Chapter V: Part 5

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.

DEGENERATION.

The riddle of heredity is yet unsolved. The seed corpuscles and the _ovum_--the male and female germinal substances--through the coalescence of which the new individual is created, not only transmit bodily characters from progenitors to progeny, but psychical peculiarities too, and thus convey family traits from forefathers to posterity. Of the fact experience assures us, but as to its biological causes nothing has been disclosed.

In the great catalogue of diseases, somatic and psychical, heredity plays an important part. This has been undisputed since Hippocrates. In most cases, however, it is not a definite disease which is inherited, but a diathesis, a predisposition, a want of resistance to all baleful influences of the direct exciting causes of disease.

In this way heredity is an important element in all pathogeneses, or origins of disease; and it is especially so for derangements of the mind. The inheritance may either be a direct one--from parent to offspring--or an indirect one. In the latter case it is either atavism, or reversion to the characters of grandparents, or there is a collateral inheritance from an uncle or aunt.

Essentially distinct from heredity is gradual and progressive _degeneration_--a phenomenon first profoundly studied by Morel de Rouen.[81] Morel schematizes it as follows:

_First Generation:_ Nervous temperament; moral depravity; excesses.

_Second Generation:_ Tendency to apoplexy and severe neuroses; alcoholism.

_Third Generation:_ Mental derangements; suicide; intellectual incapacity.

_Fourth Generation:_ Hereditary imbecility; deformities; arrested development. With this last generation the race comes to an end by sterility.

Besides a long list of mental symptoms, Morel has collected a number of stigmata, or bodily marks, which he has observed in degenerate subjects. These are many kinds of deformities, want of equality in the two halves of the face or other bilateral parts, irregularities of the skull, protruding or unlike ears, overgrown ear-laps, squinting, stuttering, deformed teeth, too few or too many fingers, atrophies or abnormal formations of the organs of sex, etc.

Morel called these phenomena phenomena of _dégénérescence_. This has been translated into German by the term _Entartung_. The German word implies etymologically a departure from the _Art_--that is, the species, the normal form--and might be applied to any chronic disease, whether somatic or psychic. It need not imply, as _degeneration_ does, a progressive pining away of the race till it is extinct.

In the course of time, however, this point has fallen out of sight. Modern writers, and especially the French author, Magnan, who has very industriously worked upon the subject, leave almost unnoticed the question of progressive pining ending with the extinction of the race, and place the whole emphasis upon the heredity. Magnan employs the terms _dégénérés_, _héréditaires dégénérés_, _héréditaires_, indifferently. Möbius directly declares that it is convenient to replace the expression _hereditary_ by _degenerate_.[82]

Thus it is that at present the expressions _Belastete_ (afflicted), _Hereditarier_ (hereditary), and _Entartete_ (degenerate) are used promiscuously. The fact that such diversity of expression reigns is due, in this department as elsewhere in science, to the habit of quarrelling over words instead of making their meaning clear. So von Krafft-Ebing, for example, terms paranoia exclusively a psychosis of degeneration, and, in order to refute Mendel,[83] who questions the degenerative significance of the disease, advances the argument that paranoia is only found among the “afflicted.”[84] Now, “affliction” and “degeneration” are two entirely different things, which have few, if any, common features. Many paranoiacs have perfectly sane children, and therefore in Morel’s sense they can not be called degenerate. Paranoia is likewise found in perfectly sane persons at an advanced age; and in them there can be no _Entartung_ or _degeneration_.

_The term “hereditary affliction” means, in psychopathology, merely that disorders of the nervous system existed among the person’s progenitors._ The man himself may thus not be deranged at all. In fact, great numbers of the hereditarily afflicted are perfectly healthy. As I have said, hereditary affliction plays an important part not only in degeneration, but in the majority of mental diseases; and consequently we shall do well to keep the terms “heredity” and “degeneracy” distinct.

The forms of disease described by Morel under the name of _dégénérescence_ are referred by him and his adherents, especially Falret, exclusively to hereditary affliction; and a “hereditary insanity” without qualification has been spoken of. But we have seen that, on the one hand, a pathogenic significance belongs to heredity in most psychoses; while, on the other hand, it has been proved that the so-called “hereditary insanity” or “_dégénérescence_” is found in persons who have had no insanity in their families; so that there would be here a “hereditary insanity” without heredity.

These facts shatter the very essence of Morel’s doctrine; and so it came about that want of clearness of terms has led to many misunderstandings and much diversity of expression. If, then, we are to hold fast to the term _degeneration_, or _Entartung_, _this must be understood to embrace all cases of defective development of the psychical organ_. Degenerates are mental monstrosities; degeneration κατ’ ἐξοχήν is idiocy.

The causes of degeneration--that is, in good English, of _degeneracy_--may be divided into three classes, as follows:

1. _Degenerative Hereditary Transmission._--This concept is essentially different from the above-described simple form of inheritance. In _simple_ heredity nothing is transmitted but a predisposition, the individual being radically sane. _Degenerative_ hereditary transmission implies a diseased germinal substance, which may lead to progressive degeneration of the posterity. The disease of the germinal substance is in many cases due to actual poisoning, more especially by alcohol. Many authors insist that chronic intoxication is not requisite, but that if drunkenness supervenes during the act of copulation, it suffices to transmit a degenerate state to the offspring.[85]

2. _Intra-uterine Disturbances of Development._--Here are to be placed infectious diseases of the mother during pregnancy; bad nutrition of the embryo in consequence of cachectic states of the mother, such as rickets, etc.; deformities of the pelvis, and consequent compression of the skull; injuries to the head in delivery by instruments, and in consequence of accidents to the mother during pregnancy, etc.

3. _Extra-uterine Disturbances of Development._--Such are injuries to the head, infectious diseases, and the like, in early childhood.

As regards the clinical portrait of degeneration, there have been many attempts to divide it into classes and to establish specific forms of disease under this genus. Morel divides the degenerate into four classes, as follows:

The first embraces all those persons in whom there are no particular anomalies, whether of the intellect or the heart, but who are characterized by a so-called nervous temperament. Among them are neurasthenics, hysterical women, and people who, while very eccentric, are fully conscious of their own state.

In the second class are those persons who, while their intellectual powers are unimpaired, display a decided disturbance of their feelings and impulses, and consequently great defects and perversity in morals.

The third class contains imbeciles whose mental weakness is limited to the intellect, so that the instincts hold sway over their understanding.

In the fourth class are found idiots in whom the whole mental development is extremely low.

This and other classifications are purely arbitrary. These classes gradually pass into one another, and single examples show the most diverse combinations. In consequence of the disturbances of development in degeneracy the quintessence of the malady is to be sought in the disproportion in which the mental factors stand to one another. Thus Magnan[86] says of the degenerate: “Doubtless the essential thing is the discord, the want of balance of the mind.” Hence, in diagnosing the mental state, it is not enough to inquire into the degree of general mental development that the intellect, for example, may have attained, for there are some men who are dull, as well as those who are bright. But one main problem must be to determine the proportions which the different mental factors bear to one another. A short-legged man is just as healthy as a long-legged man, but if the relative development of the two legs is different, one being longer than the other, there is a state of disease, though each leg singly be sound. So it is with the mental powers. If the feelings and moods are relatively more strongly developed than the other mental characteristics, so that the latter depend too much upon the former, there will be a relatively hysterical condition. With a disproportionate development of the fancy, delusions and hallucinations may occur; while an excessive development of the impulses, at the expense of the sensations, joined with intellectual weakness, may lead to moral insanity, since here the characteristics known as conscience, pity, etc., do not exist. Of course, these are not universal, unyielding rules, for every case has its singularities and must be studied and diagnosed for itself.

The clinical morbid picture of these degenerates may be very manifold. As might be expected on theoretical grounds, there is scarcely a symptom in psychiatry which may not occasionally be observed in the degenerate, since the disproportion of the single mental powers among one another may produce the most diverse combinations.

That which distinguishes degeneracy from other diseases of the mind is precisely the absence of any type in the occurrence and history of its symptoms. While in chronic paranoia a systematized fabric of delusions is found to which patients adhere in its unaltered form, and which only at the end becomes mollified in the general death of the intellectual powers, in the history of the degenerate, on the other hand, we find the most variegated medley of symptoms wildly succeeding one another. At one time there are imperative ideas, imperative impulses, and other such supervenient states; then we see delusions emerge in them; but, unlike those of the mad, they do not arise and remain systematically, but are only temporary, and are characterized by the absence of any marked type. “The fabric of delusions,” says Magnan, “has in the degenerate particular marks. Whether it be delusion of greatness, or delusion of persecution, or religious, or hypochondriacal delusion, or whatever other variety, it appears without preparation, is often multiform, and whether it lasts a longer or a shorter time, it never goes through a series of determinate periods.”[87]

Manifold diseased sensations and impulses play a great part in degeneracy, and are often motives to the most surprising behaviour. Magnan has described a great many impulses and antipathies or syndromes, and terms them the mental stigmata of degeneracy. The most important are the following: The mania for asking questions; the mania for subtleties; the mania of doubt; aichmophobia, or fear of points, in which needles and all pointed objects put the patients into agony; agoraphobia, or fear of public squares; claustrophobia, or fear of inclosed places; dipsomania or periodic passion for drink; sitiomania, or irresistible longing to eat; pyromania, or the impulse to set things on fire; kleptomania, or the passion for stealing; oniomania, or the impulse to make purchases; zoöphilomania, or morbid love of animals; onomatomania, or compulsion to seek for a particular word; arithmomania, or compulsion to count, etc. These diseased impulses and antipathies, whose number is very great, never occur singly, so as to form a proper variety of insanity, as was erroneously assumed in former times, thus giving rise to the term monomania. On the contrary, they always form a mere partial phenomenon of a diseased state of the nervous system, consequent upon the discord of its several factors.

Here, too, belong the numerous sexual anomalies described at length by von Krafft-Ebing. These, too, never constitute a disease proper, but are mere symptoms of a general malady. If, therefore, it is required of a psychiatrist to ascertain whether an act which conflicts with morals and with law is to be considered as pathological or not, he must not consider that act by itself. He will have to find out whether or not the mental conduct of the person who committed it is insane independently of that act.

The morbid symptoms of degeneracy are, as we have said, of the most various description, and cases in which the symptoms are decided can be diagnosed without difficulty. Since such cases strike even the general public as insane, the relatives of such patients call in medical aid. The consequence is that those degenerates that are known to practising physicians are, for the most part, those of typical imbecility, perverse sensations, etc.

It is very different with those _dégénérés supérieurs_, in whom no direct phobias, manias, imperative ideas, delusions etc., are present, but in whom there is merely a disturbance of the mental equilibrium, so that Magnan terms them simply _unbalanced_, _déséquilibrés_. In such a person every single mental faculty may have attained a degree of development which surpasses the average; and yet the proportion of the different mental factors to one another may be so abnormal that the mental balance is destroyed; and thus the discord may be so prominent that the person in question, in spite of his seemingly high mental development, may be mentally deranged.

An acquaintance with this class of degenerates is important, not alone for the mad-doctor, but for every physician, every jurist, every historian, every art critic, every pedagogue. In short, every person whose duty it is to pass judgment upon men should interest himself in this form of degeneracy, for men thus afflicted have at all times exercised great influence upon the arts, the politics, and the whole civilization of their countries--all the more so that the public have not recognised that they were insane, but have allowed them not infrequently to play parts in social life.

One of the characteristic marks of these degenerates is their highly emotional nature and the incalculable oscillations of their mood. Although in great men, in consequence of the extreme refinement of their mental organism, the moods and feelings are capable of very wide modulation, so that Goethe said of himself that he passed in his moods from one extreme to the other, yet in them this phenomenon is strictly limited to their subjective sensation. Men of undisturbed mental balance remain ever masters of themselves, and do not allow themselves to be hurried into irrational acts. In spite of all the oscillations of his inward state of heart, Goethe, as seen from without, was always the same distinguished, consistent, imposing figure. This marked the greatness of his character, the proportionate development of his different mental factors, his pure harmony of soul. In spite of the bold leaps of his luxuriant fancy, in spite of the great exaltations and depressions of his moods and feelings, the great _ensemble_ of his psychical organism was governed by his forceful thought; his every act was guided and determined by his intellect.

In the degenerate, on the other hand, sudden gusts of passion and fluctuations of moods not infrequently lead to the most singular and eccentric acts. Their intellectual action is not able to set limits to their impulsive feelings. Inward excitement runs unbridled into outward manifestation. Irritable to the highest degree, touched by the slightest impressions, they frequently react in the most passionate way upon the most insignificant occasion. No occurrence is too indifferent or insignificant to excite an emotion in them which hurries them into the most incredible acts.

The circumstance that, with the degenerates, the emotion leads to a total superseding of the intellectual capacity, and may then drive them, in their utter irresponsibility, into acts of violence and crime, has often led to the opinion that there was something morbid in that emotion itself. But this is a superficial view, not in consonance with the facts.

A man capable of no emotion, whom no mental stimulus is able to get out of the common ruts, is like a stupid mule that keeps on its way undisturbed, without regard for the strokes of the whip, and with unmoved composure, though a cannon were discharged by its side. Such dulness is found among a class of degenerates, including the idiots. The sane man is usually capable of emotion, but he knows how to govern and curb it by the action of his intellect. Emotion in the sane man as an expression of a legitimate sentiment is beautiful, at times even sublime. This is true even of anger. The blushing maiden repelling unworthy propositions, the anger of the man whose honour is assailed and who seeks satisfaction, have of a surety nothing unwholesome, and will hardly be confusible with the uncalled-for passion of the degenerate.

A phenomenon frequently observed among degenerates is an abnormally lively fancy, which appears in childhood, and renders any purposive thought impossible. Such children are inclined to dreaminess and so-called thoughtlessness. Their mental powers are sometimes pretty well developed, but they can make no use of them because their dreaminess permits no persistent logical thought. They have to be incessantly shaken up. At school they are inattentive and never follow the matter in hand. In their earliest childhood they have lively dreams, often wake up with a dreadful shriek, in what is called _pavor nocturnus_, and sometimes have deceptions of sense. Proneness to invent stories is a characteristic of these children gifted with fancy, and their tales are narrated as actual occurrences. This is the _pseudologia phantastica_ of Delbrück. At the age of puberty they are often attacked by that kind of self-nursed anguish which the Germans called _Weltschmerz_. They indulge in sentimental effusions, and often perpetrate all sorts of eccentric follies. In later life they fall into that class of minds whom we call dreamers, enthusiasts, Utopians, and mystics. Their luxuriant fancy, directed by no purposive will or intellectual plan, attracts them to whatever is occult, incomprehensible, and wonderful. From his youth up such a man is not habituated to look plain facts in the face, but gives himself up to building castles in the air and to useless trifles. He lives in dream-land; his metaphysics (for every man has a metaphysics or general conception of the universe, a _Weltanschauung_) is not built upon outward experience, but is the outcome of his peculiar experience, which is one of mystical notions spun from the body of his fancy.

In this class belong these religious fanatics, the prophets, the founders of sects, and the like, who in earlier times were able to exercise no little influence upon the course of history. Religious enthusiasm and the fanaticism of religious sects, which linger yet in North America and in Russia, are in great part phenomena of psychical degeneration. But in our days the fantastics and Utopians have largely turned aside from the early forms of religious enthusiasm to spiritualism, occultism, and other varieties of mysticism. Most of what is written to-day upon spiritualism, prophetic dreams, clairvoyance, second sight, and such matters springs from morbid, degenerate brains, in which the creations of fancy take the lead, and the intellectual action is too weak to exercise a rational criticism. We meet such persons in every department of life. They make their appearance as philanthropists and as political agitators, discoursing with pathos and fervour upon the subjects they least understand, inciting one class of society against another, and setting up as champions of labour and as apostles of freedom. Though they themselves understand nothing about the matters of which they speak and write, being utterly incapable of subjecting their fancies and mysticisms to logical criticism, yet they are thoroughly impressed with their own merit and greatness. Their gift of clothing the absurdest notions in fine words enables them to infatuate the masses, and they often collect about them a mob of admirers. The untenable and contradictory character of their doctrines and promises little disturbs the silly multitude that applauds them, although their imbecility is readily detected by rational thinkers and close observers.

Sometimes it happens that the defective development of the intellect in such persons affects only one part of it, while some intellectual characteristics are highly cultivated. Degenerates are found who have remarkably good memories and good capacity for learning. They may even acquire vast erudition, although they have no capacity for turning their knowledge to account. Their fancy gets the better of their intellect, and throws the manifold residua of former impressions of sense into a promiscuous and confused heap. They lack the power of concentrating their attention exclusively upon one object. The procedure of their thought reminds one of a rudderless craft given over to the caprices of the winds and waves. The extent of their erudition may, upon a slight acquaintance, lead one to think them bright and intelligent. But, owing to their lack of power of arranging their ideas logically, they will never be able to accomplish anything of any consequence, and the instability of their mental conduct will not escape the expert observer.

History is rich in examples of such individuals. The Roman emperor Claudius, whose imbecility is beyond question, acquired, in spite of his intellectual weakness, a solid mastery of the Greek tongue, and possessed marked talent as an orator. He also composed an extensive history. Apart from these powers, he was a typical degenerate. Before he became emperor he had a mania for hearing lawsuits as a judge, and, owing to his simplicity and inability to reason logically, he was generally the butt of the lawyers. On one occasion his written decision read that “he gave his vote for those who had spoken the truth.”[88]

In still other degenerates we find a well-developed action of the intellect combined with an almost total absence of feeling. The moral sense, sympathy, pity, love, etc., are conditions utterly strange to such people. They act from cold calculation. Selfishness and heartlessness mark all their acts. Those curmudgeons whose sole satisfaction is the heaping up of wealth, to whose life all ideal features are foreign, who stick at no legal means of attaining their selfish ends, who are not only without feeling for the sufferings of their fellow-men, but are even cold and indifferent to their nearest family, belong to this category of mental degeneration.

This unfeeling nature, combined with certain proportions of other mental factors, will result in the so-called moral insanity, and when prudence is deficient or circumstances push to it, produce the worst criminals. We often find not merely a deficiency of feeling, but a positive perversion of sentiments and feelings. Acts which other men perform with anguish and horror occasion them delight and contentment. Where others feel pain and sympathy they feel pleasure and a glow of comfort. Such mental states may lead to bestial cruelty and to an incredible pitch of brutality.

History affords numerous examples of this. The Roman emperor Nero had evil inheritances from both parents. Insanity and epilepsy were prevalent in both families. His father, Domitius Ahenobarbus, was so low in the moral scale that it was said of him that he would have been the worst man of his age if his son Nero had not lived. Suetonius reports that when they wished him joy at the birth of Nero he remarked, “The offspring of me and of Agrippina can only be a monster who will scourge the world.” Everybody knows that the inclination of Nero for cruelty, lust, and dissipation passed all bounds. His behaviour when he had Rome set on fire, admired the spectacle from afar, and recited verses painting the destruction of Troy, is quite typical of a degenerate. Yet he was not without talents of an intellectual kind. The vanity which led him first to appear in Naples as an actor, singer, and charioteer, and later carried him to Olympia, whence he returned richly adorned with prizes, was decidedly characteristic of his mental degeneracy.

Moral insanity in its furthest extreme is illustrated in the later Emperor Commodus. As a youth he displayed a lust and cruelty which amounted to mad fury. His whole pride was in his extraordinary bodily strength. To imitate Hercules, he often appeared clad in a lion’s skin and armed with a club. He appeared as a gladiator seven hundred and thirty-five times. His joy in murder knew no bounds. He often had the companions of his orgies slain from simple delight in bloodshed. It was a pleasure to him to bleed a man.

We not infrequently find degenerates who, in spite of their defective development, have brilliant talents in special directions; and such persons may attain high consideration on account of their achievements. Their endowments are, however, always one-sided, and, whatever their capacity, they are wanting in logical thought, energy, and force of will. Whether in these cases the hypertrophy or overgrowth of some parts, with consequent talents in certain departments, is to be regarded as a consequence of the general disturbance of the development--this partial capacity being gained at the expense of the development of other parts--or whether we have a highly refined organism in which particular parts are atrophied or backward in their development, we are at present unable to decide. Each opinion has something to support it from a theoretical standpoint, and it may be that both cases occur in fact, so that different causes lead to the same effect.

Sometimes such a partial development--limited, it may be, to a single intellectual capacity--is found in a mind that is otherwise a blank. There have been high-grade idiots who have had a decided talent for music or painting, and who have now and then accomplished something remarkable in one of these directions. An interesting example of an idiot with an enormous development in a narrow, intellectual line is that of the calculator Dase.

A partial gigantic growth is the somatic analogue of that partial mental development. Of this Ranke says:[89] “A light is thrown upon the morbid affinities of gigantic growth by the numerous cases in which partial gigantic growth has been observed. Single parts of the body, especially the extremities, sometimes attain immoderate dimensions. In rare cases, one entire half of the body has had a gigantic development. At other times a single limb, or only one hand or one foot, or even only one finger or one toe, has been affected.” Ranke explains partial gigantic growth, as well as partial dwarfing, as deformities due to perturbations of development during fœtal life. Here, then, is a perfectly exact somatic analogue of mental degeneracy. The same discord between single parts, the same disturbance of equilibrium, is due to the same general cause--disturbances of development during fœtal life.

It is well known that injuries to the heads of children originally sane produce mental degeneracy, and even complete idiocy. Many writers teach that such injuries have not infrequently caused hypertrophies of single mental faculties. Lombroso reports as follows: “Cases are by no means rare in which accidents, such as usually result in mental derangement, injuries of the brain, and fractures of the skull, have converted a perfectly commonplace soul into a man of genius. Giovambattista Vico in his youth fell to the ground from a high ladder, and was taken up with a fractured brain pan. Goetry, originally a simple chorister, became a great composer after a heavy beam had fallen on his head. Mabillor, who possessed very small capacities, attained all his greatness in consequence of a wound in his head. Hall, who narrates this, knew a Dane who was in his youth semi-idiotic, and who showed great talent after he had fallen from a ladder and had struck the ground headforemost.”[90]

The term “genius” appears to be applied by Lombroso, here as elsewhere, in a pretty broad sense. Moreover, in many such cases it is impossible to ascertain whether the mental development took place by reason of, or in spite of, the injuries of the head. It is certainly possible, according to the general analogies of degeneration, that a partial hypertrophy was occasioned by the accident. This seems the more presumable since analogous cases have been observed in somatic medicine. Thus Ballinger reports a case observed by von Buhl. It is that of the giant Thomas Hasler: “Thomas grew quite normally,” says Ballinger, “up to his ninth year. About that time he was kicked by a horse in the left cheek. He soon began to grow monstrously. He ate a great deal, particularly of butter and other fat fare, common enough in his country in the Bavarian mountains. At eleven Thomas was so large that he had to leave off going to school because the seats were not large enough. Gradually the bones of the skull and face thickened, and that not merely on the side where he had been kicked. After he was full-grown he ate little. Every motion he made involved effort and fatigue. He attained the age of twenty-five, the weight of three hundred and forty-one pounds, and the height of seven feet three inches.”[91]

The one-sided mental development of the degenerate, the brilliant gifts in special directions at the expense of the development of other psychical powers, is generally called “genius”; and this confusion of ideas, this confounding of those powerful minds whose high capacity of achievement consists in a general refinement of the psychical organism with those individuals of whom instability and mental discord are the characteristics, and whose partial mental overdevelopment is a consequence of derangements of growth, has, in no slight measure, contributed to the belief that there is a real affinity between genius and insanity--that is, that those great men who have always decided the fate of mankind are results of morbid conditions.

Between the instability or disturbance of the mental balance and the so-called normal average man there is, as we know, a gradual transition. No sharp line can be drawn here between mental health and mental disease. There is also a gradual series connecting fully endowed men of genius and those partially developed degenerates. But to establish any affinity between them on that account would necessitate an equal affinity between “normal average men” and common degenerates. The same reasoning would conclude an affinity between the Philistine and the degenerate who suffers from moral insanity or imbecility.

If we are to give the name of genius to the great men in different departments we might very well term a degenerate with partially conspicuous development a _pseudo-genius_ (_pseudogenie_). But to accomplish anything really great, a partial mental development is not enough. A correct combination and balance of all the mental faculties are needed to thread that thorny path and to climb the steep heights which lead to immortality. Those characteristics with which we have become acquainted in great men, that of concentrating undivided attention upon an object, indomitable energy and staying power, the unselfish, self-forgetting compulsion to create--these qualities are found in the degenerate either not at all, or in insufficient measure.

In those partially gifted degenerates, those pseudo-geniuses, certain typical characteristics are hardly ever wanting. In childhood they already show that vanity and self-sufficient arrogance, that foolhardy conceit which never leave them through life. While they are still schoolboys they speak contemptuously of the greatest men of art and science. Raphael and Titian were bunglers in their estimation. They compassionately shrug their shoulders over the “Philistine Schiller,” who ought long ago to have passed into oblivion. Goethe is no longer “up to the times,” and his creations have been “greatly overrated.” Such is the trash which they utter as boys. They learn nothing at school, partly because they are incapable and slothful, and partly because they are so convinced of their genius that they hold learning to be for them superfluous. They are of the opinion that much knowledge might damage their originality, their genius, and that their high inward merit needs no adventitious augmentation. They leave school as soon as convenient, but not to learn a trade or, by the study of years, to train themselves to any specialty. They enter the world at once as accomplished poets, writers, painters, or musicians. With the most secure self-confidence, which is never wanting to these subjects, they devote themselves to the most difficult departments. They write dramas, novels, and romances, paint, compose, feel themselves to be judges of art and critics, and write about matters far above their mental horizon.

Often enough their works carry the stamp of the silly and ridiculous. In place of the renown and applause upon which they had calculated, scorn and ridicule are their portion. But that will not shatter their faith in their own merit and genius. They rather complain that their fellow-men do not appreciate them or else envy their powers too much to acknowledge them. The truly great man who is in advance of his age and is not understood by his contemporaries feels an unaffected pain at that; but he wends his way as best he may, and perseveres in his endeavours as long as good sense permits him to do so, and very often longer. The degenerate, on the other hand, is soon discouraged by failure. He retires from society, considers himself a “misunderstood genius,” looks upon every man as his enemy, and develops in later years a decided mania of greatness and persecution.

Other degenerates have, partly by their higher gifts, partly by the want of discrimination of the community in which they live, greater success with their works. Their so-called “originality of genius,” which often enough deserves to be called original madness, is able to infatuate the multitude who fancy that the gabble of these persons makes a “new departure” in art and the beginning of a new epoch.

Well says Kant of this class of men: “But one guild of these so-called _men of genius_ (better, monkeys of genius) is placed under this shop sign; they speak the language of minds extraordinarily favoured by Nature, declare laborious learning and research to be dull-minded, and profess to have seized the spirit of all science at one clutch, and to dispense it in small doses, concentrated and strong. This race, cousins of the quacks and criers at fairs, is very prejudicial to progress in scientific and moral culture. They pronounce in decisive tones upon religion, politics, and morals, as if they were illuminated and adepts, envoys from the throne of wisdom, while their secret object all the time is to conceal the real poverty of their minds. What else is there to be done but to laugh and continue patiently at our industry, without regard to those mountebanks?”[92]

Not infrequently the perverse impulses and sensations of the degenerate are reflected in their artistic production. The Roman Emperor Commodus had a rough animal strength. He also had an impulse to bestial cruelty, and received pleasure and satisfaction from bloodletting and from the sufferings of others. Now, that impulse, that pleasure, and that satisfaction were marked in that strength of his. In like manner, degenerate writers have similar impulses and sentiments; and they give expression to them in their writings. Many modern literary men love to wallow round in sloughs and puddles, to sweep forward what is dirty and vulgar, and to amuse themselves with such things. This preference may in many cases be accounted for by such a perversion of the feelings and by a mental degeneracy. Other abnormal impulses, especially of a sexual origin, appear in the works of degenerates.

Instability and want of mental equilibrium hold the higher degenerates in a continual unrest. Of patience and perseverance they have next to none at all. They precipitate themselves with zeal into a subject, and very soon give it up. They are mostly occupied with themselves. The world and all it contains only so far interests them as it is the vehicle of their precious selves and what can hurt or help them. In everything they betray the same egoism. It is typical and characteristic of their souls. Nobler sentiments, demanding self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice, are alien to the degenerate. Hence they are unacquainted with the ideal feelings of friendship and love. Cicero says: “Amicitia non esse potest nisi inter bonos,” and he might well have added “et mente sanos.” Never among degenerates can such a bond of friendship be found as is frequent among great men. Conformably to the proverb, “Birds of a feather flock together,” degenerates are often attracted to one another. But their intercourse, rooted as it is in mere selfish interests and morbid impulses, is more like that of the inmates of a monkey’s cage than the self-forgetful and ideal friendship of men.

The degenerate ever remains a stranger in the world. To comprehend what goes on in the world, to understand and appreciate the acts of his fellow-men, one must be able to feel with them. But the degenerate is either wanting in the intellectual power necessary to comprehend what is taking place, or, if that be not his defect, then his feelings and sentiments are too narrow to enable him to make use of his perceptions. Hence, when the degenerate poet undertakes to paint the world, it is not the world we live in that he brings before us, but a fantastic invention of his brain, the counterpart of his morbid ideations. In case he belongs to the subjective class of poets, who embody in art their own sentiments and feelings, he gives us a peep into an abyss of aberrations and morbid sufferings.

It were vain to attempt an exhaustive description of the clinical appearances of degeneracy. The morbid symptoms are too manifold, the characteristics too diverse, the combinations of mental factors in disturbed equilibrium too numerous, and new phenomena are perpetually presenting themselves to the most experienced psychiatrist.

As an example of a degenerate painter who attained some consideration and was even the originator of a “new departure” in painting may serve the Frenchman Courbet, often called the “first realist.” According to Rosenberg,[93] who gives a somewhat detailed account of him, he had a very defective schooling, although his father sent him to Paris at the age of twenty to study law. His spelling was atrocious. “The sight of a book excited his anger, and he recoiled from the presence of an inkstand.” In the genuine imbecile style he ventured the following judgment upon the old masters while he was yet a student:

“Veronese was a superior man, a painter without weakness and without exaggeration, an honest painter. Rembrandt bewitches the intelligent and astounds the simple. Titian and Leonardo da Vinci are impostors. If one of these two were to come back to earth and were to pass through my studio, I should go for my knife. Ribera, Zurbaran, and Valasquez before all excite my admiration. Ostade and Craesbeek seduce me. Holbein I revere. As for Mr. Raphael, he has undoubtedly painted some interesting portraits, but I can find no thought in him.”

He possessed a quite monstrous self-love, and loved best to paint his own portrait. “He imagined he had an Assyrian profile, and that imperative idea only strengthened his preference for his own physiognomy.” A visitor to an exhibition of his pictures remarks: “With three or four exceptions, all the rest represent Courbet himself--‘Courbet bowing,’ ‘Courbet promenading,’ ‘Courbet standing still,’ ‘Courbet lying down,’ ‘Courbet seated,’ ‘Courbet dead,’ Courbet everywhere. Nothing but Courbet was to be seen.”

In his morbid vanity he endeavoured, in spite of his slight mental capacity, to get himself talked about in reference to every possible subject. Rosenberg reports: “In his immoderate vanity he boasted that since the cross of Christ no other cross had been so much talked about in the world as his own.” His letter to the minister,[94] which had been composed for this illiterate man by one of his friends, he had concluded with bombastic phrases which sufficed to crown him, in the eyes of the Irreconcilables, with the civic garland of an incorruptible republican. “I am fifty years old,” he wrote, “and I have ever lived a free man. Let me end my life in freedom. When I am dead, it must be said of me: This man never belonged to a school, nor to a church, nor to an institution, nor to an academy--above all, never to a government, not even to the government of liberty.”

Courbet played an extremely ridiculous part in the year 1870, as a member of the Commune, at the pulling down of the column of the Place Vendôme.

“Before the court-martial, the poor, vain soul did all he could to repel or at least to mollify the charge brought against him. He was punished with that with which he had erred. He was not a bad man but a mere simpleton, whom his intolerable self-love had led into a path where he did not belong. He regarded himself as a universal man, when he was at best only a painter. His too highly rated and too much disparaged works had made him known and had enabled him to live comfortably. His absolute want of fancy, the insurmountable difficulty which he felt of ‘composing’ a picture, had brought him to found the so-called ‘realism’--that is to say, the exact reproduction--of natural objects, without distinction, without choice, as they presented themselves to view. Men attacked the ideas of Courbet. His pictures were sent back from the _Salon_. He proclaimed himself a martyr, sincerely considered himself to be persecuted, and so became a great man. People were wrong; they should have left him a free field and not tried to render innocuous the revelations of an undoubtedly imperfect, yet in many respects interesting talent. Courbet became a sort of leader of a school, or, rather, head of a sect. Many nobodies flocked about him and recognised him as their master. By the side of these naïve persons, who dreamed of wishing to paint without having learned to paint, were grouped banterers who liked to laugh, and for whom Courbet was a standing source of delight. They flattered the vanity of this heavy-witted peasant, who replaced wit with malignity, drove him to all sorts of follies, told him he was a national economist, a moralist, a philosopher, and a statesman, and encouraged him to speak, while they drank the beer to which he treated for the sake of finding listeners.” Again: “The painter was of the opinion that the glory of the emperor interfered with his own, for his pictures seemed to him more important than victories, than the _concordat_, or than the _code civil_.”

After he had been condemned by the court-martial to six months’ imprisonment for the overthrow of the column of the Place Vendôme and had served out his time, he often called out boastingly in the streets and on other occasions: “I destroyed your column. I will pay for it.” Finally he was taken at his word, and again accused. He was obliged to flee. After long negotiations an agreement was reached between him and the Government, according to which he was to pay annually ten thousand francs. He soon after died suddenly.

Here, then, was a mental degenerate who, in spite of his pathological action of mind, possessed unquestionable talent, but, owing to lack of ideas of his own, and his incapacity to produce anything independent, had to content himself with reproducing what he saw.

This art of mimicry in itself, joined to that kind of “realism” which endeavours to elevate the ugly and to suppress the beautiful, necessarily produced, for a time, the illusion of originality, with some, perhaps, of genius. Thus it came to pass that Courbet was almost the founder of a school.

A great number of degenerates are found in literature. Lombroso has collected a list of such cases and given them the name of _graphomaniacs_. This is not a very happy designation, for, according to the analogy of the other manias--kleptomania, pyromania, etc.--_graphomania_ ought to mean the irresistible passion to write. It would refer to the physical action, and would depend upon the quantity of writing performed. But the majority of Lombroso’s cases are distinguished by the peculiar contents of the writing, and a special compulsion to write much only appears in a few cases.

The passion for writing is found in different forms of disease, and there are frequent opportunities to see it in the asylums. A patient whom I myself had occasion to observe, a woman suffering from paranoia, had formed a system of delusions upon which a new religion was to be founded. She was constantly occupied in the erection of churches and schools, and wrote about these things almost all day. During several years she had filled a great number of _cahiers_, and wrote ceaselessly letters to magistrates, personages of high position, etc., in which she frequently covered the inside of the envelopes with characters. What made the case particularly interesting was that she had constructed her own language and her own characters, of which she commonly made use.

Another case, which was that of a mathematician, was a worn-out _hebephrenia_, or insanity of youth, which had passed over into terminal dementia. The patient answered all questions with a few stereotyped phrases. Going into his room, you would usually find him working at his table. He had, in the course of years, written a stately number of blank books full, and that in so small a hand that a magnifying glass was necessary to make them out. He sometimes wrote mathematical formulæ which for the most part could not be deciphered.

The common symptom of these cases might very well be termed _graphomania_. Of course, like the other manias, it is only a symptom, a partial phenomenon of the disease, for we know by experience that no monomania exists. Such a mania can not form a disease _sui generis_.

Lombroso, who repeatedly speaks of “monomaniacs,” describes “graphomania” as an independent malady. He says: “A sort of mental disorder which I might call graphomania forms the link between the fool of genius, the sane man, and the insane proper.”

Both Lombroso’s “fools of genius” and “graphomaniacs” are mental degenerates. In all these people there is a disturbance of the mental balance, a disproportion between impulse and intellect, and in most cases a marked lowering of intelligence, a general weakness of mind.

Lombroso divides his graphomaniacs into different classes. Of one he says: “These are given to excesses, whether of abstemiousness or of unbridled appetite for food also to the most singular sexual excesses, which I have cursorily noticed in my work upon Insane Love (paradoxal, ideological, zoölogical love). They also have singular fondness for dogs, cats, birds, etc., and still more singular inclinations to tear up and destroy, say, costly ornaments. They throw themselves from moving railway trains. They shun the light and only go about at night, and not even then unless provided with a sunshade. They fear abode in closed rooms so much that they faint if they hear doors shut; or else they hate being in the open air, and refuse to cross public squares,” etc. Further on we read: “These men are often overmastered by a hatred of their fellow-beings. They withdraw into remote regions, and flee all contact with men (claustrophilia). Others, again, although they prolong existence in an evil life, crave society, whose cancers they are; long for the admiration of others, be it only such as can be excited by the most insignificant things, such as collections of buttons and of umbrellas. They let slip no means, however ridiculous, to draw attention to themselves. They write love-letters to themselves and read them publicly, or smoke Trabucos while they suffer hunger. They strive for the first places in the _cafés_ and in the political clubs. They found little literary societies, and the more ignorant they are of the matter in which for the moment they are engaged, the warmer is their apostleship. Sometimes they are, from their youth up, incorrigibly cruel, hypocritical, and thievish, make swindling and thieving their pleasure, and are amazed when they are punished, although they perfectly know the terms of the law. But the vanity of these men is almost incredible. They commit crimes to satisfy this vanity, and they do not care that what they do destroys their whole credit, nor that it does not bring them the honour of which they are so desirous.” This is a picture of typical cases of mental degeneracy, as we have already learned. The symptom of graphomania is, according to Lombroso’s own picture, not even particularly marked. There is a general imbecility which may express itself in the most various ways. Of another class of cases Lombroso says: “The intellectual fools are tireless talkers who are often unable to bring their own flow of speech to an end. They speak without logical connection, and almost always reach conclusions contradicting something else that they had said. This happens more on some days than on others.” Of these subjects Lombroso says: “I may add that they are mostly incurable, since their malady is congenital. They have the morbid and eccentric elements of genius, without its judgment and creative power.”