GENIUS AND INSANITY.

Having come to the conclusion that the designation “genius” does not

express any one psychological concept, that nobody has succeeded in

giving a pregnant definition of genius, nor is likely to do so, and

also that insanity is equally indefinable, that it is impossible to

draw a sharp line between mental sanity and mental derangement, it may

seem useless to attempt to compare two such indefinite quantities.

Still, the comparison--so long as it is a comparison--if we draw our

conclusions with circumspection, can hardly do any harm; and it may

possibly enrich our knowledge and lead us toward a recognition of truth.

It is no new-fangled notion that genius and insanity are somehow

connected. Plato is known to have spoken of a θεῖα μανία, a divine

insanity of poets. Seneca[44] attributes to Aristotle the saying,

“Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiæ fuit.” Aristotle[45]

says: “Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and

the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.” Cicero says:[46]

“Negat enim sine furore Democritus quemquam poetam magnum esse posse,

quod idem dicit Plato.” Horace[47] speaks of an _amabilis insania_, and

Wieland of an amiable insanity of the Muses. Dryden[48] has the lines--

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

One undeniable resemblance of the two phenomena is the relative

infrequency of their occurrence and their divergence from the majority

of mankind. Of old there was a tendency to ascribe everything that was

uncommon and unaccountable to the influence of a supernatural force.

Accordingly, it was believed that famous minds, as well as those that

were darkened with madness, stood under a direct divine influence, or

even formed, themselves, a part of the Godhead. In the Middle Ages

the crazy were held to be bewitched, or possessed of the devil, while

the greatest minds were honoured as graced by the Holy Spirit. Not

infrequently the crazy, too, if their delusions or hallucinations were

of a religious cast, were considered as saints in direct communion

with the Deity. At the same time, eminent men of science, persecuted

by ignorance and superstition, were abhorred as tools of the devil or

burnt as heretics. At all events, genius and insanity--two inexplicable

phenomena and vaguely defined--have been confounded together in various

ages of the world, according to the ideas of those times.

After modern science had got rid of the dross of superstition and

had taken its stand upon sceptical and objective observation, a

revolution of opinion took place. Anciently an unbounded freedom

had been attributed to the play of Nature. This far surpassed those

limits within which rigid laws of Nature allow any such play. That was

supernatural. But in modern times the tendency has been to confine

the action of Nature within much too restricted bounds. All phenomena

must now be brought under a _schema_ artificially erected. Everything

must have just such a measure and just such a weight, and every action

of Nature is regarded as subject to a numerical rule. This method of

investigation may have had beneficial results in physics, chemistry,

and the other sciences that have flourished under it, but such a method

of violent formularization must prove out of place for a science like

psychology, in which we must always be limited to purely empirical

facts, so that our investigations can only be analytical, and can never

proceed synthetically.

As I have repeatedly remarked, psychology must strictly individualize;

and I can imagine nothing more preposterous or unscientific than to

assume a so-called normal man, and to conclude that anything which

widely departs from that norm is diseased. We have seen that all

phenomena of pronounced mental disease arise from the same psychical

elements as the healthy action of the mind. We have further seen that

the mental life of those great men whom we call geniuses presents no

other psychical conditions than those of ordinary men, except for

differences of quantity. “Health and disease,” says Claude Bernard,

“are not two essentially different forms, as the old physicians could

believe, and as many practitioners still believe. They are not to be

regarded as distinct principles, as entities disputing for the living

organism, and making it the theatre of their war. That sort of ideas

belong in the medical lumber room. But, in fact, between any form of

disease and health there are only differences of degree. No disease

is anything more than an exaggeration, or disproportion, or anharmony

of normal phenomena.”[49] This is true of all diseases whatsoever,

whether they be of corporeal or of mental origin. Hence the decision

whether anything is to be considered as a disease or not cannot be

made to depend upon how far the phenomena depart from a norm. The only

question is, whether the vital action of the organism is prejudiced or

the performance of the individual deranged. Take, for example, bodily

deformities or other perturbations of development. The only question

is whether the individual concerned is disabled or not. A woman with

a contracted pelvis, if she be otherwise normal and her organs act

normally, will not be called diseased; but as soon as she becomes

pregnant she becomes a pathological subject, because parturition can

not take place in the normal way. A man whose lungs are ill developed,

so that the slightest exertion produces dyspnœa, must be considered

as ill, while another man with uncommonly large lungs, such as fast

runners generally have, is certainly not to be called diseased on

account of this abnormality.

People with bodily deformities, or anomalies of development, frequently

find themselves in situations in which they cannot fulfil some

requirements of business; and it depends upon the degree of their

incapacity how far their anomalies are to be reckoned as pathological.

The laity are frequently able to decide what can be expected of such

people, and what not. The subjects can often estimate for themselves

what they can undertake. Nobody would accept a dwarf for military

service, and a weak man will be conscious that he is not fit to be a

drawer of stones.

It is the same in regard to mental departures from the average

proportions. Only, people with mental deformities are commonly less

able than those misshapen in body to decide for themselves in regard

to their capabilities, being generally not at all aware of their

defects. Nor are the laity in condition to form a sound judgment of the

mental state of such people. It is therefore for the best interests

of these subjects, as well as for society, that the question of their

accountability and responsibility should be left to experts.

Now, how is it with corporeally overdeveloped men, or giants? According

to the investigations of Lange, Bollinger, Ecker, and Ranke, a number

of those giants who have been exactly described are disproportioned.

“In some cases there is a surprising disproportion between the

relatively small development of the central nervous system and their

overgrown bodies. Most commonly their excessively developed bones are

pathologically brittle, with irregular partial thickenings, curvatures,

or absolute deformities.”[50] Nevertheless, cases do occur, according

to Ranke, in which these men are well proportioned and can fulfil the

requirements of life. The question whether giants, or overgrown men,

are to be regarded as diseased depends entirely upon the proportionate

development of their parts. Gigantic growth _per se_ is surely not

morbid. But if it is carried out in some parts of the body at the

expense of the development of other parts, be it with reference to the

structure of the tissues or to the general growth, we have a deformity

which consists in an anomaly of development analogous to a congenital

crippling or dwarfish growth.

There is no reason for regarding mental giants from a different point

of view. In order to judge of them, we have to inquire whether their

development is proportional, or whether there is an overdevelopment of

one part of the psychical organ at the expense of other parts, so as to

disturb their inward equilibrium and give rise to a morbid state. No

doubt, if we are to assume that whatever does not conform to the norm

is to be considered as diseased, every man mentally famous must be set

down, without further parley, as a pathological subject. This opinion

has found many advocates, who maintain that careful research signally

confirms their theory, and that most, if not all, famous men exhibit

symptoms of mental disease.

The first writer to discuss the subject at length was Moreau de

Tours,[51] who considers genius as a positive disease of the mind,

consequent upon an overexcitation of the brain. “Genius,” he says,

“like every other intellectual condition of dynamism, necessarily has

its material substratum. This substratum is a semi-morbid state of the

brain, a true nervous erethism (orgasm or excited state), the source

of which is from this moment well known....

“Whenever the psychic forces surpass the ordinary limits of

their action, whether we consider them in their most elevated

manifestations--those in appearance the most independent of the

organization--or in their simplest and most rudimentary expression,

whether in the most transcendent operations of the intellect, or in the

unelaborated and almost material fact of sensation--the cause must be

sought in certain neuropathic conditions of the subjects.”

No attempt is made by Moreau to define genius or to attach a

psychological meaning to the term. In his examples he treats all men

as geniuses who have accomplished anything famous in any department,

without regard to their psychical divergencies. He might therefore just

as well have stated his proposition in these terms: All men who have

ever accomplished anything very remarkable were insane. This seems to

be a fair statement of his real position.

This opinion was supposed to have been completely confirmed by the

discovery of the many “morbid symptoms” which men of genius present.

Moreau collected a very considerable number of such cases, which

have been injudiciously accepted by the other authors who have

elaborated the same theme, and have received great accessions from new

discoveries. One of the most comprehensive works in this department

is that of Lombroso, whose book[52] has created a general sensation.

Extensive as it is, its author makes no attempt to define genius, but

seems to regard the meaning of the word as well settled. In the chapter

entitled The Physiology of Genius, in which we might expect to find the

writer’s opinion upon this point set forth, he tells us that men of

genius commonly have cold feet and warm heads, etc., but unfortunately

omits to inform us what he means by a man of genius. Throughout the

book all sorts of men who have ever attained any sort of eminence are

adduced as examples of men of genius. Such characters as Columbus and

Donizetti are treated promiscuously. The greatest men in the history of

art and science are placed cheek by jowl with any weak-minded persons

whose names have by some accident come before the public. Lombroso’s

conclusion is that “between the physiology of the man of genius and

the pathology of the insane there are not a few points of agreement.”

At the same time, in the book of which we are speaking, he says that

there have been men of genius who, “allowance being made for some

eccentricities of sense,” have never become insane. His list of these

“sane geniuses” is “Spinoza, Columbus, Dante, Michel Angelo,” etc.--a

wonderfully harmonious assemblage. But subsequent studies have led this

distinguished writer to modify this last opinion, and he has since

declared that “cases of genuine men of genius in which anomalies are

wanting are probably illusory. In such cases either anomalies have

escaped notice or defective data prevent our knowing of them.”[53] What

a pity that we neither know what he means by “genuine men of genius”

nor by “anomalies”!

Before we go on to examine the numerous “morbid symptoms of genius”

which Moreau and Lombroso are supposed to have discovered, let us

briefly call to mind in what way we have come to specify certain

phenomena as symptoms of mental derangement.

Psychiatry is, more than others, an empirical science. Whatever we

know about it we have learned by experience and observation. As I have

repeatedly insisted, neither in somatic nor in psychical medicine are

there any sharp boundaries between health and disease. In reference to

the body, “feeling well” is the chief mark of health. Everybody who

is sick knows it. Connected with the majority of diseases there are

positive pains, in consequence of which those who are taken ill send

for the doctor. Pain has rightly been called the sentinel of health;

but with the mind it is otherwise. Here there is no such connection

between health and feeling well. The illness gives no pain, at least

not directly; and the patient is in very little condition to say

whether he is well or not. On the contrary, the consciousness of being

deranged is recognised as the most marked symptom of convalescence. The

question has here to be decided in quite other ways. Disease is not an

entity, and no precise definition can be given of it. The chief point

upon which the decision must turn is the person’s ability to do his

duties to society.

We have learned by experience that there are certain typically

recurring forms of a psychical process in which a disorder of

self-consciousness has taken place, so that the persons affected

were deprived of their self-control. We have become acquainted with

well-marked cases in which a general decay of the mental powers

commenced; and this has gone on until the capacity of the patients for

business has sunk to nothing, etc. In this purely experimental way we

have come to recognise classes of mental diseases which are marked by

certain phenomena and by a certain course.

The next step in the progress of science was the comparison of the

psychological conditions of those who were undoubtedly insane with

mentally sane men. Here we had a right to the premises that on the

one side we had minds mentally sound, and on the other minds mentally

deranged. Having studied the psychological distinctions between the

two, psychiatrists came to recognise the so-called symptoms of insanity.

It is important to remark that, although the aggregate of the symptoms

constitutes the disease, yet it was not the symptoms which primarily

presented themselves to our recognition. On the contrary, we first

attained it by the study of the single elements of the diseases. For

example, in early times hallucinations were explained in all sorts of

mystical ways, as seeing ghosts, divine visions, suggestions of the

devil, etc.; but by the study of mental diseases psychiatrists came

to recognise that in such cases hallucinations are extraordinarily

frequent. They thus become accustomed to consider the occurrence of

hallucinations as in every case a morbid symptom. In fact, it became

apparent that wherever there were illusions of the senses, as a rule, a

mental disorder could be made out.

By a further study of the symptoms and of the course of mental

diseases, psychiatrists ultimately became able to diagnose mental

derangements at a time at which ordinary people would have been able

to perceive little or no alteration of the mental processes of the

patients. All this rests solely on experience. Only through experience

has it come to pass that we can now, on recognising a certain set of

symptoms, predict a certain course of the psychical process.

Should our experiences in the department of psychiatry receive an

augmentation, we shall have every reason to be thankful; for, in spite

of all our efforts, we stand upon the threshold of the science. But

every new experience brings new difficulties with it, for it is from

experience that we have to draw our conclusions. Now, new experiences

often wreck our finest theories, in one or other of two ways--namely,

first, by not confirming them, or, secondly, by conflicting with them.

That is the way with unprejudiced tests and objective judgments.

Accordingly, after a great number of mental maladies, such as paranoia,

progressive paralysis, certain forms of melancholia, mania, etc., had

been found to be accompanied by hallucinations as an important symptom,

the discovery was made that a great number of famous men--the so-called

men of genius--were equally subject to deceptions of the senses. What

does that show? Does it show that those men were insane? Such is the

inference drawn by Moreau and Lombroso. But is it logical? Why not

rather conclude that hallucination is not such an unfavourable symptom

as we had supposed?

Moreau and Lombroso take it for granted that hallucinations only occur

in mental disease. How do they prove that? Do not the very facts they

adduce, if they be facts, disprove it?

We find a man full of crazy notions, with his self-consciousness gone,

or with general loss of intelligence; and we mark him as unquestionably

insane, and proceed to study the phenomena of his mind as symptoms of

insanity. We meet another man whose achievements are positively great,

who has, all his life long, excited the admiration and astonishment

of his fellows, and who behaves in the most complete consciousness of

what he is about. Ought we not to reckon him as sane beyond a doubt,

and take his psychological processes as the very type of purely healthy

phenomena?

Charles Lamb[54] says, “It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a

mad Shakespeare.” There is much truth in that. Shakespeare, however,

is only known to us as a poet. Goethe is a better example, because we

know him as a man as well. Indeed, we have a clearer insight into his

inmost feelings than we have into those of almost any man that ever

lived. If we wish to call up the typical idea of a perfect man we

naturally think of Goethe. Whoever came into personal contact with him

was ravished of his soul and inspired by the greatness of his mind.

Heine, the poet of the senses, greets him as a “fiery spirit with eagle

wings, as a genius of the whirlpool from top to toe”; the Christian

enthusiast Lavater terms him a genius whose characteristic was love;

the sensible Jung-Stilling regrets that so few people were acquainted

with the heart of this admirable man with the great, clear eyes, the

beautiful brow, and the stately stature; the forcible Klinger writes

that posterity will be astounded that such a man ever lived; and the

poetical philosopher Jacobi holds it as impossible for any one who had

not seen and heard Goethe to conceive of this extraordinary creation of

God. It is ridiculous to desire that he should think and act otherwise

than he does; that does not mean that no change could make him finer or

better, but that no change would be possible any more than the flower

could bloom otherwise, the grain could ripen otherwise, or the tree

could grow and crown itself otherwise than it does. When he would walk

down the Rhine between Lavater and Basedow--“a prophet to the right, a

prophet to the left, and the world-child in the middle”--there was a

picture of how he understood everybody and had something to proffer to

everybody. It was because he aimed at all-sidedness, at a full and free

humanity; and Wieland acknowledges that never in God’s world did a son

of man show himself who so combined all that was good and all that was

mighty, who so deeply impressed himself upon every soul, and yet who

lived so entirely within himself.

In entering upon the psychological analysis of Goethe, we are justified

in assuming as a premise that we have here a case of a mentally sound

man. Whatever we may find, however uncommon it may be, must be set down

as a healthy condition. If, then, Goethe, as we have seen, was subject

to occasional illusions of sense, it would be illogical to infer that

Goethe was insane. We must rather conclude that we have been in error

if we have been supposing that deceptions of sense occur only in the

insane; and the problem set before us is to ascertain the distinction

between the hallucinations of the sane and the hallucinations of the

insane.

It might be objected that, in spite of Goethe’s greatness of mind,

there was a supervenient morbid condition. But this assumption is

directly contradicted by the fact that deceptions of sense are

relatively frequent among famous men. Hence, even Moreau does not say

that there is a supervenient disease by the side of, and in spite of,

the mental greatness, but holds the latter to be itself a sign of

incipient insanity.

I am therefore of the opinion that the sporadic sense-deceptions of

famous men, like other so-called “morbid symptoms of genius” which we

shall have to consider, can not be regarded as morbid symptoms, but

that they are phenomena of health which it is the task of science to

explain and account for.

The chief condition of mental sanity, as I have already several times

remarked, is a well-proportioned development of the different psychical

factors. But as in the development of the different mental faculties,

so also in their proportion to one another, a certain latitude of

health is to be allowed. In one man fancy is preponderant; in another,

consecutive thought; while a third may have particularly strong

feelings as his characteristic. Yet we have no reason to say that these

minds transgress the border of health. It is the difference in the

relation of the different psychical elements that makes the diversity

of men’s characters. Now we know that there are no two characters in

the world that are precisely alike. It follows that there is no norm

for these relations.

The higher the grade of development of the genius and of the

individual, the more prominent will differences of psychical factors

become, and a correspondingly greater latitude of health must be

allowed. If a sculptor models a small statue, and in doing so makes

a slight error, so that there is a difference between the two

sides, probably it will strike nobody. But let the statuette be five

times larger, and the difference will become prominent, though the

proportions should remain the same. In like manner, for persons of the

highest mental development--the so-called geniuses--we have to use a

larger measure. They appear to us like ordinary men seen through a

magnifying glass.

We now proceed to examine the different symptoms which have been

discovered in great men, and to endeavour to ascertain the distinctions

between these and symptoms of insanity.

Moreau and Lombroso have collected a large catalogue of famous men

who are said to have experienced hallucinations. I will not enumerate

them all, but among them are Napoleon, Luther, Bernadotte, Benvenuto

Cellini, Byron, Cardanus, Cromwell, Socrates, Brutus, etc.

It must be remarked at the outset that all the data are extremely

doubtful. Everybody knows how the lives of great men become daubed

over with anecdotes and tales, how--in part consciously, in part

unconsciously--the facts are enveloped in a tissue of the most

wonderful legends, until each great historical figure becomes

surrounded by a nimbus. These inventions mingle with the real events;

one writer copies them from another; the original documents are lost;

and the tale becomes universally accepted as a fact.

Every psychiatrist is well aware that it is not always an easy matter

to make certain that there are hallucinations, even when the patients

are under our eyes. Neither the testimony of the patients themselves

nor that of their guardians is, as a rule, sufficient to exclude the

possibility of error; and the physician will, in most cases, form his

judgment only upon his own personal observation. When it comes, then,

to a notice, by a writer who has copied from some previous writer,

of some hallucination that somebody is supposed to have had several

centuries ago, the fact cannot but be regarded as dubious. Plutarch,

for example, informs us that during the night before the battle of

Philippi the ghost of murdered Cæsar appeared to Brutus. Are we to

accept this as a case of hallucination, without further information, or

not? We should like to cross-examine the witness; at least to inquire

whence he got his information. But that can not be done. Here is the

whole passage:[55] “It was late one night. The tent of Brutus was dimly

lighted, and a deep silence reigned over the whole camp. He himself was

sunk in thought, when he suddenly thought he heard somebody coming.

He looked toward the door, and saw there a dreadful and extraordinary

sight. It was a dismal, frightful figure which silently stood by him.

He ventured to ask it, ‘Who art thou, man or god? What wouldst thou?

Why comest thou to me?’ The ghost answered: ‘Thy evil spirit, Brutus.

At Philippi thou shalt see me.’ And Brutus without being terrified,

answered, ‘So be it.’”

Plutarch gives no authority for this statement. How can we determine

to-day whether the narrative has any truth in it, or whether Plutarch

has not repeated an unfounded legend? In another place[56] we read:

“During that night the spirit is said to have appeared a second time

before the eyes of Brutus. Its appearance was the same; but this

time it disappeared without uttering a word.” But Plutarch adds: “It

is true that Publius Volumnius, a philosophical man and a follower

of Brutus from the beginning to this battle, does not mention this

portent.” Plutarch thus seems to be himself doubtful about the fact.

But even supposing Brutus really told of it, would that be proof of

a hallucination? Might it not, considering that it happened in the

night, have been a vivid dream which Brutus, excited, as we may easily

imagine him to have been, mistook for a reality?

Of Cromwell, Moreau tells us that once in his youth he was lying tired

on his bed, but not yet asleep, when a woman of gigantic stature

appeared to him and told him that he would be the greatest man of

England. But who shall prove that Cromwell, while he lay on the bed,

had not fallen asleep, so that it was only a dream? Or who will vouch

for it that the worthy Cromwell may not have been partaking of the ale

of merry England?

To prove that Luther was a hallucinant, Lombroso adduces the following

narrative of the great reformer himself: “When, in the year 1521, I

lived in my Patmos, in a room in which nobody except two pages who

brought me my food ever set foot, one evening while I lay in bed I

heard the hazelnuts move in their sack, and quite spontaneously throw

themselves against the roof and all about where I lay. I was scarcely

asleep when I heard a great noise, as if a quantity of nuts had been

poured out. I raised myself and called out, ‘Who art thou? I commit

myself to Jesus Christ.’” Here, then, Luther himself admits that during

the last event he was asleep. This circumstance, certainly significant

to a psychiatrist, is left entirely unmentioned by Radestock, who

reports the fact. Who knows in what form the story will next appear?

Isolated hallucinations occurring at night in bed are, in all cases,

decidedly questionable.

Hagen emphasizes this circumstance in patients: “At the commencement of

insanity, and indeed throughout its course, vivid dreams are narrated

by patients as if they were real events. They will say that they have

been to one place and another during the night, or that they have seen

heaven with all the angels. The true state of things may either be

plain enough or, when patients sophisticate the dream in their memory,

no little pains and penetration may be requisite not to be misled, so

as to take the dream for a subjective perception in the waking state.”

This is a fair sample of the whole material; and I must openly confess

that I should not easily be induced to erect a scientific theory upon

such observations. At the same time, it is desirable to collect as

many data as possible, in order to augment our stock of knowledge of

great men. Yet we must not allow ourselves to be seduced into drawing

positive conclusions from such uncertain facts.

But how sceptically soever we may approach these narratives, which are

certainly in part legendary, they nevertheless contain some facts which

cannot be avoided. That great men, as the example of Goethe shows, have

had illusions of sense is an undeniable fact; and this is a phenomenon

which we must endeavour to explain.

It is to be remarked at the outset that for the correct diagnosis of

a case of hallucinations the most detailed knowledge of the phenomena

of the case is requisite, for there are most diverse varieties of

hallucinations; and their occurrence depends upon the most manifold

psychological conditions. To enter upon all the facts and upon the

different theories is, of course, not possible in this place. For such

information the reader is referred to the extensive literature of the

subject. There are only one or two points that I desire here to touch

upon in order to avail myself of the knowledge of psychiatrists for the

special inquiry now in hand.

Since Esquirol, who first thoroughly investigated the subject,

psychiatrists have distinguished two classes of deceptions of sense.

The first are those which are not suggested by any outward appearance;

these are termed _hallucinations_. In the second there is an outward

object exciting sensations which are misinterpreted in the percept,

and filled out with imaginary details, so as to appear in a falsified

form; these phenomena are termed _illusions_. The two kinds of

phenomena pass gradually the one into the other, so that in many cases

it is impossible to distinguish between them.

It has been remarked above that certain hallucinations of the

insane have their perfect analogue in the reproductive power of

sense-impressions. We can reproduce in the mind any object which we

have often seen. This power is developed in very different grades

in different persons. Usually the reproduced image is decidedly

weaker than its original, both in its outlines and in its colour. In

rare cases we find the reproductive power so much heightened that

the reproduced image is almost equal to the original percept. Thus

Lombroso[57] reports of a painter that “he was able to sketch as

many as three hundred portraits a year. He only needed to look at a

person attentively for half an hour, and after that could call up a

hallucinatory vision of him which he would proceed to copy in painting

with as much distinctness and confidence as if he were looking at a

real person.” This case is nothing but an intensification of a healthy

action, much to the advantage of the artist concerned. It is certainly

offensive to call such a gift by the name of hallucination. That,

however, is a mere question of the usage of language. At any rate, such

a phenomenon ought not to be confounded with insane hallucinations,

for in the painter the action was under his control. He called up

the “hallucination,” if you will call it so, when it served his

purpose to do so, and dismissed it when it had served his turn. The

hallucinations which torment and affright persons of diseased minds

arise spontaneously and will not go at the patient’s bidding.

Meantime it is very doubtful whether the artist’s recollected image was

really as distinct and definite as the original percept. To determine

that would require evidence of a widely different kind from the report

of the writer Ball, who was Lombroso’s informant. The fact that the

painter was able to distinguish the recollected image from an object of

direct visual perception, and did not mistake the face recollected for

a face really there, would seem to show that his image differed from

a perceived image somewhat in the same manner as do the recollections

of ordinary people. But however that may be, such a phenomenon is

certainly in no wise a morbid symptom.

Goethe describes the same faculty in himself. “My sensuous,

apprehensive power is of so unusual a sort that I retain all outlines

and forms most sharply in my memory; but I am moved in the most

lively way by misshapen and defective forms.... Without that capacity

for sharp apprehension and impression I could not have produced my

characters so vividly and sharply individualized. This distinctness

and precision led me, for many years, to entertain the delusion that I

possessed a vocation and talent for drawing and painting.”

If we consider Goethe, as above suggested, as an ordinary man whose

mental powers are seen under a magnifying glass, we shall find it quite

a matter of course that the intensity of his reproduced images should

be increased relatively to the intensity of his directly perceived

images in the same proportion as all the other psychical factors.

Hence, if we find that the distinctness of his perception is not

exceeded by that of his memory, this is a phenomenon which differs

as widely as possible from an insane hallucination, and it betokens

rashness and want of good sense to call his condition morbid.

In another passage Goethe describes a state dependent partly upon

an excitation of the retina and partly upon heightened ideation, so

falling into the class, not of hallucinations, but of illusions: “If I

shut my eyes and, letting my head hang down, thought of a flower in

the middle of my field of vision, it did not endure an instant in its

first shape, but separated, and from its interior a new flower unfolded

itself of coloured and also green leaves. It was not a natural flower,

but a fantastic yet regular one, like the conventionalized rosettes of

the carver. It was impossible to fix the sprouting creation; yet it

lasted as long as it was pleasing to me, without fading and without

brightening. I could produce the same effect by thinking of the

ornament of a variegated disk; and this immediately underwent a change

starting at the middle and proceeding to the periphery, just like the

subsequently invented kaleidoscope.”

Just as sense-impressions can be simply called back to memory, so also

new combinations arise by fancy, which therefore have the character

of original creations. In persons whose fancy is powerful, the images

of fancy, altogether in the same way as those of memory, can become

so clear and distinct as to be very near to actual percepts. Lombroso

reports: “The painter Montina thought he saw his pictures before him

before he had painted them. When one day somebody stood between him and

the place where he thought he saw his picture he bade him stand aside,

so as to let him see what he was painting from.”[58]

Here again the image was voluntarily excited, so that a doubt must

remain as to whether it equalled a real sense image in clearness. The

painter’s bidding anybody who stood in the way to step aside was quite

a matter of course. When we wish to reproduce a former impression of

sense we try first to shut out all other impressions of that sense.

When we wish to call up the image of a person we always shut our eyes.

With open eyes most people are, however, capable of making such a

reproduction, provided that none but lifeless objects are in the field

of vision. But in talking to one person and fixing the traits of his

countenance, few people are able to call up the image of another person

at the same time. In the same way, very few can recall one melody while

another is heard.

Such phenomena are by no means rare among artists of lively fancy.

They have nothing in common with the hallucinations of insanity.

Hagen, therefore, calls them pseudo-hallucinations, Baillarger

psychical hallucinations, and Kahlbaum apperceptional hallucinations.

Von Krafft-Ebing[59] says: “Among artists this gift is found both in

a simply reproductive and also in a fancifully deforming mode. The

striking art of delineation of many an eminent dramatic artist, the

plastic power of description of a Goethe, Ossian, or Homer, suggest

such an endowment. Among some composers, too, the fineness of the

instrumentation and the timbre of their tone poems lead us to suspect

a specially fine and lively faculty of reproduction of their acoustic

memory. Persons extraordinarily gifted in sensuous faculties can create

hallucinations more easily than do those who are poor in fancy and who

live in the realm of abstract ideas. This will readily be admitted.

Even their recollections can sometimes be voluntarily raised to a

plastic distinctness approaching hallucination.”

So far, we have only considered cases in which deceptions of sense

were voluntarily called up, whether by a specially strong faculty of

reproduction or by a play of fancy. The subjects were quite aware that

the object before them was fantastic and not real.

On the other hand, it is recorded of a considerable number of famous

men in different departments that they have had deceptions of the

senses which arose independently of their will, and were consequently

genuine hallucinations. Among these we must place many religious

visions, such as those of St. Paul and other saints. Luther insists

that he often saw the devil; and on one celebrated occasion he threw

the inkstand at him.

Whether such deceptions of sense are to be regarded as morbid or not

opinions differ. Many psychiatrists speak of hallucinations, and

consider them compatible with complete health. Others hold that they

are always symptoms of mental disorder. Hagen[60] occupies a peculiar

position on this question, for he takes hallucinations to be invariably

morbid symptoms, yet not symptoms of mental disease. This is connected

with his theory that hallucination is a phenomenon of convulsion of

certain blood vessels which I cannot here further set forth.

There is a quite arbitrary separation of psychical and somatic

conditions at the bottom of this view. What Hagen means is, that the

cause, or somatic concomitant, of the hallucination is a convulsion.

It is presumable that every mental process whatever has a somatic

concomitant, or “cause,” in the organic vehicle of the soul.

Hallucinations may have different somatic concomitants from other

mental processes, but they cannot be supposed to be peculiar in merely

having somatic concomitants. There are some diseases of the brain

which are accompanied by no symptoms of derangement of the mind, and

are therefore exclusively somatic diseases. But just as soon as the

stimulation of a path of sense enters into a psychical metamorphosis,

we have to do with a mental process. If this is morbid, we have to do

with a symptom of mental disease.

That which determines Hagen to pronounce hallucination under all

circumstances to be a proof of a morbid state is its relative

infrequency. “Hallucination is in every case a condition departing from

the norm.” But if everything which “departs from the norm” is to be

called morbid, then we return to the proposition that genius is morbid,

since it “departs from the norm”; for the “normal” man is a tradesman

and no “genius.” But I can only meet Hagen with his own maxim, “Quod

sola affirmatione affirmatur, sola negatione negatur.”

It is a fact of daily observation that hallucinations can be produced

by suggestion, and that not only in hypnosis but in the ordinary

condition. If a woman who has never been electrified, and is therefore

somewhat nervous, has the electrodes of a galvanic battery placed

upon her head without the circuit being closed, while the faradic

apparatus is caused to sound, she will not seldom imagine she feels the

current distinctly, and perhaps complain that it is too strong. Though

there is no current, the woman is positive she feels it. Every inward

excitation, especially every emotion, favours such deceptions.

A timid or superstitious person is liable, in crossing a churchyard

at night, to see figures, hear voices, etc. These deceptions may be

of the class of illusions, shadows of trees being taken for ghosts,

and the noise of the foliage for spiritual voices; or they may be pure

hallucinations, the pseudo-perceptions not being formed by any outward

sensations. An interesting case is described by H. Moore:[61]

“A whole ship’s crew were thrown into consternation by the ghost of

the cook, who had died a few days before. He was distinctly seen by

all of them walking on the water with a peculiar gait by which he was

distinguished, one of his legs being shorter than the other. The cook,

so plainly recognised, was only a piece of an old wreck.”

A child endowed with a rich fancy, whose mother has died, may, in the

emotion of the pain and the excitement, see her image in heaven or

hear her voice. Such phenomena are by no means rare. They depend upon

a rich and vivid fancy and a powerful emotion of the heart. This play

of fancy, called forth by emotions and moods, has never been better

described, in its external resemblance to insanity, than by Shakespeare

in the Midsummer Night’s Dream:

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold--

That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination;

That, if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or, in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear.

Deceptions of sense arising in this way have their origin in the most

central part of the organ of mind. They are consequences of ideas. Such

hallucinations occur, of course, in the insane, and to distinguish

them from those of peripheric origin--that is, from those that are

independent of the thoughts that immediately preceded them--Kahlbaum

terms them centrifugal hallucinations, or phantasms.

As an example of such a phantasm we may instance a well-known

hallucination of Goethe, who, when he was once riding to Gesenheim,

saw his own counterpart riding toward him. “I saw myself coming along

the same path on horseback toward me, dressed, as I had never been, in

pike-gray and gold. I shook myself out of the dream, and the figure

was gone. But it is singular that eight years later, not at all by

choice but only by chance, I found myself riding over the same path

in the very direction my visionary self took, and clad in just those

clothes, being again on my way to Frederica. Whatever the explanation

of these things may be, the wonderful phantom gave me at that moment of

separation some alleviation.”

The emotion excited by the separation from Frederica was enough, with

Goethe’s lively fancy, to produce the phantom. Goethe himself judged

his condition quite correctly. He recognised the shape as a fallacious

one and said, “I shook myself out of this dream, and the figure was

gone.” It is very characteristic of the condition that Goethe should

himself class it along with dreams. Obviously, the actual impressions

of sight were, at the time of hallucination, not apperceived; and all

that Goethe thought he saw at that moment was a painting of fancy,

parts of the hallucination being superposed upon and congruent with the

objects that had been seen an instant before. Goethe further says that

the phantom gave him consolation and relief. It thus evidently answered

to his thoughts; and we can presume that his fancy prefigured to him

the moment when he should again visit Frederica.

The circumstance of hallucinations being recognised as such by the

subject or not, is no more decisive for the diagnosis of the case

than is the simple occurrence of deception of sense. Whether the

hallucination is recognised as such or not depends more upon its

contents and upon the metaphysical opinions, religious turn of mind,

and superstition of the subject. Luther believed in the existence of a

personal devil. His hallucination was the outcome of this belief--that

is, of his ideas. Consequently his holding the fallacious object to be

real was no insane opinion, but was in consonance with his metaphysics.

So it is with the visions of saints and prophets. We may admit that

a considerable number of them were insane, but the hallucinations

do not suffice to prove that every one of them was so. He who has

devoted his whole life to religious meditations and tendencies and

is fully convinced of the truth of his faith, who is penetrated with

belief in the presence of a personal God, personal angels, tutelary

spirits, etc., may, on an occasion of strong emotion, with a moderately

lively fancy, have visions and hear voices, and hold them for real,

without in the slightest degree justifying a suspicion of insanity.

Such hallucinations, called forth by _suggestion_ or auto-suggestion,

occur less infrequently in men endowed with fancy. While Benvenuto

Cellini was praying that God would once more let him see the sunlight

a hallucination came to him. It was that of a landscape with the sun

shining upon it. Napoleon, before important events, battles, etc.,

saw his star in the sky. Pascal, in consequence of a great fright,

saw a precipice before him. If we are to accept Plutarch’s story, the

hallucination of Brutus is explicable in the same way.

The question whether hallucinations always betoken some unsoundness

of mind can not be answered from a theoretical standpoint. Like the

whole of psychiatry, it is a question of experience. Should experience

show that hallucinations occur only among those whose minds are

disordered, then we should be right in considering them as symptoms

of derangement. But it is not so. Experience shows that sane persons,

especially men of lively fancy, like great artists and poets, are

subject to hallucinations; and though such phenomena are exceptional,

and in that sense may be called not “normal,” yet nothing could be

more preposterous than to regard all those great men as subject to

occasional disorders of mind, or as approaching insanity in any way.

I have shown above what an influence emotion can exert upon all the

organs of the body. A permanent acceleration of the pulse is, as

we know by experience, always a morbid symptom. But would it ever

occur to a pathologist to pronounce a person diseased because some

emotion--such as fright, anxiety, or joy--made his heart beat faster?

Emotion may produce in one man beating of the heart, in another

vasomotor phenomena, such as blushing or blanching, and in a third any

one of manifold nervous states, without there being anything morbid

in those effects. In men of uncommonly strong fancy the emotion may

sometimes call up supervenient hallucinations. But that is merely a

phenomenon analogous to the beating of the heart, which we observe

every day, except that it is relatively infrequent.

Hallucinations that are held to be true always make us fear for the

preservation of an unclouded self-consciousness and of an unfalsified

reaction between the ego and the outer world. In deciding whether, in a

given case, hallucinations are to be denominated morbid, the decisive

circumstance will be whether and how far the self-consciousness and

free will have been influenced, and whether and how far responsibility

for actions has been diminished.

Besides hallucinations, other phenomena connected with the rich fancy

of famous poets and artists have many points of similarity with

symptoms of insanity, and in many cases may lead to actual insanity.

Although we have seen that in Goethe’s case the gushing fancy was

always in harmony with the high faculty of his intellect, and that, in

spite of the apparent independence of his fancy, it was nevertheless

directed by the purpose of an intellectual will, yet in many poets

we find this harmonic interaction seriously disturbed and the inward

equilibrium deranged. Alfieri calls his condition during composition

a fever. He says:[62] “That part of composition which I have called

creation is a fever, and during its access one feels nothing else.” And

in another passage: “The whole day I pondered as I always do as soon

as the fever by means of which I begin and carry through a work seizes

me, I know not how.”

Byron owns that his poetry is the dream of sleeping passions. If he

be awakened, he can not speak its language, which he only knows while

sleepwalking. Any shock or effort awakens the elasticity of his mind

and always makes him what he must be. Of the third canto of Childe

Harold, he says: “It is a fine piece of poetical desolation, and

my favourite. I was half mad, during the time of its composition,

between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love inextinguishable, thoughts

unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies. I should, many

a good day, have blown my brains out but for the recollection that it

would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.”[63] His biographer,

Moore, says that Byron saw only the reflection of his own brilliant

ideas in every new object.

Although such conditions are not quite pathological, yet they stand

hard by the borders of insanity, and certainly indicate a decided

disposition to mental derangement. Byron often fell into a state of

melancholia, and showed manifest defects of a moral kind.

One of the most peculiar symptoms of some deranged minds is lying. All

authors, without exception, who have treated of hysteria, emphasize

lying as one of the most characteristic symptoms of that malady.

Charcot[64] is astonished at the perseverance and energy with which

hysterical patients understand how to deceive those about them.

Numerous examples of the same phenomenon are recorded by Morel[65],

Lasègne,[66] and others. Delbrück[67] has described a special form

of morbid lying, and has proposed for it the designation “pseudologia

phantastica.” As a general rule, this lying is not motived by personal

interest, as, for example, to escape punishment or to attain some

advantage; but it is some creation of fancy which is narrated as a

true event. Such patients, mostly weak-minded, possess, in consequence

of their small intellectual powers, a fancy very rich in proportion

to their intellectual function. Such persons sometimes narrate whole

romances as true occurrences, and may, upon superficial consideration,

be taken for intellectual. Dr. Paul Sollier[68] also paints this

symptom: “Among imbeciles, in opposition to idiots, an ungoverned

imagination is often observed. This shows itself in their love of

grotesque comparisons, which prove that they are capable of associating

disparate ideas only remotely related to one another. This tendency is

sometimes carried to an extraordinary pitch, and gives them a false

air of being bright. On the other hand, we know how mendacious they

are. They are all more or less so. They do not content themselves with

simply denying anything of which they are accused. They invent a story

quite different from the truth. Some of them do not stop at distorting

the facts, but insert additional details, or make a story out of whole

cloth. They not only do this to clear themselves, or to throw the blame

on their comrades, but even when it is to their disadvantage--boasting

of tricks they have not played, for the purpose of exciting interest

and admiration.”

While in imbeciles this impulse to express such pictures of fancy is

to be regarded as a consequence of a degradation of intelligence, a

similar condition is found in poetical men, owing to an overdevelopment

of the ideation and the fancy. Hence it becomes interesting to trace

out this phenomenon of “pseudologia phantastica” in the childhood of

poets. Delbrück adduces as examples Goethe and Gottfried Keller, both

of whom themselves remarked this symptom of their childhood. Goethe

tells how he narrated to his schoolmates histories drawn from his

fancy as actual events, and how he himself often wondered at their

believing him. Later he passes this judgment: “Had I not gradually, in

conformity with my nature, learned to convert these forms of air and

empty boastings into artistic productions, such swaggering beginnings

would certainly not have been without bad consequences to me. If this

impulse be accurately observed, there may be recognised in it the same

pretension with which the poet, as such, sets forth dictatorially the

most improbable thing and requires the reader to take for true what in

any sense appears true to him, the inventor.”

In the previous chapter a characteristic of great poets and artists was

described under the name of the impulse to expression, whose analogue

in great men of a different constitution of mind, especially in those

who follow science, takes the form of a creative impulse. This impulse

which prompts the true artist to abandon himself unselfishly to his art

and to produce what nobody has demanded, and spurs the scientific man

to untiring research and opens to him new paths, is the most important

mark of the truly great man. Hagen[69] says: “Just as the instinct

of the beast impels him to certain actions though they cost him his

life, so is it originally far less a conscious purpose than a force

of nature which impels genius to producing, versifying, endeavouring.

He is filled with one idea, and divided interests are impossible for

him. A heroic genius, an Alexander or a Napoleon, conquers continually,

not from mere desire of glory or of rule, but because it is his

nature to make war upon others, and because continual victory is his

natural need. In like manner the scientific genius knows no rest, but

forever places before itself a new problem. It must equally always

be conquering. The artist must ever be producing. Each man’s action

appears to him to be free choice. In reality it is so only in a very

narrow sense. Genius acts less because it would than because it must.”

So says Schopenhauer:[70] “Everything comes at last to this question,

Where does the first motive--the _Ernst_--of the man lie? For almost

everybody it lies exclusively in his own well-being and that of those

that belong to him. Hence he is able to further that and nothing else,

for no deliberate purpose, no voluntary and intentional excitation, can

borrow the true, deep, personal _Ernst_, nor produce it, nor rightly

replace it; for such a purpose is an attempt to wrench Nature; nor

without _Ernst_ can anything be but half willed. For the same reason,

persons of genius look out ill for their own well-being. As a leaden

counterpoise will always bring a body back to the situation which

its centre of gravity requires, so the true _Ernst_ of the man ever

carries the force and attention of his intellect back to where it lies;

everything else the man desires without true _Ernst_. Hence only those

rare abnormal men, whose true _Ernst_ does not lie in the personal and

practical but in the objective and the theoretical, are able to embrace

the essences of things and of the world as the highest truths, and to

render them again. For such an _Ernst_, falling without the individual

in the objective, is something foreign to human nature--something

unnatural and supernatural. Yet by that alone is man great. And in

accordance with that is what he does ascribed to something different

from himself--namely, to his genius, which takes possession of him.

Such a man has no ulterior purpose behind his images, his poems, or his

thoughts; and everything personal is but means to those as end. Other

men seek the main chance, and generally know how to advance themselves,

for they insinuate themselves with their contemporaries, ready to

subserve their needs and whims. Hence they live, for the most part, in

good circumstances, while the externally centred man is in misery. For

he sacrifices his well-being to his objective end. He can not help it.

There lies his _Ernst_. With them it is the reverse; and that is why

they are small and he is great. His work is for all time, though the

recognition of it generally begins in future ages. But they live and

die with their day.”

This _Ernst_ of the man of which Schopenhauer here speaks corresponds

exactly with the above-described impulse to expression and to creation.

The neglect of personal interests, the entire abandonment to his work,

the restless strife for an ideal, are characteristics of the great man.

Here again we remark a surprising similitude between the so-called

genius and many forms of insanity. But it is merely a similitude, and

not an affinity, as Lombroso, Hagen, and others take it to be. For

affinity supposes a community of essence deeper than mere similitude of

external phenomena. It is this latter alone that we meet with here. The

causal conditions are separated by the whole diameter of being.

In great artists and scholars on the one hand, and in the insane on

the other, there is a great irresistible impulse which fills them

to overflowing and makes them forget all personal considerations.

But while in the former the restless compulsion to create, the hot

aspiration, is the kernel of the highest and noblest perfection of

man, in the latter there is a morbid impulse which is usually directed

to the silliest things. Formerly such a state was called a monomania,

since this irresistible impulse seemed to be the only pathological

symptom; but careful observation has shown that there is always a

more general psychical malady, usually the consequence of arrested

development. It is perfectly astonishing with what tenacity and

untiring persistence such patients go to work. Trélat[71] reports a

suitable example as follows:

“M. de W. is forty-five years old. He lives almost all the time shut up

in his room, where he is supposed to be carrying on serious studies.

He is seldom seen, and when he is seen complains of headache caused

by overwork and the fatigue of his continued night labours. He has an

amiable and accomplished wife. People talk to her about the health of

her husband, and how wrong it is for him to misuse his forces, and

beg her to influence him to pursue his studies with less ardour. She

answers sadly that all her endeavours are vain; but she does nothing

to shake the conviction of his friends, although she knows very well

what she has to endure in this difficult situation. The poor lady is

absorbed by her attempts to maintain the sense and dignity of her

husband.

“In fact, he employs the whole time passed in his room in counting how

often the same letter--_s_, or _t_, or _g_, or _z_--occurs in Genesis,

in Exodus, in Leviticus, in Numbers, in Deuteronomy, in the books of

Kings, in the books of Chronicles, in the book of Jesus the Son of

Sirach, in the Song of Solomon, in the book of Revelation, etc. How

many pages in one book begin with a _p_, with a _b_, with an _a_; how

many end with a _t_, with a _c_, etc.

“Other studies of such seriousness as to cause this man of science

to pass a fortnight without any attention to his toilette, or even

washing himself, consist in counting all the contradictions he can find

in the same author. Having passed one, two, or three years without

interruption in these works, this indefatigable worker throws himself

with the same ardour into taking his watch to pieces, down to its

minutest parts, and putting it together again. During six months he

undoes every morning what he had completed the night before. Everybody

who calls upon him receives the invariable answer, Monsieur is too busy

to be disturbed. Everybody thinks that this writer is too modest to

publish his book, and will leave behind Titanic works. The poor wife

alone contrives to procure to so utter a nonentity honour and esteem to

the last day of his life.”

Here is a state of compulsory counting termed arithmomania. A great

variety of such symptoms are distinguished. These interest us less

as such, at present, than does the way in which they come about, the

complete absorption of the mental action in the impulse, which shows

much resemblance to the creative impulse of men of genius.

Those patients exhibit the same phenomena who may be termed inventors

and Utopians. They not seldom sacrifice their means and bring

themselves and their families to ruin by their unconquerable desire

of making inventions and discoveries. They are fully convinced, in

their folly, of the epoch-making importance of their improvements,

and all pains are lost to cause them to desist from their ridiculous

performances.

Morel had a patient who thought he could alter the weather and bring on

rain. Lombroso reports the case of a patient who wrote a book entitled

Dominatmosphere, in which he undertook to teach husbandmen how to

get two annual harvests, and to put sailors in possession of a means

of blowing the winds out of their way. The alchemists, who forfeited

their lives in trying to make gold, the searchers for the philosopher’s

stone, were, for the most part, weak-minded persons of this sort.

In modern times perpetual motion has been one of the great objects

of crazy inventors. Trélat knew a man who had brought his family to

want by his discoveries and inventions. He asserted that in order to

bring a wheel into perpetual motion nothing was wanted but a supply of

still water. In every discussion he objected to the competence of his

opponent. To put an end to this, the physician of Bicêtre carried him

to Arago, who proved to him that his inventions would not work. The

poor devil was taken aback for an instant and burst into tears; but in

a moment he raised his head and exclaimed with confidence, “No matter!

Arago is mistaken!”

We have seen in the preceding chapter how important a part feelings and

moods play in the psychical processes of great artists. In opposition

to students, in whom the turning point of their mental action lies in

the understanding, in artists moods and feelings are often the starting

point of their productions. Hence we find that in them this part of

the mental organ has not infrequently an enormous development. As with

the other psychical characters, so likewise here we find that the high

refinement of a single factor--always, however, in just proportion

to the total action of the organ--produces outward phenomena having

some similarity with those states which are due to disturbed inward

equilibrium, and which we often have occasion to observe in the insane.

“Exulting to heaven, to death beaten down,” expresses a temperament not

uncommon among great poets and artists, causing those oscillations of

moods which justify that reproach of caprice which is often addressed

to them. This is one of the commonest symptoms of mental disease, above

all of hysteria. But the similarity between the phenomena is merely

external. They are rooted in widely divergent causal conditions. The

practised psychiatrist will distinguish without difficulty between

changes of mood such as Goethe observed in himself, which had their

origin in the highest refinement of the psychical organism, and the

capriciousness of a hysterical woman at whose bidding there stands

always ready, in case of need, a rich well of tears, whose sluices have

but to be opened to allow the never-drained stream to flow.

The restless energy of great men--who, with a new goal before their

eyes, press ceaselessly forward, and who, as soon as they have climbed

one height of science or of art, see new heights rise before them yet

to be essayed--keeps them in continual discontent with themselves and

their performances.

Fate such a bold, untrammelled spirit gave him

As forward, onward ever must endure;

Whose over-hasty impulse drave him

Past earthly joys he might secure.

Dragged through the wildest life will I enslave him

Through flat and stale indifference;

With struggling, chilling, checking, so deprave him

That to his hot, insatiate sense,

The dream of drink shall mock, but never lave him;

Refreshment shall his lips in vain implore.

Had he not made himself the devil’s, naught could save him,

Still were he lost forevermore![72]

In this destiny of Faust, Goethe painted his own sensations, and, like

a genuine poet, in the particular touched the general. Goethe felt

within him the restless mind which “drave him past earthly joys.”

He himself acknowledged that he could scarce call four weeks of his

life happy. His feeling of misery incited him sometimes to thoughts

of suicide, though he was always able to master it. He says: “Among a

fine collection of arms I possessed a costly and sharp poniard. This

I always placed beside my bed, and before I put out the light I would

consider whether it would suit me to strike the sharp point a couple of

inches into my breast or not; but since it never did suit, I laughed

myself out of the habit, and, casting aside hypochondriacal grimaces,

concluded to live.”

Happiness and contentment are feelings denied to truly great men. And

hence, as Aristotle says, those who have been eminent in philosophy,

politics, poetry, and art have been predisposed to melancholy. But

this kind of melancholy is as different as possible from pathological

melancholia. Far from being of a morbid nature, it is an inevitable and

eminently sane consequence of the psychical constitution of such men.

In contrast to it stands the self-satisfied good humour of degenerate

simpletons, who are always convinced of their own merits and live in

the most comfortable self-conceit. The dissatisfaction of the great

man, which finds no relief but in creation and in ceaseless endeavour,

is the noblest mainspring of the human race, to which all civilization

is due.

In the mode of life of great men we shall find much that departs from

the everyday habits of the conventional son of Adam. The Philistine, to

whom all that is unusual appears unsuitable, is often heard to remark

that great artists and scholars are all a little crazy. He says so

because he unthinkingly confounds the uncommon with the irrational.

The thinker will judge otherwise. The psychologist’s business is to

ascertain the causes of these phenomena.

Lombroso has, in his psychological researches into genius, adduced

many such phenomena, and has dwelt upon their incontestable similarity

with the symptoms of many insane patients. “What is observed in the

insane has been asserted of the man of genius--that he walks solitary

in the world, and solitary departs from it, a stranger to the warmth

of family life and untouched by the charms of society.”[73] But this

is not precisely the fact. History sufficiently assures us that great

men are frequently by no means strangers to family feeling. But what

is observable in great men is that they are relatively indifferent to

everything which does not answer to their inward endeavours, that the

ideas of which they are full absorb their attention, and that they

consequently seem uninterested in what goes on about them. For this

reason the genius, like the madman, has been called a stranger to the

world.

As we have already said, such egotism as often characterizes the

insane is in the great man impossible. Self-forgetfulness is the first

condition of true greatness. Nor is it accurate to call the poet or

artist a stranger to the world. We have seen that Goethe had a rare

insight into the world; nor can we conceive of a true poet without

knowledge of the world. Jürgen Meyer is quite right when he says: “A

poet who should sing what he had not seen and heard, but what he freely

imagined without any experience of life, must sing without vitality.

Creative fancy requires supplies from life, and can not draw its

wondrous threads from out of its own body as a silkworm does.”[74]

Here, as before, the similarity is merely external, and the determining

causes are essentially different.

If the conduction of impressions over the nerves of sense is impaired

or destroyed, so that the individual concerned is in a measure cut off

from the external world, his attention will naturally be more directed

to his inner life. Hence it is that people who become deaf or blind are

apt to seem selfish. But without any defect of the conduction of the

nerves a loss of perceptions may be brought about by a weakening of

the perceptive centres or of the paths of association. Such weakening,

which, in degenerate subjects, is not seldom very considerable, will,

of course, result in a preponderance of inward perceptions. If there

is a concurrent want of power of concentration of the attention upon

outward things, as there generally is, we have the type of a person of

weak mind, who is unable to comprehend the relations of things about

him, who, occupied with himself, remains a stranger to the world, and

who displays a characteristic selfishness and vanity.

No doubt poets and artists, as well as scholars, often exhibit an

outward appearance of self-absorption and of indifference to their

surroundings. This is common to them with many of the insane.[75] But

how disparate are the causes underlying these phenomena! With the

weak-minded it is the want of power to concentrate the attention which

renders them uninterested and indifferent to the outward world; but

with poets and scholars it is, on the contrary, the high degree of that

power which brings about similar phenomena. As we know, the centrifugal

condition which we term attention not only extends its power to the

organ of sense whose action is emphasized, but it must also be able to

order off all the rest of the impressions of sense. The great thinker

appears uninterested in surrounding things because his whole attention

is directed to the well-ordered sequence of his logical thoughts, to

which end, with fullest consciousness, the outward impressions are

ordered off. The weak-minded man is present at a performance. The

sounds of the words of the orator ring in his ears, but the slightest

outward or inward impression suffices to make his attention wander. His

thoughts ramble. They are everywhere and nowhere. The mentally gifted

man, on the contrary, constantly has his mind on the matter in hand. If

he wishes to concentrate his thoughts upon an outward object, nothing

that takes place is able to escape him. His attention is stronger than

the promiscuous spontaneous suggestions; and outward impressions of

sense which do not relate to the matter in hand will not be apperceived.

The average man, when he walks the street, perceives all the

impressions that strike his senses. He meets, we will say, two persons

whom he knows, both of whom look him full in the face and fail to

recognise him. They pass him by, and at the next crossing are nearly

run over because they do not hear or see a coming vehicle. One of them

is an idiot. His attention is not concentrated upon anything. He is

drowsy, his thoughts breed lawlessly around, without being directed

by his will. The second is a learned man who is occupied in solving a

scientific problem. He is deep in his logical train of thought, and the

requisite attention has ordered off all outward impressions of sense.

We see, then, that we have here a phenomenon common to the idiot and

the genius. Yet how contrary are the causes of the two phenomena!

Lombroso sets up insensibility to heat and cold, to hunger and thirst,

as a phenomenon common to genius and insanity. He brings forward this

example:

“When Beethoven had sat down to compose, and Newton to study a

mathematical problem, they so completely forgot the needs of the

stomach that they would scold the servant who brought them a meal,

under the impression that they had already eaten.”

To explain this abstractedness Lombroso says:

“The unnatural tension of the power of sensation, and the consequent

drain of all the forces and faculties, is undoubtedly the cause of this

surprising behaviour found equally among men of genius and among the

insane.”

I do not think it is accurate to refer these peculiarities of genius to

a “draining” or exhaustion. On the contrary, I would rather explain

it by the heightening of the mental action. In the concentration of

the attention upon inward conditions, in which, as we have seen, the

impressions of all organs of sense not directly concerned are ordered

off, the feeling of hunger will not be perceived. Nor need one be

either a genius or a fool to forget eating and drinking over an arduous

work. Moreover, in extreme idiots, who are unable to concentrate their

attention at all, as a rule a bestial impulse to eat is observable.

The insane refuse to take nourishment, or forget their bodily needs,

from a great variety of causes. In one case, like that of a sane

man immersed in his work, the attention may be directed to inward

processes, and all the other impressions of sense may be ordered off.

Only, the patient’s inward process, instead of consisting in an ordered

sequence of thoughts, is composed of hallucinations, which foster his

whole attention; or he may have religious visions which so completely

absorb all his senses that he not only feels no hunger but is

insensible to all physical pain whatever. Another patient may decline

food because he thinks himself persecuted, and believes the food is

poisoned. A hallucinatory subject refuses to eat because a voice from

heaven has forbidden him to do so. A victim of melancholia does not eat

because he thinks himself too great a criminal to receive God’s gift.

A hypochondriac imagines his stomach is not in condition to digest

food, and will not take food for that reason. Another may be unable

to assign any reason for not eating, but still he will not do so. The

outward effect is the same in all these cases. It is the business of

the psychiatrist to trace out the causes, and thus diagnostically to

estimate the symptom.

We thus see that neither the psychologist nor the psychiatrist ought

to be content to observe behaviour superficially, but must trace out

the motive of it in order to draw any inference from it. The most

absurd conduct sometimes has reasons consistent with health, while

conduct which would not surprise a layman at all may be regarded by a

psychiatrist as a well-recognised symptom of insanity.

A further explanation of many peculiarities of men of genius is to be

sought in their relations to the society in which they live. A man

with a reputation for high talents, distinguished from his youth for

his superiority and genius, always has his circle of admirers with its

proportion of flatterers. If he had the misfortune to be a precocious

child he will have been accustomed from his earliest youth to the idea

that his genius is far above ordinary men and above the rules that

apply to those men. If such a man is, in later years, attacked by a

competent critic upon this or that point, or if schools and parties are

formed unfavourable to his method, whether in art or in science, he

will, of course, react otherwise than a man would do who was accustomed

to opposition of every description. He will, perhaps, regard his just

critic as a personal enemy; he will complain that he is misunderstood

by his contemporaries, and his passion may go so far that the public at

large, and superficial observers among psychiatrists, may consider him

to be the victim of a delusion of persecution.

Peculiar inclinations and other mental idiosyncrasies of men of

genius can mostly be very readily explained. Everybody accustomed

psychologically to study and dissect those whom he meets, so far

as opportunity is afforded, is familiar with the remark that each

individual of the human race has his peculiarities, more or less odd,

his “weaknesses,” his _locus minoris resistentiæ_, as we say in somatic

medicine.

The ordinary man, if he has the least breeding, has been accustomed

from his youth up to hold in check one inclination or another which

violates the usages of society, or even perhaps of good morals. He

has learned to attend sufficiently to his own conduct not to allow

habits to take root which might appear unusual or be disagreeable to

others. But the man of genius is far too much governed by his inward

processes, his fancy, and his work, to pay attention to trifling

details of manner. He therefore appears what he really is, while the

average man would not do this. Consequently chance peculiarities and

special inclinations appear in the former more than in the latter.

Thus it is that the behaviour of great men is not to be measured by

the same standard as that of others, that we have to take account of

the motives of their actions, and that the psychical conditions must

be kept in view if we are to draw any trustworthy inferences from

their behaviour. Those mighty natures must be judged from their own

organization, and not from the Philistine standpoint of the so-called

average man.

As a further proof of the affinity of genius to insanity it has been

alleged that a great number of eminent men have actually had attacks of

insanity. Among poets are mentioned Lucretius, Tasso (who suffered from

periodical melancholia with hallucinations and fits of excitement),

Lenau, Swift, and Reinhold Lenz (who died insane). Hölderlin was

thoroughly mad during the greater part of his life. Lessmann suffered

from melancholy and committed suicide. Von Sonnenberg, Southey, and

Ben Jonson were likewise attacked by insanity. Molière had repeated

fits of melancholy. Rousseau suffered during much of his life from

insanity.[76] Gutzkow and Cowper were insane; also the French poets

Berthes, Dubellay, Duboys, Bataille, Baudelaire, and Guy de Maupassant.

Kleist, Merk, Raimund, Stieglitz, Louise Brachmann, and Nerval

committed suicide.

Insane students of nature were Swammerdam (who was attacked with

_melancholia religiosa_, thinking he had insulted God, and therefore

burned his writings) and Albrecht von Haller (who was also melancholy).

The mathematician Bolyai, Cardan, and Johann Georg Zimmermann were

likewise insane. So was the celebrated physiologist Johannes Müller,

who committed suicide.

Among insane philosophers may be mentioned Auguste Comte and Engel.

Of composers who were attacked by insanity, Schumann and Donizetti are

examples. Gounod had a superinduced insanity.

Insane painters were van Goes, van Leyden, Wiertz, Carlo Dolce, etc.

The question whether we are justified, from the alleged frequency of

insanity among famous men, to draw any conclusion whatever--as, for

example, in regard to a predisposition to insanity among great minds,

more than among average men--or that there is an intimate connection

between genius and insanity, can only be answered from the standpoint

of experience.

That is to say, it can only be based upon severely critical

statistics. But we are very far from possessing any data that are even

approximately sufficient. If we are to go to work scientifically, of

what use can a list of famous men who have been insane be to us? Even

were the number of examples multiplied by ten, what could be inferred?

The question is not whether there have been great men who were insane,

but whether the proportion of those who have at some period of their

lives been attacked by insanity of different types has been markedly

greater or less among famous personages than among the general run of

mankind.

In order to decide this, we should be in a condition to state with

exactitude what the percentage of insane among the total population

was at a given period of history, how many men of genius there were

at that time, and how many of these were insane? Such researches

must be repeated at different times of history; then, if they were

irreproachably exact and sufficient, it would be possible that some

conclusion might be drawn. But we can not even make such comparisons

for the present day, far less for bygone ages. The most we can do

to-day is to count the inmates of asylums. But extremely few of those

insane geniuses who have been reported were ever confined in asylums.

Most of them belonged to that class of deranged persons who are cared

for by their family. Manifestly, then, sufficient statistics fail us,

even for the present time. Everybody will see, without going further,

how futile it is to make a list of insane poets from the early Roman

literature to the end of the nineteenth century, and to offer this as

supporting any assertion of the kind. Do but consider how hard it is

for us to attain any reliable conclusions upon matters much more within

our control. For a long time there has been a serious dispute among

psychiatrists as to whether there is any connection between syphilis

and general paresis. Both are accurately limited and well-defined

terms, and not, like genius and insanity, two terms, neither of which

can be defined. They are perfectly typical and exactly characterized

forms of disease. Yet all the researches of the two parties have been

powerless to settle the question. The most diverse theories about the

matter still find numerous defenders.

There has also been an attempt to trace a connection between genius and

insanity through facts of heredity. In spite of some valuable works

in this department,[77] it must be admitted that the observations

hitherto adduced are still far from sufficient to have any scientific

value. The fact that in several families of eminent men insanity has

occurred in no wise justifies us in drawing any conclusion. In order to

do that we must, as in the former case, be in a condition to establish

statistical comparisons which shall be _absolutely exact_ between the

proportionate occurrence of insanity in the families of men of genius

and those of ordinary men. The past must therefore be left altogether

out of account; nor is it any exaggeration to say that the difficulties

of establishing the facts for the present time with absolute exactitude

are unconquerable. Independently of all else, the flexibility and

indeterminacy of the terms of the question--genius and insanity--give

room for inexactitude in the conclusions.

Every disinterested observer must be struck with the contradictions and

inadequacy of the investigations that have been made in this field.

Lombroso, for example,[78] says: “Galton and Ribot remark that genius

is as hereditary as insanity, and that especially the gift for music,

which drives so many into the madhouse, is transmitted from parents to

children. Palestrina, Benda, Düssek, Stiller, Mozart, and Eichhorn all

had musically gifted children. The Bach family presented to the world

eight generations of musicians, and among them fifty-seven individuals

distinguished themselves not a little. Among painters of renown, von

der Weld, von Eyck, Murillo, Veronese, Bellini, Caracci, Correggio,

Mieris, Bassano, Tintoretto, Caliare (uncle, father, and son), all

sprang from families which were more or less occupied with their art.

Among poets, Æschylus had two sons and two grandsons who were poets;

Swift was the nephew of Dryden; Lucian was Seneca’s grandson or nephew;

Torquato Tasso was the son of Bernardo Tasso; Ariosto’s brother and

nephew were poets; two sons of Aristophanes were dramatists; Corneille,

Racine, Sophocles, Coleridge, were each the father or grandfather of

a not insignificant poet.” But in flat contradiction to this stands

the following assertion of Lombroso:[79] “Moreover, the inheritance of

genius does not occur so easily as it otherwise would for the reason

that men of genius are often childless and often have degenerate

offspring, as we see in the lines of noble houses.” Thus he amply

refutes his own previous proposition, and saves other people the

trouble of doing so. To prove his last point he says: “Schopenhauer,

Descartes, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Comte, Kant, Spinoza, Michel Angelo,

Newton, Foscolo, and Alfieri were unmarried; and those great men who

did not shrink from the bonds of wedlock, like Shakespeare, Dante,

Arzolo, etc., found no happiness in that life.” As if celibacy, or

an unhappy marriage, could have no other cause than impotence! Other

psychiatrists have remarked the sterility of great men. Thus, Arndt

says:[80] “Hence we often see, I might say without exception, that

genius makes the summit of the family tree, or at least is the last

living twig of one branch, which bears many flowers and fruits, but

loses its capacity of putting forth new shoots in creating genius.

Thereafter it buds but scantily, or even loses the power of doing even

that, but comes to an end without progeny.”

This opinion is somewhat exaggerated, as Lombroso’s own report

shows; and we should lay ourselves open to the charge of inexcusable

superficiality were we to attempt to erect a scientific theory upon

such a foundation.

It is true that between famous men--the so-called geniuses--and the

insane many resemblances may be traced. Nevertheless, they are, as

we have seen, mere resemblances, not real affinities. Just as every

symptom of mental disease has its analogue in health, so has it also an

analogue in genius. But, owing to the entire mental action being higher

than in average men, the states analogous to morbid symptoms here come

out more markedly. Genius resembles insanity as gold resembles brass.

The similarity is merely in the appearance. When we go deeper into

the facts we find the two states so widely disparate that we are not

justified in saying that they are allied; still less, with Moreau,

that genius is a morbid condition.

Finally, let the fact be considered that most of the great men, both

of art and of science, were misunderstood by their contemporaries,

and were only appreciated after they were dead. In recognition of

this truth, Goethe pronounces that a genius is in touch with his

century only by virtue of his defects, only in so far as he shares the

weaknesses of his times. The genius of the truly great man outstrips,

with its great wing strokes, the rest of the flock. Those who can not

keep up with him can not comprehend him. They are puzzled at first,

and finally set him down as a fool. In short, they confound genius and

insanity.