of the whole community are more precious even than genius. It is so
easy, indeed, that if the question of eugenics were submitted to the
Referendum on this sole ground there can be little doubt what the result
would be. There are not many people, even in the most highly educated
communities, who value the possibility of a new poem, symphony, or
mathematical law so highly that they would sacrifice their own health,
happiness, and sanity to retain that possibility for their offspring. Of
course we may declare that a majority which made such a decision must be
composed of very low-minded uncultured people, altogether lacking in
appreciation of pathology, and reflecting no credit on the eugenic cause
they supported; but there can be little doubt that we should have to
admit their existence.
We need not hasten, however, to place the question on this ground. It
is first necessary to ascertain what reason there is to suppose that a
regard for eugenic considerations in mating would tend to stamp out the
germs of genius. Is there any reason at all? That is the question I am
here concerned with.
The anti-eugenic argument on this point, whenever any argument is
brought forward, consists in pointing to all sorts of men of genius and
of talent who, it is alleged, were poor citizens, physical degenerates
the prey of all manner of constitutional diseases, sometimes candidates
for the lunatic asylum which they occasionally reached. The miscellaneous
data which may thus be piled up are seldom critically sifted, and often
very questionable, for it is difficult enough to obtain any positive
biological knowledge concerning great men who died yesterday, and
practically impossible in most cases to reach an unquestionable
conclusion as regards those who died a century or more ago. Many of the
most positive statements commonly made concerning the diseases even of
modern genius are without any sure basis. The case of Nietzsche, who was
seen by some of the chief specialists of the day, is still really quite
obscure. So is that of Guy de Maupassant. Rousseau wrote the fullest and
frankest account of his ailments, and the doctors made a _post-mortem_
examination. Yet nearly all the medical experts--and they are many--who
have investigated Rousseau's case reach different conclusions. It would
be easy to multiply indefinitely the instances of great men of the past
concerning whose condition of health or disease we are in hopeless
perplexity.
This fact is, however, one that, as an argument, works both ways, and
the important point is to make clear that it cannot concern us. No
eugenic considerations can annihilate the man of genius when he is once
born and bred. If eugenics is to stamp out the man of genius it must do
so before he is born, by acting on his parents.
Nor is it possible to assume that if the man of genius, apart from his
genius, is an unfit person to procreate the race, therefore his parents,
not possessing any genius, were likewise unfit to propagate. It is easy
to find persons of high ability who in other respects are unfit for
the ends of life, ill-balanced in mental or physical development,
neurasthenic, valetudinarian, the victims in varying degrees of all
sorts of diseases. Yet their parents, without any high ability, were, to
all appearance, robust, healthy, hard-working, commonplace people who
would easily pass any ordinary eugenic tests. We know nothing as to the
action of two seemingly ordinary persons on each other in constituting
heredity, how hypertrophied intellectual aptitude comes about, what
accidents, normal or pathological, may occur to the germ before birth,
nor even how strenuous intellectual activity may affect the organism
generally. We cannot argue that since these persons, apart from their
genius, were not seemingly the best people to carry on the race,
therefore a like judgment should be passed on their parents and the
germs of genius thus be stamped out.
We only arrive at the crucial question when we ask: Have the characters
of the parents of men of genius been of such an obviously unfavourable
kind that eugenically they would nowadays be dissuaded from
propagation, or under a severe _régime_ of compulsory certificates (the
desirability of which I am far indeed from assuming) be forbidden to
marry? Have the parents of genius belonged to the "unfit"? That is a
question which must be answered in the affirmative if this objection to
eugenics has any weight. Yet so far as I know, none of those who have
brought forward the objection have supported it by any evidence of the
kind whatever. Thirty years ago Dr. Maudsley dogmatically wrote: "There
is hardly ever a man of genius who has not insanity or nervous disorder
of some form in his family." But he never brought forward any evidence
in support of that pronouncement. Nor has anyone else, if we put aside
the efforts of more or less competent writers--like Lombroso in his
_Man of Genius_ and Nisbet in his _Insanity of Genius_--to rake in
statements from all quarters regarding the morbidities of genius, often
without any attempt to authenticate, criticise, or sift them, and never
with any effort to place them in due perspective.[1]
It so happens that, some years ago, with no relation to eugenic
considerations, I devoted a considerable amount of attention to the
biological characters of British men of genius, considered, so far as
possible, on an objective and impartial basis.[2] The selection, that
is to say, was made, so far as possible, without regard to personal
predilections, in accordance with certain rules, from the _Dictionary
of National Biography_. In this way one thousand and thirty names were
obtained of men and women who represent the flower of British genius
during historical times, only excluding those persons who were alive at
the end of the last century. What proportion of these were the
offspring of parents who were insane or mentally defective to a serious
extent?
If the view of Maudsley--that there is "hardly ever" a man of genius
who is not the product of an insane or nervously-disordered stock--had
a basis of truth, we should expect that in one or other parents of the
man of genius actual insanity had occurred in a very large proportion
of cases; 25 per cent. would be a moderate estimate. But what do we
find? In not 1 per cent. can definite insanity be traced among the
parents of British men and women of genius. No doubt this result is
below the truth; the insanity of the parents must sometimes have
escaped the biographer's notice. But even if we double the percentage
to escape this source of error, the proportion still remains
insignificant.
There is more to be said. If the insanity of the parent occurred early
in life, we should expect it to attract attention more easily than if
it occurred late in life. Those parents of men of genius falling into
insanity late in life, the critic may argue, escape notice. But it is
precisely to this group to which all the ascertainably insane parents
of British men of genius belong. There is not a single recorded
instance, so far as I have been able to ascertain, in which the parent
had been definitely and recognisably insane before the birth of the
distinguished child; so that any prohibition of the marriage of persons
who had previously been insane would have left British genius
untouched. In all cases the insanity came on late in life, and it was
usually, without doubt, of the kind known as senile dementia. This was
so in the case of the mother of Bacon, the most distinguished person in
the list of those with an insane parent. Charles Lamb's father, we are
told, eventually became "imbecile." Turner's mother became insane. The
same is recorded of Archbishop Tillotson's mother and of Archbishop
Leighton's father. This brief list includes all the parents of British
men of genius who are recorded (and not then always very definitely) as
having finally died insane. In the description given of others of the
parents of our men of genius it is not, however, difficult to detect
that, though they were not recognised as insane, their mental condition
was so highly abnormal as to be not far removed from insanity. This was
the case with Gray's father and with the mothers of Arthur Young and
Andrew Bell. Even when we allow for all the doubtful cases, the
proportion of persons of genius with an insane parent remains very low,
less than 2 per cent.
Senile dementia, though it is one of the least important and
significant of the forms of insanity, and is entirely compatible with a
long and useful life, must not, however, be regarded, when present in a
marked degree, as the mere result of old age. Entirely normal people of
sound heredity do not tend to manifest signs of pronounced mental
weakness or abnormality even in extreme old age. We are justified in
suspecting a neurotic strain, though it may not be of severe degree.
This is, indeed, illustrated by our records of British genius. Some of
the eminent men of genius on my list (at least twelve) suffered before
death from insanity which may probably be described as senile dementia.
But several of these were somewhat abnormal during earlier life (like
Swift) or had a child who became insane (like Bishop Marsh). In these
and in other cases there has doubtless been some hereditary neurotic
strain.
It is clearly, however, not due to any intensity of this strain that we
find the incidence of insanity in men of genius, as illustrated, for
example, by senile dementia, so much more marked than its incidence on
their parents. There is another factor to be invoked here: convergent
morbid heredity. If a man and a woman, each with a slight tendency to
nervous abnormality, marry each other, there is a much greater chance
of the offspring manifesting a severe degree of nervous abnormality
than if they had married entirely sound partners. Now both among normal
and abnormal people there is a tendency for like to mate with like.
The attraction of the unlike for each other, which was once supposed
to prevail, is not predominant, except within the sphere of the secondary
sexual characters, where it clearly prevails, so that the ultra-masculine
man is attracted to the ultra-feminine woman, and the feminine man to the
boyish or mannish woman. Apart from this, people tend to marry those who
are both psychically and physically of the same type as themselves. It
thus happens that nervously abnormal people become mated to the nervously
abnormal. This is well illustrated by the British men of genius
themselves. Although insanity is more prevalent among them than among
their parents, the same can scarcely be said of them in regard to their
wives. It is notable that the insane wives of these men of genius are
almost as numerous as the insane men of genius, though it rarely happens
(as in the case of Southey) that both husband and wife go out of their
minds. But in all these cases there has probably been a mutual attraction
of mentally abnormal people.
It is to this tendency in the parents of men of genius, leading to a
convergent heredity, that we must probably attribute the undue tendency
of the men of genius themselves to manifest insanity. Each of the
parents separately may have displayed but a minor degree of neuropathic
abnormality, but the two strains were fortified by union and the
tendency to insanity became more manifest. This was, for instance, the
case as regards Charles Lamb. The nervous abnormality of the parents in
this case was less profound than that of the children, but it was
present in both. Under such circumstances what is called the law of
anticipation comes into play; the neurotic tendency of the parents,
increased by union, is also antedated, so that definite insanity occurs
earlier in the life of the child than, if it had appeared at all, it
occurred in the life of the parent. Lamb's father only became
weak-minded in old age, but since the mother also had a mentally
abnormal strain, Lamb himself had an attack of insanity early in life,
and his sister was liable to recurrent insanity during a great part of
her life. Notwithstanding, however, the influence of this convergent
heredity, it is found that the total insanity of British men and women
of genius is not more, so far as can be ascertained--even when slight
and dubious cases are included--than 4.2 per cent. That ascertainable
proportion must be somewhat below the real proportion, but in any case
it scarcely suggests that insanity is an essential factor of genius.
Let us, however, go beyond the limits of British genius, and consider
the evidence more freely. There is, for instance, Tasso, who was
undoubtedly insane for a good part of his life, and has been much
studied by the pathologists. De-Gaudenzi, who has written one of the
best psychopathological studies of Tasso, shows clearly that his
father, Bernardo, was a man of high intelligence, of great emotional
sensibility, with a tendency to melancholy as well as a mystical
idealism, of somewhat weak character, and prone to invoke Divine aid in
the slightest difficulty. It was a temperament that might be considered
a little morbid, outside a monastery, but it was not insane, nor is
there any known insanity among his near relations. This man's wife,
Porzia, Tasso's mother, arouses the enthusiasm of all who ever mention
her, as a creature of angelic perfection. No insanity here either, but
something of the same undue sensitiveness and melancholy as in the
father, the same absence of the coarser and more robust virtues.
Moreover, she belonged to a family by no means so angelic as herself,
not insane, but abnormal--malevolent, cruel, avaricious, almost
criminal. The most scrupulous modern alienist would hesitate to deprive
either Bernardo or Porzia of the right to parenthood. Yet, as we know,
the son born of this union was not only a world-famous poet, but an
exceedingly unhappy, abnormal, and insane man.
Let us take the case of another still greater and more famous man,
Rousseau. It cannot reasonably be doubted that, at some moments in his
life at all events, and perhaps during a considerable period, Rousseau
was definitely insane. We are intimately acquainted with the details
of the life and character of his relations and of his ancestry. We not
only possess the full account he set forth at the beginning of his
_Confessions_, but we know very much more than Rousseau knew. Geneva
was paternal--paternal in the most severe sense--in scrutinising every
unusual act of its children, and castigating every slightest deviation
from the straight path. The whole life of the citizens of old Geneva may
be read in Genevan archives, and not a scrap of information concerning
the conduct of Rousseau's ancestors and relatives as set down in these
archives but has been brought to the light of day. If there is any great
man of genius whom the activities of these fanatical eugenists would have
rendered impossible, it must surely have been Rousseau. Let us briefly
examine his parentage. Rousseau's father was the outcome of a fine stock
which for two generations had been losing something of its fine
qualities, though without sinking anywhere near insanity, criminality, or
pauperism. The Rousseaus still exercised their craft with success; they
were on the whole esteemed; Jean-Jacques's father was generally liked,
but he was somewhat unstable, romantic, with no strong sense of duty,
hot-tempered, easily taking offence. The mother, from a modern
standpoint, was an attractive, highly accomplished, and admirable woman.
In her neighbours' eyes she was not quite Puritanical enough,
high-spirited, independent, adventurous, fond of innocent gaiety, but a
devoted wife when, at last, at the age of thirty, she married. More than
once before marriage she was formally censured by the ecclesiastical
authorities for her little insubordinations, and these may be seen to
have a certain significance when we turn to her father; he was a thorough
_mauvais sujet_, with an incorrigible love of pleasure, and constantly
falling into well-deserved trouble for some escapade with the young women
of Geneva. Thus on both sides there was a certain nervous instability, an
uncontrollable wayward emotionality. But of actual insanity, of nervous
disorder, of any decided abnormality or downright unfitness in either
father or mother, not a sign. Isaac Rousseau and Susanne Bernard would
have been passed by the most ferocious eugenist. It is again a case in
which the chances of convergent heredity have produced a result which in
its magnitude, in its heights and in its depths, none could foresee. It
is one of the most famous and most accurately known examples of insane
genius in history, and we see what amount of support it offers to the
ponderous dictum concerning the insane heredity of genius.
Let us turn from insanity to grave nervous disease. Epilepsy at once
comes before us, all the more significantly since it has been
considered, more especially by Lombroso, to be the special disease
through which genius peculiarly manifests itself. It is true that much
importance here is attached to those minor forms of epilepsy which
involve no gross and obvious convulsive fit. The existence of these
minor attacks is, in the case of men of genius, usually difficult to
disprove and equally difficult to prove. It certainly should not be so
as regards the major form of epilepsy. Yet among the thousand and
thirty persons of British genius I was only able to find epilepsy
mentioned twice, and in both cases incorrectly, for the National
Biographer had attributed it to Lord Herbert of Cherbury through
misreading a passage in Herbert's _Autobiography_, while the epileptic
fits of Sir W.R. Hamilton in old age were most certainly not true
epilepsy. Without doubt, no eugenist could recommend an epileptic to
become a parent. But if epilepsy has no existence in British men of
genius it is improbable that it has often occurred among their parents.
The loss to British genius through eugenic activity in this sphere
would probably, therefore, have been _nil_.
Putting aside British genius, however, one finds that it has been
almost a commonplace of alienists and neurologists, even up to the
present day, to present glibly a formidable list of mighty men of
genius as victims of epilepsy. Thus I find a well-known American
alienist lately making the unqualified and positive statement that
"Mahomet, Napoleon, Molière, Handel, Paganini, Mozart, Schiller,
Richelieu, Newton and Flaubert" were epileptics, while still more
recently a distinguished English neurologist, declaring that "the
world's history has been made by men who were either epileptics,
insane, or of neuropathic stock," brings forward a similar and still
larger list to illustrate that statement, with Alexander the Great,
Julius Caesar, the Apostle Paul, Luther, Frederick the Great and many
others thrown in, though unfortunately he fails to tell us which
members of the group he desires us to regard as epileptic. Julius
Caesar was certainly one of them, but the statement of Suetonius (not
an unimpeachable authority in any case) that Caesar had epileptic fits
towards the close of his life is disproof rather than proof of true
epilepsy. Of Mahomet, and St. Paul also, epilepsy is alleged. As
regards the first, the most competent authorities regard the convulsive
seizures attributed to the Prophet as perhaps merely a legendary
attempt to increase the awe he inspired by unmistakable evidence of
divine authority. The narrative of St. Paul's experience on the road to
Damascus is very unsatisfactory evidence on which to base a medical
diagnosis, and it may be mentioned that, in the course of a discussion
in the columns of the _British Medical Journal_ during 1910, as many as
six different views were put forward as to the nature of the Apostle's
"thorn in the flesh." The evidence on which Richelieu, who was
undoubtedly a man of very fragile constitution is declared to be
epileptic, is of the very slenderest character. For the statement that
Newton was epileptic there is absolutely no reliable evidence at all,
and I am quite ignorant of the grounds on which Mozart, Handel and
Schiller are declared epileptics. The evidence for epilepsy in Napoleon
may seem to carry slightly more weight, for there is that in the moral
character of Napoleon which we might very well associate with the
epileptic temperament. It seems clear that Napoleon really had at times
convulsive seizures which were at least epileptoid. Thus Talleyrand
describes how one day, just after dinner (it may be recalled that
Napoleon was a copious and exceedingly rapid eater), passing for a few
minutes into Josephine's room, the Emperor came out, took Talleyrand
into his own room, ordered the door to be closed, and then fell down in
a fit. Bourrienne, however, who was Napoleon's private secretary for
eleven years, knew nothing about any fits. It is not usual, in a true
epileptic fit, to be able to control the circumstances of the seizure
to this extent, and if Napoleon, who lived so public a life, furnished
so little evidence of epilepsy to his environment, it may be regarded
as very doubtful whether any true epilepsy existed, and on other
grounds it seems highly improbable.[3]
Of all these distinguished persons in the list of alleged epileptics,
it is naturally most profitable to investigate the case of the latest,
Flaubert, for here it is easiest to get at the facts. Maxime du Camp, a
friend in early life, though later incompatibility of temperament led
to estrangement, announced to the world in his _Souvenirs_ that
Flaubert was an epileptic, and Goncourt mentions in his _Journal_ that
he was in the habit of taking much bromide. But the "fits" never began
until the age of twenty-eight, which alone should suggest to a
neurologist that they are not likely to have been epileptic; they never
occurred in public; he could feel the fit coming on and would go and
lie down; he never lost consciousness; his intellect and moral
character remained intact until death. It is quite clear that there was
no true epilepsy here, nor anything like it.[4] Flaubert was of fairly
sound nervous heredity on both sides, and his father, a distinguished
surgeon, was a man of keen intellect and high character. The novelist,
who was of robust physical and mental constitution, devoted himself
strenuously and exclusively to intellectual work; it is not surprising
that he was somewhat neurasthenic, if not hysterical, and Dumesnil, who
discusses this question in his book on Flaubert, concludes that the
"fits" may be called hysterical attacks of epileptoid form.
It may well be that we have in Flaubert's case a clue to the "epilepsy"
of the other great men who in this matter are coupled with him. They
were nearly all persons of immense intellectual force, highly charged
with nervous energy; they passionately concentrated their energy on the
achievement of life tasks of enormous magnitude, involving the highest
tension of the organism. Under such conditions, even in the absence of
all bad heredity or of actual disease, convulsive discharges may occur.
We may see even in healthy and sound women that occasionally some
physiological and unrelieved overcharging of the organism with nervous
energy may result in what is closely like a hysterical fit, while even
a violent fit of crying is a minor manifestation of the same tendency.
The feminine element in genius has often been emphasised, and it may
well be that under the conditions of the genius-life when working at
high pressure we have somewhat similar states of nervous overcharging,
and that from time to time the tension is relieved, naturally and
spontaneously, by a convulsive discharge. This, at all events, seems a
possible explanation.