Chapter VI: Part 6

He then describes another category of subjects, the “foolish graphomaniacs.” Of the only case he adduces he says: “Stewart, the remarkable author of the New System of Physical Philosophy, who struggled through the world in order to discover the cynosure of truth, asserted that all kings and potentates of the earth had entered into a solemn pact to annihilate his work. Hence he sent his friends copies of it with the request that they would bury them, well packed, in secret places, and only reveal the localities on their deathbeds.” In all probability there was in this case a system of delusions; and, so far as one can found a diagnosis on these few words, it would seem to be a case of paranoia. How Lombroso can call it a special disease, above all a “foolish graphomania,” is not comprehensible. The same thing is true of the following case, which is either one of paranoia or of imbecility: “Martin William was the brother of Jonathan, who, in a fit of insanity, set fire to the cathedral of York, and likewise of that John, who invented a new method of painting. He published numerous works to demonstrate the possibility of perpetual motion. Having convinced himself by thirty-six experiments that no perpetual motion was possible, he experienced in a dream that God had elected him to discover the principle of all things and the perpetual motion, which subject he again treated in numerous writings.” Lombroso continues: “These people would not appear to be insane were it not that, along with the appearance of thoroughness and of resolute persistency in one and the same pursuit (characteristics which they share alike with monomaniacs and with men of genius), their writings never renounce absurdities, continual contradictions, loquacious, foolish verbosity, and another tendency--which we have found to be the strongest of all in insane men of genius--I mean boundless vanity.” This is as much as to say that these people would not appear insane if they were not what they are; for, according to Lombroso’s own description, they are degenerate, imbecile, weak-minded men. That they share a characteristic with men of genius is not accurate, for, as Lombroso says, their thoroughness and perseverance are only a false appearance, while genius really possesses these qualities.

If we are to attempt a division of degenerates into classes, the only way will be to follow the plan of Morel and use the psychological disproportion as our _directrix_, and thus bring degenerates with deficient intelligence, with excessive or perverted impulses, fancy, feeling, etc., under separate heads. To divide them upon the ground of a not distinctly prominent symptom would be a regress rather than a progress in our science. Perhaps the course which impels Lombroso to select the particular symptom of writing much may be that this symptom is the only one which can be communicated through those writings to posterity and to the researcher in its whole extent, while others--such as the numerous manias, weaknesses of mind, perversities, and other weaknesses--require direct observation.

Lombroso’s designations, “intellectual fools,” “foolish graphomaniacs,” “fools of genius,” and “foolish geniuses” lead only to misunderstandings and confusion of ideas, while it should be our task to make our terms as precise as possible and keep them sharply distinguished from one another.

However various the clinical picture of the degenerate may be, yet, in consequence of its common cause in all cases--namely, mental instability, discord of the mental faculties--the cases always have something to characterize them, and they give to the competent observer no occasion to confound them with great, fully developed, and harmonious minds.

INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION UPON GENIUS.

It is a known fact that the higher an animal stands in the scale of development, the more helpless and dependent it is immediately after birth. The lowest of all classes of animals, the _Amœba_, as soon as it comes into separate existence by partition, possesses all the properties and faculties which are requisite to its life, or which it ever can attain. The higher the genus is, the longer the time after the commencement of individual life before the animal is capable of caring for itself independently. The highest class, the Mammal, needs maternal nourishment longer than any other being. The highest organized creature, Man, develops more slowly and needs parental care longer than anything that lives on earth. Among men, again, the rapidity of individual development is in inverse proportion to the general state of civilization of the people from whom that individual springs. Savages develop faster than children among civilized peoples, and the woman comes to maturity earlier than the male.

The rapidity of development can afford no indication of the later mental powers. A child which at seven years of age is uncommonly large does not necessarily continue to grow in the same proportion. On the contrary, it may turn out a short man; and we often see boys who are small up to sixteen develop into tall men. Quite as little can we predict that a precocious child will show distinguished ability when it grows up; and backward children sometimes develop remarkable minds. Linnæus, the great botanist, in his youth so neglected his classical studies that his parents intended, on account of his poor progress at school, to apprentice him to a shoemaker. But a physician remarked the boy’s talent, and induced them to send him to the gymnasium.[95] Newton was a dreamy child and for a long time was at the foot of his class.

Far more important than the rapidity of mental development--upon which vain parents are unfortunately apt to lay too great stress, to the detriment of the child--is the uniformity of formation of the different psychical factors. We have seen that mental degeneracy does not necessarily imply a small degree of general development. It mostly consists of a defective proportionality of the different mental elements, and a disturbance of inward balance.

The correct proportion of the impulses to the inhibiting intellect; the equilibrium between the understanding and the feelings, between the will, the attention, and the unconscious action of the brain, of the fancy; a faculty of apprehension and memory in concord with the other mental functions; a corresponding action of association--all these are conditions for sane mental action.

Sollier[96] rightly remarks that the state of the idiot is neither like that of the child nor like that of the animal, for in the child, as well as in the animal, the mental characters are suitably proportionate, and the expression of the soul shows nothing morbid.

A rational education must therefore aim chiefly at a uniformity of mental development. Especially must it attend to this in the treatment of children that have shown at home a defect of mental balance. There are children that from earliest youth have disproportionately strong impulses. There are others in whom there is a particularly strong development of feeling and an unusually tender heart. If such children do not receive suitable treatment, their state, which as a rule is somewhat exalted of itself, may easily pass into hysteria. On the other hand, many children have very little feeling. In common parlance, they are “cold natures.” In others, again, the faculty of concentrating their thoughts is more weakly developed than their other qualities.

It is a moot question what influence education can have upon character, especially how far it is able to correct disturbances of the process of growth, and thus to prevent the occurrence of mental diseases. An opinion defended by many is, that education has no influence whatever upon the formation of character. It is said that genius, under all circumstances, be the education good or bad, will “force its way.” On the other hand, “born criminals,” it is said, in spite of the best education, are destined to become criminals. All this I hold to be absolutely false. But the contrary opinion, which makes the character a product of education alone, and the whole mental life to depend upon nothing but the experiences of the individual concerned, is a downright absurdity. This is maintained by a schoolmaster, Gustav Hauffe,[97] who takes for his motto, “Man is mentally only what education has made him to be.” Dressed out in vestments of the most fashionably scientific cut (his first part is entitled “Analytical and Synthetical Psychology”), the author communicates his discovery that at birth the mind of man is a _tabula rasa_ and that the diversity of its later development is to be referred exclusively to differences of education and of experience. Were it possible to educate two men exactly alike, they must, he thinks, grow up precisely alike. Were a child to receive precisely the same education and the same impressions as fell to the lot of Goethe, he would necessarily become just as great a man. The doctrine is that the whole mental action is analyzable into impressions of sense, their associations, and ideas due to associative suggestion. From this discovery the author undertakes to demonstrate the theorem that “Schiller could never have written Laura am Klavier if no piano and no Laura had existed.” To examine such nonsense would be a waste of time. A windmill can not make meal unless it is fed with grain, as every child knows, but, nevertheless, it is not the grain that runs the mill, but the wind. Were all impressions withheld from a man as far as possible, as in the case of Caspar Hauser, it is certain that, even in a man capable of developing genius, mental action would be at a standstill. But for all that, impressions by themselves could effect nothing were there no mental powers to react upon them. The best education can not convert a dullard into a sage nor an idiot into a genius.

To treat of the importance of education and set forth its psychological principles in full would be the theme of a large book. I limit myself here to some considerations which lead me to regard education as of great importance for the development of character, particularly in the case of a genius.

A child that from its earliest childhood is accustomed to suffer want and to see vice and cruelty necessarily has its feelings dulled. How far in later life heart and sentiment may appear will depend upon the proportion which the evil influence may bear to its original and natural disposition. A child in which the exercise of the intellect is altogether neglected will, at all events, be in later years less strong than if it had had a solid training of the understanding. The same thing, _mutatis mutandis_, is true for the other mental characteristics--attention, the power of apprehension, memory, the action of association and suggestion, fancy, will, energy, perseverance, etc. All these powers are capable of being greatly affected by exercise and custom.

Experience shows that even with ordinary men impressions received in youth are the most durable, and in many respects may have a momentous influence upon the whole life. In a child endowed with genius this must be true in much higher measure, for such a child, even in its earliest years, observes surrounding events with marvellous acuteness; it assimilates its impressions much more thoroughly, and infers much more from them than an ordinary child. Moreover, owing to its lively fancy, it will be much more affected by all influences, whether good or bad.

Thus Nohl[98] says of Mozart: “Even as a child he was full of fire and life; and without the admirable education which his earnest and strict father gave him, he might have become the most reckless miscreant, so sensitive was he to every excitation to whose good or bad influence he was of an age to respond.” When Goethe in his sixth year heard of the great earthquake at Lisbon, in which sixty thousand persons were swallowed up in the twinkling of an eye, religious doubt arose for the first time within him, and his faith in the goodness of Providence was shattered.

Great men have in most cases shown uncommonly high mental capacity in their tenderest years. But this is not true without exception, for there have been geniuses who were quite ordinary children. On the other hand, it is a fact that frequently children that have matured early and seemed to be highly gifted have not in later years fulfilled the promise of their childhood. In part this may be a purely natural phenomenon, due to no outward causes. But in many cases the outward circumstances are traceable; and in particular a bad education has been to blame for the loss to the world of the fruits of, perhaps, an important genius.

Education is the foundation upon which the whole man is built up. Youthful impressions are not only decisive in their effect upon the development of character, but they may even induce a predisposition to diseases of the nerves and of the mind. It is altogether probable that, among the innumerable cases which are set down as hereditary nervous diseases, a considerable percentage is due less to actual inheritance than to the impressions which a child has received from a hysterical mother or from a father given to drink, combined with a defective education.

Von Krafft-Ebing[99] says: “Next to the organization of his brain, a man has to thank his education for the idiosyncrasy of his mental existence. Sometimes organization and education co-operate in calling forth psychopathic predispositions, for parents not only in procreation transmit an unfortunate organic constitution, but also upon the ground of this organization afflicted with morbid passions, moral faults, and eccentricities, further communicate their eccentricities and moral transgressions to their children by their bad example and by mistaken education.”

Griesinger[100] says: “We agree with Ideler in thinking that there are cases of so-called hereditary insanity which are not principally due to the transmission of an organic disposition. A later psychical propagation of characteristic peculiarities takes place. The child imitates the example of certain eccentricities and of certain bizarre and perverse tendencies and views of life; and this hinders the commencement of the development of a healthy soul harmonizing with the outward world. In this way hysteria may be communicated from a mother to a daughter. So, too, may foolish or half-foolish parents infect their children with mental distortions; and so passionateness and evil inclination may set their impress upon young minds. It is to be added that by such a state of the parents family life is often discomposed, and thus the co-operation of those happy circumstances which are essential requisites for the harmonious development of the child’s character is destroyed.”

It is not of the first consequence in education, especially with precocious children, what and how much the child shall learn; for the lacunæ of knowledge can, by the exercise of energy, always be filled up. But the faculty of apprehension, the capacity for logical thought, attentive concentration, close observation, etc., are things which must be exercised from youth up; and it is very difficult to make good in later years any deficiency which education may have left in these respects.

Care must be taken that the bodily training does not lag behind the mental. This is specially requisite for precocious children. Their ambition must be restrained within limits. They must not be allowed to give themselves over to enthusiastic dreamings. Conceit and vanity should be checked by hard facts. Moreover, such children are particularly liable to a too early awakening of sexual impulses and other sexual irregularities which require the closest attention from their tutors. It is of great importance that children should early appreciate the fundamental conceptions of morals, love of truth, the obligation of a promise, unselfishness, etc. Yet too great an emphasis upon these things is to be avoided, since the contrary effect may easily be produced, inasmuch as for the attainment of the desired result love and faith on the part of the child are requisite above all. Of the greatest importance for the formation of character are the development of the heart, refinement of feeling and sentiment, which must be implanted in the child from its earliest childhood. “Much can be effected under unfavorable circumstances by an intelligent education. This must be adapted to the individual and free from pedantry. It should be directed not to the formation of the intellect alone, but also to that of the heart. This is the point in the importance of which pedagogy, rightly conceived and treated, joins with the doctrine of heredity.”[101]

On children of lively fancy and fine feelings stories about fabulous things and supernatural phenomena often have a bad effect, above all when they are made use of to put children into a fright. In some dispositions such methods of education may induce severe hysterical states. “This detestable method of bringing up,” says Mosso,[102] “has not yet disappeared; children are to this day agonized with stories of Knecht Ruprecht, of fabulous monsters, werewolves, magicians, and sorcerers. Every minute somebody says to children: ‘He will eat you up’; ‘This bites you’; ‘Call the dog’; ‘There is the chimney-sweep’; and a hundred other terrors which bring them to tears and deform their friendly character by distressing them with constant threats, by a system of torture which makes them timid and weak.”

Children that are inclined to dreaminess, in whom fancy is active and threatens to dispossesses the pure intellectual action, require particular care, so that the child may as early as possible receive a strong impression of the realities of life, and that there is in those realities a stern and inflexible order, and as truthful a general idea of what that order is like as possible. Pains must be taken to prevent nurses’ tales, religious mysticism, and mythological fictions from overexciting the fancy. It is in the knowledge of real things and facts--first, the sense that there is a reality altogether different from fancies; second, that it is undeviating in its order; third, something of what that order is like--this must be the turning point of education for imaginative children. If these precautions are not taken by their parents, those children of fancy will be filled with images utterly foreign to the real nature of things. Then, in later years, when life presents itself to them in its naked truth, and castles in the air come tumbling over their heads, they will find themselves astray in the world, with nothing to protect them but fine words unintelligible to the citizens, and will be hooted at and run down as cranks and monkeys of genius.

While the superintendence of the scientific education is the affair of the father and of the pedagogue, it is the mother’s duty to look after the formation of the heart and the sentiments. And what a momentous charge is this! Think what that is to a man! Think what it is to a man of genius! And what wonder is it that it should be popularly believed that all great men were remarkably influenced by their mothers? Alas! Alas! How many of the women of to-day see in this holy duty their highest throne, their completest royalty? Modern economy compels many women to work, and therefore to economize their intercourse with their children. In such a case the fault lies with our social institutions and not with the poor mothers, although there are even hard working women, who somehow contrive to care for the corporal well-being of their children, and for their spiritual health and nourishment too.

But how is it with well-to-do ladies, who have time and means enough to spend upon their children? Do they, for the most part, see in the education of their children the great purpose of life? Do they feel their highest bliss in self-forgetful, loving surrender of themselves to this natural office? Yes, there are such mothers; and the number of them measures the vitality of our civilization. They receive the supreme homage which is their due. They receive it in their persons, and it is extended to every woman who can be presumed to fulfil that function or to be about to fulfil it. The vulgar throng of women are not of that sort. Many women are honest enough to confess that the education of their children is burdensome to them and that they find no pleasure in it. They shift the irksome burden to the shoulders of a stranger. Some mothers are foolish enough to think that a mother’s love could be replaced by money. They believe that they fulfill their duty by seeing that their children’s food is wholesome and their clothes handsome. Perhaps they hire accomplished governesses or send their children to expensive boarding-schools. But can a stranger ever replace a true mother’s heart? No, never. Children who have lost a mother are to be pitied. But children whose mother lives and is only such a guardian to them as those above mentioned are in far worse plight. The former can at least carry in their hearts the ideal of a mother’s love; but for the latter even this is torn to rags, and with it one of the anchors of life is lost. Many mothers use their children to satisfy their personal vanity. From this motive they rig them out like monkeys and flaunt around with them; they teach them speeches like parrots, so as to be able to boast of them and occupy attention with them, and that they can tell themselves that they have been doing their children some good. It is not the ennobling of the childish heart that is the motive of such mothers’ action, but the satisfaction of their own petty vanity.

I have already said that with children of high mental gifts and with precociously developed power of apprehension the influence of youthful impressions, as well as their whole education, is of uncommon importance for their after-life. Let us cast a glance upon the youth and education of some super-eminent men.

Of Goethe it is said:

“Seldom has a boy exhibited such completeness of human faculties. The multiplied activity of his life is prefigured in the varied tendencies of his childhood. We see him as an orderly, somewhat formal, inquisitive, reasoning, deliberative child, a precocious learner, an omnivorous reader, and a vigorous logician who thinks for himself--so independent that at six years of age he doubts the beneficence of the Creator, at seven doubts the competence and justice of the world’s judgment. He is inventive, poetical, proud, loving, volatile, with a mind open to all influences, swayed by every gust, and yet, while thus swayed as to the direction of his activity, master over himself.”[103] One sees from this short picture what enormous influence education and the impressions of childhood must have had upon his after-life. His mind was “open to all influences, swayed by every gust.” The careful education which young Goethe received aided in no small degree in the unfolding of his mighty genius. His father conducted the education with strictness and conscientiousness, and the scientific instruction was systematically arranged.

His excellent mother knew how to mould her child’s tender heart in its early childhood, how to bring his fancy into exercise, and how to impress him with a sense of the noble and the beautiful. Her relations with her children are truly touching. She herself reports how she told stories every evening to little Wolfgang and his sister Cornelia: “I could not be tired of telling them as long as he was not tired of listening. I represented Fire, Water, Earth, and Air as beautiful princesses, and gave a meaning to all that goes on in Nature. I believed in it myself more implicitly than my listeners did; and when we pretended there were roads between the stars, and that we should some time live in stars, and thought what great spirits we should meet up there, nobody was ever more eager than I for the hour of story telling with the children, nor more vexed when some invitation I had received prevented it. There sat I, and there was he devouring me with his great black eyes; and if the fate of any favourite did not go right according to his sense, I could see how the angry vein would swell in his forehead and how he would choke down his tears. Many a time he would interfere before I could bring about the turn of affairs, and would say, ‘I hope, mother, that the princess will not marry the accursed tailor even if he did slay the giant?’ Then if I made a halt and put off the catastrophe to the next evening, I could be sure that he would repeat everything aright up to that point, and where my imagination fell short it would often be patched out by his. Then, if I took up the threads of fate on the next evening and turned them according to his plan and said, ‘You guessed it! that is what happened!’ he would be all fire and flame, and his little heart could be seen to beat under his ruffle. He was his grandmother’s pet, and to her he would confide all his ideas of how the story would go; and from her I would learn how it must run to conform to his wishes; and in this way there was a secret diplomatic transaction between us which neither of us betrayed to the other. So I had the satisfaction of continuing my tales to the delight and astonishment of my auditor, who, without recognising that he was the author of all my marvellous occurrences, saw with glowing eyes events fall out according to his keenly desired plans, and greeted the finishing of it with enthusiastic applause.” What unspeakable thanks Goethe owed this mother, who so completely gave herself up to the care and love of her children!

Schiller, according to the accounts of his biographers, had in his youth no extraordinary mental qualities, though his capacity was good and his diligence intense. “The boy,” we read, “felt that without diligence no mastery can be won.” His education, which his strict father most conscientiously superintended, was exceedingly solid and thorough. His extremely rich-hearted--or, as the Germans say, _gemüthvolle_--mother surrounded him with an atmosphere of love. She had plainly a great share in his education. Scharffenstein, a youthful friend of Schiller, says of her: “Her son was the image of her in figure and physiognomy. Her dear face was very feminine and mild. Never was there seen a more admirable, domestic, and feminine woman.” Körner, in his biography, says of Schiller: “In many respects he was a backward child, and certainly was not one of those who gratify the vanity of their parents by precocious acquirements and talents. But even in his childhood his soft heart, combined with a firm will, his good faith, and his attachment to those who had won his love, together with his easily roused fancy, were plainly discernible.” His remarkably intelligent father and his warm-hearted mother supplied him with a superior education. “He had from childhood a ruling bent for poetry; but his father considered his own duty to be merely to tolerate his son’s first essays, not to encourage them. He had too lofty an ideal of art to permit himself, in a case so near to him, not to exercise due care lest a mere inclination should be mistaken for an avocation.”

Raphael, though he lost his mother in his eighth and his father in his eleventh year, received a good education and rounded development. Galileo, Newton, Linnæus, Fénelon, Arago, early showed acute understanding, and all were liberally educated. Haydn, though born in narrow circumstances, received an exceptional and loving education. He expressed his gratitude for it in later years, and was most strongly attached to his mother, who had always most tenderly cared for his well-being. Liszt was brought up with the utmost love and care. His father early recognised his genius, and once exclaimed: “You are elect of destiny, and will realize that ideal of art which cast a vain glamour over my youth. In you I wish to rejuvenate and propagate my soul.” Franz was a weakly child in body and was in need of a good deal of parental concern, and it was prodigally bestowed. His father kept a diary devoted to him “with the minute and anxious punctiliousness of a tender father.” Washington’s father, dying when George was eleven years old, had such confidence in the highly intelligent and prudent mother, that he gave her, by his will, full control of all the property of the children until they should come of age. This lady fulfilled every duty of a mother with the utmost love and tenderest concern, and gave them an excellent education. Kant said: “I shall never forget my mother, for she planted and tended the first germs of good in me. She opened my heart to the impressions of Nature. She awakened and expanded my ideas; and her teachings have had an enduring and wholesome influence upon my life.”

Heine had an admirable mother, whose only endeavour it was to transmit to her children the excellent education that she had herself received in her father’s house. Her favourite authors were Goethe and Rousseau. The reading of Emile had made education rather a hobby of hers. She herself taught the boys to read and write, and most carefully superintended their instruction. “To her,” we read in a biography of Heine, “he clung with an affecting child-love. He sang her praises in charming poems, and referred to her continually in his writings with the sincerest piety.”

A genius of whom Heine says that “he was one of the greatest German poets, and among all our dramatists nearest approached Shakespeare,” was ruined by vice and debauchery. This was Dietrich Grabbe, whose father was director of a house of correction and of a pawn shop. He suffered the gloomiest impressions in his childhood, and these were increased by his neglected and perverse education. A biographer of the poet accuses his mother of having led him to drink, but Heine defends the woman from this charge, saying that it is false. Still, even Heine, in his attempt to rehabilitate the honour of the mother of his colleague, says: “She was a rough dame, the wife of a turnkey, and in caressing her wolf cub, Dietrich, she perhaps sometimes scratched him a bit with the claws of a she-wolf.” What might a genius like Grabbe not have become if his education had been conducted by a mother like Goethe’s?

A multiform genius, equally gifted in poetry, music, and painting, was E. T. A. Hoffmann. His parents separated after a short and unhappy marriage, and his mother, who with her children was invited to her mother’s, was prevented by bad health from concerning herself with their education. It was left to the grandmother and an uncle, and was so conducted as to exercise in many respects a decidedly unhappy influence upon the formation of the boy’s character. It dealt with all that regards the formation of the intellect and the information of the memory. He received superior instruction in the sciences and the arts. But the mother’s influence was wanting. The formation of the character and of the heart was neglected. The pedantic peculiarities of the uncle served as motive to the boy’s satiric pencil and leaning toward the bizarre. To the remonstrances which his friend Hippel addressed to him concerning his disrespectful deportment to his relatives he replied: “What luck have I had with my relatives? If I had had people like you for my father and my uncle I would not behave so.” In spite of his genius, his works show a craziness for which his perverse education is sufficient to account. At last he gave himself over to drink, and that not from need or anxiety, with which he had certainly been acquainted, but just at the time when fortune smiled upon him and he had been absolved from all sordid cares.

Schopenhauer had a mother mentally gifted indeed, but cold. In his early youth an antagonism arose between mother and son. When he showed her his first work--The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason--she ironically remarked: “A book for apothecaries, is it not?” She was herself an authoress, and he replied: “My books will live after yours have long been relegated to the lumber room.” She retorted: “Your books will never go to the lumber room, because nobody will buy them at all.” This want of motherly love may well have had more than a slight influence upon the character and later life of the philosopher. Much in his life might have shaped itself otherwise if he had been able to look back upon a youth beautified by a mother’s love. Perhaps the repellent coldness of his mother laid the foundation for his subsequent disparagement of women.

Rousseau’s mother died at his birth. His father was a poor watchmaker who could not concern himself much about the education of his son. When the father had to flee on account of an affair of honour, the son went into a boarding-school, where he was treated hardly and unjustly. Later he was apprenticed to an engraver, and in that situation he read during his leisure all the books in a circulating library. Being ill-treated by his master, he left him, and at the age of fifteen wandered about Savoy until he was recommended by a Catholic priest to Madame de Warens. She was a very good-hearted but morally weak woman, who spoiled her _protégé_ exceedingly, and soon converted him from an adopted son into a lover. Such youthful impressions must, it is plain, have had a very disadvantageous influence upon the character of Rousseau. Many an absurdity of his later life is to be attributed to his unfortunate youth. How far his bad education, or rather his total want of education, may have acted upon the later development of the derangement of his mind is a question not to be decided with certainty.

Byron’s parents having separated, he was educated, or rather not educated, only by a mother of weak and overemotional character and an old nurse. The consequence was that he developed a very unstable character, became addicted to wild excesses, later suffered from hallucinations; and, in short, his genius did not unfold itself at all as it otherwise would have done.

These few examples are not offered as an inductive argument to establish a connection between education and character, as if it were otherwise unknown to us, as Lombroso, for example, gives lists to show that men of genius are commonly undersized, etc. They are offered as illustrations which, when we know what that connection is in ordinary cases, may disabuse the mind of an unfounded notion that genius is an exception to the general rule, and which will help us to imagine what the early life of a genius is, and how he is _more_ and not _less_ influenced by education than another boy would be, agreeably to the deductive arguments we have already set forth.

The circumstance that there have been men of genius (not so numerous, perhaps, as is supposed) who, in spite of an education, either defective or positively baleful, have worked their way to fame and public usefulness, does not in the slightest degree conflict with our proposition, for we can never know what degree of perfection they might have attained with a better education. We do know that some of those who ultimately impressed themselves upon the minds of their own age and upon those which succeeded it, had been at one time in danger of turning out nonentities in consequence of early influences, and were only awakened by some fortunate chance; and, finally, in anthropological questions we must not expect to find rules without any exceptions whatever.

Beethoven developed the greatest musical genius, although his youth was not cheerful and his education was very faulty. His father, himself a musician, took care to form his son in music in a thorough manner, especially as the son’s genius was recognisable in his childhood; but the moral impressions which he received as a boy were not calculated to influence happily a young heart or a character in process of formation. The father was given to drink; and Ludwig’s young friend, Stephan von Brenning, once saw the drunken father rescued from the police by the son in the open street. Certainly, such things could not fail to make their mark upon the still plastic character. Nohl says, “The reticence and a certain defiant spirit of his youth and manhood must be referred to such harsh experiences.”

Disadvantageous as a bad education may, even under ordinary circumstances, be expected to be to a genius, both with respect to his character and to his intellect, it will be still more fatal in case he has a strongly marked fancy with but moderate gifts in other directions. Children in whom inordinate fancy or feelings somewhat overbalance their other faculties may, nevertheless, by the aid of an energetic education, with continued training of their memory, attention, will, etc., be made productive and capable men, while without a rational education they would fall into the category of pseudo-geniuses or fools of genius.

Thus we see the enormous importance of education--not merely school instruction, but the impressions of the family circle upon the child and the youth. Especially momentous for the child’s later destiny is the mother’s part in education. Every innovation in our social habits tending to diminish the mother’s large share in the education of her children ought to be considered as prejudicial to the progress of humanity. Public schools answer well enough to teach children arithmetic and geography, but no institution can for one moment be thought of as a substitute for the bringing up by a whole-hearted mother. It is the natural vocation of the woman; and every wife who, from motives of ease, pleasure, or vanity, tries to shirk that duty, has, by an unnatural civilization, been brought to a lower moral level than her cat or her slut, either of which, by instinct, surrenders itself ungrudgingly to its maternal duties. Oh, mothers, take these things to heart! Learn to recognise that no higher or nobler task is presented to a human being than the self-forgetting and love-abounding education of one’s own children. Nature herself sanctifies this duty, and upon its performance the destiny of the race depends.

Before I leave this subject, let me animadvert to a phenomenon interesting in many respects--that of the precocious child. What is a precocious child? As I have already mentioned, the majority of great geniuses have shown in their childhood great mental capacities, which, according to their inborn dispositions, were specially developed in one direction or another. A child whose capacity in a special branch is so high that it is able to perform things which “astound the multitude” is generally called an “infant phenomenon” or precocious child. It is an established fact of experience that, with very few exceptions, precocious children are found exclusively in the branch of practical music. This fact is not so much due to the earlier development of musical genius, for Raphael, Michel Angelo, and Thorwaldsen equally showed in their early childhood a very uncommonly great gift for their art. But were they able “to astound the multitude”? The performance of a precocious child can only astound when the multitude is able to compare the fine result with the youth of the performer. A child, be it never so gifted, is not at the apogee of its ability; but allowances are made for its years. The performance--unless, indeed, it be a very incomplex result, like the answer to an arithmetical problem, or a feat of memory--is in itself hardly to be called extraordinary even in the most phenomenal cases. But it is the circumstance that it is done by a child that makes it wonderful. The work of the child-poet or child-artist, whatever its genius, when abstracted from its authorship, will not amaze the multitude as a musical performance will do. The poem or picture endures, and thus can be subjected to criticism irrespective of the personality of the artist, whether the author be boy or man. It is different with musical execution. In the concert-hall the personality of the male or female artist exercises upon the public no inconsiderable influence of that kind which is generally designate by the term _suggestion_.

As I have already said, the artistic performance of a child is, in itself considered, always slighter than that of an accomplished artist. But to see a little seven-year-old boy seat himself at a piano before a vast or distinguished audience and play it with his little hands, that is what, as a natural phenomenon, not as a work of pure art, astounds the multitude.

Opinions may differ as to whether art institutions and associations ought to confine themselves strictly to striving after the highest pure art, in the faith that thereby the sentiment and heart of the nation may be ennobled, or whether they may admit, as a secondary purpose, the bringing before the public of anthropological curiosities. For my part, the circus rather than the concert-hall seems to me their proper place. Kant says: “A precocious genius of ephemeral existence, like Heinecke in Lübeck and Baratier in Halle, are departures of Nature from her rule, curiosities for a naturalist’s cabinet. They cause astonishment on account of their early age; but they often disappoint those who bring them forward.” Let everybody choose for himself what class of entertainments he prefers, and to that end I would send the curiosities to the curiosity shops.

But there is a rather more serious, not to say solemn, side to the public exhibition of precocities; and the psychiatrist would neglect a duty if he failed to refer to it. Remembering what the importance of education and childish impressions has been seen to be, let anybody picture to himself what the life of an “infant phenomenon” is, and what are the impressions that are made upon it. A wise education, in such a case, would primarily be directed to avoiding the evil consequences of vanity and of a deadening self-consciousness. But this poor victim of the crowd and of money-getting is covered every night with medals and decorations from shoulders to waist, and is exposed to the stupendous plaudits of a brilliant assemblage. His childish heart needs forming; all that is noxious should be screened from his imagination; but instead of that, newspaper puffs and the nauseously indiscriminate praise of society blunt his feeling and nip his nobler sentiments in the bud. The consequence of this--bad education, as I was about to call it, but that is not the word for it--this wicked ill-treatment, is the destruction of the genius of almost every such child. They are not taught that not even genius can climb the rugged steeps of Parnassus without diligence and labour. They are told that they are perfect, and that their performances are above criticism. But when, at last, they have to appear, no longer in the child’s stockings and black velvet frock, but in the man’s dress-coat, that nimbus round the phenomenon melts away; and then it is perceived that the development of their genius has undergone mischievous perturbations. The character is unformed; the mental balance all out; and, in short, the wonderful child is, after all, nothing but a fool. No empty theory is this, but manifold experience. Such fools, who in their childhood were driven about the world to the sound of drum and trumpet, are numerous. It is high time that judicious men should protest against the unspeakable outrage which vain and mercenary parents and unscrupulous impressarios, who look upon a child of genius as nothing but an article of trade, commit upon these precocities.

The defenders of this abuse tell us that Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn were all infant prodigies. But what of that? If a physician recommends that our children should eat wholesome food and breathe good air, will you retort, “Pshaw! I know of several children that ate the most unwholesome things, were exposed to all sorts of bad influence, and yet they grew up all right and are marvels of rugged health; so you see it makes no difference how children are brought up?” Besides, Mozart and Mendelssohn were not treated like the youthful prodigies of to-day. I have already mentioned what an intelligent father Mozart had, and how, in spite of his son’s public appearance, in accordance with the morals of those days, he gave him a superior education. Mendelssohn’s teacher, old Zelter, always had it at heart to preserve his scholar’s childlike modesty and to guard him against self-conceit. And then, how much, after all, did these children play in public compared with the professional tours of the precocious child of to-day? Yet, notwithstanding the comparative infrequency of the performances, those art journeys certainly had no happy influence either upon Mozart or upon Beethoven. Mozart lived all his life in a highly wrought state of the nerves, and died at the meridian of life with a fatally diseased brain. The sad influence of the dreary youth of Beethoven upon the development of his character has already been noticed.

We hear it said that precocious children in poor circumstances have no other way of getting the money requisite for a rational education than by such concert tours. Were this assertion verified, it would be time that such a shocking state of things were put to an end. In the “land of the Almighty Dollar,” as it is called, besides a “Society for the Protection of Animals” there is a “Society for the Protection of Children,” invested with certain powers by law; and not long ago, when a precocious child had been sent over from Germany to win dollars, the doors of the hall were closed by the authority of that society, and, much to the disgust of the Herr Impressario, whose business was damaged, public performances were prohibited. The wonderful child was sent home by a philanthropist, and with the child was sent a considerable sum of money, this being intrusted to the father, under the condition that the child should be provided with a thorough education and should not appear in public until he was grown up. It is to be hoped that the time is now not far distant when the destruction of a genius for the sake of material interests shall belong to the barbarities overthrown by civilization.

SECULAR HYSTERIA.

Hitherto mental states of individuals have been our chief study in this book. But collective phenomena of mental disturbance are likewise met with at several distinct periods of history. The influence which the insane have exerted upon different branches of human production and upon the general development of humanity has been already pointed out. We have particularly referred to the influence of individuals, such as weak-minded benefactors of the people, mad prophets, and the imbecile Roman emperors who displayed what is called moral insanity. But besides such individual phenomena there is a form of mental disease the peculiarity of which is that it attacks not isolated individuals, but epidemically entire communities, and in that way influences the development and metaphysical conceptions (_Weltanschauung_) of whole nations.

A correct recognition of such states will be of no slight value for the community; for along with the recognition comes, as we shall see, an indication of the way to improvement and remedy. Thus it becomes the task of modern psychiatry not only to treat individual patients, but also to observe society, and especially to keep guard against that phenomenon which ought to be termed Secular Hysteria (_Zeithysterie_).

It is a pretty widespread opinion that nervous diseases, and especially hysteria, have alarmingly increased during the last decades, and that they are about to increase much more. In all civilized countries, we are told, and in every stratum of the population, a weakness of the nervous system manifests itself of which our forefathers had no knowledge. Neurasthenia and hysteria spread wider and wider, like a devastating epidemic, attacking not merely the lower classes but just the “upper ten thousand.” It is educated society which is threatened with total overthrow by utter derangement of the nerves. “Whither is this to lead, and how is it to end?” lament some solicitous prophets who already see yawning before them the gulf by which the enervated human race is about to be swallowed up.

Let us weigh the reasons which occasion this apprehension. What real proof is there of this enormous increase of nervous diseases and of the continually progressive degeneration of civilized man? First of all, there are the statistics. “Numbers,” we have been told, “can not lie.” Perhaps not; but those who collect them may fasten upon them very seriously mistaken labels.

The assiduous statistician ascertains that the insane asylums contain more women than men. So far, so good. But if he tells us that more women are insane than men, he labels those numbers erroneously, for the inequality is really due to the fact that insane males die off, while insane females survive, relatively speaking. Suppose the statistics of different countries do show that the number of inmates of insane asylums is increasing out of all proportion to the growth of the general population, would it not be superficial in the extreme to conclude, without further data, that insanity was upon the increase? At present these statistics mean nothing more than that the number of patients in such institutions has considerably increased. But when we consider what great advances have been made in the diagnosis of mental diseases, and consider also that a great number of such cases, which were formerly treated unsuccessfully at home, are now treated in such institutions with good results, because there they are removed from the detrimental influences of familiar surroundings, while the proper means and methods for rational treatment are at hand, we shall find that the seemingly enormous increase of mental disturbances need not cause us uneasiness.

Other extensive statistical material for nervous diseases is afforded by the numerous dispensaries of the great cities; but no extended experience is required to teach that a large proportion of such cases would not appear if the patients had to pay fixed fees, and round ones, as they had to do in the good old times when physicians saw comparatively little of nervous diseases. Our grandmothers had their “headaches” and their “twitchings in the limbs” like the women of to-day; but they never dreamed of calling a doctor or going to the dispensary for such things, so that they were not “statistical material.”

In the dispensaries for nervous diseases there are numerous chronical patients who, becoming discouraged in one place, think they would like to try another doctor; and some of them make a round of sojourns in different hospitals. Each of them is counted as many times over in the statistics as there are places where he is treated. This perceptibly increases the numbers.

These considerations give some idea, though but a slight one, of the extreme difficulty of making even rough approximate inferences from sanitary statistics.

But certain observers tell us that exact enumeration is not required. Hysteria and degeneration of the race stare us, as they aver, daily in the face. In every department of human activity disorders of the nervous system are seen. The very style and methods of the art and literature of the day proclaim a general nervous prostration.

Max Nordau is the protagonist of this widespread opinion. In his eyes, mental degeneration has seized upon the majority of civilized men to such a degree that “the upper strata of urban population” form but a “suffering hospital.” The art, the poetry, the fiction, the philosophy of the day present the most manifold embodiments of degeneration and of secular hysteria.

Nordau admits, of course, that degeneration and hysteria have always existed. “But,” says he, “they formerly showed themselves sporadically, and had no importance in the life of the whole community. It was only the vast fatigue which was experienced by the generation on which the multitude of discoveries and innovations burst abruptly, imposing upon it organic exigencies greatly surpassing its strength, which created favourable conditions under which these maladies could gain ground enormously and become a danger to civilization.”[104] The conception of secular hysteria which advances epidemically and attacks whole classes is therefore, according to Nordau, only applicable to the present time; and of this he says: “We stand now in the midst of a severe mental epidemic; of a sort of black death of degeneration and hysteria.”[105]

But in declaring that in former times hysteria was but of sporadic occurrence and attained no importance for the life of society as a whole, Nordau falls into a grave error. Mental diseases, and especially hysteria, have, from the earliest times to the present, exercised a tremendous influence upon the current _Weltanschauung_ or metaphysical conception of the universe and upon the whole mental development, and that precisely because they not only occurred sporadically, but, as we shall soon see, attacked the masses in the form of epidemics, and so became of the highest significance and importance for the life of society as a whole.