Chapter III: Part 3

In his inexhaustible and restlessly working fancy Mozart was very much like Goethe. His works commonly lay ready-made in his memory when he began to set them down on paper. He wrote most unwillingly, and generally waited till the last minute, so that he was commonly behind time. It is well known that he wrote the overture to Don Juan the night before the performance of the opera. While we consider creative fancy to be a part of the action of his genius, his vast musical memory was a matter of talent, which in Mozart was not less phenomenal. When he once sent his sister a fugue with a prelude he excused himself for writing the prelude after the fugue. “The truth is,” said he, “it was while I was writing down the fugue that I composed the prelude.”[37] Thus his fancy was able to work undisturbed while he exercised his intellectual reproductive power. This fact may at first sight seem incredible and contradictory to common psychical conditions. But it is not so. Here again is a high refinement of a universal psychical phenomenon. Most men, while engaged in a mechanical occupation, can give a free rein to the play of fancy; and even when the mechanical work requires some attention, many men are able at the same time to think about something else. Whoever is accustomed to work in a laboratory knows very well what it is to follow those mechanical operations with attention and at the same time to be considering some important question. The strange thing in Mozart’s case is that the writing down from memory of a fugue--a work which would have required the concentrated attention of a fairly talented man--was for him a mere mechanical act. We hardly know which most to admire, his stupendous talent or his creative genius.

Mozart’s rich fancy, like that of Goethe, was directed by a high intellectual faculty which checked its boilings over, held the ideas to an ordered sequence, and eliminated disturbing elements. Mozart’s capacity of concentrating his attention upon what was in his mind, and of shutting out all disturbing perceptions of sense, was tremendous. While he was at work social conversation about him was no annoyance, and even with an orchestra playing in his ears he could calmly follow out his own fancy. “His eldest sister, Frau Hofer, told Neukomm that even at the opera,--as anybody who knew him could easily observe by the restless movements of his hands, by his glance, and by his pursing his lips to sing or whistle,--he would be completely taken up in following out his inward train of music.”[38]

But wherever it was worth while to pay attention to the outer world, and to take in outward impressions of sense, he had an equally high capacity for that. His fancy received rich aliment from the action of his intellect. He had studied the old masters perfectly. He himself said: “Nobody takes so much pains in the study of composition as I. You could not easily name a famous master in music whom I have not industriously studied, often going through his works several times.” Rochlitz reports that he knew the chief works of Händel as well as if he had all his life been director of the London Academy for the Support of Old Music.

With all the likeness between Mozart and Goethe there was this remarkable difference between them, that Mozart was not influenced by moods. They had no part whatever in the work of his artistic production. Art was not for him the means of expression of his own sentiments, as it was with Goethe; he could adapt the play of his fancy to outward conditions, to motives of the outer world; so that, in this respect, Mozart strongly reminds one of Schiller. He could set his fancy any problem he liked, and it would promptly proceed to solve it. Mozart could compose to order; and many of his works, especially canons, were produced in that way. In consonance with this was Mozart’s power of setting foreign texts of operas to music, which corresponded precisely to the character and mood of the words, although he did not warm up to them.

In Beethoven, on the contrary, art was solely a means of expression of his own sentiments and feelings. The immortal creations which sprang from his artistic fancy enable us to look deeply into the spiritual life of the great artist. They paint his inner struggles, his anguish, and his delight.

The ideal that was constantly before him, and which by great struggles he sought to attain, was that of a strong, active, manly character, unmoved by any blow of fate and never despondent in the struggle of life, but keeping up its courage to its last breath. “Courage! However weak my body, my soul shall rule.” To this boast he always adhered, no matter how hard his lot. After a joyless youth he had to contend with the direst need. But worst of all was the defect of his hearing, which at last amounted to stone-deafness. One can imagine what it meant for him to be the only one to whom it was not permitted to listen to his own symphonies. But dreadful as it was, his courage was never broken; his soul marched victoriously to the strife and held command over his sufferings.

Such moods as struggle, gloom, hope, pleasure, suffering, burst into expression in his art of music--the mother tongue of sentiments and moods. Of every creation of Beethoven we may say, with Goethe, it was “a fragment of one long confession.”

The fineness of Beethoven’s faculty of sense, the subtilty in the _nuances_ of his moods, was a no less important factor of his nature than his rich creative fancy. Words could not describe his sentiments; only music, the language of the heart, could render them; and his moods were the motives of the action of his genius.

How little such feelings and sentiments can be described in words is shown by Richard Wagner in his Programmatische Erläuterungen.[38] In speaking of the Heroic Symphony he says: “The first movement brings to a focus all the sentiments of a rich manly nature in restless, youthful, active emotion. Bliss and woe, delight and suffering, joy and grief, musing and aspiration, yearning and revelling, daring, insolence, and indomitable self-feeling jostle so closely upon one another that while we sympathize with all these sentiments, we can isolate no one, but are obliged to partake of all as this master of all sentiments delivers them.” Of the second movement he says: “A sentiment excited in solemn nuptials and combined with profound pain is communicated to us in a tone language which takes possession of us; an earnest, manly sorrow looks forward out of its plaint to soft pathos, to recollections, to tears of love, to inward elevation, to inspired summons.” But it is in vain that Wagner strives to reproduce in words the mood produced by the work or the sentiments of his artistic heart. He confesses it himself: “But who could paint in words the infinitely manifold but inexpressible sentiments which pass from pain to the highest exultation, and from exultation to the softest grief, until they come to rest in a bottomless pondering? The tone poet alone could do this in this wonderful composition.” The account closes with the words: “But only in the master’s tone-speech could that unspeakable meaning be uttered which my confined words have attempted to describe with the greatest modesty.”

Thus between these two classics, Mozart and Beethoven, there was a distinction analogous to that between Schiller and Goethe. Still, creative fancy is the common and indispensable factor, without which neither a poet nor a composer of genius can be conceived.

It plays the same important part in the minds of painters. Accordingly, Humboldt[39] says: “As soon as the painter’s fancy has given birth to the living image, the masterpiece is completed, though his hand were that instant to be paralyzed. The actual execution is but the echo of that decisive moment.” But the same psychological distinction pursues us. For some painters art was merely the means of expression of their sentiments and moods. Examples will be mentioned in another chapter.

Let us first turn our attention to representatives of the arts of execution. I mean musical performers and actors.

We have already analyzed the nature of musical talent, so that we can come at once to the question, What is the distinction between a performer of talent and a performer of genius?

Jean Paul[40] speaks of men of “receptive or passive genius” “who are richer in receptive than in creative fancy,” to whose productions that radiance of genius is wanting “which only breaks forth from the consensus of all the powers, and from great powers alone.”

By “receptive fancy,” which is an expression psychologically incorrect, Jean Paul means that state of heart which is particularly inclined to be put by a work of art into a responsive mood, a disposition that can enter into the sentiments of the artist and can fully enjoy his work. Jean Paul says: “There are men who, endowed with a higher sensibility than powerful talent in itself confers, but with less power, receive into a consecrated, open soul the great world-mind, be it in outward life or in poems and thoughts, and remain constant to it as the tender woman to the strong man, disdaining the vulgar, and who yet, if they would express their love, stammer out broken, confused words and say something different from what they wished to say.” These are people endowed with extreme delicacy of feeling and sentiment, so that they are more capable of being absorbed in a work of genius than others, yet lacking the creative fancy which would enable them to give to their sensations an independent artistic expression. Let such people be provided with musical talent which specially fits them for the use of an instrument, and they will have the opportunity, in playing the compositions of others, to express their own artistic feelings and sentiments. They will put their souls into the reproduction of the work. In short, they will be performers of genius. Schütz[41] says of Paganini: “The instant he took his instrument a divine spark seemed to touch him, and celestial fire ran through his being. Every feeling of weakness departed. He was transformed into a new being; he instantly became another soul; and so long as he played, his strength was more than quintupled.” So it is with those actors and singers who in the performance of a part are completely absorbed in the situation. They throw into it their artistically excited hearts, and fulfil their feelings and sentiments.

Other performers of no less talent, or perhaps more, remain cold and without sensation in the performance of the work of art. With them the intellectual function alone determines their rendering of the piece. The effects are calculated, the execution studied, the whole is made up. However great the talent of such performers, bringing them to the highest pitch of technical skill, genius will never be attributed to them by the great public. Thus we see that in artists of execution the psychical causes of performances of genius have to be sought in the sphere of feeling and sensation. That faculty which we have recognised as the chief requisite for the genius of the creative artist--namely, creative fancy--is never present in the performer of genius.

Thus, in the attempt to reduce genius in different departments to the same or similar faculties, we are thrown into perplexity. There are doubtless common factors, but it must be admitted that the psychical elements which constitute the essence of genius in poets such as Schiller, and in performers such as Paganini, have nothing in common.

We now pass to the consideration of those famous men who are called men of scientific genius or scholars of genius. An inquiry into the causes of scientific genius will show that it has two factors--discovery and invention. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton distinguished themselves by many important discoveries. As we have seen above, the success of the discoverer is partly dependent upon external circumstances; so that we shall not remain content with the outward facts, but shall endeavour to probe the matter to the bottom. In short, we shall try to find psychical circumstances accounting for the discoveries of genius.

When Newton’s friend Halley once asked him how he ever came to make all those great discoveries, he said it was by incessantly dwelling on the problems concerned. On another occasion he said that the chief difference between him and other men was that he had more patience than others.

Galileo investigated and worked restlessly to his latest years. When he was blind in both eyes, he wrote, by the hand of another, that in his darkness his mind was perpetually turning over the problems of nature, and would not cease its activity, even when he desired rest; so that he was deprived of his sleep.

These and other sayings of famous men of science about the actions of their mind and the origin of the ideas of genius have an entirely different tone from the analogous reports of poets and composers. Great discoveries, unless they were mere effects of chance, have never been made “unconsciously,” “as in a dream,” “like sleepwalking,” but, on the contrary, require the completest wakefulness, self-conscious thought, and untiring industry. These characters, which we find in all great investigators and scholars, depend upon the extremest refinement of that part of the psychical organ which is the vehicle of the intellectual powers. In the first place, and above all, great discoverers have great powers of observation. For this, as we know, undivided attention concentrated upon an exterior process is requisite. The faculties of perception and ideation are highly refined; the organs of apperception and reproduction act with the greatest energy. The ideas obtained in this way are connected into conceptual forms by that intellectual action which Wundt[42] terms the “inductive understanding.” Upon the extremest refinement of this faculty depends the quick and correct recognition of the connections of things which is met with in great investigators.

We find here, then, essentially different psychical conditions from those of poets and artists of genius. We may go so far as to say that they are antagonistic, the one to the other. A rich fancy and a variety of moods, feelings, and sentiments, which form the main condition of a productive artist, are not only of no use to a great investigator of Nature, but they are positively disadvantageous to him. Every human being possesses fancy, and an absolutely sharp line of demarcation cannot be drawn between fancy and intellect. Every man, too, is subject to oscillations of his moods. But to the great investigator it is absolutely essential that his intellect should possess an iron rule over all other psychical factors. Schiller says of the poet: “He will do well not to let his reason keep too severe a guard at the doors against the incrowding ideas.” But for the investigating scholar it is not well that a rich fancy should modify the result of his objective observations or should draw his attention away from the object of his research.

Those authors who endeavour to find a general psychological basis for genius, but strive to limit the term to a particular class of famous men--as, for example, to productive artists--cannot avoid the incorrect reasoning into which Meyer falls when he says[43]: “Nobody can dispute that genius, even in science, is only the result of the creative force of imagination.” In another place the same author says: “Reflective thought is often prejudicial to the creative power of genius. Thought must come from itself and conclude according to its elective affinities.” According to this, all reflective thought must be prejudicial to the genius of the scholar. But we have learned from their own words that reflection is requisite to the success of scholars.

Whoever, like Meyer, recognises “creative imagination” and the “unconscious origination of thoughts” as the essence of genius ought not to apply that term to the learned. But when Schopenhauer, who gave a similar meaning to genius, says of generals and statesmen, “It is ridiculous to talk of genius in such folks,” Herr Meyer protests and says: “I should rather call it ridiculous to deny that Frederick the Great was a political and military genius, that Napoleon was a general of genius, or that Bismarck was a statesman of genius.”

The usage of language alone, irrespective of other considerations, must determine whether we shall apply the name of genius to generals or statesmen; but this much is manifest, that the greatness of a military commander depends upon essentially different psychical conditions from the greatness of an artist. If we are to conceive of genius as Meyer does, and are to follow him in declaring that the “how” and the “wherefore” “remain obscure” for genius, that “nothing is less conscious,” “nothing less voluntary,” than “a thought of genius,” and that “reflecting thought is sometimes prejudicial to the creative force of genius,” then it certainly must seem ridiculous to connect such an appellation with Frederick the Great, Napoleon, or Bismarck. Imagine a great statesman for whom the “how” and the “wherefore” remain always obscure. Think of a Bismarck devoid of “reflective thought.”

The greatness of a general or a statesman is exclusively due to sharpness of intellect. A power of swift apprehension, an instantaneous recognition of facts and their connections, a logical and consecutive reason--these are the qualities which are indispensable to a general of genius. The great statesman and the great soldier must neither of them be influenced by varying moods and feelings. All moods and feelings must be entirely subordinated. An understanding conscious of its purpose and an iron will must direct and lead the whole action of the soul. The general of genius is always distinguished by discretion and cold deliberation; he preserves an imposing calm. At critical moments he shows a wonderful presence of mind. He never permits any upwellings of feeling or preponderance of emotion. Hence the greatest statesman of our age has received the admirable epithet of the Man of Iron. How utterly is the psychical constitution of such a man unlike the rich and sensitive heart of the artist of genius! For the substance of the great statesman of genius iron is required; but it is wax that has to compose the sensitive artist.

The psychical faculties are not sharply separable. They insensibly shade into one another. Hence we find a gradual transitional series of minds bridging over the interval between creative art and inductive science. It is in this series that we are to place the inventor. For him a combination of fancy with “inductive intellectual action,” as Wundt calls it, is what is to be desired. The action of his productive imagination is essentially different from that of the free, creative fancy of the artist of genius. In the dreams of the artist the work of art emerges freely, without that definite, prefigured, foreseen purpose which is needed in the imagination of the inventor. Well-planned, systematic thought is for him not less requisite than the productive faculty. It is the combination of both states, or an intermediate condition, which we find here.

There are many points of agreement between the psychical conditions of the creative artist and those of the scientific investigator. But where art begins science ends. Speculative philosophy used to call for creative imagination, no doubt; but this department of thought, which among the ancients was the queen of the sciences, is to-day scarcely recognised as science at all. Plato was much more a poet than a representative of science. On the other hand, those poets and novelists who undertake the construction of characters in objective fashion, on a basis of research and observation, approximate toward scientific minds.

Perhaps when Meyer says that genius in science is fulfilled only by the creative force of imagination he means the speculative sciences of theology and philosophy. But the further science advances toward its goal of truth, the more it will emancipate itself from fancies; or, to express the matter more accurately, the less science has to do with fancy, the more truthful will it become and the higher will be its value. In the truest of all the sciences, mathematics, fancy will accomplish very little. Fancy can not solve equations nor enunciate theorems. Fancy never discovered bacteria, nor has it been successful as a method of medical diagnosis.

We conclude, then, that _genius in different departments is referable to the most diverse psychical conditions_. Psychical faculties and characters which in one case constitute the essence of genius, in another case are inconsistent with the action of genius. In short, definite psychical characters common to all genius are not to be found. One would seek in vain any common psychological explanation of the greatness of a Paganini and a Bismarck, of a Mozart and a Napoleon.

That which of old connected all genius in the eyes of men and, in fact, gave rise to the conception, was the idea of the mystical, the unaccountable, the supernatural. If any such standpoint as that is to be assumed, of course there remains no difficulty in finding an unequivocal meaning for the term. Prof. Jürgen Bona Meyer says: “The ancient Greeks considered poets and artists to be consecrated to God and inspired of God. When they produced their works the Godhead seized upon them in sacred madness, and through them spoke to men. Who knows but that is the very truth? Perhaps God really does lead the world by these creative souls to the high goal to which it is destined. Perhaps a philosophy of history might make this significance of the heroes of spirit and of force manifest, and vindicate the faith which, in the geniuses of earth, will recognise the immediate agents of God.” If notions like these are what is meant by ideas of genius, Meyer is quite right in saying that genius can be introduced into science only by the creative force of the imagination. Modern science, however, can not follow Mr. Meyer in these “fancies of genius,” for it is restricted to objective observation and to actual knowledge.

The foregoing researches will bring the reader to the conviction that _no psychological meaning can be attached to the word genius_. We can make out what a poetic genius is, what a composer of genius is, what a performer of genius is, what a military genius is, what a scientific genius is, etc.; but to accept genius as a univocal term and attach one psychological definition to it, to any good purpose, is not to be done. Undoubtedly all men of genius have common traits; but they are not traits characteristic of genius; they are such as are possessed by other men, and more or less by all men. Indeed, in no case is there anything in the mode of action of genius qualitatively different from that of other men; there are only different degrees of the same qualities. We can, for any psychical character, form an unbroken series of instances from the grade met with in the average man up to phenomenal genius, and every rung of the ladder will be occupied; so that it is impossible to say where the line is to be drawn between ordinary men and men of genius. In psychology every individual man is a _species sui generis_. To attempt to separate men into disparate kinds, as we do plants, would be a backward step in biology.

Chemists analyze different kinds of substances, and show that all contain precisely the same elements; so that no two substances differ, except in the proportions of their elementary constituents. It is just as scientifically established that in all men precisely the same psychical elements occur, and that these may exist in any one proportion as well as in any other. Mood, fancy, intellectual function, memory, ideation, apprehension, etc., are characters present in every man, and into them psychological analysis dissects every man’s faculties, whether he be a genius or whether he be an ordinary man.

The purpose of these researches and of the conclusions to which they lead will become apparent in the following chapter. Psychiatrists have of late been much interested in genius; but before I could discuss the questions which have been mooted, it seemed incumbent upon me to ascertain what is meant by genius. Was it a psychologically definite condition, or was it a loose name for a promiscuous bundle of phenomena? Having, in what precedes, expressed my opinion upon this, I now proceed to the principal question.

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.