from their parents. An instructive 
 glimpse of the creative mind is given us by Bulwer Lytton, 
 who, writing at the age of forty-two, says : ' For sixteen years 
 I can conceive no life to have been more filled with occupa- 
 tion than mine. What time was not given to action was 
 given to study, what time not given to study, to action — 
 labour in both ! To a constitution naturally far from strong 
 I allowed no pause or respite. The wear and tear went on 
 without intermission, the whirl of the wheel never ceased. 
 Sometimes, indeed, thoroughly overpowered and exhausted, I 
 sought for escape. The physicians said " Travel," and I 
 travelled, " Go into the country," and I went. But at such 
 an attempt at repose all my ailments gathered round me — 
 made themselves far more palpable and felt. I had no re- 
 source but to fly from myself — to fly into the other world of 
 books or thought or reverie, to live in some state of being less 
 painful than my own. As long as I was always at work it 
 seemed that I had no leisure to be ill. Quiet was my hell.' ^ 
 
 The foregoing extract illustrates curiously enough what 
 has been said about the will. The writer thinks that his 
 action was voluntary. ' To a constitution far from strong,' he 
 remarks, 'I allowed no pause or respite.' In reality the 
 automatic forces of his brain drove him to what he did. 
 Among the private papers of Bulwer Lytton was found a 
 criticism of his own character, written at the age of forty- 
 three, in which a further illustration of this argument 
 presents itself. ' Thought,' says the writer, ' is continually 
 flowing through my mind. I scarcely know a moment in 
 which I am awake and not thinking. Nor by thought do I 
 mean mere reverie or castle building, but a sustained process 
 of thinking. I have always in my mind some distinct train 
 of ideas which I seek to develop, or some positive truth 
 which I am trying to arrive at. If I lived for a million years 
 I could not exhaust a millionth part of my thoughts.' 
 
 Defoe believed that the premonitions he sometimes felt 
 as to coming events were spirit warnings, and a passage in 
 ^ Bulwer Lytton : Confessions of a Water Patient. 
 
206 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 his works bearing upon this subject may be taken to illus- 
 trate the automatic character of his inspiration. ' I have 
 never,' he writes, ' had any considerable mischief or disaster 
 attending me, but, sleeping or waking, I have had notice of 
 it beforehand ; and had I listened to these notices I believe I 
 might have shunned the evil. Let no man think this is a 
 jest.' He further says, ' I know a man who made it a rule 
 to obey these silent hints, and he often declared to me that 
 
 when he obeyed them he never miscarried.' This man, , 
 
 there is good reason to believe that Defoe means himself; 
 at all events, he seems to write from his own experience. 
 
 came under the ban of a Government prosecution, and 
 
 was much perplexed as to what he should do. ' In this extre- 
 mity,' writes Defoe, ' he felt one morning just as he had 
 waked and as thoughts of his misfortune began to return 
 upon him, I say he felt a strong impulse darting into his 
 mind, thus : " Write a letter to them." It spoke so distinctly 
 to him, and as it were forcibly, that, as he has often said 
 since, he could scarcely persuade himself to believe but that 
 he heard it ; but he grants that he did not really hear it too. 
 However, it repeated the words daily and hourly, till, at 
 length, walking about in his chamber where he was hidden, 
 very pensive and sad, it jogged him again, and he answered 
 aloud to it as if it had been a voice : "Whom shall I write to?" 
 It returned immediately, " Write to the judge." This pursued 
 him again for several days, till at length he took his pen, 
 ink, and paper.' He was puzzled what to say, but on begin- 
 ning to write, ' the words flowed upon his pen in a manner 
 that charmed even himself,' and the letter was instrumental 
 in averting the prosecution. 
 
 Mrs. Gaskell says of Charlotte Bronte that it was not 
 every day that she could write. Sometimes weeks, or even 
 months, elapsed before she felt that she had anything to add 
 to that portion of her story which was already written. 
 Then some morning she would waken up, and ' the progress 
 of her tale lay clear and bright before her, and she had only 
 to sit down and write out the incidents and consequent 
 thoughts, which were, in fact, more present to her mind at 
 such times than her actual life itself.' 
 
THE CREATIVE MIND 267 
 
 Whether the creative power is active or sluggish would 
 seem to depend upon a greater or less degree of energy in 
 the nerve-cells. Both conditions are met with among dis- 
 tinguished men of letters. Irritated by current reports that 
 he was suffering from mental aberration, Byron said to 
 Nathan, who set the ' Hebrew Melodies ' to music, that he 
 w^ould try for once to write like a madman. Hastily seizing 
 the pen, he stared for a moment into vacancy and then 
 wrote down, as if by a flash of inspiration, and without 
 erasing a single word, the beautiful verses beginning : — 
 
 My soul is dark — oh ! quickly string 
 The harp I yet can brook to hear ; 
 And let thy gentle fingers fling 
 Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear. 
 
 There was nothing laboured in Hartley Coleridge's inventions. 
 'Intense, glowing, ever-kindling genius,' says Townshend, 
 ' breathed in every word he uttered. Originality was the 
 life and soul of his most common converse.' And, as with 
 Hartley Coleridge's conversation, so with his written composi- 
 tions. ' His poems,' says his brother Derwent, ' including the 
 best, were thrown off with the greatest facility and in the 
 most casual manner. . . At any hour, in any place, or in any 
 company if the fit took him, he would ask for a scrap of 
 paper and produce a short piece of poetry, perhaps a sonnet, 
 often of very perfect construction.' He had a great con- 
 tempt for what he called ' baker's poetry,' poetry that had to 
 be kneaded and pounded by its author. His own thoughts, 
 accordmg to his friend Thomas Blackburne, ' always came 
 out finished cap-a-pie like a troop in quick march.' 
 
 Byron assured Leicester Stanhope that the gift of poetry 
 had ' burst upon his mind unexpectedly,' and had excited his 
 wonder, as he was not previously conscious of its possession. 
 Goethe found himself impelled to^turn into an image or a 
 poem everything that delighted or troubled him, and Cole- 
 ridge ' from childhood ' was accustomed to ' abstract, and as 
 it were unrealize,' whatever of more than common interest 
 his eyes dwelt upon, and then, ' by a sort of transfusion and 
 transmission of his consciousness, to identify himself with the 
 
2G8 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 object/ Brougham wrote with extreme rapidity. There 
 seemed to be no bounds to his energy or to the impetuosity 
 of his spirit. His accomplishments were manifold and 
 dazzling. It was said of him that if a new language were 
 discovered in the morning, he would be able to talk it before 
 night, and that if locked up in the Tower without a book he 
 would be able to write an encyclopa3dia. 
 
 The foregoing examples represent a very high degree of 
 morbid excitability. Wordsworth's brain, on the other hand, 
 had little of the actual glow of insanity, though sensitive to 
 rhythm and harmony. He had to slowly grind out his 
 grandest poetry, and had few compensatory bursts of inspi- 
 ration. He records as a remarkable feat of fancy his shaping 
 out a single sonnet off hand. His sister's journals are full of 
 lamentations over the sad hours he passed at his desk when 
 out of the mood, hunting with a dismal sense of failure after 
 thoughts and expressions that eluded him. Though a vigor- 
 ous pedestrian and indifferent to weather, a trifle would inter- 
 fere with his literary work, such as the pinch of a tight shoe. 
 
 In literary and poetic genius there would seem to be a 
 considerable excitability of the visual centre, with more or 
 less extensive cohesions in other centres. Describing in 
 ' Facino Cane ' his own early life, Balzac says : ' Observation 
 had become to me intuitive. It penetrated the spirit with- 
 out neglecting the body ; or, rather, it seized external details 
 so clearly, that it immediately went beyond them. It gave 
 me the power of living the life of any individual upon whom 
 it was exercised, and permitted me to substitute my person- 
 ality for his. . . . While listening to the poor people around 
 me, I espoused their life. I felt their rags on my back, my feet 
 marched in their tattered shoes; their desires, their needs 
 all passed into my spirit, and mine into theirs ; it was the 
 dream of a waking man. ... To relinquish my identity, to 
 become another through the intoxication of the moral facul- 
 ties, and to play this game at will, such was my sole distrac- 
 tion. I have sometimes wondered if this gift were one of 
 those whose abuse leads to madness, but its causes I have 
 never sought. I know merely that I possess and make use 
 of it.' 
 
ACTIVE AND SLUGGISH INTELLECTS 269 
 
 Balzac's characters were as realistically vivid to him as 
 people of flesh and blood, and he spoke of them as friends 
 and acquaintances. ' I am going to Alenyon,' he would say ; 
 ' you know Mdlle. Cormon lives there,' or, 'I am off to 
 Grenoble, the abode of M. Benassis.' ' Let us talk of 
 realities,' he one day said to Jules Sandeau, ' let us talk of 
 Eugenie Grandet;' and at another time, when his sister asked 
 him for some information about Captain Jordy, Balzac replied 
 ver)^ simply, ' I never knew the man before he came to 
 Nemours, but if he interests you I will try to learn something 
 of him.' 
 
 'Dickens once declared to me,' says George Henry Lewes,' 
 ' that every word said by his characters was distinctly heard 
 by him,' and the eminent critic accounts for the novelist's 
 vividness of imagination, much to the disgust of Dickens's 
 biographer, John Forster, by a theory of hallucination. 
 ' When he (Dickens) imagined a street, a house, a room, a 
 figure, he saw it not in the vague schemetic way of ordinary 
 imagination, but in the sharp definition of actual perception, 
 all the salient details obtruding themselves on his attention. 
 He, seeing it thus vividly, made us also see it, and believing 
 in its reality, however fantastic, he communicated something 
 of his belief to us. So definite and consistent was the image, 
 that even while knowing it was false, we could not help for 
 a moment being affected, as it were, by his hallucination. . . . 
 The imagination of the author laid hold of some well-marked 
 physical trait, some peculiarity of aspect, speech, or manner 
 which everyone recognised at once ; and the force with which 
 this was presented made it occupy the mind to the exclusion 
 of all critical doubts ; only reflection could detect the incon- 
 gruity. . . . Dickens sees and feels, but the logic of feeling 
 seems to be the only logic he can manage. I do not suppose 
 a single thoughtful remark on life or character could be found 
 throughout his twenty volumes. Keenly as he observes the 
 objects before him, he never connects his observations into 
 a general expression. Compared with that of Fielding or 
 Thackeray his was merely an animal intelligence, i.e. restricted 
 to perceptions.' The hallucination theory of Dickens's art is 
 * FoTtmghtly Mevierv, February 1872. 
 
270 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 supported by a letter of his to Forster. ^ May I not be for- 
 given,' he writes, ' for thinking it is a wonderful testimony 
 to my being made for art, that when in the midst of this 
 trouble and pain I sit down to my book, some beneficent 
 power shows it all to me and tempts me to be interested, 
 and I don't invent it — really do not — but see it and write it 
 down ? ' 
 
 What seems to limit Dickens's genius is the fact that 
 while his perceptions are vivid, their cohesions in the brain 
 are not extensive, and, unlike those of Balzac, for example, 
 embrace no profound experiences of human nature. Scott's 
 genius is also largely pictorial. He draws his materials from 
 history and legend, but the automatic activity of his brain 
 blends so many impressions that his picturesque scenes 
 deviate widely from the pattern of past realities ; and while he 
 is not without a shrewd knowledge of the world he depicts 
 rather the actions of men than their motives. Yet with all 
 the spirit Scott had none of the executive faculty of the 
 painter. ' The humble ambition which I loag cherished of 
 making sketches of those places which interested me was,' 
 he writes, ' totally ineiFectual. After long study and many 
 efforts I was unable to apply the elements of perspective or 
 of shade to the scene before me, and was obliged to relin- 
 quish in despair an art which I was most anxious to practise. 
 But show me an old castle or a field of battle and I am at 
 home at once, filling it with its combatants in their proper 
 costume and overwhelming my hearers by the enthusiasm of 
 my description. In crossing Magus Moor, near St. Andrews, 
 the spirit moved me to give a picture of the assassination of 
 the Archbishop of St. Andrews to some fellow travellers with 
 whom I was accidentally associated, and one of them, though 
 well acquainted with the story, protested that my narrative 
 had frightened away his night's sleep.' Scott's defect evi- 
 dently lay not in the visual centre of his brain, but in the 
 nerve-connections between that and the motor apparatus for 
 the hand. 
 
 Given morbid conditions of the brain a conceived idea 
 in ay assume the force and vividness of a fact. It is a common 
 delusion among the insane that they have taken part in great 
 
VIVID PERCEPTIONS 271 
 
 historical events. George IV. was convinced that he had 
 fought at the Battle of Waterloo, and was accustomed to call 
 upon the Duke of Wellington to corroborate him. Balzac 
 described with enthusiasm to Madame Delphine Gay a superb 
 white horse which he wished to present to Sandeau. A few 
 days afterwards he believed that he had really given the 
 horse, and meeting Sandeau asked him how the animal was 
 doing.^ Gustave Flaubert, like Dickens, had remarkably quick 
 perceptions intimately associated with each other. While 
 describing the death by poison of his famous character Emma 
 Bovary, he felt the taste of arsenic so sharply in his mouth 
 that he made himself ill and vomited his dinner.^ His epi- 
 leptic visitations were a dread to him, but the ' poetic vision ' 
 he frequently experienced with pleasure. ' Very often,' he 
 observes, ' it comes slowly, bit by bit, like a scene set on the 
 stage. At other times, however, it is sudden and fleeting. 
 Something passes before your eyes and it must be seized 
 quickly or it is lost.' Theophile Gautier, passing by the 
 Vaudeville Theatre in Paris one day, noticed on the printed 
 bill a commonplace phrase which stuck in his memory. He 
 found himself repeating it mechanically. After a time it 
 sounded in his ear as if uttered by a third person in a clear 
 and distinct voice ; and this continued intermittently for 
 several weeks. From the repetition of a single phrase, such 
 voices readily pass into a threatening key, make prolonged 
 and more or less appropriate remarks, order the patient to do 
 this or that, and finally assume all the characteristics of an 
 insane hallucination. 
 
 Shakespeare's perceptions must have been extraordinarily 
 keen and persistent. His mind must have photographed 
 everything he saw. Natural scenery, natural objects, human 
 character, society and its usages — all must have been vividly 
 impressed upon his brain, and there associated with extensive 
 and hardly less vivid memories. I^robably had we known 
 the man we should have discovered that he had limitations. 
 All we can gather from his writings is that his surroundings 
 must have impressed him with a force out of all proportion 
 to the attention he could have given them, and that his 
 * Taine : Be VlntelVujence. ^ Ihicl, 
 
272 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 impressions being retained must have furnislied him with an 
 enormous amount of intellectual material and a basis of com- 
 parison infinitely greater than that possessed by ordinary 
 men. He seems to have been untravelled, and to have had 
 but a moderate knowledge of books; yet by dint of his 
 acquisitions — mainly visual in their origin, but extensively 
 cohering together and thus creating a great identifying or 
 constructive faculty — he was able to people foreign scenes and 
 the ancient world with appropriate characters, and to supply 
 them with incidents to match. Such immense creative power 
 as Shakespeare's can only be understood in connection with a 
 morbid impressionability. Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, 
 of all English authors, have probably drawn the largest number 
 of distinct characters after Shakespeare, and their imaginative 
 faculty, as we have seen, was associated with an extremely 
 unsound condition of the nervous system. Thomas Kenny, 
 although ignorant of this physical aspect of genius, makes some 
 suggestive observations upon Shakespeare's character as a 
 man. Accepting the sonnets in common with most English 
 commentators as pure autobiographical material, Kenny 
 finds that they exhibit throughout a ' teeming, unchecked, 
 more or less disordered profusion of thought and imagery 
 in the mind of the writer,' and from Shakespeare's unparal- 
 leled faculty of transporting himself into the state of mind 
 of every species of human being, he concludes that the 
 poet cannot have possessed a very resolute character of his 
 own.^ 
 
 From the absence of all mention of him by his contem- 
 poraries outside a small theatrical circle, it is indeed not un- 
 likely that Shakespeare may have looked a comparatively 
 insignificant person, gliding through life quietly and unpre- 
 tentiously. Masson, after a close analysis of his works, comes 
 to the conclusion that he was ' essentially a meditative, 
 speculative, and, even in his solitary hours, an abject and 
 melancholy man, rather than a man of active, firm, and 
 worldly disposition.' Instead of being a calm, strong observer 
 of life and nature, a ' bird singing on the bough,' as Carlyle 
 puts it, he was, in Masson's view, ' a man of the gentlest and 
 ' Thomas Kenny : Life and Genius of Sliakcsjjeare. 
 
SHAKESPEARE THE MAN 273 
 
 most troublesome affections ; of sensibility abnormally keen 
 and deep ; full of metaphysical longings ; liable above most 
 men to self-distrust, despondency, and mental agitations from 
 causes internal and external ; and a prey to many secret and 
 severe experiences which he did not discuss at the Mermaid 
 Tavern.'^ Physically and mentally this is precisely what a 
 man of Shakespeare's surpassing genius might be expected 
 to be. 
 
 Style, so important an element of literary genius, consists 
 in the choice of words, images, metaphors, and illustrations 
 appropriate to the subject in hand. It has its basis in our 
 sensory and motor cohesions, and is therefore dependent upon 
 the reciprocal action and retentiveness of the several centres 
 of the brain. The great writer is one who has a profusion of 
 words at his command, together with a great stock of observa- 
 tion, and who is able out of the plenitude of his resources to 
 convey the exact shade of meaning he desires — to communi- 
 cate to others the precise effect, pictorial or comparative, which 
 has been produced by something upon his own mind. A neces- 
 sary part of the faculty of choosing the right word is to be able 
 to discriminate between the associations of one word as com- 
 pared with those of another which may have pretty much the 
 same meaning. Such associations may be extremely delicate, 
 in many cases almost indefinable. ' Acute ' and ' sharp ' are 
 obvious examples of a distinction without much fundamental 
 difference. Most people know or feel which of the two in a 
 given connection is the more suitable. It is less easy to say 
 why ^ plenitude ' is sometimes a better word than ' fulness,' or 
 * stupendous ' than ' vast,' though every skilful writer prefers 
 one or the other according to circumstances. 
 
 Some remarks by George Henry Lewes ^ on the difficulties 
 of making an adequate translation of poetry, illustrate the 
 delicate effects of association and suggestion in the use of 
 words, effects of which the poet's mind takes account. The 
 line, 
 
 The river wanders at its own sweet will, 
 
 ^ David Masson : Essays Biogra])1iical and Critical. 
 * Life of Gottlie. 
 
•274 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 is not adequately rendered by this other, although the mean- 
 ing is the same : 
 
 The river runneth free from all restraint. 
 
 In the first case, a landscape is somehow brought before the 
 mind, probably by the word 'wander' in conjunction with a 
 river. The words of the parody, on the other hand, have only 
 bad associations. ' Eunneth,' ' free,' and ' restraint ' are in 
 no way associated with rural scenery, but rather with Bow 
 Street or the Old Bailey. Walter Scott speaks of the verse 
 of an old ballad which haunted his boyhood. It is this : 
 
 The dews of night began to fall. 
 
 The moon, sweet regent of the sky, 
 Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall 
 
 And many an oak that stood thereby. 
 
 Lewes renders the verse as follows, and asks, as well he may, 
 ' Where is the poetry of it ? ' : 
 
 The nightly dews commenced to fall. 
 
 The moon, whose empire is the sky, 
 Shone on the walls of Cumnor Hall 
 
 And all the oaks that stood thereby. 
 
 The beauty and the force of the original lie mainly in the 
 phrases ' sweet regent,' which gives the moon a personality, 
 ' silvered,' which pictorially represents the effect of her light, 
 and ' many an oak,' which conveys a sense of vagueness and 
 romance incompatible with such a precise and matter-of-fact 
 statement as ' all the oaks.' 
 
 In general, that style is clearest and best which enables 
 the nerve-currents in the reader's brain to travel along 
 easy and direct tracks. Long parentheses or suspensions of 
 the interest are fatiguing from the greater expenditure of 
 nerve-energy required to establish the necessary organic 
 cohesions in the brain, and for the same reason, vague, ab- 
 stract terms call for a greater effort on the reader's part than 
 direct word-pictures. To ' send a man to prison ' is a more 
 forcible expression than to ' punish him in accordance witli 
 the regulations of the penal code.' ' Beware of the bottle ' is 
 better than ' be careful not to indulge excessively in intoxi- 
 
LITEEARY STYLE 275 
 
 eating fluids.' A word learnt and used in childhood has more 
 meaning to us as a rule than one acquired in after life, the 
 reason being that it lies upon a well-established track of 
 nervous impulse, and has easily aroused associations. The 
 fancied superiority of Latin to Saxon English is only a ques- 
 tion of early use. It so happens that an English child's 
 vocabulary is almost wholly Saxon. Hence, ' sour ' has al- 
 ways more forcible associations in the average Englishman's 
 mind than ' acid,' though to a Frenchman who has learnt 
 English the cases are reversed. The words of a foreign 
 language seldom become as vivid to us as those of our mother 
 tongue, but increasing familiarity with them brings increased 
 rapidity and ease of comprehension. 
 
 A good style of writing is one that is constantly arousing 
 pleasing and illustrative associations. To express everything 
 overloads the reader's mind with detail. The skilful writer 
 feels how much may be left to the average reader's imagina- 
 tion, and is careful not to say more than he need for the pur- 
 pose in view. Much of the effect of style depends upon the 
 sequence of the ideas presented, and there is also the music 
 of language to be considered — the rhythmic effect of words 
 and phrases upon the ear. All these niceties of writing are 
 governed by the degree of the susceptibility of the writer's 
 brain, the physical basis of language being the innumerable 
 nerve fibres that run between the visual, auditory, and articu- 
 latory centres. The enjoyment of a good style by the reader 
 necessarily depends, of course, upon the reader's own faculties. 
 If he has no associations, his author cannot be expected to 
 stir them into activity. 
 
 It may further be laid down that the extreme sensibility 
 which raises the individual's faculties of perception and ex- 
 pression to the level of genius is a morbid condition, which, 
 if it were not demonstrated by the pathological history of 
 great men, could still be proved from the records of insanity. 
 Gerard de Nerval, the friend of Theophile Gautier and 
 Gustavo Flaubert, in the lucid intervals of an insanity which 
 afflicted him from his youth upwards, and which terminated 
 in his suicide, was a prolific writer of fiction, and his colleague, 
 Maxime du Camp, pointedly observes that he possessed ' a 
 
 T 2 
 
27G THE INSxVNITY OF GENIUS 
 
 great finefise of style ' and a rare gift of ' subtle observation/ 
 as, indeed, every reader of his works will acknowledge. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable in Shakespeare than the easy 
 flow of his language. ' Abundance, ease, redundance,' ob- 
 serves a literary critic, ' a plenitude of word, sound, and 
 imagery which, were the intellect at work only a little less 
 magnificent, would sometimes end in sheer braggardism and 
 bombast, are the characteristics of Shakespeare's style ! On 
 and on the poet flows : words, thoughts, and fancies crowding 
 upon him as fast as he can write, all related to the matter on 
 hand, and all poured forth together, to rise and fall on the 
 waves of an established cadence. Such lightness and ease in 
 the manner, and such prodigious wealth and depth in the 
 matter, are combined in no other writer.' The little we 
 know of Shakespeare the man attests his extraordinary 
 fluency. Ben Jonson says : ' I remember the players have 
 often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his 
 writing he never blotted out a line.' ' Shakespeare,' his 
 brother poet adds, ' had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, 
 and gentle expressions, wherein he flovjed with that facility that 
 sometimes it ivas necessary he should he stojpjped ! His wit was 
 in his own power. Would the rule of it had been so too ! 
 Many times he fell into those things wdiich could not 
 escape laughter, as when in the person of Ca3sar, one speak- 
 ing to him, " Ceesar, thou dost me wrong," he replied, 
 " Oassar never did wrong but with just cause," and such like, 
 which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his 
 virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than 
 pardoned.' The editors of the First Folio, Hemynge and 
 Condell, remark of Shakespeare : ' His mind and hand went 
 together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness 
 that we have scarce received from him a blot on his papers.' 
 Fluency of expression occurs in insanity, and may be tem- 
 porarily increased by alcohol and other drugs. Evidently, 
 therefore, it depends upon a morbid excitability of the nerve- 
 cells and fibres of the brain. 
 
 The susceptibility of the mind to the minuti^ of style 
 may, in extreme cases, seriously impede a writer's productive- 
 ness. Gustave Flaubert exhausted himself in corrections. 
 
FLUENCY OF THOUGHT 277 
 
 He would toil for hours at a single phrase. It is recorded 
 that in one of his pages of manuscript the word ' mais ' at the 
 beginning of a sentence is struck out and written in eleven 
 times before being allowed to stand. Latterly his life was a 
 perpetual irritation, his work haunting him in his feverish 
 sleep, and his days being consumed in frenzied attempts to 
 push the art of composition beyond the limits even of perfec- 
 tion. Probably there is some affinity between such a condition 
 and the somewhat rare form of insanity called by the French 
 la folie du doute, and by the Germans Grubelsiicht, or prying- 
 mania, the essential feature of which is the obsession of the 
 mind by a perpetual interrogation — a constant and urgent 
 morbid impulse to inquire into and investigate everything of 
 however trivial a nature, a tendency to spin an endless web 
 of questionings, an inability to accept the ordinary facts of 
 experience.^ The assonance of words in a sentence produced 
 as violent an effect upon Flaubert's nerves as a discord did 
 upon those of Mozart. 
 
 Closely allied to the choice of the right word is that 
 curious sense displayed by some famous writers of fiction of 
 the appropriateness of names. Balzac was very scrupulous 
 in the naming of his characters. He never invented names ; 
 he discovered them. They could no more be fabricated, he 
 held, than granite or marble; they were all the work of time 
 and revolutions. It is told of him that for a whole day he 
 scrutinised the signboards of Paris in company with Leon 
 Gozlan for a name for a personage in his ' Scenes de la Vie 
 Politique,' and found it at last on a tailor's signboard. It 
 was ' Marcas,' to which he took the liberty of prefixing the 
 initial ' Z.' 'A certain harmony,' he afterwards wrote, of the 
 character whom he called Marcas, ' existed between the man 
 and the name. This Z with which Marcas was preceded pre- 
 sented to the imagination a something indescribably fatal. 
 Marcas ! Repeat to yourself the name ! Does it not seem 
 to have a sinister significance ? Does it not seem as though 
 its owner were born to be martyr'd ? . • • I would not dare 
 affirm that destiny is uninfluenced by a name, for between 
 
 » A curious example of this malady is reported in the Joimial of Mental 
 Science for October, 1888. 
 
278 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the deeds of men and tlieir names there are inexplicable 
 affinities and visible discords which at once astonish and sur- 
 prise. But the subject will some day assuredly form part of 
 the occult sciences. Does not the Z present a thwarted and 
 contradicted appearance ? Does it not represent the contin- 
 gent and fantastic zig-zags of a tormented life ? What ill 
 wind can have blown upon this letter that in every language 
 to which it is admitted it commands barely fifty words ? . . . 
 Examine the name again — Z. Marcas ! The entire existence 
 of the man is contained in this fantastic assemblage of seven 
 letters. Seven ! — the most significant of the cabalistic numbers ! 
 Marcas died at the age of thirty-five ; his life, therefore, was 
 composed of but seven lustres. Marcas ! Does not the sound 
 convey to you the idea of something precious broken in a 
 noiseless fall ! ' Very few people, perhaps, will discover as 
 much as Balzac in the conjunction of letters referred to, but 
 the anecdote is instructive as pointing to the existence in 
 certain minds of subtle appreciations of harmony and discoi'd 
 in words, akin to the musical sense. 
 
 Susceptibility to metrical cadence is a natural endowment. 
 It is more or less developed in individuals, and when brain 
 disease occurs it is liable to be depressed or elevated. To 
 Swift, during one phase of his insanity, it was ' as hard to find 
 a rhyme as a guinea.' On the other hand, patients in lunatic 
 asylums sometimes rhyme with marvellous facility. I appre- 
 hend that the metrical faculty has its main seat in the area 
 of the brain concerned with articulatory movements, and that 
 it is largely dependent upon the efficiency of the nerve-fibres 
 passing between that area and the auditory centre. Of the 
 muscular element in rhyme we may assure ourselves by a 
 simple illustration. In walking along the street, or, still 
 better, in going down stairs, a rhythm is established in the 
 movements of our limbs. The concussions of our steps recur- 
 ring in a definite order, we automatically adjust the muscular 
 resistance needful for each concussion; the body husbands its 
 resources so as to meet the calls made upon it. Then, if our 
 foot knocks against an unexpected obstacle, or if at the bottom 
 of the stairs there is a step more or less than we counted upon, 
 we receive a shock. Precisely the same thing happens in 
 
ELEMENTS OF POETRY 279 
 
 rhyme if we come across a misplaced accent or a super- 
 numerary syllable. In both cases there is an erroneous pre- 
 acljustment of our muscular forces. A special susceptibility 
 of the motor as well as of the auditory centres and their con- 
 nections would therefore seem to be essential to the writing 
 of verse. 
 
 But rhyme does not necessarily go with reason nor cadence 
 with poetry. Coleridge observes that the words — 
 
 Behold yon row of pines that shorn and bowed 
 Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve — 
 
 contain so little poetry that if re-arranged they would not be 
 out of place in a book of topography, or in a description of a 
 tour. The same image, however, rises into a semblance of 
 poetry if thus conveyed : 
 
 Yon row of bleak and visionary pines 
 By twilight glimpse discerned ! Mark how they flee, 
 From the fierce sea- blast, all their tresses wild, 
 Streaming before them ! 
 
 Whence comes the difference ? Surely from the identity un- 
 expectedly established between the row of trees and some form 
 of moving animal life. The visual and motor centres, with 
 their respective memories, contribute to the creation of the 
 image. 
 
 The part played by the visual sense in poetry is very 
 great, hearing, touch, taste, or smell furnishing comparatively 
 few metaphors or illustrations. Frequently a mere optical 
 effect is reproduced with great force and propriety. For 
 example : 
 
 As when far off at sea a fleet descried 
 
 Hangs in the clouds, by equinoxial winds 
 
 Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles 
 
 Of Ternate or Tidore, whence merchants bring 
 
 Their spicy drugs ; they on the trading flood, 
 
 Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape, 
 
 Ply, stemming nightly toward the pole : so seem'd 
 
 Far off the flying fiend. 
 
 Here the word ' hangs ' governs the whole image, and the 
 optical effect is further heightened by representing the fleet, an 
 
280 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 aggregate of many ships, as one mighty person whose track 
 is upon the waters. Another example of the same kind is 
 Milton's description of the Messiah : 
 
 Attended by ten thousand thousand saints 
 He onward came ; far off His coming shone. 
 
 What finer abstraction could there be than His coming, which 
 merges into a single optical effect a multitude of individuals ? 
 Shakespeare abounds in visual images. Here is a fine 
 example : 
 
 Night's candles are burnt out and jocund day 
 Stands tijy-toe on the misty mountain tops. 
 
 A similar pictu;re presented itself to the poet while he was 
 writing his sonnets, and was thus rendered : 
 
 Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
 Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye. 
 
 In both cases the optical virtue of the words italicised is very 
 marked. Wordsworth delighted in the exercise of 
 
 — that inward eye 
 Which is the bliss of solitude. 
 
 The woods, the fields, the seasons, and aspects of simple rural 
 life, alone moved the poetic spirit of Wordsworth to expression. 
 The most exciting and dramatic public events scarcely in- 
 terested him. He visited France during the great Revolution 
 and saw the first French politician sent to the guillotine. To 
 this subject he alludes casually in his letters ; but he notes 
 nothing of it in his verse, though he could make sonnets on 
 the sunsets on the banks of the Loire. Turner the painter 
 had, of course, the pictorial eye required by the poet, but he 
 was deficient in the rhythmic sense. His verse was very 
 jolting, and his command of words ludicrously inadequate to 
 the task of writing even passable poetry. Wordsworth's 
 deficiency was evidently in the perception of the dramatic and 
 social or historical element in events. It was the pictorial sense 
 that he excelled in, and, unlike Turner, he had the necessary 
 command of words and rhythm to give it poetic expression. 
 
 Graphic writing is due to the possession of a strong visual 
 faculty. It is more telling to say that a ' field is black with 
 
WIT AND PUNNINO 281 
 
 people,' than that ' thousands of people are in a field.' 
 Carlyle, ridiculing a doctor who failed to cure him of his 
 dyspepsia, says he might as well have poured his tale into 
 ' the long, hairy ear of the first jackass ' he met. In penning 
 this, Carlyle must have had the picture of the jackass, with 
 its long, hairy ear, in his mind. 
 
 The identifying faculty whereby unsuspected likenesses 
 and analogies are discovered, is strong in all forms of literary 
 genius ; it is exceptionally strong in wit, and even in the 
 despised form of wit called punning. Sydney Smith's theory 
 that surprise is an essential ingredient of wit is probably the 
 true one. The best joke loses its effect on repetition, and 
 the reason would seem to be that the ' sudden joy,' the ' flash 
 of astonishment ' with which it was first received is not re- 
 kindled in our minds. ' The greater the surprise,' says 
 Sydney Smith, 'the greater the pleasure.' Voltaire was 
 praising Haller to a Swiss gentleman. ' I am astonished,' 
 said the Swiss, ' you should speak so well of Haller, for he is 
 outrageous in his abuse of you.' ' Well, well,' replied Voltaire, 
 * I believe the truth is we have both formed very erroneous 
 notions of each other.' ' Here,' says Sydney Smith, who 
 quotes the anecdote, ' surprise is excited by the connection 
 discovered between the apparent candour and the real severity 
 of Voltaire. We expect from the first physiognomy of the 
 answer that he is going to say something kind and con- 
 ciliatory of his enemy, when at the same time he overwhelms 
 him with the keenest satire.' When surprise is accompanied 
 by other feelings the sensation of wit is almost entirely lost. 
 This is aptly illustrated by Sydney Smith. ' In looking over 
 the various parts of a steam engine,' he remarks, ' the mind 
 is repeatedly affected by sensations resembling those of wit ; 
 the mode in which the valves open and shut, etc. But, at the 
 same time, we begin to speculate upon the importance of the 
 discovery ; to reason upon its utility, and the sensation of sur- 
 prise no longer remains pure and unmixed. In the mind of 
 a child capable of understanding these mechanical discoveries, 
 the unexpected relation between the parts and movements 
 would excite nearly the same feeling as wit would do ; he 
 would enjoy the pure surprise and speculate little, if at all, on 
 
282 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 the matter.' Hobbes thought the pleasure of wit lay in the 
 implied superiority of the person expressing it or hearing it, 
 and it is undoubtedly true that wit is nearly always derogatory 
 to somebody or something. On reflection it will be found, 
 however, that surprise is a more constant ingredient of wit 
 than detraction. When a joke is twiqe told the detraction 
 remains, but in the absence of surprise its characteristic effect 
 is lost. 
 
 Many of Sydney Smith's own recorded witticisms are as 
 perfect in the element of surprise as the one he quotes from 
 Voltaire. Such were his remarks : to a boy, who was trying to 
 please a tortoise by stroking its shell, that he might as well 
 stroke the dome of St. Paul's to please the Dean and Chapter, 
 and his pithy reply to the medical men who advised him to 
 ' take a walk on an empty stomach ' — ' On whose ? ' This, 
 again, is a fairly good specimen of wit : ^ The observances of 
 the Church as to feasts and fasts are tolerably well kept upon 
 the whole, since the rich keep the feasts and the poor the 
 fasts.' Just as wit depends upon an identity of intellectual 
 conceptions, so does punning consist in establishing an identity 
 of word sounds. A good specimen of a pun is the following : 
 
 Customer (to Tailor) : Were you at Balaclava ? 
 
 Tailor: No! Why? 
 
 Customer : Because you charge so magnificently. 
 
 Here the memorable charge of the Six Hundred is un- 
 expectedly associated with such a trivial matter as a trades- 
 man's bill, and, as in wit, surprise is evoked. Generally, how- 
 ever, punning is confined to identities of sound. It stirs a 
 much more limited circle of associations in the brain than 
 wit and is justly accounted inferior. Remarkable wits and 
 punsters like Voltaire, Sydney Smith, and Thomas Hood, have 
 invariably been of the morbid type as regards their nervous 
 organisation, and it is probable that excellence, either in wit 
 or in punning, is only attained at some cost to the other 
 faculties. Wits and satirists, it has been observed, are them- 
 selves peculia.rly sensitive to ridicule. This, one would ex- 
 pect from their keen sense of the ridiculous in others. 
 
 In the exercise of the fine arts, both a sensory aptitude 
 and an associated muscular endowment are called into play. 
 
THE MUSICAL FACULTY 283 
 
 The musician's discrimination of sound is acute, and there 
 is a wealth of sound-memories accumulated in his auditory 
 centre ; but the perception of time is as obviously as much 
 a question of muscular movement as the metrical sense. 
 Again, the painter, like the poet, has an extensive percep- 
 tion of colour in nature together with a strong retentiveness 
 for all kinds of pictorial display. With this, however, he also 
 possesses a faculty for delicate movements of the hand and 
 fingers. If he is good at drawing, his sense of touch and 
 the muscular adjustments of his eye will be keen. Whence 
 his perception of form — an endowment likewise of the sculp- 
 tor. The mere colourist, on the other hand, will rely chiefly 
 upon his optical sense and his mechanical aptitude. 
 
 As few musicians write poetry, or poets music, it may be 
 concluded that time in music and metre and cadence in 
 poetry are not identical. I have associated rhyme with the 
 speech-centre. Considering how prone v^e are to beat a 
 measure with hands and feet, and how greatly music con- 
 duces to dancing, it is probable that time in music is con- 
 nected with movements of the limbs. Individuals differ 
 widely in their perceptions of music, and although the ear 
 may be improved by cultivation, the musical faculty is essen- 
 tially a natural gift, that is to say, dependent upon the number 
 and the susceptibility of the nerve-cells and fibres in the 
 auditory and motor centres. Executive power, involving the 
 use of the hands in conjunction with the visual reading of 
 the musical notes, is a distinct faculty from that of musical 
 creativeness or the mere taste for music. Wagner confessed 
 to being a poor hand at the piano. Other musicians, such as 
 Paganini, have been great executants with little creative 
 power. 
 
 Like visual images, sounds are revived by association. 
 They, too, form more or less extensive cohesions, and it is 
 probable that the educated musician has many thousand such 
 cohesions at his command. A memory for sounds is as im- 
 portant to the musician as is a visual memory to the man of 
 letters. Revived combinations or sequences of notes, whether 
 conscious or unconscious, are the raw material of musical com- 
 position, and creativeness in music is due to precisely the 
 
284 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 same cause as creativeness in literature, namely, tlie spon- 
 taneous action of the nerve-cells and fibres of the brain, the 
 only difference being that the auditory and general motor 
 areas are affected in place of the visual and the articulatory. 
 
 In Mozart the impulse to compose manifested itself in his 
 fifth year, by which time he was already a good player. His 
 ear was extremely delicate. ' Until he was about ten years 
 old,' says his early friend Schachtner, 'he had an insur- 
 mountable horror of the horn when it was sounded alone 
 without other instruments ; merely holding a horn towards 
 him terrified him as much as if he had been threatened with a 
 loaded pistol.' Schachtner once blew the horn in the boy's 
 presence notwithstanding. ' Mozart no sooner heard the 
 clanging sound than he turned pale and would have fallen 
 into convulsions had it continued.' To be creative it is 
 necessary that the musician should have his mind well stored 
 with musical memories. Mozart said of himself: ' It would 
 not be easy to find a celebrated musician whose works I have 
 not often and laboriously studied.' ^ Wherever he happened 
 to be, Mozart was incessantly occupied with musical thoughts. 
 * I am,' he wrote, ' steeped in music so to speak ; it is in 
 my mind the whole day and I love to dream, study, and re- 
 flect upon it.' He was always strumming — on his hat, his 
 watch-fob, the table, the chairs, as if he were at the piano, 
 and even in conversation with his friends he seemed to be 
 carrying on an uuder-train of musical thought. More re- 
 markable still, when music was going on that did not interest 
 him, he had the power of working upon his own musical 
 ideas. At the opera, his friends could tell by the restless 
 movements of his hands, by his look, and the motion of his 
 lips as if he were singing or whistling, that he was entirely 
 engrossed by his internal musical activity. It is further re- 
 lated of Mozart that, in walking or driving, he would be 
 occupied in inventing, arranging, and elaborating melodies, 
 often humming or singing aloud, and growing red in the 
 face with excitement, and the briefest indications in black 
 and white sufficed to preserve these studies in his memory. 
 
 It is often quoted as a proof of Mozart's wonderful 
 • Otto Jahn. 
 
MOZART'S CEEATIVENESS 285 
 
 memory tliat, as a boy, he was able to recollect and write down 
 Allegri's ' Miserere ' after hearing it once ; but this was by 
 no means a solitary feat of the kind on his part. Concertos 
 that he had not heard for a long time he could play by heart ; 
 he wrote the trumpet and drum parts of the second finale in 
 ' Don Giovanni ' without a score ; on one occasion he wrote 
 only the violin part of a sonata for violin and piano, playing 
 himself the piano part without having heard the piece, and 
 he could write a composition at once in parts without having 
 scored it. Compositions that he had once thought out he 
 could recollect with perfect clearness in their minutest details. 
 In composing he was not obliged to have recourse to the 
 piano ; his mind pictured the whole work when he had once 
 conceived it. According to his wife, ' he wrote music like 
 letters and never tried a movement until it was finished.' 
 He could, however, improvise marvellously. At such times, 
 ' the bold flights of his imagination into the highest regions 
 and down again to the very depths of the abyss caused the 
 greatest masters of music who heard him to be lost in amaze- 
 ment and delight.' The impressions produced, says one of 
 them, were like the gift of ' new senses of sight and hearing.' 
 Mozart, in the height of his activity, lived in a delirium of 
 invention, often working so hard that, as he himself expressed 
 it, he did not know whether his head was on or off. Concern- 
 ing his method of work he wrote : ' It is when I am, as it 
 were, entirely myself, alone and in good spirits, that my ideas 
 flow best and most abundantly. Whence or how they come 
 I know not, nor can I force them. Those that best please 
 me I retain in my memory, and I am accustomed, as I have 
 been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, 
 it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morceau to 
 account, agreeably to the rules of counterpoint and to the 
 peculiarities of the various instruments. All this fires my 
 soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges it- 
 self, becomes methodized and defineH, and the whole, though 
 it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, 
 so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a statue, at a 
 glance. In my imagination I hear the various parts, not 
 successively but all at once. What a delight this is I cannot 
 
286 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 tell. All this inventing and producing takes place in a 
 pleasing, lively dream. Why my productions take from my 
 hand that particular form and style that makes them 
 *' Mozartish " and different from the works of other composers 
 is probably owing to the same cause that renders my nose 
 Mozart's and different from the noses of other people. For I 
 really do not study or aim at any originality ; I should not, in 
 fact, be quite able to describe in what mine consists. At least, 
 I know that I have not constituted myself either one way or 
 another.' ^ 
 
 Other great composers have similarly been controlled by 
 the automatic forces of their brain. Handel was not only 
 born of unmusical parents, but was sternly forbidden to prac- 
 tise music and, as a boy, received no instruction in the art 
 whatever. Yet his earliest delight was a mimic orchestra of 
 toy drums and trumpets, horns, flutes, and Jew's harps. He 
 practised on an old clavichord in secret, and by dint of his 
 unaided efforts made such progress in executive power and 
 artistic expression as to astonish all who heard him the first 
 time he was allowed to touch an organ. At eight or nine 
 years of age he was consumed by the fire of inspiration. 
 Of Beethoven, Schindler relates that he would not infrequently, 
 in a fit of the most complete abstraction, go to his washhand 
 basin and pour several jugs of water upon his hands, all the 
 while ' humming and roaring, for sing he could not.' After 
 splashing in the water till his clothes were wet through, he 
 would pace up and down the room with a vacant expression 
 of countenance and his eyes frightfully distended. These 
 were his moments of profoundest meditation. Again, ' when 
 one of his musical ideas took possession of his mind, he would 
 look upwards, his eyes rolling and flashing brightly, or stare 
 straight in front of him with his eye-balls fixed. These fits 
 of inspiration frequently came to him when he was in com- 
 pany or even in the street. In public, at such moments, 
 he naturally attracted attention and ridicule.' The fact that 
 Beethoven went on composing after his hearing failed him, 
 shows how his brain must have seethed with musical material. 
 Mendelssohn's fits of inspiration were sudden. 'Sometimes 
 * Holmes : Life of MozaH. 
 
MUSICAL INSPIRATION 287 
 
 I have a feeling like this,' he remarked to Rockstro, twist- 
 ing his hands rapidly and nervously in front of him — ' and 
 when that comes I know that I must write.' 
 
 The key to this great creative activity in music is furnished 
 by the insanity of Schumann. While in a beer saloon one 
 evening Schumann threw down a newspaper he had in his 
 hand, saying to a friend, ' 1 can read no more ; I hear an 
 incessant A.' Afterwards he imagined he heard a tone which 
 pursued him incessantly, and from which harmonies, and even 
 whole compositions, were gradually developed. Spirit voices 
 whispered in his ear ; now gently, now rudely and reproach- 
 fully. These hallucinations robbed him of sleep for the last 
 two weeks of his wretched existence. One night he rose 
 suddenly and called for a light, saying that Schubert and 
 Mendelssohn had sent him a theme which he must write out 
 at once, and this he did in spite of his wife's entreaties. 
 During his illness he composed five piano variations upon this 
 theme, which was his last work.^ Taken in conjunction with 
 Mozart's remarkably lucid statement of his methods, nothing 
 could more conclusively establish the automatic character of 
 musical inspiration than this experience of Schumann's. 
 
 That musical inspiration is subject to pretty much the 
 same rules and exceptions as literary, is shown by the fact 
 that Chopin, like Flaubert, had a mania for corrections. 
 Chopin's creations were spontaneous; the idea came to him 
 without his seeking it. It would come to him at the piano 
 suddenly and completely, or it would spring up in his mind 
 out of doors when he would hasten to fix it upon paper. 
 * Then began,' says Madame George Sand, ^ a painful labour 
 of correction. Chopin wrote, erased, added, diminished, 
 transformed, and, finding his idea still inferior, would sink into 
 the depth of despair. For whole days he would be shut up 
 in his room, marching to and fro, weeping, tearing his hair, 
 tearing up his written sheets, breaking his pens, changing a 
 hundred times a measure, a harmony, a note. He would 
 spend six weeks torturing a page only to restore it ultimately 
 to its original form.' Such incessant correction would seem 
 to arise from a persistent flow of fresh combinations upon a 
 ' Wasilewski. 
 
288 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 given theme, if it is not, as already suggested, a form of la 
 folie du chute. Music requires little or no basis of general 
 observation in the individual ; it has few cohesions outside 
 the auditory area and the motor centre where it finds expres- 
 sion. As a class, consequently, musicians do not strike one 
 as exceptionally intelligent or well-informed men. 
 
 Painters have a much keener perception of light and shade 
 in a given object than the ordinary observer. They see their 
 model as a patch of diversified colour apart from tactile and 
 motor suggestions of a disturbing character. The eminent 
 French painter Delacroix was exclusively a colourist, with 
 little idea of form. He was bad at drawing, but in the 
 manipulation of colour his genius was marvellous. 'I have 
 seen him,' says Maxime da Camp, 'take coloured skeins of 
 wool, mix and group them, and by that means produce extra- 
 ordinary effects of colouration.' Delacroix once remarked that 
 the finest picture he had ever seen was a Persian carpet. In 
 his portraits he achieved but an indifferent likeness, but his 
 pearl necklaces and jewels were startlingly real. Destitute 
 of colour, his compositions tended to the grotesque. 
 
 ' What do you see, sir ? ' said Fuseli one day to a student, who, 
 with his pencil in hand and his drawing before him, was gazing 
 into vacancy. ' Nothing, sir,' was the answer. ' Nothing ! 
 young man,' rejoined the eminent painter ; ' then I tell you 
 you ought to see something — you ought to see distinctly the 
 true image of what you are trying to draw. I see the vision 
 of all I paint, and I wish to Heaven I could paint up to what 
 I see.' At the same time Fuseli was near-sighted, so much so 
 that, while painting, he was obliged from time to time to re- 
 tire from his easel to a distance and examine his picture by 
 means of an opera glass, then return and retouch the defec- 
 tive places.^ The faculty of seeing their subject in the mind's 
 eye is not an uncommon one among painters of genius. 
 Leonardo da Vinci organised a festive meeting of peasants, 
 fed them, watched them closely, and afterwards painted them 
 from memory. Hogarth writes : ' I had one material advan- 
 tage over my competitors, namely, the early habit I acquired 
 of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying it on 
 ^ Allan Cunnincrham. 
 
THE PAINTING FACULTY 289 
 
 tlie spot, whatever I intended to imitate.' Gustave Dore and 
 David Eoberts, the inspired house-painter who rose to be a 
 Eoyal Academician, possessed the same gift. Of Roberts 
 a biographer says: 'With a few touches he could produce 
 an effect, rivalling in apparent elaboration the most careful 
 productions, and far excelling them in breadth and power. 
 He seemed to be able to photograph objects on his eye, for I 
 have ao^ain and ag-ain been with him while he was sketchino: 
 very elaborate structures, or very extensive views, and he took 
 in a large mass at one glance, not requiring to look again at 
 the portion until he had completed it in his sketch.' 
 
 How morbid is this faculty of optical retentiveness may 
 be gathered from a remarkable case that came under Wigan's 
 treatment. It was that of a painter of note, who executed 
 portraits with remarkable facility. He required but one 
 sitting, and his system, he thus explained : ' When a sitter 
 came, I looked at him attentively for half an hour, sketching 
 from time to time on the canvas. I wanted no more. I 
 put away my canvas and took another sitter. When I 
 wished to resume my first portrait, I mentally took the man 
 and set him in the chair, where I saw him as distinctly as if 
 he had been before me in his proper person — I may almost 
 say more vividly. I looked from time to time at the imaginary 
 figure, then worked with my pencil, then referred to the 
 countenance, and so on, just as I should have done had the 
 sitter been there. When I looked at the chair I saw the man.' 
 The artist possessing this strange susceptibility was very 
 popular for a time and made a great deal of money. Gradu- 
 ally, however, he began to lose the distinction between the 
 imaginary figure and the real person, and sometimes disputed 
 with sitters as to whether they had been with him the day 
 before. Madness supervened, and he remained for thirty 
 years in an asylum. A short time before his death he re- 
 sumed his pencil and painted nearly as well as formerly. 
 
 Another celebrated artist of Wigan's day (probably 
 Hay don), whose fertility of imagination was a general subject 
 of wonder and admiration, is said to have remarked that the 
 preposterous faces and figures he put forth always seemed to 
 him to exist already on the paper, and that his hand did 
 
 u 
 
200 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 nothing more than trace the outlines and fix them with the 
 pencil. Here we have an example of that spontaneous 
 activity of the nerve-cells of the visual centre which is at the 
 bottom of creative art. Another illustration is furnished 
 by the case of an ' eminent artist ' known to Forbes Winslow. 
 This person died of apoplexy, and, before his death, he ex- 
 hibited a curious derangement of the visual centre. The 
 cerebral symptoms showed themselves several years before 
 the fatal attack, in the form of flashes of light before the eyes, 
 to which were afterwards added pains in the head and 
 diminished distinctness of sight. This last symptom gradually 
 increased, till the patient's sight was totally destroyed. From 
 that time he suffered from a series of the most dazzling 
 images, playing apparently upon the optical apparatus by 
 day and night. Their brightness was unspeakably distress- 
 ing. Sometimes they would assume the form of angels with 
 flaming swords, every motion of which seemed like an electric 
 flash to blind the eye and sear the brain by the intensity of 
 its light. With the exception of some irritability of temper, 
 there was not the slightest affection of the intellectual powers. 
 The memory, imagination, and judgment were unimpaired, 
 and there was no change in the coats or humours of the 
 eye. 
 
 The actor's genius consists mainly in a special command 
 of voice, facial expression, gesture, and action. Actors do 
 not feel more acutely than other people, but they are able to 
 express their feelings more vividly, and this faculty may be 
 ascribed to a special susceptibility of the area for the articu- 
 latory apparatus and for the movements of the body and 
 limbs, more particularly the face, arms, and hands. Of all 
 the arts, acting probably requires the least assistance from the 
 sensory centres. It does not seem to be necessary that the 
 actor should closely observe or have a specially retentive 
 memory for life and character. Working by analogy, he 
 can successfully enact a murder though he may never have 
 assisted at one, and he constantly depicts feelings, such as those 
 of a king or a criminal, which he has never actually experi- 
 enced. Some of the greatest actors are callous to the emotions 
 they portray ; they seem to feel but in reality they do not. Sarah 
 
THE ACTIXa FACULTY 291 
 
 Bernhardt's pulse does not quicken in her violent scenes of 
 passion. Robson could electrify his audience by his emotional 
 changes ; yet Palgrave Simpson described him as one of the 
 stupidest actors at rehearsal he had ever met, and apparently 
 without an idea in his head. Actors who have played with 
 him, relate that in his most pathetic scenes, while he was 
 thrilling the house to tears, Robson could try to make his 
 stage companion laugh by some sotto voce remark upon a 
 trivial subject, showing himself to be completely unmoved. 
 
 Probably there is little in the greatest acting that goes 
 beyond the mechanical aptitudes described. The intellectual 
 finesse^ so much admired in certain impersonations, is one of 
 the many illusions of the stage. No actor ever possessed it 
 in a higher degree than the elder Farren, who, nevertheless, 
 in private life, according to George Henry Lewes, was 
 * rather stupid than otherwise.' An actor may, of course, 
 be an acute thinker, but at the same time he is not bound 
 to be intellectual, exceptional powers of observation not 
 being essential to his art as they are to that of the man of 
 letters or the painter, though he must, of course, have intelli- 
 gence enough to make-up in character, and to adapt himself 
 to the optique of the stage. Children with no knowledge of 
 the world act remarkably well, whereas we never hear of 
 infant prodigies in literature or of Royal Academicians of 
 tender years. I am speaking, be it remembered, of the actor's 
 natural endowment, the gift of imitation, which constitutes 
 his speciality. With this a very ordinary degree of intelli- 
 gence will make a great display, and without it the highest 
 intellectual attainments will avail nothing. Shakespeare 
 was a mediocrity on the boards — at all events, nothing has 
 been recorded in praise of him as an actor, and it is a matter 
 of common observation in theatrical life that the author, 
 who necessarily feels the pathos of what he writes, is usually 
 unable to give it effective expression personally. In the 
 mounting of a play, much of the painter's faculty for colour 
 and form may be displayed ; but this, properly speaking, lies 
 outside the actor's province, as does also the business skill 
 required for the successful management of a theatre. 
 
 The impulsive actor is one whose muscular mechanism is 
 
 u 2 
 
292 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 highly responsive to the induced emotion of the scene. 
 When Edmund Kean was at his best, ^ the fury and whirlwind 
 of the passions,' says a contemporary writer, * seemed to 
 endow him with supernatural strength. His eyes were 
 glittering and bloodshot ; his veins were swollen, and his 
 whole figure restless and violent.' The very looks of a great 
 tragedian are as terrible to his fellow actors as to the public. 
 Murdoch, an actor who played with Junius Brutus Booth, 
 thus describes a scene in which he took part with that 
 tragedian : ' I turned, and there, with the pistol held to my 
 head, stood Booth, glaring like an infuriated demon. Then 
 for the first time I comprehended the reality of acting. The 
 fury of the passion-flamed face, and the magnetism of the 
 rigid clutch upon my arm paralysed my muscles, while the 
 scintillating gleam of the terrible eyes, like the green and red 
 fiashes of an enraged serpent, fascinated and fixed me spell- 
 bound to the spot.' And a moment's reflection will show 
 how much the functions of the muscular system are indicated 
 in the following description by Lewes of the genius of 
 E-achel : ' In her early days nothing more exquisite could be 
 heard than her elocution — it was musical and artistically 
 graduated to the fluctuations of meaning. Her thrilling 
 voice, flexible, penetrating, and grave, responded with the 
 precision of a keyed instrument. Her thin, nervous frame 
 vibrated with emotion. Her face, which would have been 
 common had it not been aflame with genius, was capable of 
 intense expression. Her gestures were so fluent and graceful 
 that merely to see her would have been a rare delight. Very 
 noticeable is it,' adds the eminent critic, ' that Rachel could 
 not speak prose with even tolerable success ; deprived of the 
 music of verse, and missing its ictus, she seemed quite inca- 
 pable of managing the easy cadences of colloquial language. 
 The subtle influences of rhythm seemed to penetrate her, and 
 gave a movement and animation to her delivery which were 
 altogether wanting in her declamation of prose.' ^ 
 
 I have already shown what ground exists for believing 
 that our perception of rhythm is connected with the motor 
 area of the brain. On the theory of dramatic expression as a 
 * George Henry Lewes : Actors and the Art of Acting. 
 
EACHEL'S ENDOWMENT 293 
 
 muscular endowment one can understand how Macready was 
 able to prepare himself for rendering the rage of Shylock by 
 violently shaking a ladder and cursing in an undertone behind 
 the scenes. Had Macready, however, been an actor of sur- 
 passing genius, that is to say, of surpassing susceptibility as 
 regards his muscular system, the induced emotion of the scene 
 would have lashed him into a rage, or the semblance of a 
 rage, without the aid of the ladder. 
 
 That the actor or actress can shed tears on the stage is 
 perfectly true ; but this, again, is a purely mechanical effect. 
 It is not the expression of a genuine grief. The same auto- 
 matic action of the lachrymose glands in obedience to a 
 stimulus is experienced by the spectator of a play, who weeps 
 at, while he secretly enjoys, the harrowing scene enacted 
 before him. There is in the brain a mechanism of grief and 
 gladness — a cohesion of sensory and muscular nerve-groupings 
 which is operated upon by direct or induced sensations. The 
 stimulus may be real or false ; of that the brain takes no 
 account. A l^ver is pulled, and the fountains play whether 
 the occasion be a great or a small one. In insanity, examples 
 of automatic grief are frequently met with. For example, a 
 young woman treated by Maudsley passed her time moaning 
 and weeping abundantly. She was not really, however, as 
 miserable as she looked, for in the midst of her sobbing, if a 
 ludicrous remark were made, she would look up calmly, speak 
 quietly, and even smile for a moment before relapsing into 
 her habitual condition. The motor centres for the expression 
 of grief were evidently subjected to some morbid excitement. 
 All theatrical emotion, whether on the stage or in the audi- 
 torium, is of this automatic kind, the impressionability of the 
 auditor, like that of the actor, depending upon his cerebral 
 organisation. A special susceptibility of the articulatory 
 apparatus would confer the faculty of learning long speeches 
 by heart, and this the actor possesses in an unusual degree. 
 
 It is not a little remarkable that the greatest military 
 commanders in the world have been epileptics. Cruelty or 
 indifference to the feelings of others is a special feature of 
 epilepsy, which seems to sap or destroy the links of associa- 
 tion productive of sympathy. Epileptics are notoriouaiy 
 
294 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 destructive ; they break, maim, or kill witliout apparent 
 motive, and this characteristic is developed even in children. 
 Napoleon made war as an epileptic smashes the crockery in 
 his room or murders his own child, namely, from a wanton 
 desire to destroy something or somebody. Bourrienne often 
 heard Napoleon say, ' Friendship is but a name ; I love 
 nobody.' When physically idle, Napoleon never knew what 
 to do with himself. So great was his natural impatience and 
 hastiness that he could not shave without gashing his cheek. 
 Olive's indifference to consequences has already been noted in 
 his duelling experience. In a military commander of genius 
 tliere is, of course, much more than mere destructiveness. In 
 addition to great energy and quickness, he must have a keen 
 perception of the eftects of strategic movements — a motor 
 susceptibility in combination with quickness of vision, whereby 
 he is enabled to be superior to his enemy at the point of con- 
 tact ; and he must have a spirit of reckless daring calculated 
 to inflame the courage of his soldiers. Of literary or artistic 
 culture he need have none. Olive, one of the greatest of 
 generals, was almost illiterate ; Napoleon's scholastic attain- 
 ments were very moderate. The epileptic is indifferent, not 
 only to the fate of others, but also to his own, as the great 
 frequency of motiveless suicides among epileptic patients 
 attests. In this respect he resembles the born general who, 
 by his calmness, coolness, and courage in the hour of danger 
 carries his men to victory. 
 
 The orator, whether in Parliament or in the pulpit, re- 
 quires the actor's control of voice and gesture, together with 
 a great fluency of speech and command of verbal imagery. 
 Ohatham seems to have had all the physical resources of 
 Edmund Kean. ' In his look and gesture,' says a contem- 
 porary, ' dignity and grace were combined. . . The terrors of 
 his look, the lightnings of his eye, were insufferable. His 
 voice was both full and clear, his least whisper was distinctly 
 heard, his middle tones were sweet, rich, and beautifully 
 varied. When he lifted his voice to its highest pitch the 
 house was completely filled with the volume of the sound. 
 The effect was awful, except when he wished to cheer and 
 animate ; then he had spirit-stirring notes that were perfectly 
 
THE SCIENTIFIC FACULTY 295 
 
 irresistible. But the terrible was his peculiar power. Then 
 the whole house sank before him.' ^ The keen lighting of 
 Chatham's eye is said to have ' blasted the courage of the most 
 intrepid of his opponents.' Profusion of language implies a 
 great retentiveness in the various cerebral centres concerned. 
 From the testimony of his grand-daughter, Lady Hester 
 Stanhope, we know that Chatham's visual memory was great. 
 ^ On passing a place where he had been ten years before,' she 
 relates, ' he would observe that there used to be a tree, or a 
 stone, or something that was gone, and on inquiry it always 
 proved to be so. Yet he travelled always with four horses at 
 a great rate.' Chatham was a wretched financier, and his 
 administrative faculties generally were poor. For statesman- 
 ship in its highest form, not only a rich store of facts and 
 figures, but also a far-reaching identifying faculty, is required. 
 In this respect the philosopher and the statesman approxi- 
 mate, though the latter is more alive than the former to 
 considerations of practical expediency. If the philosopher 
 dabbles in statesmanship he is apt to become a doctrinaire. 
 
 Men of science, also, are distinguished for their discernment 
 of likeness in diversity. It was this identifying faculty which 
 enabled Newton to couple with a falling apple the moon's 
 deflection to the earth, and James Watt to see the possibili- 
 ties of the steam-engine in the boiling kettle. In the same 
 way, from the facts laid down by Malthus showing that the 
 increase of population was limited by the supply of food, 
 Darwin deduced the principle of natural selection. In all 
 these discoveries there was a great stretch of identifying 
 genius — an enormous generalising power displayed. The 
 identifying faculty was very great in Faraday. Bence Jones 
 say he had ' a sort of divination or scientific second sight 
 which led him to anticipate results that he or others after- 
 wards proved to be true.' He laboured to establish the 
 actual identity of all the forces of nature — a conception borne 
 out in part by Joule's discovery of tlie mechanical equivalent 
 of heat, and by the later developments of the molecular theory 
 in physics. 
 
 Of the scope and power of Darwin's mind we have an 
 ' Charles Butler : Reminiscences. 
 
296 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 interesting rf^cord in his autobiograpliy. ' For many years,' 
 says the author of the ' Origin of Species,' ' I cannot endure to 
 read a line of poetry ; I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, 
 and have found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I 
 have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. . . . My 
 mind,' he adds in his autobiography, written five or six years 
 before his death, ' seems to have become a kind of machine 
 for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.' 
 This bent declared itself in his early youth, when he always 
 had ' the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever 
 he observed,' and he had the patience to ' reflect or ponder 
 for any number of years over any unexplained problem.' 
 
 In scientific genius the faculty of long-sustained atten- 
 tion is very marked. 'The difference,' says Sir William 
 Hamilton truly enough, ' between an ordinary mind and the 
 mind of Newton consists principally in this, that the one is 
 capable of the application of a more continuous attention 
 than the other ; that a Newton is able, without fatigue, to 
 connect inference with inference in one long series towards a 
 determinate end, while the man of inferior capacity is soon 
 obliged to break off or let fall the thread which he had 
 begun to spin.' In the case of the poet, who likewise 
 possesses it, the identifying faculty is affected by strong 
 human sympathies. To these the man of science is com- 
 monly as much a stranger as he is to the perception of 
 verbal rhythm. The arithmetical faculty of Zerah Col burn 
 probably consisted in a tenacious recollection of forms, as 
 visible in the ten numerals and their combinations. George 
 Bidder, another famous calculator, relates that, having a great 
 liking for figures, he gave himself up to the study of numbers, 
 learning first the ordinary multiplication table by making 
 lines and squares of peas, marbles, and shot, and then enlarg- 
 ing upon this, until at last he had a multiplication table of 
 his own, rising to a million. 
 
 The faculty of fixing and sustaining attention is assigned 
 by modern physiology to the frontal area of the brain, 
 whence the movements of the head and eyes are controlled. 
 What has been called the identifying faculty, must also, how- 
 ever, be concerned with some automatic process carried on 
 
THE BUSINESS FACULTY 207 
 
 between various cerebral centres, inasmuch as solutions of 
 problems, glimpses of truth, so to speak, occur to the mind 
 when one is not actively engaged in considering the subject 
 in hand ; when, indeed, the attention is relaxed. Swedenborg's 
 great inventive genius, based upon a morbid excitability, was 
 clearly of the automatic order. The sub-marine torpedo- 
 vessel, the balloon, and the steam-engine, he anticipated 
 long before they became accomplished facts,^ while the 
 shrewdness of not a few of his observations is remarkable. 
 ' Nature,' he said, ' is the same everywhere, in suns and 
 planets, and in the smxallest particles ' — a view which spec- 
 troscopic analysis and chemical research at the present day 
 tend to bear out. In physiology, again, his theory that the 
 angels read a man's history in his brain and physical struc- 
 ture after death, is not one that any reader of this book will 
 scoff at. And most of these pregnant thoughts appear to 
 have come to him, not by dint of conscious reasoning, but 
 spontaneously, or automatically, in visions. 
 
 The prudential faculty, so important in business, appears 
 to consist in a lively memory for pains or inconveniences, 
 and a consequent eagerness to avoid a recurrence of them. 
 If the mind is untenacious of its worries it will not be pru- 
 dent. The improvident man is one whose perception of the 
 evils that threaten him is feeble ; he is a careless, happy-go- 
 lucky person, who does not realise the force of the sage 
 counsels tendered him from time to time, and who gathers 
 nothing from his own past experience. Bain offers some 
 shrewd remarks on the qualities which ensure success in 
 life : ' As an artist feels at once the effect of every touch in 
 the total of his picture, so some men,' he observes, ' discern 
 in a moment whether they have given offence or caused 
 delight, while to others no indication of either is apparent. 
 The art of reading countenances and interpreting the full 
 force of words, tones, and gestures, belongs to the politician, 
 to the diplomatist, to the man that keeps free of quarrels, and 
 
 ^ These inventions took the form in Swedenborg's mind of (1) a sort of 
 ship in which men might go below the surface of the sea and do great 
 damage to an enemy ; (2) a flying chariot ; and (3) a machine driven by 
 fire for pumping water. 
 
298 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 to most of those that attain popularity and rise in the world. 
 Some men may do many foolish things, but by being distin- 
 guished in this one branch of circumspection, they procure 
 the reputatim of prudence, caution, and foresight, which by 
 sinister applications degenerates into cunning. We cannot 
 doubt that in some corner of the human cerebrum there 
 is a distinguishing development in the instances where this 
 quality of the observation of men is strongly manifested. 
 It may not be an ultimate fact in our constitution, but it is 
 a genuine fact of character unequally displayed in individuals. 
 It is a chief mode of being wide-awake, and an instrument 
 in the hands of every one engaged in ruling, persuading, 
 guiding, instructing, or moulding human beings.' * In the 
 mental processes above described, one can perceive a quick 
 responsive action between the chief centres, in conjunction 
 with cohering trains of past experiences. A dull mind 
 brought into contact with the same facts would be irrespon- 
 sive and deficient in its memories. 
 
 In the ne'er-do-well there is not only improvidence, but a 
 warp of the organisation conducing to drunkenness and even 
 to crime. Avarice is a haunting prepossession like the ' fixed 
 ideas' of insanity; for the miser has been known to starve 
 himself to death in the midst of his possessions. Philanthropy, 
 benevolence, and the kindred sentiments of compassion and 
 friendship, again, are excited through the sensory centres. 
 To experience these sentiments we must realise the pain or 
 discomfort of those who stand in need of our services. Dis- 
 tresses that are incomprehensible to our minds, that is to say, 
 of which we have no experience direct or indirect, awaken 
 no benevolence within us. A tender-hearted man will kill a 
 minute insect without compunction, though he may hesitate 
 to injure an animal of larger growth more nearly resembling 
 himself in organisation. 
 
 Simple piety or veneration seems to resolve itself into an 
 absence of the identifying faculty, the generalising power 
 which is so marked in scientific genius. It is not to be 
 confounded with the theological spirit, which is often well 
 versed in the methods of controversy. A typically pious 
 ^ Bain : On the Study of Character. 
 
PHYSICAL BASIS OF PIETY 299 
 
 mind would have been incapable of discerning, as Franklin 
 did, that electricity and lightning were identical. True 
 religion is the antithesis of self-esteem. The mind imbued 
 with it distrusts itself and is fond of relying upon authority 
 or dogma. The identifying faculty, if not pushed to the 
 extreme which produces the genius of a Newton, is a great 
 safe-guard of mental stability. Hallucinations of sight or 
 hearing do not affect the reason if there is a strong identify- 
 ing faculty in the individual whereby he is enabled to keep 
 in touch with his actual surroundings. By dint of extensive 
 memories and cohering impressions in his brain he hnoivs 
 that the figures he sees or the voices he hears can have no 
 objective reality. He can even calmly study the pheno- 
 mena as the result of some disorder of the visual or the 
 auditory area. If, on the other hand, he is without the 
 identifying faculty, he is carried away by his errors of 
 sense. A man like Nicolai knows that his phantoms have 
 no reality, but an ignorant French peasant girl who sees the 
 Virgin accepts her vision as a miracle. Swedenborg com- 
 bined in a remarkable degree the most opposite qualities, 
 reminding one a little of Coleridge, who was as much a 
 philosopher as a poet. But the Swedish prophet was not an 
 example of ordinary piety ; his sensory hallucinations were 
 too strong for him and so warped his understanding. Ee- 
 ligious inspiration, like the inspiration of the poet, never 
 transcends the actual knowledge of its own day. No ancient 
 prophet anticipated the Copernican theory of the universe. 
 Mahommed's inspiration was coloured by his ideas of Judaism 
 and Christianity. George Fox believed that the Lord had 
 given him ' a spirit of discerning,' by which he could see the 
 inward condition of people, and the use he put this to was 
 to ' discern witches.' ' As I was going to a meeting,' he 
 says, ' I saw some women in a field and I discerned them to 
 be witches,' upon which he told them his mind. Swedenborg, 
 in his ecstatic trances, conversed with the inhabitants of all 
 the planets except Uranus and Neptune, which, unfortunately 
 for his pretensions, had not then been discovered. 
 
 Of criminality there are many varieties, but a common 
 feature underlies them all — an obtuseness with regard to the 
 
300 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 consequences of unlawful acts, whether as affecting the criminal 
 himself or his victim. The criminal can hardly be expected 
 to study the welfare of society when he is indifferent to his 
 own. In civilised communities, crime most emphatically 
 does not pay ; it is in the long run a losing game. Yet it is 
 taken up by a regular percentage of individuals, generation 
 after generation, who persist in their evil courses despite the 
 cumulative punishments meted out to them. The investi- 
 gations of Lombroso and others leave no room for doubt that 
 crime is literally a moral insanity, depending in the main 
 upon congenital causes. In extreme cases, the vicious pro- 
 clivity manifests itself in childhood, and the individual, acute 
 though he may be in many respects, betrays a total incapacity 
 to appreciate the moral bearings of his offence. There are, of 
 course, degrees of this insanity as of every other. Punishment 
 may deter a large class who hover on the brink of crime, or 
 normally constituted individuals who, through passion or stress 
 of circumstances, are tempted to break the law ; but when the 
 congenital bent is strong no repressive measures avail. 
 
 The great frequency among criminals of anomalies in the 
 shape of the skull testifies to a special mental organisation ; 
 and this is confirmed by an anatomical study of the convolu- 
 tions. So complex is the mechanism of the brain as a whole, 
 and so numerous the functions called into activity even in the 
 commission of crime, that no constant set of anomalies in the 
 brain-structure of criminals can be looked for. But so far as 
 one can judge from the recorded confessions of malefactors of 
 all descriptions, the working of the . criminal mind revolves 
 itself into a partial, instead of a general,activity of the different 
 centres. The murderer strikes, the thief steals, in obedience 
 to a first impulse. His associated impressions or memories are 
 comparatively few ; his cohering trains of ideas are imperfect. 
 The question then arises : Ought the criminal to be relieved 
 of the penal consequences of his acts ? My answer is, No. 
 The welfare of the community is the supreme consideration. 
 If he is a danger to it he must be suppressed. The majority 
 have the right to protect themselves against him as they 
 would against a madman, a venomous reptile, or a wild 
 beast. 
 
301 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 PHRENOLOGY AND ITS LIMITATIONS— EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR OF IT — 
 THE FOREHEAD AS AN INTELLECTUAL REGION — EFFECTS OF 
 INJURY OR DISEASE OF THE FRONTAL LOBES— THE CONCENTRATIVB 
 FACULTY — CRIMINAL HEADS — LOCALISATION OF WIT — SWIFT'S 
 SKULL — PARALLELISM BETWEEN THE OLD PHRENOLOGY AND THE 
 NEW — CORRECT AND INCORRECT LOCALISATIONS — SIZE AND WEIGH C 
 OF BRAINS — HEADS OF REMARKABLE MEN — SAVAGE AND CIVILISED 
 BRAINS — THE PHRENOLOGY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 After suffering mucli neglect and obloquy from the scientific 
 world, phrenology begins to appear in a somewhat more 
 favourable light than heretofore. No doubt any method of 
 guessing at the functions of the brain from the shape of 
 the head must in a great measure be untrustworthy. The 
 volume of the brain is not the only point to be considered ; 
 the quality of it is a matter of importance, and this it 
 seems to be impossible to gauge through the skull. But 
 such a condemnation as Bastian passes upon phrenology 
 is obviously too sweeping, namely, that it is .' fallacious in 
 almost every respect,' ' eminently unsatisfactory in its locali- 
 sations, and altogether defective in its psychological analysis.' 
 Bain's conclusion is more just : ' There is much that is 
 noticeable in the coincidences between the shape of the head 
 and mental peculiarity, and of the entire number of such 
 included in the phrenological system, it is possible that some 
 may stand and others turn out mistaken.' The elements of 
 character are very numerous, and they are found united in 
 individuals in infinitely varying proportions. That particular 
 functions are carried on by the various centres of the brain is 
 proved beyond a doubt, and it follows inevitably that all 
 mental functions, however complex, have an equally material 
 basis. To concede this, as physiology must do, is to concede 
 the principle of phrenology. The only question that can arise 
 
802 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 is as to tlie particular regions of the brain where the various 
 mental functions are exercised. 
 
 The phrenologists, it must be owned, have been singularly 
 rash. They have not only carried their pretensions to an 
 absurd pitch, but they have shown an almost incredible laxity 
 and credulity in their investigations. ' It is impossible,' says 
 Spurzheim, ' to unite a greater number of proofs in demon- 
 stration of any natural truth than may be presented to place 
 the seat of the amative propensity in the cerebellum.' What 
 these so-called proofs amount to is this : The effects of lesion 
 or disease in the cerebellum have been shown in repeated 
 instances to be accompanied by a disturbance of the amative 
 propensity, while unusual force of the feeling has been seen to 
 accompany a large cerebellum, and weakness of the propensity 
 a small one. There is nothing, however, in these cases to pre- 
 clude the possibility of mere coincidence ; and in point of fact 
 the only proved connection of the cerebellum with amativeness 
 is that the nerve-connections between the hemispheres and 
 the organs of generation pass near it, and are therefore liable 
 to be affected by disease in the cerebellar region, just as the 
 telegraphic communications between London and Edinburgh 
 might be disturbed by floods in the Midlands. Of Gall many 
 amusing anecdotes are related. He is said to have mistaken 
 the skull of an imbecile for that of his colleague Spurzheim. 
 On one occasion he went to the prison of Bicetre for the pur- 
 pose of examining the heads of some notorious convicts. In 
 anticipation of the visit, Pariset dressed up a dozen of the 
 worst criminals as warders and presented them to Gall, with 
 the result that the founder of phrenology found nothing re- 
 markable in them. After Gall's death, three portions of 
 skulls were found in his museum representing the organs of 
 ' music,' ' caution,' and ' amativeness.' They were labelled as 
 having belonged to a musician, a baroness who had committed 
 suicide in a fit of monomania, and a merchant who had lost 
 his reason through love. Leuret found that the three cranial 
 specimens were all parts of the same skull. 
 
 All allowance being made for coincidence, however, there 
 is still a certain amount of evidence in favour of the theory 
 that the shape of the head bears some relation to mental 
 
PHEENOLOGY OLD AND NEW 303 
 
 capacity. Phrenology need not be thrown over altogether. 
 It was originated at a time when knowledge of the functions of 
 the brain was extremely limited, but it roughly accords, not 
 only with general experience, but in some important respects 
 with the latest discoveries in physiology. The forehead has 
 long been regarded as an important seat of the intellectual 
 faculties. Now, the electric stimulus produces no effect upon 
 the frontal lobes of the brain ; but the fact of their being con- 
 nected with the sensory and motor centres by great bands 
 of fibres shows that they play some important part in the 
 cerebral economy. Of this there is also some negative evi- 
 dence. Animals whose frontal lobes are destroyed become 
 stupid. They eat freely enough but canuot look for their 
 food. If a bone is thrown to a dog so injured, it will run to it 
 with great alacrity, but it has not the sense to stop at the 
 right moment ; it overshoots the mark. Then, instead of 
 turning round and looking for the bone in a methodical way, 
 it appears to forget what it was after and runs on heedlessly 
 until the object is again brought under its notice. Mean- 
 while the animal is able to hear, see, smell, touch, and taste 
 perfectly, but it has a stupid expression of the eyes and 
 inability to fix the gaze. The same results are observed in 
 monkeys. When their frontal lobes have been removed, 
 ' instead of as before,' says Ferrier, ' being actively interested 
 in their surroundings and curiously prying into all that comes 
 within the field of their observation, they remain apathetic, or 
 dull, or doze ofi* to sleep, responding only to the sensations and 
 impressions of the moment, or varying their listlessness with 
 restless and purposeless wanderings to and fro. While not 
 demented,^ they have lost to all appearance the faculty of 
 attentive and intelligent observation.' 
 
 Evidence directly bearing upon the functions of the frontal 
 lobes in man is very scanty, disease being seldom entirely local 
 in its effects and special experiments with the electric stimulus 
 or the cautery being forbidden even in the case of the worst 
 criminals. Several cases are recorded, however, in which disease 
 or accident to the frontal region has produced in man an 
 intellectual deficiency and an instability of character exactly 
 as in monkeys and dogs. An American workman, for ex- 
 
301 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 ample, had his frontal lobes injured by a crowbar and lived 
 twelve years after the accident. Before sustaining the injury 
 he was steady, shrewd, intelligent, persevering, and well- 
 mannered ; afterwards the balance of his intellectual faculties 
 appeared to be destroyed, and he became nervous, irritable, 
 impatient, obstinate, capricious, disrespectful, and profane in 
 his language — a child in intellect, a man in his passions and 
 instincts. Idiots in whom the frontal lobes are notably 
 undeveloped have no power of concentration whatever, but 
 turn from one object to another without gathering any 
 informing impressions. Darwin's head, on the contrary, 
 show^ed a striking development of the pre-frontal region. 
 Immediately over the eyes it jutted forward so much as almost 
 to be a disfigurement. This peculiarity is very marked in a 
 photograph dating from 1854, when he was forty-five, and is 
 still more so in the portraits of his latter years. The brain of 
 Gauss, the mathematician, was very much convoluted in the 
 frontal regions. Rudolph Wagner compared his frontal lobes 
 with those of an artisan and found a marked difference 
 between them. Bastian examined the brain of another 
 mathematician, De Morgan, and although the convolutions 
 were by no means so intricate as those of Gauss, the frontal 
 development was still very large. In the lower races of man- 
 kind the frontal lobes are comparatively small. 
 
 The anatomical evidence by which Terrier seeks to 
 establish the solidarity of the post-frontal region, whence the 
 movements of the eyes and head are governed, with the pre- 
 frontal region, wdiich are not electrically excitable, is plausible, 
 and no better conclusion can at present be arrived at than 
 that the whole frontal area of the brain is concerned with 
 intellectual observation. It is here that the phrenologists 
 locate the perception of facts, movement, and cause, together 
 with the faculty of comparison. This last is the identifying 
 faculty, already noted as so important an element of the 
 higher intellectual operations. Its exercise one can almost 
 feel to be muscular, prolonged concentration of thought 
 producing fatigue like a severe physical effort. The con- 
 nection of thought or attention with muscular action is not 
 at first sight apparent, but it is none the less real. In 
 
PHRENOLOGY OLD AND NEW 305 
 
 hypnotism, suggestions may be conveyed through the muscular 
 system as well as through the sensory centres. The operator 
 places a limb in such a position as to suggest an act, and the 
 subject spontaneously completes the act so suggested. This 
 shows that, just as sensory impressions tend to call up 
 movements, so the excitation of movements tends to call up 
 by association the various sensory factors with which these 
 particular movements cohere. Now, as movements of the 
 head and eyes are intimately concerned with attention to an 
 object actually placed before us, it follows that, if the portion 
 of the brain governing these movements be well developed, 
 there will be a special faculty for reviving these movements 
 ideally and so reacting upon the associated sensory cohesions 
 that constitute the fabric of thought. If, on the other hand, 
 the portion of the brain referred to be poor as regards the 
 number or the activity of the nerve-cells, there will be no 
 persistence of the muscular effort with which the whole 
 mechanism of thought coheres ; our ideas will slip from our 
 grasp, so to speak, and we shall find ourselves thinking of 
 nothing. Men differ greatly ic this power of concentrating 
 their attention. It is unquestionably a natural endowment, 
 and there is every reason to believe that its seat is in the 
 frontal region of the brain. As the material of thought is 
 supplied by the sensory and motor centres, well-developed 
 frontal lobes do not, by themselves, imply acute mental 
 powers ; they may be like an excellent machine which has 
 nothing passing through it, and which consequently produces 
 nothing. Rudolph Wagner remarks, however, that ' the 
 convolutions and fissures, as a rule, are better developed in 
 all portions of the brain when the frontal convolutions are 
 specially complex.' 
 
 Among criminals a low or narrow forehead is common. 
 This bears out to some extent what Lombroso says of them 
 morally. ' Taken as a whole, criminals show a great want of 
 coherence and continuity in their mental operations, which, 
 if occasionally powerful, are intermittent.' Some famous 
 criminals no doubt have shown remarkable cunning in their 
 enterprises, but they have generally failed through over- 
 looking some source of danger which a mind of scientific 
 
 X 
 
30G THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 calibre would liave perceived and guarded against. The 
 scientific mind is, i^jso facto, the least criminal of any. With 
 the doubtful exception of Bacon, criminals of scientific at- 
 tainments are virtually unknown.^ On the other band, men 
 of poetic and artistic gifts are not indisposed to crime, 
 especially crime arising from the passions. Notwithstanding 
 the frequency of low and narrow foreheads among convicts, 
 however, criminality is most assuredly not a question of the 
 size of the frontal lobes or of the shape of the head alone. 
 The brains of criminals are in many cases found to be defec- 
 tive in a manner which could not possibly be detected outside 
 the skull. They exhibit a deterioration of the gray or white 
 substance, the blood circulation is imperfect or the convolu- 
 tions are abnormally fissured.'^ 
 
 Wit is located by the phrenologists in the frontal region, 
 and in view of what has been said of this faculty as consisting 
 in an identification of the like with the unlike, the presump- 
 tion is in their favour. Swift's skull when disinterred proved, 
 however, to be phrenologically disappointing. The forehead 
 was extremely low, and the so-called organs of wit, causality, 
 and comparison were scarcely developed at all. This relic of 
 one of our greatest humorists was, in 1835, handed to an 
 eminent phrenologist, who ' pronounced it to be a very com- 
 mon-place head indeed — nay, from the low frontal develop- 
 ment, almost that of a fool.' ^ This reading the phrenologists 
 afterwards sought to explain away on the ground that the 
 skull must have collapsed during Swift's period of mental 
 derangement. That a skull previously normal alters its form 
 in insanity is not, however, a physiological fact, as Esquirol 
 proved by a long series of observations upon the inmates of 
 his asylum. 
 
 Examined in the light of the new phrenology. Swift's 
 skull is pretty much what we should expect it to be. Its 
 sensory and motor capacity is very great. A medical man 
 who examined it at the time of its exhumation, after remark- 
 
 * The principal cases are those of Eugene Aram, Doctor Dodd, Merca- 
 dante, an able Italian chemist who put himself at the head of a gang of 
 thieves and a number of medical men of no great professional eminence. 
 
 « LoiLb.oso. » Wilde. 
 
PHRENOLOGY OLD AND NEW 307 
 
 ing upon the lovvuess of the forehead, goes on to say : ' The 
 head rose gradually, and was high from benevolence back- 
 wards. The portion of the occipital bone assigned to " philo- 
 progenitiveness " and " amativeness " appeared excessive. 
 The side view showed great elevation above the level of a 
 horizontal line drawn through the ears. The front view ex- 
 hibited extreme width of the forehead. It was, however, 
 when looking into the interior and examining the base that 
 the wonderful capacity of the skull became apparent. The 
 room for the anterior lobes of the cerebrum was very great ; 
 the depressions also for the middle lobes were very deep. 
 The cerebellum must have been very small, and the posterior 
 lobes very large. . . . Although the skull, phrenologically 
 speaking, might be thought deficient, yet its capacity was 
 in reality very great. I took an ordinary skull, and making 
 a section of it on the same level with Swift's, I compared 
 their outlines, drawn on paper, and found that the latter ex- 
 ceeded the former in a remarkable manner, particularly in its 
 transverse diameter.' 
 
 It has already been remarked that the smallness of the 
 cerebellum would account for Swift's fits of giddiness, which 
 made his gait so frequently that of a ' drunk man.' As for 
 the hugeness of the posterio]' and middle lobes, representing 
 the visual, auditory, and chief motor centres, this formation 
 would clearly favour an accumulation of intellectual material. 
 Ignorant as we are of the precise functions of the frontal 
 lobes, it is impossible to say what other uses Swift might have 
 made of this material had his forehead been of the three-storey 
 order of architecture so much affected by artists since the rise 
 of phrenology, but a mere lateral extension of the frontal area 
 is evid<^ntly not incompatible with the exercise of a keen 
 satirical humour. Probably, however, there was little re- 
 flection or sustained thought in Swift's writings. Swift's 
 skull showed the blood supply of his brain to be unequally 
 distributed. In the posterior lobes the marks of the blood- 
 vessels were large and deep ; in the middle they were 
 ordinary ; and in the frontal area small. One may cer- 
 tainly conclude from the general plan of the brain that the 
 
308 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 discriminating faculty called wit has its seat somewliere in 
 the frontal lobes, but it is by no means proved that the pos- 
 session of it is coincident, as the phrenologists contend, with 
 a high and square forehead. 
 
 Although ' form,' ' size,' * order,' and ' weight ' depend 
 somewhat upon ocular adjustments, there can hardly be any 
 warrant for the phrenological localisation of those faculties 
 round the eye. They are probably associated with sight 
 and touch. Language, again, is auditory, visual, and motor 
 in its genesis. To locate ' colour ' in the frontal region is 
 clearly a mistake. The optical sense pure and simple must 
 be assigned to the visual area at the back of the head. Jeffrey, 
 of the ' Edinburgh Review,' had a hollow where the bump of 
 colour is supposed to be, but he had, nevertheless, a keen 
 enjoyment of bright hues; and this difficulty Combe, the 
 phrenologist, tried rather disingenuously to get over by 
 detecting Jeffrey in the admission that his pleasure had to 
 do, not with the intrinsic effects of the colours themselves, 
 but with their associations, the red of flowers suggesting a 
 lovely season, and so forth. Arithmetical calculation or 
 'number' is probably dependent in some degree upon a 
 memory for naked forms or visual abstractions, and ' locality ' 
 would seem to resolve itself into a sense of forms and colours 
 in combination with muscular movements. Both faculties 
 are assigned by the phrenologists to the forehead. The 
 primary seat of both must be in the sensory and motor areas, 
 but it may be in the frontal region that the raw material of 
 judgment in such matters is utilised. In dogs, ' locality ' is 
 essentially a memory for smells. 
 
 Over some portion of the motor area the phrenologists 
 have come wonderfully near the truth. Thus, their bump for 
 ' imitation,' the actor's art, is almost identical with Terrier's 
 centre ' for the extension forwards of the arm and hand ' — in 
 other words, for gesture, one of the main elements of the 
 actor's genius. The seat of 'imitation,' however, must be 
 more extensive than the phrenologists have supposed; it 
 must cover at least another of Terrier's centres in a down- 
 ward direction, that, namely, for ' movements of the lips and 
 tongue,' as in articulation. With the centres for movements 
 
PIIRENOLOaY OLD AND NEW ■ 309 
 
 of the Land and arm, again, the ' construct! ven ess' of the 
 phrenologists has evidently a close affinity, ^ Constructive- 
 ness ' is a talent for the mechanical arts, as found in engineers, 
 engravers, painters, operative surgeons, and mechanics of 
 great skill. It consists in nice powers of muscular discrimi- 
 nation in the hand. With a pressure or sweep of the fingers 
 or a turn of the wrist the operator produces a desired effect, 
 and he retains for future use an exact memory of the degree 
 of muscular force expended. Meissonier's fingers were so 
 sensitive that he could, with his eyes shut, lay on the exact 
 amount of colour that he wanted at a given spot, if somebody 
 placed the point of the brush upon ^t. The phrenologists 
 are probably right, therefore, in associating mechanical con- 
 structiveness with a bump on the side of the head, though 
 it ought not to be exactly where they locate it, namely, 
 between the eye and the ear on a higher level, but a little 
 further back over the ear, where Ferrier places the centres for 
 movements of the fingers and wrist. 
 
 The emotional constructiveness of the poet or the play- 
 wright is a totally different endowment. Unlike mechani- 
 cal constructiveness, which is a pure nicety of touch, as the 
 actor's diction is a nicety of articulation, emotional con- 
 structiveness is a co-ordination of sensory and motor im- 
 pressions, which probably has its seat in the frontal region. 
 'Music,' as already shown, must be both a motor and an 
 auditory endowment, and I should expect it to be denoted by 
 a lateral bulge of the head covering the centres for movements 
 of the limbs and trunk, and for hearing. Similarly, a poet 
 ought to be well-developed in the articulatory centre, the 
 probable seat of rhythm, which is a motor faculty. The 
 phrenologists appear to place 'music' rather too far forward. 
 Some of the perceptions involved in musical composition 
 may belong to the frontal region, but the main constituents 
 of time and tune must be motor and auditory. In the motor 
 region, also, will lie the executive faculty of the painter. 
 All the arts, indeed, on their executive or motor side, would 
 seem to be indicated in phrenology by the vague term of 
 ' ideality,' which is obviously not a special faculty at all, but 
 a mass of widely different feelings or aptitudes. 
 
810 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 All that can physiologically be said for phrenology is 
 probably summed up in the foregoing pages. As regards, 
 the frontal region and the fore portion of the side of the 
 head, the s^^stem of Gall and Spurzheim contains elements of 
 truth which no doubt serve to keep it alive. But all its 
 localisations in the back and upper parts of the head are very 
 contestable, even allowing for the fact that the physiologists 
 talk a different language from the phrenologists, as when 
 Terrier says ' movements of the fingers and wrist,' and Gall 
 ' constructiveness.' The visual centre in man covering the 
 back part of the head, has, no doubt, manifold functions to 
 l)erform. But one cannot satisfactorily connect ' love of 
 home,' ' friendship,' ' cautiousness,' ' combativeness,' ' love of 
 approbation,' or ' love of offspring,' with visual images. 
 Equally incompatible are ' destructiveness,' ' acquisitiveness,' 
 or ' secretiveness,' with effects of hearing, smell, or taste. 
 The ^ self-esteem ' of phrenology is almost identical with 
 Ferrier's centre for ' movements of the leg and foot such as 
 are concerned in w^alkiug.' Here, again, there is no reason- 
 able parallelism to be established. Nor is there between 
 ' firmness,' ' conscientiousness,' ' veneration,' ' hope,' ' benevo- 
 lence,' or ' wonder,' and the different motor centres for the 
 legs, arms, etc., actually underlying them. Many of these 
 phrenological faculties are not simple but compound. Such 
 characteristics as vanity, veneration, and philanthi'opy cannot 
 be the outcome of so many particular bumps, but must rather 
 depend upon a combination of qualities or defects in the 
 brain. Under analysis, vanity seems to resolve itself into 
 an automatic persistence of the various images and effects, 
 sensorial and motor, affecting the personality ; the main 
 feature of veneration, on the other hand, an absence of the 
 identifying faculty — that main-stay of the scientific mind — 
 probably arises from some w^eakness in the frontal lobes or 
 their nerve-connections, while philanthrop}^ is, in the main, 
 sympathy — a ready emotion induced by the susceptibility of 
 one or more of our sensory centres to the painful experience 
 of others. 
 
 The size and weight of the brain are important, but net 
 so much so in an absolute as in a relative sense. Usually the 
 
niKENOLOGY OLD AND NEW 311 
 
 efficiency of a brain-centre bears some proportion to its de- 
 velopment, and so far the system of phrenology is justitied. 
 But size is not always a trustworthy criterion. AVitli a brain 
 smaller than a pin's head, the ant is capable of acting in an 
 organised community and exercising mental functions as 
 complicated at least as those of a bullock. The muscular 
 movements of an animal consume a great deal of nerve-energv, 
 and a large brain may be expected to go, therefore, with a 
 large body. It is mainly for this reason, no doubt, that the 
 male human brain on the average weighs one-tenth more 
 than the female. More important, however, than size is 
 efficiency. One brain, without being greater in volume than 
 another, may be better supplied with nerve-cells and fibres, 
 and the same may be said of one area of the brain as com- 
 pared with another. Acknowledged genius, again, is a verv 
 uncertain test of brain-efficiency. Of the many different 
 kinds of genius, some may arise from the inordinate activitv 
 of one or two centres, while their possessor as regards the 
 common concerns of life may be a very ordinary person 
 indeed, or even a fool. 
 
 Among men of genius, accordingly, all sizes of heads are 
 found. Napoleon's head always appeared to the Duchesse 
 d'Abrantes to be ^ too large for his body,' and his portraits 
 show great lateral breadth in the motor region. Mozart's 
 head was also disproportionately large. As Napoleon and 
 Mozart were physically small men, it may be inferred that 
 they had both a great deal of supertluous nerve-energy. 
 "Wordsworth had a good forehead. Landor, in a letter to a 
 friend, describes it as 'broad though somewhat heavy,' adding: 
 'There are few indications in the forehead, however. I 
 would not say nulla fides, but one of the emptiest heads I 
 ever saw was a man's so exactly like Erskiue's that you 
 might look at both together and doubt which was which, 
 and I once saw a postilion at La Cava as exactly like 
 Napoleon.' 
 
 On the other hand, Keats, Byron, and Shelley had all 
 small heads. Leigh Hunt, who had not himself an abnormal 
 head, says he could not get their hats on. Hartley Coleridge 
 and Charles Lamb, too, were small headed. The averao-e 
 
312 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 circumference of the heads of Englishmen is from 22;^ to 22^ 
 inches. Nevertheless, Galton has found ' thirteen eminent 
 scientific men with heads under 22 inches, and only eight 
 with heads of 24 inches or upwards, and of the thirteen there 
 were only two or three who had not " remarkable energy." ' 
 As he omits to tell us, however, what size of body accom- 
 panied his small heads, his figures are rather inconclusive. 
 A little man with the same size of head as a big man will, 
 other things being equal, possess more energy. In weight of 
 brain, again, considerable differences exist among men of 
 acknowledged power. The average weight of the male brain 
 in civilised races is about 49 ounces. Cuvier's brain weighed 
 64 ounces ; Abercrombie's and Schiller's 63 ; De Morgan and 
 Gauss, the mathematicians', 52 J and 52 respectively. But 
 Grote, the historian, had a brain only three-quarters of an 
 ounce above the average, while the brains of Tiedemann, 
 the anatomist, and Hausmann, the mineralogist, fell 5 and 
 6 ounces below it. 
 
 In congenital idiots the average weight of brain is low, as 
 is also that of persons dying in lunatic asylums; andGratiolet 
 says that where it falls below 31| ounces ordinary human in- 
 telligence is impossible. But many idiots and lunatics have 
 been found with brains far above the average in weight ; 
 Thurnam, for example, having met with an epileptic butcher, 
 barely able to read, whose brain turned the scale at 62 ounces. 
 Among men of the artisan class who were perfectly sane, but 
 by no means superior in endowment, brains of this weight 
 have occasionally been found. The heaviest known human 
 brain belonged to a Sussex bricklayer, who died of con- 
 sumption in University College Hospital in 1849. It ex- 
 ceeded 67 ounces, and was well proportioned ; while in 
 physical size its owner was not greatly above the average, 
 being 5 ft. 9 in. in height and of robust frame. But the 
 man could not read or write, though he was said to have a 
 good memory and to be fond of politics. Age makes some 
 difference in brain weight, but not enough to materially affect 
 the foregoing figures. 
 
 At the same time the brains of civilised races are consider- 
 ably heavier on the average than those of the uncivilised and also 
 
PHRENOLOGY OLD AND NEW 313 
 
 more convoluted, showing a general correspondence between 
 size and function. Thurnam's figures establish a difference 
 between Europeans and African negroes of about 5 ounces. 
 A Bushwoman's brain examined by Marshall was found to 
 be remarkably deficient in its convolutions, especially in the 
 occipital, the middle and lower frontal and the temporal regions 
 — a formation which would clearly conduce to poverty of ideas. 
 The human brain of the lowest type approximates in fact to 
 that of the monkey. Le Bon estimates the cranial capacity 
 of the gorilla at 600 cubic centimetres, the poorest African 
 or Australian black's at 1,200, and the modern Parisian's at 
 from 1,800 to 1,900. So that some human races would seem 
 to be mentally nearer to the gorilla than to the highest 
 civilised type. Among Frenchmen, Le Bon has found head 
 measurements running in the following order : 1st, scientific 
 and literary men; 2nd, tradesmen; 3rd, nobles of old families; 
 4th, male domestic servants ; and 5th, peasants ; while both 
 he and Broca conclude from an examination, the one of 
 Egyptian mummies, the other of French skulls of the twelfth 
 century, that civilisation tends to increase the cranial capa- 
 city.i 
 
 Not only the frontal but all the lobes of the brain appear 
 to grow in bulk and complexity as the race advances in 
 intelligence. Apart from the localisations actually proved, 
 there is a presumption amounting to certainty that every 
 variety of human character is represented by some variety of 
 detail in the cerebral system. The phrenologists have had a 
 glimmering of the truth ; it is to physiology we must look 
 for the further light that may be thrown upon this interesting 
 subject. So much of our mental action depends upon the re- 
 lations of the different centres to each other, independently of 
 the shape of the skull, that phrenology can never be made an 
 exact science. But clearly if the moral localisations of the 
 brain are to be attempted on anything like the scale adopted 
 by the phrenologists, the existing chart of so-called faculties 
 
 * Thurnam : ' On the Weight of the Human Brain,' Journal of Mental 
 Science, 1866 ; Marshall : Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1875 ; Gratiolet : 
 A7iatomie Comparative du SyUeme Nervetcx', Le Bon: Revue d'Atithro- 
 2)ologie, 1879. 
 
314 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 must be recast into certain main visual, auditory, tactile and 
 motor effects with manifold combinations. Meanwhile, it 
 may safely be asserted that an ample forehead, provided the 
 brain be otherwise well proportioned, will commonly be found 
 associated with powers of reflection and concentration of a 
 high order, and that breadth of head is a good indication of 
 that executive energy without which no kind of genius will 
 be able to make itself felt. 
 
815 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 MEN OP GENIUS MORE SUBJECT TO NEE VE-DISOEDEB THAN THE COM- 
 MUNITY AT LARGE — COMPARATIVE STATISTICS ON THE SUBJECT — 
 PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF GENIUS RARE — EXAMPLES OP IMPERFECT 
 GENIUS — VARIETIES OP FACULTY AND TEMPERAMENT IN EMINENT 
 MEN — VANITY — THE SEXUAL PASSION — GENEROSITY AND MEAN- 
 NESS—POETRY AND SCIENCE— IMPORTANCE OP THE NATURAL BENT 
 — THE PERFECT MAN UNKNOWN — FAMILIES IN WHICH GENIUS 
 MAY BE LOOKED FOR— NEUROPATHIC UNIONS AND THEIR BEARING 
 UPON DARWINISM — INAPPLICABILITY OF NATURAL SELECTION TO 
 MAN — UNKNOWN AGENCIES AT WORK — ORIGIN OP THE FITTEST — 
 EVIDENCE OP A GROWTH-FORCE IN NATURE— GENIUS AS A LAW 
 
 It will be seen that the connection of genius with nerve- 
 disorder manifests itself in two ways, positively by the 
 neuropathic character of all the great men enumerated in the 
 foregoing chapters, and negatively by the difficulty, I may 
 say the impossibility, of finding a single celebrity of the first 
 rank who, the facts of his life being sufficiently well known, 
 does not either personally or by heredity fall into the morbid 
 group. Taken by themselves, of course, these considerations 
 are still not conclusive. If it could be shown that all men, 
 great and small, distinguished and undistinguished, were 
 equally subject to nerve-disorder, the theory of genius as a 
 neurosis would fall to the ground. It is important, therefore, 
 to see in what proportion nerve-disorder affects mankind at 
 large compared with that small section of mankind with 
 whom we are specially concerned. 
 
 Altogether I have dealt specifically with some 250 men 
 of genius. Selected upon no other ground than their eminence 
 in the first instance, the total number of these are found to be 
 neuropathic, suffering from, or dying of, some description of 
 nerve-disorder. Now the Registrar-General's returns for 
 
316 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 England for 1888 exhibit the proportion of deaths from the 
 chief constitutional or nerve-diseases to a million deaths — from 
 all causes in round numbers as follows : — 
 
 Phthisis, 86,500; pneumonia, 00,000; convulsions, 40,600; 
 inflammation of the brain, and brain paralysis, 34,000 ; 
 apoplexy, 31,500 ; heart-disease, various forms, 17,000 ; 
 hydrocephalus, 13,000 ; scrofula, 9,600 ; rheumatism, various 
 forms, 7,000; softening of the brain, 6,000; epilepsy, 5,600; 
 asthma, 4,600 ; diseases of the spinal cord, 3,700 ; syncope, 
 3,300 ; diabetes, 3,000 ; chronic alcoholism and delirium 
 tremens, 2,800 ; rickets, 1,600 ; angina pectoris, 1,300 ; gout, 
 1,000 ; stone, 500 ; and paralysis agitans, 390. 
 
 Other constitutional diseases there are, though com- 
 paratively unimportant, but for the sake of contrasting the 
 ordinary death-rate with that of genius I mention only 
 those disorders which the biographer, as a rule, has been 
 able or has thought fit to specify in the case of eminent men. 
 The death-rate of the general population from the above- 
 mentioned diseases would appear to be about one in 3;^. 
 Among the men of genius enumerated it is at least three times 
 greater. Certain varieties of nerve-disorder, moreover, such 
 as gout, paralysis, and epilepsy, occur in an enormously 
 greater proportion among men of genius than among ordinary 
 individuals. So likewise with insanity. Of this, however, 
 owing to the fact of there being so many degrees of mental 
 unsoundness unrecorded in statistical returns, no trustworthy 
 percentages can be arrived at, though it is clear from the 
 biographical portion of my record that the proportion of 
 eccentricity or insanity observed in great men and their 
 families is very much in excess of that prevailing in the 
 community at large. 
 
 Very notable as a sign of nervous degeneration is the 
 extreme mortality of the family stock to which the greatest 
 men belong, and more especially among the immediate heirs 
 of an illustrious name. Examples abound in the biographical 
 chapters. As a rule the families of great men die out in the 
 course of a few generations ; occasionally they recover them- 
 selves through an admixture of healthy and undistinguished 
 blood, but in that event the period at v/hich the man of 
 
NERVOUS DEGENERATION 317 
 
 genius makes liis advent will be found to coincide with the 
 lowest ebb of the family vitality. Had the human race con- 
 sisted three hundred years ago of Shakespeares, Miltons, and 
 Cromwells, it would long since have disappeared from the 
 face of the earth. Napoleon divorcing Josephine with the 
 view of obtaining by another marriage a dynastic heir, is at 
 the best a sorry example of human vanity ; it is doubly so 
 when we perceive, as we now do, that the very greatness which 
 the conqueror of Europe sought to perpetuate was itself fatal 
 to his hopes. Nature is rich in compensations. The undis- 
 tinguished citizen, centuries after his death, is represented by 
 the vital principle which he has transmitted to his descendants ; 
 the great man has often to be content to influence posterity 
 indirectly by his works. 
 
 Here, a plausible objection to the theory of genius as a 
 neurosis suggests itself and has to be met. There are many 
 insane persons, many paralytics, many epileptics, many gouty 
 subjects, many consumptives, in a given generation, while the 
 men of genius are few and far between. Why so ? In answer 
 to this, it can only be said that the physical conditions from 
 which genius results are highly complex, and that the chances 
 of a member of a neuropathic family uniting in himself all 
 those conditions are exceedingly small. They may be com- 
 pared to the chances of an unmusical person being able to strike 
 by accident on the key-board of a piano a succession of har- 
 monies. Given the sensory endowment requisite for a painter 
 or a poet, there may be a lack of executive power or vice versa, 
 and the disability may be of all degrees. The colour sense, 
 for example, without making a man a jDainter may dispose 
 him merely to a fondness for the concrete in life and a re- 
 pugnance to abstractions ; combined with the literary faculty 
 it may make him merely a writer upon art. 
 
 Side by side with undoubted geniuses, there ought, on 
 this showing, to be a multitude of imperfect or fractional 
 geniuses — men possessing some of the elements of greatness 
 but not all. This is, in fact, what we find. Many persons are 
 to be met with, extraordinarily gifted, but just falling short 
 in some particular of true genius — the genius which not only 
 conceives but executes, and which has persistence enough not 
 
318 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 to grow weary in well-doing whatever obstacles may lie in its 
 path. The imperfect genius does not make his mark in the 
 world unless, like Blake or George Burges, he happens to err 
 on the side of insane whims or extravagance. Nevertheless 
 he is on record. To such a type belonged Bulwer Lytton's 
 grandfather, Richard Warburton Lytton, who had an extra- 
 ordinary faculty for acquiring languages, and was a profound 
 student of science and metaphysics, but who imparted none 
 of his wisdom to the world. Bulwer Lytton says of this not 
 very distant ancestor : — 
 
 ' He loved learning for learning's sake. He disentangled 
 himself from the world — from pleasure, from ambition, from 
 all the usual aspirations of a man who unites knowledge and 
 talent to wealth and station. The image of his life was like 
 a statue, cold in its complete repose, and shattered into frag- 
 ments on his tomb. Nothing remains of it — nothing but a few 
 notes and comments, scattered here and there, through remote 
 i-egions and down recesses of that silent world in which he 
 lived unseen. ... To me, amid the hum and buzz that 
 accompany the feeblest fame, the most fleeting celebrity, 
 there is something unspeakably impressive in the oblivion to 
 which this solitary scholar was carried, with all the spoils and 
 trophies of his vast research.' 
 
 Another example of the imperfect genius is that of the 
 gifted W. M. Praed, whose bright and varied talents obtained 
 him an enviable position at the University, but who died at 
 thirty-seven of consumption, without achieving anything of 
 note. He swept away prizes and scholarships, was the 
 readiest and most forcible debater in the Union, was match- 
 less in dancing, never missing a ball, though it were on the 
 eve of an examination. He excited at the University the 
 same kind of haunting personal interest that Byron was then 
 exciting in the world, and speculation was freely indulged 
 in as to his future — as to whether he would be most renowned 
 as poet or wit, essayist or orator. But he lived as long a 
 life as Byron, Mendelssohn, or Raphael, and left only a 
 collection of pretty but feeble poems, which the world has 
 made haste to forget. 
 
 Within the limits of true genius many varieties of faculty 
 
YAEIETIES OF FACULTY 319 
 
 and temperament are to be observed. Vanity is generally 
 supposed to be the cliaracteristic of little minds, and to be 
 incompatible with true greatness, but this is not so. It is to 
 be found on both sides of the account. There have been many 
 great men who thought little of themselves. Shakespeare 
 took no care of his writings, nor did Swift. Walter Scott 
 had an extreme simplicity of manners. ' It was impossible,' 
 says Robert Chambers, ' ever to detect in his conversation a 
 symptom of his grounding the slightest title to consideration 
 upon his literary fame, or of his being even conscious of it.' 
 On the other hand, Milton had a curious vein of egotism 
 and unbashful self-assertion. ' In his later years,' says 
 Masson, 'he evidently believed himself to be, if not the greatest 
 man in England, at least the greatest writer. All that he 
 said and wrote was backed, in his own consciousness, by a 
 sense of the independent importance of the fact that it was 
 he, Milton, who said or wrote it.' Wordsworth, again, was 
 excessively vain, as Carlyle shows in the following amusing 
 passage of his ' Reminiscences : ' — 
 
 ' One evening I got him (Wordsworth) upon the subject 
 of great poets, which I thought might be admirable equally 
 to us both, but was rather mistaken as I gradually found. 
 Pope's partial failure I was prepared for; less for the 
 narrowish limits visible in ^lilton and others. I tried him 
 with Burns, of whom he had a singularly tender recognition, 
 but Burns also turned out to be a limited, inferior, creature ; 
 even Shakespeare himself had his blind sides, his limitations. 
 Gradually it became apparent to me that of traDScendent and 
 unlimited genius there was to this critic but one specimen 
 known — Wordsworth himself. He by no means said so or 
 hinted so in words, but his pride in himself was so quiet, so 
 fixed, so unappealing — like a dun, old lichened crag on the 
 wayside.' And not poets alone, but all men of eminence 
 suffered the same depreciation at AVordsworth's hands. ' One 
 saw the great Wilberforce and his existence visible in all their 
 lineaments, but only as through a reversed telescope, and 
 reduced to the size of a mouse and its nest, or a little more ! 
 This was in all cases the result brought out — one's self and 
 telescope of natural, or perhaps, preternatural size, but the 
 
820 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 object, so great to vulgar eyes, reduced amazingly with all 
 its lineaments recognisable.' 
 
 Byron was similarly filled with an inordinate vanity. 
 He was vain of his personal appearance, and it was for this 
 reason he dreaded corpulency, and found his club foot such a 
 source of vexation — vain also of his aristocratic birth, and a 
 passion for celebrity seems to have been the motive of his 
 actions through life. Shakespeare's fame excited his mor- 
 tification and jealousy. He told Lady Blessington that 
 Shakespeare owed half his popularity to his low origin, and 
 the other half to the distance of time which separated him 
 from the nineteenth century. Except Pope, and of course 
 himself, he regarded the English poets as barbarians. 
 Goethe's writings and recorded conversations betray a great 
 deal of the self-consciousness which is not far removed from 
 vanity ; and the existence of this element in his nature is 
 further proved by the readiness with which he was able to 
 break off detrimental attachments. Chatham was full of 
 affectation. Walpole described him as a comedian even in his 
 dress, and in fact the crutch upon which he hobbled about 
 when in mourning for the King of France was covered 
 with black velvet. 
 
 Equally marked are the differences exhibited in the 
 sexual passions of great men. It is by no means true, as 
 many suppose, that the poet is necessarily a flighty person. 
 From his earliest youth a solemn and austere demeanour of 
 mind was the characteristic of Milton. Wordsworth, Southey, 
 and Scott were strait-laced in their domestic relations. 
 Despite appearances, it may be doubted whether Goethe was 
 a man of strong passions, seeing that at twenty-five he was 
 able to give up a beautiful and innocent girl from the philo- 
 sophical conviction that it was better to do so. Licentious- 
 ness, on the other hand, was the characteristic of Byron and 
 Shelley, as it has been perhaps of the majority of poets and 
 artists. Shakespeare does not seem to have been exempt 
 from this weakness. There is evidence that while in the 
 prime of his intellectual powers he was the abject slave of 
 a dark-complexioned woman who was faithless to him and 
 whom he cursed in his heart. 
 
INEQUALITY OF FACULTY 321 
 
 Apart from vanity and amativeness, whicli are perhaps 
 the most strikingly varied characteristics of great men, many 
 inequalities of character or faculty accompany genius. 
 Milton and Wordsworth were wholly destitute of humour. 
 Pitt and Fox, resembling each other in their wonderful powers 
 of debate, were otherwise as opposite as the poles, the one 
 being lanky, slender, cold and ascetic, except in the matter 
 of port wine, the other corpulent, slovenly, and given to all 
 manner of sensual indulgence. Byron was niggardly in small 
 things, and lavish in great. His memory for scenes and 
 events was extraordinarily retentive, but he could never 
 acquire a competent knowledge of arithmetic. Both Woi ds- 
 worth and Scott were wanting in the sense of smell. In the 
 senses of taste and hearing, too, Scott was curiously deficient. 
 Lockhart says he was unable to tell madeira from sherry, 
 while the incurable defects of his ear rendered it impossible 
 for him to acquire a knowledge of music. To the last, com- 
 plicated harmonies seemed to the author of ' Waverley ' a 
 *■ babble of confused though pleasing sounds,' and this al- 
 though his father was musical and a performer on the violin. 
 
 The metamorphosis of faculty and character is necessarily 
 as varied as that of nerve disorder. Where a general 
 soundness of the brain and nervous system exists, there is 
 perhaps a tolerably equable transmission of mental and moral 
 endowments ; but given in the parent those inequalities 
 from which genius arises, we may expect in the offspring 
 great uncertainty or capriciousness of function. In the re- 
 shuffling of the cards, so to speak, it is impossible to pre- 
 dict which member of the family, if any, will hold the 
 trumps. The Darwin family exemplifies in a striking degree 
 this inequality of faculty. Great in some directions, Charles 
 Darwin's powers were in others curiously limited. His want 
 of ear was such that he could not distinguish the commonest 
 tunes. ' I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit,' 
 he wrote in his latter years. ' I am -therefore a poor critic ; 
 a paper or book when first read generally excites my admira- 
 tion, and it is only after considerable reflection that I per- 
 ceive its weak points. My power to follow a long and 
 abstract train of thought is very limited, and therefore I 
 
 Y 
 
322 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 could never have succeeded with metapliysics or mathematics. 
 My memory is extensive, yet hazy ; it suffices to make me 
 cautious by telling me that I have heard or read something 
 opposed to the conclusion which I am drawing, or on the other 
 hand in favour of it, and after a time I can generally recollect 
 where to search for my authority. So poor in one sense is 
 my memory that I have never been able to remember for 
 more than a few days a single date or a line of poetry.' A 
 memory for dates was, however, the special gift of Charles 
 Darwin's father, Kobert. ' My father,' says the author of the 
 ' Origin of Species,' ' knew the day of the birth, marriage, 
 and death of a multitude of persons in Shropshire, and he 
 once told me that this power annoyed him, for if he once 
 heard a date he could not forget it, and thus the deaths of 
 many friends were often recalled to his mind.' With this 
 was combined an excessive sensibility. ^ I once asked him,' 
 says Charles Darwin, ' when he was old and could not walk, 
 why he did not drive out for exercise, and he answered, 
 '^ Every road out of Shrewsbury is associated in my mind 
 with some painful event." ' The uncle, Erasmus Darwin, the 
 younger, who committed suicide, had for his part a peculiar 
 taste for statistics. ' When a boy, he counted all the houses 
 in the city of Lichfield and found out the number of in- 
 habitants in as many as he could, and when a real census 
 was first made his estimate was found to be nearly accurate.' 
 Although the only trace of the poetic faculty in the 
 Darwin family was in the ill-fated ChaHes, who died in his 
 youth, the gift of poetry is not incompatible with scientific 
 genius. Humphry Davy was fond of poetry and romance. 
 According to his brother and biographer, heVas 'sanguine, 
 with an excess of sensibility and irritability, and of vital 
 action combined with corresponding activity of mind, and a 
 certain warmth and impetuosity of temper.' He was a many- 
 sided man. Besides poetry he dabbled in religious and 
 metaphysical speculation, before engaging in the chemical 
 studies which brought him fame. Yet he had not the wit to 
 perceive, or the fairness to acknowledge, the equally brilliant 
 genius of his assistant, Faraday, whose election to the Royal 
 Society he opposed. The younger Herschell wrote poetry ; 
 
THE NATUKAL BENT 323 
 
 the sons of Arago, the mathematician and astronomer, dis- 
 played literary and artistic gifts, and the Bernoulli family, 
 distinguished for mathematics and science, comprised an orator 
 of exceptional powers. It has already been remarked that 
 philosophy and the business faculty were combined with 
 music in the family of Mendelssohn, and the business faculty 
 with poetry in that of Heine. A great variety of faculty is 
 presented by the Meyerbeer (or Beer) family. The father was 
 a successful banker, the mother was noted for her philanthropy. 
 One of the sons, William Beer, devoted himself successfully 
 to scientific studies ; another, Michael Beer, became a dra- 
 matist and poet of distinction, although he died at thirty- 
 three ; Jacob or Giacomo Meyerbeer, always remarkably 
 sensitive and irritable, was from childhood a musician, and 
 of the gifted members of his family he alone attained to old 
 age. 
 
 A natural bent asserts itself in the face of all obstacles. 
 The poet lisps in numbers. Burns was a local celebrity at 
 sixteen, Campbell published his ' Pleasures of Hope ' at 
 twenty, and Schiller his ' Brigands ' at twenty-three ; Byron 
 awoke and found himself famous at one and twenty ; and 
 Keats was dead at twenty-five, the age at which most men 
 are only buckling on their armour for the battle of life. 
 The poet, the painter, and the musician, employ their innate 
 faculty as naturally as a cat uses its claws, or a bull its horns. 
 There were no artists in Michel Angelo's family, and no 
 musicians in Handel's, and the parents of both tried in vain 
 to thrash them out of their predilections. Claude Lorraine 
 began life as a poor uneducated boy apprenticed to a pastry- 
 cook. Reynolds as a lad eagerly copied all prints that came 
 in his way, and was a good artist as Handel was a good 
 musician before he received a single lesson. Hogarth's school 
 exercises were more remarkable for their ornament than for 
 their matter ; apprenticed afterwards to a silversmith, he was 
 nobody's pupil in art, but painted life as he saw it. To some 
 extent the statesman and the military commander may be 
 creatures of circumstance. There may be a Clive or a 
 Warren Hastings now languishing at his desk in the Indian 
 Civil Service of to-day; there may be a Napoleon in the 
 
324 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 village bully. But as in letters and art, so in science and 
 philosophy, genius insists upon making itself felt. Faraday 
 was not lost because he began life as an errand boy, nor did 
 Carlyle find the world unwilling to listen to a voice from 
 Craigenputtock. The natural endowment for some one or other 
 of the great spheres of human activity is the all-important 
 point. With this, minor and non-essential details of charac- 
 ter may be combined in infinite variety. Hogarth, for ex- 
 ample, was gross and unpolished in his manners, Eeynolds 
 was suave and miserly, Lawrence was a dandy and a spend- 
 thrift ; but all three were born artists. As regards educa- 
 tion, it is vain to expect boys by means of a system of hot- 
 house forcing to excel or even to attain proficiency in studies 
 for which they have no natural aptitude. 
 
 If it is impossible to say exactly upon what plan the 
 variations of heredity proceed, it may confidently be afiirmed 
 that genius implies some inequality of brain and nerve 
 function tending to be morbid, if not actually so. Probably 
 a dead level of capacity is impossible, for we have all our 
 strong and our weak points. The soundest man is he who 
 most nearly approaches the mean. He will assuredly not be 
 a genius, but having the powder to do many things well, 
 though none superlatively, he may be — indeed, must be — a 
 good citizen. Such a man, we may take it, exerting all his 
 powers in a given direction, will achieve those respectable 
 results in life commonly ascribed to talent. Benjamin West 
 must have been a painter of this stamp. At all events it is 
 curious and suggestive, that he who was accused of a lack of 
 imagination and a want of fire and poetry,^ should at the 
 same time have been a most amiable and upright man, 
 enjoying good health and a long life. Conceivably there 
 might be soundness in a general levelling up of faculty to 
 the highest point, but this is a phenomenon we are never 
 likely to meet with, since the man who was gifted in that 
 degree would be a Shakespeare in literature, a Eeynolds in 
 painting, a Mozart in music, a Kean in acting, a Chatham in 
 oratory, a Pitt in politics, a Napoleon in war, and a Newton 
 in science. The respectable, law-abiding, healthy, long-lived 
 ' Allan Cunningham. 
 
UKSUITxiBLE UNIONS 325 
 
 family is not tliat into which the man of great genius may 
 be expected to be born. In his parentage there will be symp- 
 toms of the insane temperament, or of its allied functional 
 disorders ; he will stand side by side with the ne'er-do-well, 
 the paralytic, and the consumptive, and his offspring, for the 
 most part, will be puny, ailing, unintelligent, and generally 
 ill-equipped in body and mind. 
 
 This being so, the stud-book theory of genius, which 
 seems to possess most attraction for the public mind, must be 
 definitively abandoned. It is to some extent true, as Galton 
 says, that 'ability is not distributed at haphazard, but 
 clings to certain families.' This does not imply, however, 
 that genius is ^er se hereditary. What runs in the blood 
 is nerve-disorder, of which genius is the occasional outcome. 
 Genius is not to be compared with the physical perfections 
 of the Derby winner ; it is an accident of the cerebral and 
 nervous organisation, and one which different races estimate 
 differently. Among a hardy tribe of savages, the sensibility 
 which we esteem in the musician or the painter would be a 
 positive drawback ; half our men of genius indeed, with their 
 feeble frames and their indifferent health, would be merely 
 so many despised camp-followers, unable to take a scalp or 
 to capture a buffalo. 
 
 There is no evidence that sexual selection plays any 
 considerable part in obviating such unions as are likely to 
 prove disastrous from the physical point of view. Insanity 
 or deformity renders its victims unattractive no doubt to the 
 opposite sex, but neuropaths, who suffer from more disguised 
 though equally serious forms of nerve-disorder, do not in- 
 stinctively avoid each other. On the contrary, they seem to 
 be drawn to each other's society. Southey and Coleridge 
 made most unfortunate matches, seeing that there was 
 insanity in the Fricker family into which they married, but 
 the former at least was much attached to his wife, and his 
 second marriage, with Miss Catherine Bowles, a poetess and 
 a confirmed neuropath, was from the physical point of view 
 no better. De Quincey says Coleridge assured him that his 
 marriage was not his own deliberate act, but was ' in a 
 manner forced upon his sense of honour by the scrupulous 
 
326 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 Southey, who insisted tliat he had gone too far in his 
 attentions to Miss Fricker for any honourable retreat.' De 
 Quincey, however, adds : ' A neutral spectator of the parties 
 protested to me, " that if ever in his life he had seen 
 a man under deep fascination, and what he would have 
 called desperately in love, Coleridge in relation to Miss F. 
 was that man.'" The neutral spectator's opinion is supported 
 by the evidence of Coleridge's poems, from which it may be 
 gathered that for the first two or three years at least his 
 marriage was a happy one. 
 
 Among Byron's many ' loves,' again, none could have 
 been less suited to him, as a partner, than Lady Caroline 
 Lamb. More than half crazy, this woman had a touch of 
 genius in her composition. ' There was a wild originality in 
 her talk,' says Bulwer Lytton, ' combining great and sudden 
 contrasts from deep bathos to infantine drollery ; now senti- 
 mental, now shrewd, it sparkled with anecdotes of the great 
 world, and of the eminent personages with whom she had 
 been brought up or been familiarly intimate ; and ten 
 minutes after, it became gravely eloquent with religious 
 enthusiasm, or shot off into metaphysical speculations — some- 
 times absurd, sometimes profound, generally suggestive and 
 interesting. A creature of caprice, and impulse, and whim, 
 her manner, her talk, and her character shifted their colours 
 as rapidly as a chameleon.' At forty- three, Lady Caroline 
 Lamb lapsed into a state of ' partial insanity,' and died of an 
 epileptic attack. She was, therefore, as unsoundly constituted 
 as Byron himself. Nevertheless, Byron and she fell in love 
 with each other almost at first sight, and their attachment 
 while it lasted was strong. The poet said Lady Caroline 
 was the only woman who never bored him. Among other 
 notable attachments in which there have been strong neuro- 
 pathic tendencies on both sides, may be reckoned those of 
 Sara Coleridge and her cousin, H. N. Coleridge, Flaxman 
 and his wife, Scott and his wife, Campbell and his wife, and 
 Charles Darwin and his cousin. Miss Wedgwood. 
 
 Elsewhere I have suggested that our growing knowledge 
 of the danger of neuropathic unions may gradually create an 
 
SEXUAL SELECTION 327 
 
 instinctive dislike to them,^ but this is necessarily a mere 
 speculation with respect to the distant future. In the face 
 of the examples quoted and the common experience of life, it 
 is unsafe to assume that sexual selection necessarily tends to 
 the immediate and physical improvement of the species ; and 
 although errors of the sexual instinct may be supposed to be 
 corrected by natural selection or the principle of the survived 
 of the fittest, this in its turn has serious, nay, insuperable 
 difficulties to encounter when it comes to be applied to man. 
 Darwin was latterly constrained to enlarge the scope of 
 natural selection so as to include the preservation of varia- 
 tions beneficial to the community, although not to the 
 individual,^ and under this head he reckoned the scientific 
 and artistic faculties to which is mainly to be attributed 
 the advance of the race from barbarism to civilisation. But 
 now that the exact genesis of those faculties has been studied, 
 such an argument is seen to be open to grave suspicion. 
 
 ' If in each grade of society,' says the author of the 
 ' Descent of Man,' ' the members were divided into two equal 
 bodies, the one including the intellectually superior, and the 
 other the inferior, there can be little doubt that the former 
 would succeed best in all occupations and rear the greatest 
 number of children.' Considering the excessive mortality 
 and the general unfitness that attend upon genius, this does 
 not by any means follow. ' At the present day,' continues 
 Darwin, ^ civilised nations are everywhere supplanting bar- 
 barous nations, and they succeed mainly, though not exclu- 
 sively, through their arts, which are the product of the intel- 
 lect. It is therefore highly probable that with mankind the 
 intellectual faculties have been gradually perfected through 
 natural selection. Again, this is an absolute non sequitur^ as 
 even Darwin seems to feel from the admission he is constrained 
 to make in another passage, namely, that, allowing for natural 
 selection, 'an unexplained residuum of change, perhaps a 
 large one, must be left to the action of unknown agencies.' 
 
 Weismann, whose investigation of the germ-plasm has 
 been so fruitful in suggestion, adopts the Darwinian view. 
 * 6>/. clt. * Darwin : The Descent of Man. 
 
328 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 ' Human intelligence in general,' he observes, ^ is the chief 
 means, and the chief weapon which has served, and still serves, 
 the human species in the struggle for existence. Even in the 
 present state of civilisation, disturbed as it is by numerous 
 artificial encroachments and unnatural conditions, the degree 
 of intelligence possessed by the individual chiefly decides 
 between destruction and life ; and in a natural state, or still 
 better in a state of low civilisation, this result is even more 
 striking.' All this is undeniable. Intelligence, under which 
 are included the inventive and the mechanical faculties, is 
 the great means of advancement for the human race. The 
 savage may have greater muscular strength and greater powers 
 of endurance than the European, yet the superior mental 
 capacity of the latter ensures him in every field an easy 
 victory. ' Here again, therefore,' continues Weismann, ' we 
 encounter the effects of natural selection.' Why ' therefore ? ' 
 AVeismann's easy acceptance of this conclusion prepares us for 
 his next remark, which is that chance alone determines in 
 what direction a man's faculties shall be developed, and in- 
 cidentally he adds that ' at the present day there are many 
 men of science, who, had they lived in the time of Burger, 
 Uhland, or Schelling, would probably have been poets and 
 philosophers,' also that ' Raphael might have been as great 
 a musician as he was a painter if, instead of living during the 
 historical high-water mark of painting, he had lived under 
 favourable personal conditions at a period of highly developed 
 and widespread musical genius.' ^ When Weismann ventures 
 upon such a speculation as this, it is plain that he has given 
 no attention to the subject of mental faculty at all. 
 
 That human intellect is progressive there can be no ques- 
 tion. The fact is shown by the greater development of the 
 brain among civilised as compared with savage races. But the 
 causes of this advance in intellectual capacity cannot yet be 
 said to be determined. For many years past, natural selec- 
 tion has been a phrase to conjure with ; it has been glibly 
 used to explain everj^thing. But its insufficiency as applied 
 to man latterly began to dawn upon Darwin himself. ' In 
 one of my latest conversations with Darwin,' says Alfred 
 ' Woismann : Biolor/ical Memoirs, 1889. 
 
NATUEAL SELECTION 329 
 
 Eussel Wallace, * he expressed himself very gloomily as to 
 the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern 
 civilisation natural selection had no play and the fittest did 
 not survive.' ^ As if the human race could abrogate or 
 suspend any great law that truly underlay its existence ! 
 Wallace himself also circumscribes considerably the principle 
 of which he was the co-discoverer, confessing himself wholly 
 unable to explain by natural selection the growth of the ma- 
 thematical and artistic faculties in man, and taking refuge 
 in the hypothesis of ' an unseen universe — a world of spirit 
 to which the world of matter is altogether subordinate.' ^ 
 Other evolutionists, while accepting natural selection up to a 
 certain point, hold that the intellectual gap between man 
 and brute is too great to be bridged over by Darwinian 
 principles alone. 
 
 The kernel of the question is clearly the origin of the 
 so-called ' spontaneous variations ' upon which the principle 
 of natural selection is based, and concerning which Darwin 
 has remarked : ' We know not what produces the numberless 
 slight differences between the individuals of each species, for 
 reversion only carries the problem a few steps backward, but 
 each peculiarity must have its own efficient cause.' ^ It 
 seems to be established by the study of morbid heredity in 
 man that variations in structure including the brain, and 
 consequently the intellectual capacity, have their origin in 
 a molecular instability of the cerebro-spinal. system which 
 follows a law of alternation in heredity and is little affected 
 by environment. These variations Darwin has never pro- 
 fessed to explain, his system of natural selection starting 
 from the point where they appear, and being essentially 
 ^ restrictive, directive, conservative, or destructive of some- 
 thing already created.' What an investigation of the physical 
 basis of genius seems to disclose is that human progress 
 through the practice of the arts and sciences is mainly due to 
 the molecular instability of the nervous system above referred 
 to, operating not only without aid from sexual selection or 
 natural selection, but in direct opposition to those principles. 
 
 • Wallace : ' Human Selection,' Fortniglitly Beview, September, i8i)0. 
 2 Wallace : Darwinism, 1889. ^ Darwin : Oj). cit. 
 
SCO THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 By the use of clothes and fire man renders himself indepen- 
 dent of climate ; his weapons give him a power for offence 
 and defence far transcending that of beak or claw ; and the 
 inventive faculty which thus extends his dominion in nature 
 is not the attribute of a race, but only the apparently acci- 
 dental endowment of a few individuals in each generation 
 who, in the Darwinian sense, are to be classed with the 
 ^ unfit ' — a category to which Darwin himself, with his forty 
 years of persistent and disabling ill-health, might not im- 
 properly be assigned. Victorious generalship and skilful 
 administration, again, both important factors in determining 
 supremacy of race, are likewise the outcome of a cerebral 
 organisation which is wholly personal to individuals and not 
 necessarily transmissible by heredity or otherwise amenable 
 to the Darwinian law. 
 
 These considerations appear to me to be of great impor- 
 tance, lending as they do an unexpected support to the view 
 of the small but not uninfluential group of evolutionists 
 above referred to, and favouring the still more heterodox 
 speculations of the new American school of biologists, who, 
 upon different grounds, believe in the existence of a special 
 developmental force in nature which they term ' bathmism,' 
 or growth-force, and which they conceive to act by means of 
 ' retardation and acceleration ' and ' without reference to fit- 
 ness at all.' ^ Cope rightly observes that the theory of the 
 survival of the fittest leaves the origin of the fittest entirely 
 untouched. Growth-force, in his view, is the vital principle 
 which supplies material for selection; its direction is de- 
 termined in part by effort and use, but from its automatic 
 action it may also tend to the production of useless cha- 
 racters. 
 
 The grounds upon which the American biologists seek to 
 establish this theory of the origin of the fittest may not be 
 conclusive, but in the molecular variations of heredity, as 
 illustrated in genius, we certainly seem to come upon some 
 such agency as the so-called growth-force — an agency no 
 longer subject to natural selection, but eluding it and deter- 
 
 ' Cope : The Origin of the Fittest : Essays on Evolution. New York, 
 
 1887. 
 
GEOWTH-FORCE 331 
 
 mining human advancement by independent means. To 
 growth-force may be attributed small racial differences like 
 those which exist between Celt and Saxon and which are not 
 explicable by the Darwinian law. It does not follow that 
 man is to be regarded as a special creation — a type apart in 
 the animal kingdom. His close anatomical resemblance to 
 the higher apes — not merely in body, but in brain — forbids 
 such a supposition ; and if growth-force be accepted as a 
 factor in human development, it must also be allowed for in 
 the case of the lower animals, though possibly the shaping 
 influence of natural selection may be all-powerful until the 
 higher intellectual processes come into play. After all, growth- 
 force is only another name for ' spontaneous variations,' and 
 the true point at issue is how far it is governed by outside 
 conditions favourable or unfavourable. In man it appears 
 to be largely independent of such conditions. 
 
 To discuss the new aspect of evolution thus opened up 
 would, however, carry me far beyond my present purpose. 
 This I have fulfilled if, in availing myself of the latest ac- 
 quisitions of knowledge in more than one field of research, I 
 have succeeded in reducing to a law those higher manifesta- 
 tions of the intellect which have so long perplexed, while they 
 have stirred the admiration of, mankind. Some prejudices 
 may have been hurt in the process. It is the facts, however, 
 which speak rather than I, who merely group them so that 
 they may be mutually explanatory of each other ; and as to 
 the wisdom of Nature's courses it behoves us to be dumb. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ACQ 
 
 Acquisitions, mental, 11-15, 17-23 
 
 Acting faculty, the, 187-192, 290-3, 
 
 308 
 Agraphia, 6, 20 
 Alcohol, 25-6, 45 
 Alexander the Great, 193 
 Alfieri, 108 
 Ampere, 230 
 Aphasia, 6 
 Apoplexy, 40-9 
 
 — in relation to genius, 87, 106, 
 107, 115, 125, 128, 135, 140, 141, 
 143, 145, 165, 168, 170, 172, 180, 
 211, 215, 221, 229, 230 
 
 Arc, Joan of, 203 
 
 Arithmetical faculty, 60-2, 231, 232, 
 
 308 
 Associated perceptions, 9-17, 254-7, 
 
 270-2 
 Associations of words, 273-5 
 Asthma, 39-49 
 
 — in relation to genius, 130, 135, 
 179, 190, 220 
 
 Auditory centre, localisation of, 6 
 
 action of, 13, 18, 21-2 
 
 in relation to music, 283-7 
 
 Automatic action of the brain, 11- 
 
 28, 254-300 
 Avarice, 47, 240-2, 298 
 
 — in relation to genius, 90, 176, 
 185, 190, 206, 239-242 
 
 BACHS, the, 163 
 Bacon, 217 
 Balfe, 173 
 Balzac, 135, 268-9 
 
 CAN 
 
 Beaconsfield, 215 
 
 Beethoven, 167, 283 
 
 Bellini, 172 
 
 Bent, the natural, 323-4 
 
 Berlioz, 173 
 
 Blake, 76-80 
 
 Blindness, experiences of, 13, 14, 21 
 
 Booth, Junius Brutus, 189 
 
 Bossuet, 143 
 
 Botticelli, 175 
 
 Brahe, Tycho, 221 
 
 Brain, the structure of, 3, 4, 28-9 
 
 — localisation of the functions of, 
 5-7 
 
 — nerve-cells and fibres of, 3, 7-14, 
 17-24, 26, 34, 254-5, 273-5 
 
 — convolutions of, in relation to 
 mental faculty, 34-6, 300, 303-14 
 
 — organic functions of, 37-8 
 
 — excess and deficiency of the 
 functions of, 33, 36, 60, 62, 193, 
 239, 318-25 
 
 — automatic action of, 11-28, 254- 
 300 
 
 — size and weight of, 310-14 
 Bridgman, Laura, 21 
 Brohan, Augustine, 192 
 Brontes, the, 130-1, 266 
 Brougham, 213 
 Browning, 135 
 
 Bunyan, 245 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 214 
 
 Burns, 122-3 
 
 Byron, 92-7, 267, 320-6 
 
 Campbell, 97-9 
 Candolle, A. de, 230 
 
304 
 
 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 CAN 
 
 le, ' 
 Cardan, 230 
 Carlyle, 220-1 
 Caution, 27, 297 
 Cavour, 215 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, 175 
 Cerebellum, functions of, 16 
 ■ — affected by alcohol, 26 
 
 — smallness of, in Swift, 83, 307 
 Cerebral organisation in relation to 
 
 feelings and opinions, 28, 32 
 Charles V., 205 
 
 — XIL, 201 
 Chateaubriand, 106 
 Chatham, 210-12, 294-5 
 Chatterton, 104 
 Cheri, Rose, 192 
 Chess-playing faculty, 232 
 Childlessness, 40, 41 
 
 — in relation to genius, SO, 98, 111, 
 116, 126, 136, 174, 177, 182, 184, 
 200, 205, 209, 210, 212, 218, 229, 
 316-17 
 
 Chloroform, 26 
 
 Chopin, 173, 287 
 
 Claude Lorraine, 175, 323 
 
 Clive, 195 
 
 Colburn, Zerah, 231-2 
 
 Coleridge family, the, 115-19, 267, 
 
 325-6 
 Collins, Wilkie, 135 
 Colour sense, the, 8, 60, 185, 288 
 Common -sense, 32 
 Comparison, faculty of, 8, 28, 276, 
 
 278 
 Comte, Auguste, 219 
 Conception, process of, 49-52 
 Conde family, the, 215 
 Conscience, 63 
 Consciousness, 31 
 Constructiveness, mechanical and 
 
 poetical, 309 
 Consumption, 40-9 
 
 — in relation to genius, 108, 112, 
 115, 118, 120, 122, 126-8, 130, 
 1 31, 134, 144, 149, 172-3, 175, 190- 
 91, 199, 200, 214, 220, 229, 232 
 
 Conversion, religious, 246-51 
 Convolutions of the brain in relation 
 to mental faculty 31-6, 300-14 j 
 
 EPI 
 
 Copernicus, 221 
 
 Corneille, 144 
 
 Cosway, 215 
 
 Courage, 251 
 
 Creative faculty, the, 262-4 
 
 Criminality, hereditary character 
 
 of, 47, 252, 300, 305-6 
 Cromwell, 207 
 Cuvier, 230 
 
 Dante, 143 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus, 232 
 
 — Charles, 238, 321-2, 330 
 Davy, Humphry, 229, 322 
 De Foe, 144 
 Delacroix, 285 
 Demidoff family, the, 242 
 De Musset, 137-9 
 
 De Quincey, 134 
 Descartes, 219 
 Desclee, 192 
 Diabetes, 40 
 Dickens, 131-3, 269-70 
 Diderot, 108 
 Donizetti, 170-1 
 Dore, 180 
 
 Dreams, 25, 258-60 
 Drugs, effects of, 25 
 Drunkenness, 25-6, 45 
 
 — in relation to genius, 99, 101, 104, 
 107, 110, 112-14, 118, 122, 125, 
 131, 144, 177, 188, 190-3, 212 
 
 Dryden, 144 
 Dumas, 140 
 Durer, 175 
 
 ECCENTEICITY, 39-49 
 
 — in relation to genius, 82, 88, 90, 
 93, 97, 98, 104, 113, 114, 115, 
 120-1, 128, 131, 133-5, 137, 140, 
 142, 167, 171, 172, 177, 182, 190, 
 201, 206, 212, 214, 216, 221, 228, 
 230, 316 
 
 Eliot, George, 133 
 Ellis, John, 243 
 Epilepsy, 40-9 
 
 — in relation to genius, 66, 97, 114, 
 132, 135-6, 139, 141, 143-4, 166, 
 
INDEX 
 
 335 
 
 EPI 
 
 168, 170, 191, 194, 198-9, 200, 
 202, 204-6, 218, 293-4, 316 
 
 Epilepsy the cause of mental activity, 
 66, 139 
 
 Eugene, Prince, 200 . 
 
 Faculty, diversity of, 32-6, 59, 60, 
 
 62, 193, 239, 318-25 
 Fanatical views, 28 
 Faraday, 229 
 Feelings, painful and pleasurable, 
 
 55 
 Fielding, 144 
 Flaubert, 139, 271 
 Flaxman, 176 
 Fox, Charles James, 215 
 
 — George, 246, 299 
 Frederick the Great, 206 
 
 Frontal lobes, functions of the, 6, 7, 
 
 16, 35, 303-8, 310 
 Fuseli, 177 
 
 Galileo, 221 
 Gautier, Theophile, 145 
 Genius, 36, 56, 254-6, 275 
 
 — as distinguished from talent, 
 263-5 
 
 — morbid character of, 264, 316-17, 
 324-5 
 
 — stud-book theory of, untenable, 
 325-31 
 
 — imperfect development of, 74, 
 317-18 
 
 — occurrence of, rare, 317 
 
 — in relation to insanity, 56, 66- 
 108, 117, 120, 133, 142, 165, 170, 
 175, 180, 184, 192, 204, 205, 208, 
 210, 211, 215, 217, 218, 219, 222, 
 224, 230, 232, 233, 234, 275-7 
 
 — in relation to idiocy, 60-2, 112, 
 143, 164, 172, 184-7, 194, 204, 
 215, 236 
 
 GEN 
 
 Genius in relation to apoplexy, 45, 
 
 87, 106, 107, 115, 125, 128, 135, 
 140, 141, 143, 145, 165, 168, 170, 
 172, 180, 211, 215, 221, 229, 230 
 
 — in relation to asthma, 87, 113, 
 130, 135, 173, 179, 190, 220 
 
 — in relation to avarice, 90, 176, 
 185, 190,206,239-41 
 
 — in relation to consumption, 108, 
 112, 115, 118, 120, 122, 126, 127, 
 128, 130, 131, 134, 144, 149, 172, 
 173, 175, 190, 191, 199, 200, 214, 
 
 220, 229, 232 
 
 — in relation to criminality, 251, 
 306 
 
 — in relation to childlessness, 80, 98, 
 111, 116, 126, 174, 177, 182, 184, 
 200, 205, 209, 210, 212, 218, 229, 
 316-17 
 
 — in relation to habits of drinking, 
 99, 101, 104, 107, 110, 112, 113, 
 
 114, 118, 122, 125, 131, 144, 168, 
 177, 188, 190, 192, 193, 212, 236 
 
 — in relation to eccentricity, 82, 
 
 88, 90, 93, 97,. 98, 104, 113, 114, 
 
 115, 120-1, 128, 131, 133-5, 137- 
 8, 140, 142, 167, 171, 172, 177, 
 182, 190, 201, 206, 212, 214, 216, 
 
 221, 228, 230, 316 
 
 — in relation to epilepsy, 66, 97, 
 114, 132, 135, 136, 139, 141, 143, 
 144, 166, 168, 170, 191, 194, 198, 
 199, 200, 202, 204, 205, 206, 218, 
 293-4, 316 
 
 — in relation to fits of giddiness, 
 81, 83, 132, 173, 213, 215, 220, 226, 
 230, 238 
 
 — in relation to gout and rheu- 
 matism, 99, 102, 109, 111, 112, 
 
 116, 123, 127, 128, 132, 133, 134, 
 
836 
 
 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 GEN 
 
 135, 138, 140, 144, 106, 175, 182, 
 192, 195, 208, 209, 210, 212, 215, 
 
 217, 219, 221, 225, 226, 229, 230, 
 231, 237, 316 
 
 Genius in relation to hallucinations, 
 76-80, 83, 84, 91, 96, 104, 106, 
 107, 117, 118, 126, 131, 138, 141, 
 144, 170, 175, 181, 191, 192, 193, 
 197, 198, 202, 203, 204, 213, 216, 
 
 218, 219, 226-7, 230, 260-2, 287 
 
 — in relation to heart disease, 115, 
 134, 135, 136, 138, 172, 179 
 
 — in relation to hypochondria and 
 melancholia, 83, 84, 87, 89, 90, 98, 
 104, 106, 108, 113, 118, 122, 127, 
 129, 170, 172, 173, 175, 179, 180, 
 195, 220, 230, 238, 239 
 
 — in relation to the insane tem- 
 perament, 82, 93, 94, 101, 104, 
 113, 135, 136, 173, 182, 196, 201, 
 206, 215, 229, 236, 316 
 
 — in relation to imbecility, 82, 89, 
 100, 113, 121, 141, 149, 151, 175, 
 213, 221, 230 
 
 — in relation to ill-health, 115, 118, 
 124, 120, 127, 133, 135, 149, 155, 
 179, 180, 199, 221, 220, 228, 230, 
 234, 230, 238-9, 325, 330 
 
 — in relation to irregularities of 
 growth, 89, 94, 95, 101, HI, 113, 
 119, 127, 131, 134, 135, 144, 107, 
 169, 170, 170, 177, 179, 184, 190, 
 192, 199, 200, 205, 213, 214, 215, 
 217, 222, 230, 232, 233, 235 
 
 — in relation to the linguistic 
 faculty, 74, 102, 130, 134, 109 
 
 — in relation :b length of life 89, 
 98, 104, 108, 112, 115, 127, 134, 
 148, 169, 171, 172, 174, 199, 200, 
 225,226,228, 229, 231, 316 
 
 GEN 
 
 Genius in relation to memory, 87, 
 110,127, 130, 130, 138, 142, 144, 151, 
 180,214,221,218,229,230,254,285 
 
 — in relation to mortality and un- 
 fitness of offspring, 104, 111, 115, 
 117, 123, 127, 141, 144, 147, 154, 
 155, 165, 166, 174, 178, 205, 207, 
 222, 225, 228, 316-17 
 
 — in relation to ne'er-do-wellisra, 
 89, 93, 98, 99, 104, 109, 113, 124, 
 
 128, 132, 137, 150, 175, 177, 178, 
 187, 190, 213, 225, 226, 236, 238, 
 246, 252-3 
 
 — in relation to neuralgic affec- 
 tions, 101, 104, 106, 110, 119, 122, 
 
 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 168, 170, 
 173, 228, 234, 237, 244 
 
 — in relation to opium- eating, 90, 
 116, 131, 134, 135, 113, 195, 237 
 
 — in relation to paralysis, 81, 83, 
 87, 98, 100, 104, 107, 112, 113, 
 115, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 132, 
 
 135, 144, 145, 158, 159, 162, 105, 
 106, 168, 169, 175, 177, 179, 181, 
 199, 213, 221, 225, 229, 230, 231, 
 237, 316 
 
 — in relation to physical energy, 
 87, 88, 118, 121, 129, 130, 135, 
 
 136, 140, 142, 144, 176, 178, 233, 
 239, 240, 256, 264 
 
 — in relation to piety, 87, 108, 123, 
 144, 173, 174, 176, 192, 203, 214, 
 225, 230, 232, 244-51 
 
 — in relation to defects of the 
 senses, 81, 89, 109, 122, 128, 131, 
 134, 143, 144, 104, 105, 166, 107, 
 168, 169, 173, 175, 178, 182, 190, 
 192, 199, 214, 215, 226, 229, 230, 
 231, 236, 237, 246, 321 
 
 — in relation to prodigality, 93, 
 112, 178, 207, 239-42, 297 
 
INDEX 
 
 337 
 
 GEN 
 
 Genius in relation to scrofula, 83, 117, 
 205, 214, 249 
 
 — in relation to sexual passion, 89, 
 96, 104, 107, 110, 123, 127, 137, 
 140, 225, 252, 320 
 
 — in relation to defects of speech, 
 101, 119, 120, 168, 200, 204, 233, 
 234, 238 
 
 — in relation to the shape of the 
 skull, 82, 135, 143, 167, 172, 175, 
 230, 310-14 
 
 — in relation to sudden death, 115, 
 123, 135, 143, 144, 168, 170, 22i, 
 234 
 
 — in relation to suicidal tendencies, 
 85, 86, 104, 106, 107, 108, 137, 145, 
 170, 183, 188, 189, 196, 203, 215, 
 219, 234, 236-7, 244, 293-4, 319 
 
 — in relation to temper, 81, 89, 90, 
 94, 98, 100, 104, 122, 123, 124, 
 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 
 166, 168, 169, 172, 173, 177, 178, 
 184, 191, 193, 195, 196, 199, 206, 
 208, 214, 220, 221, 232-4, 256, 
 322-3 
 
 — in relation to unsuitable unions, 
 90, 114, 115, 117, 128, 141, 226, 
 227, 229, 234, 235, 237, 325-30 
 
 — in relation to vanity, 318-20 
 Giddiness, 16 
 
 — in relation to genius, 81, 83, 132, 
 173, 213, 215, 220, 22G, 230, 238 
 
 Giorgione, 175 
 
 Gluck, 172 
 
 Goethe, 141-2 
 
 Goldsmith, 99-100 
 
 Gout and rTr^nmatism, 48-9 
 
 — in relation to genius, 99, 102, 
 109, 111-12, IIG, 123, 127-8, 132- 
 3, 134-5, 138, 140, 144, 166, 175, 
 182, 192, 195, 208-10, 212. 215. 
 
 HON 
 
 217, 219, 221, 225-6, 229-31, 237, 
 316 
 
 Graphic writing, 280-1 
 
 Graphology, 149, 197 
 
 Growth-force, evidence of the ex- 
 istence of a, 330-1 
 
 Gustavus Adolphus, 200 
 
 Habit tending to instinct,, ] 2 
 
 — force of, 31 
 Hallam, 144 
 
 Haller, Albert von, 230 
 Hallucinations, 28, 33, 39, 40, 57, 
 90, 247-8 
 
 — Blake's, 76, 80, 201 
 
 — Bostock's, 257 
 
 — Bunyan's, 245 
 
 — George Fox's, 246 
 
 — Joan of Arc's, 203 
 
 — Mahommed's, 202 
 
 — Nicolai's, 57-8, 257 
 
 — Schumann's, 287 
 
 — Swedenborg's, 218 
 
 — in relation to genius, 83-4, 91, 
 96, 104, 106-7, 117-8, 126, 131, 
 138, 141, 144, 170, 175, 181, 191, 
 192-3, 197-8, 202, 203, 204, 213, 
 216, 218-19, 236, 260-2, 299 
 
 Handel, 1 65, 323 
 
 Handkerchief, tying a knot on, 14 
 
 Haschish, 26, 247 
 
 Hastings, Warren, 213 
 
 Hauff, 108 
 
 Haydon, 182 
 
 Heads, size and shape of, 300, 304- 
 
 5, 310-14 
 Hegel, 219 
 Heine, 144, 242 
 Heiresses, sterility of, 241 
 Heredity, metamorphoses of, 39-49, 
 
 54, 109, 225, 238-51, 321-9 
 Herold, 172 
 Herschell, William, 225 
 
 — Sir Jt)hn, 226-8 
 Hogarth, 176, 288, 323 
 Holderlin, 107 
 Homer, 143 
 
 Honesty no guarantee of wisdom, 
 1)3 
 
338 
 
 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 HOO 
 
 Hood, Thomas, 134 
 
 Howard, 242 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 142-3 
 
 Hypnotism, 24-6, 30, 66 
 
 Hypochondria and melancholia, 40- 
 9,55 
 
 in relation to genius, 83, 84, 
 
 87, 89, 96, 98, 104, 106, 108, 113, 
 118, 122, 127, 129, 170, 172, 173, 
 175, 179, 180, 195, 220, 230, 238, 
 239 
 
 Ideas, formation -of, 12-15, 254 
 Identifying faculty, the, 8, 28, 279, 
 
 281, 295-9 
 Idiocy, mental power in, 60-62 
 
 — in relation to genius, 112, 143, 
 164, 172, 184, 187, 194, 204, 215, 
 236 
 
 Ill-health, 38-9, 40 
 
 — in relation to genius, 115, 118, 
 124, 126-7, 133, 135, 149, 155, 
 179, 180, 199, 221, 226, 228, 230, 
 234, 236, 238-9 
 
 Imbecility, 42-8 
 
 — in relation to genius, 82, 89, 100, 
 113, 121, 141, 149, 151, 175, 213, 
 221, 230 
 
 Insane temperament, the, 63-5 
 
 in relation to genius, 82, 93, 
 
 94, 101, 104, 113, 135-6, 173, 182, 
 196,201, 206,215, 229,236 
 Insanity, causes of, 33 
 
 — conducive to mental activity, 56, 
 67-80 
 
 — in relation to genius, 81, 108, 117, 
 120, 133, 142, 165, 170, 175, 180, 
 
 184, 192, 204-5, 208, 210-11, 215, 
 217-19, 224, 230-4 
 
 — moral, 63-5 
 Inspiration, 256-71 
 Instinct, 11 
 Irregularities of growth, 41 
 
 in relation to genius, 89, 94-5, 
 
 101, 111, 113, 119, 127, 131, 134, 
 
 185, 144, 167, 169, 170, 176-7, 
 179, 184, 190, 192-9, 200, 205, 
 213-5, 217, 222, 230, 232-3, 
 236 
 
 MAO 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 83 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 144 
 
 Joule, 230 
 
 Judgment, 29 
 
 Jukes family, the, 47, 252 
 
 Jussieu, De, 230 
 
 Kant, 219 
 Kean, Edmund, 187 
 — Charles, 192 
 Keats, 126 
 Kembles, the, 190 
 Kepler, 221 
 Kerner, 108 
 
 La Brxjyere, 144 
 
 Lamarck, 230 
 Lamb, Charles, 119 
 
 — Lady Caroline, 326 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 101 , 256 
 Lands eer, 182 
 
 Language, basis of, 18-19, 21 
 
 — in relation to genius, 74, 102, 130, 
 134, 169 
 
 — as a support to thought, 21 
 
 — command of, 273-4 
 
 — Shakespeare's fluency of, 276 
 Lawrence, Sir T., 178 
 Leibnitz, 219 
 
 Lemaitre, Frederick, 192 
 
 Lenau, 107 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 175, 288 
 
 Lesage, 143 
 
 Life, long and short, 40-1 
 
 in relation to genius, 89, 
 
 98, 108, 112, 115, 127, 134, 148, 
 169, 171-2, 174, 199, 200, 225-6, 
 228-9, 234, 323 
 
 Linne, 230 
 
 Literary faculty, the, 254-82 
 
 Liverseege, 179 
 
 Louise Latour, 38 
 
 Lucretius, 108 
 
 Luther, 244 
 
 Lyell, Sir C, 231 
 
 Lytton, Bulwer, 128 
 
 MACAULAY, 130 
 
Ds'DEX 
 
 839 
 
 MAC 
 
 Maclise, 179 
 
 Macready, 293 
 
 Mahommed, 211 
 
 Marlborough, 194 
 
 Mars, Mdlle., 191 
 
 Martin, Sarah, 243 
 
 Meissonier, 180, 309 
 
 ]\Iemory, physical basis of, 9-16, 22 
 
 — in idiots, 60-2 
 
 — as an element of genius, 255 
 Mendelssohn, 168, 242,286-7 
 Meyerbeer, 242, 323 
 
 Michel Angelo, 173, 323 
 Military genius, 193-201 
 
 in relation to epile^Dsy, 293-4 
 
 Mill, James, 220 
 
 — J. S., 220 
 
 Milton, 109-12, 2G3, 319 
 
 Mind, 2, 7-12, 15, 26, 32-4 
 
 IModes of feeling, 32 
 
 Moli^re, 143 
 
 Money-making faculty, the, 239, 
 
 297-8 
 Monrose, 191 
 IMontesquieu, 143 
 Moore, Thomas, 127 
 
 — George, 243 
 Morality, 11,28 
 
 — affected in insanity, 63-5 
 
 — current notions of, erroneous, 48 
 Morland, 177 
 
 Morphy, Paul, 232 
 
 Mortality in connection with genius, 
 104, 111, 115, 123, 127, 141, 144, 
 147, 159-62, 165, 200, 209, 316-17 
 
 Mozart, 166, 284-6 
 
 Musical faculty, the, 22, 60, 62, 163- 
 73, 282-7 
 
 Napoleon, 196, 294 
 
 Natural selection, inapplicable to 
 man, 327-31 
 
 Ne'er-do-wellism, 46-7 
 
 — in relation to genius, 89, 93, 98-9, 
 104, 109, 113, 124, 128, 132, 137, 
 150, 175, 177-8, 187, 190, 213, 
 225-6, 236, 238, 246, 252-3, 298 
 
 Nerval, Gerard de, 145 
 
 Nerve cells and fibres of the brain. 
 
 POE 
 
 3, 11-15, 17-23, 26, 34, 254-5, 
 
 274 
 Neuralgic affections, 40-9 
 in relation to genius, 101, 104, 
 
 106, 110, 119, 122, 129, 130-3, 168, 
 
 170, 173, 228, 234, 237, 244 
 Neurotic diseases, 39-49 
 Newman, Cardinal, 246 
 Newton, Isaac, 222 
 Nield, 243 
 North family, the, 240 
 
 Obstinacy, 28, 42 
 
 Opinions, no man responsible for 
 
 his, 28 
 Opium-eating, 26, 259, 262 
 — in relation to genius, 90, 116, 
 
 131, 134-5, 143, 195, 237 
 Originality of thought, 32, 264 
 
 Paganini, 172, 283 
 
 Painting faculty, the, 173-87, 283, 
 
 288-90 
 Palmerston, 215 
 Paralysis, 40-9 
 
 — in relation to genius, 81, 83, 87, 
 98, 100, 104, 107, 112-13, 115, 121, 
 123-6, 132, 135, 144-5, 158-9, 162, 
 165-6, 168-9, 175, 177, 179, 181, 
 199, 213, 221,. 225, 229, 230-1, 
 237, 316 
 
 Pascal, 106 
 
 Pellico, Silvio, 107 
 
 Peter the Great, 204 
 
 Petrarch, 144 
 
 Philanthropy, 28, 47, 242-4, 298, 310 
 
 Phrenology, the old, 4-6 
 
 — the new, 301-14 
 Physical energy, 40, 253 
 
 in relation to genius, 87-8, 
 
 118, 129, 130-6, 140, 142, 144, 
 176, 178, 233, 239, 240, 256, 264 
 
 Piety, physical basis of, 47-8, 298 
 
 — in relation to genius, 87, 108, 
 123, 144, 173-4, 176, 192. 203, 
 214, 225, 230. 232. 244-51 
 
 Pitt, William, 212 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 107 
 
340 
 
 THE INSANITY OF GENIUS 
 
 POE 
 
 Poetry, visual effects in, 279-80 
 
 — difficulties of translating, 271 
 Pope, 1-14 
 
 Person, 144 
 Praed, 318 
 I'revost Paradol, 145 
 Prodigality, 4G-7, 297 
 
 — in relation to genius, 93, 112, 178, 
 207, 239-42 
 
 Punning, 281-2 
 
 Eachel, 191 
 
 Racine, 144 
 
 Raphael, 175 
 
 Rashness, 27, 297 
 
 Reynolds, 175, 323 
 
 Rhythm, sensibility to, 278-9 
 
 Richelieu, 214 
 
 Roberts, David, 180 
 
 Rogers, 144 
 
 Romilly, Sir S., 215 
 
 Romney, 180 
 
 Rossini, 172 
 
 Rousseau, 104 
 
 Rubens, 175 
 
 8ALVAT0R Rosa, 175 
 
 8and, George, 1U6 
 
 Savage, 144 
 
 Schiller, 144 
 
 Schubert, 172 
 
 Schumann, 171 
 
 Scientific faculty, 295-7, 323 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 123, 270 
 
 Scrofula, 39 
 
 — in relation to genius, 83, 117, 
 205, 214, 249 
 
 Selfishness, 28, 47-8 
 Senses, defects of the, 18, 56 
 
 — in relation to genius, 81, 89, 109, 
 128, 131-4, 143-4, 164-9, 173-8, 
 182, 190, 192, 199, 214-5, 226, 
 229, 230, 236-7, 246, 321 
 
 Sensory and motor areas, 5-9 
 action of, 12-5, 17-24, 34, 
 
 254-5, 305-6, 313 
 in relation to the literary 
 
 faculty, 256, 258-63, 268-82 
 
 SUD 
 
 Sensory and motor areas in relation 
 
 to art, 283-93, 309 
 in relation to military 
 
 genius, 293-4 
 in relation to oratory and 
 
 statesmanship, 295 
 in relation to the scientific 
 
 faculty, 295-7; business, 297-8; 
 
 philanthropy, 298 ; piety, 298-9 ; 
 
 crime, 300 
 Sexual passion, 16, 17, 45, 248 
 in relation to genius, 89, 96, 
 
 104, 107, 110, 123, 127, 137, 140, 
 
 225, 252, 320 
 Sexual selection, 325 
 Shakespeare, 146 
 
 — mortality of the family of, 147, 
 154 
 
 — probable cause of the death of, 
 153-7 
 
 — signatures of, as evidence of 
 paralysis, 157 
 
 — paralysis of grand-daughter of, 
 162 
 
 — creative power of, 271-3, 276 
 Sheridans, the, 113 
 
 Siddons, Mrs., 190 
 
 Skull, shape of the, 82, 135, 143, 
 
 167, 172, 175, 230, 300, 304-5, 
 
 310-14 
 Sleep-walking, 25, 47, 90, 108 
 Smeaton, 231 
 Smell, 6, 15, 321 
 Smith, Sydney, 133 
 Socrates, 216 
 Sophocles, 143 
 Southey, 87, 320-5 
 Speech centre, 6, 18, 21, 25, 48 
 in relation to genius, 101, 119, 
 
 120, 168, 200, 204, 233, 234, 238 
 Stael, Madame de, 143 
 Stanhope, Lady Hester, 212 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 1 1 2 
 Stephenson, George, 231 
 Stuttering, 48 
 — in relation to genius, 61, 119, 
 
 120, 168, 200, 204, 233, 234, 238 
 Style, literary, 273-5 
 Sudden death, 115, 123, 135, 143, 
 
 144, 168, 170, 221, 234 
 
INDEX 
 
 341 
 
 !5-G, 
 170, 
 219, 
 
 SUI 
 
 Suicidal tendencies, 41-9 
 
 — — in relation to genius, I 
 104, 106-7, 108, 137, 145, 
 183, 188-9, 196, 203, 215, 
 234, 236-7, 244, 293-4, 319 
 
 Swammerdam, 230 
 
 SwedenborR-, 218, 299 
 
 Swift, 81, 306 
 
 Szechenyi, 214 
 
 Talent, as distinguished from 
 
 genius, 263-4 
 Talma, 192 
 Tannahill, 107 
 Tasso, 107 
 Taste, 6, 15, 321 
 Telford, 231 
 Temper, 41, 49 
 
 — in relation to genius, 81, 89, 90, 
 94, 98, 100, 104, 122-3, 124, 127, 
 128, 129, 130-3, 166, 168-9, 172, 
 173, 177, 178, 184, 191, 193, 195, 
 196, 199, 206, 208, 214, 220-1, 
 232, 234, 256 
 
 Thackeray, 134 
 
 Tintoretto, 175 
 
 Touch, 6, 13, 15, 17 
 
 Turenne, 200 
 
 Turner, 184 
 
 Twins, the conception of, 52 
 
 — physical and mental resemblances 
 of, 29, 58-4 
 
 Unchastity, 199, 252 
 
 Unfitness of offspring of men of 
 genius, 104, 111, 115, 117, 123, 
 124, 126. 147, 159-62, 165, 200, 
 209, 316-17 
 
 Unsuitable unions, 40-1 
 
 in relation to genius, 90, 114- 
 
 ZIM 
 
 15, 117, 128, 141, 226-7, 229, 
 234-5, 237, 325-30 
 
 Vandyck, 175 
 
 Vanity, 28, 47, 310 
 
 — in relation to genius, 318-20 
 
 Veronese, Paul, 175 
 
 Visions, religious, 245-8 
 
 Visual centre, 5-8, 13, 14, 19, 20, 28, 
 
 268, 308 
 Volta, 230 
 Voltaire, 143 
 
 Wagnbe, 171, 283 
 
 Washington, 214 
 
 Watt, James, 228 
 
 Watteau, 175 
 
 Weathercock, analogy of, with the 
 
 will, 27, 31 
 Weber, 172 
 Wedgwood, Josiah, 235 
 
 — Thomas, 237 
 
 Wedlock, selection of partners in, 
 
 40, 325-30 
 Weismann's theories, 51, 52, 328 
 West, Benjamin, 324 
 White, Henry Kirke, 144 
 Wilberforce, 244 
 Wilkie, David, 179 
 Will, the illusory character of, 26, 
 
 262 
 
 — in twins, 29 
 
 — in hypnotism, 30 
 Wit, 281-2, 306 
 Woffington, Peg, 191 
 Wordsworth, 119, 268, 280, 319-20 
 Writers' cramp, 48 
 
 ZiMMEEMANN, 230 
 
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