Insanity and genius

THE ARENA.No. XLIII.

JUNE, 1893.

INSANITY AND GENIUS.DR. ARTHUR MaCDONALD.

Human beings may be classified, in a general way, intonormal and abnormal. By “abnormal” is meant departurefrom the normal. While the term “ abnormal ” often sug-gests ethical or sesthetical characteristics, it is here em-ployed with no such reference. Thus a great reformer anda great criminal are both abnormal in the sense of divergingmuch from the average or normal man.

Human abnormality may be divided into three generalforms —insanity, genius, and crime. The third form, “ crime,”includes all excessive degrees of wrong.

Assuming the natural history point of view, man shouldbe studied as we study all species below him. In an investi-gation, therefore, of insanity and genius, we must, as far aspossible, eliminate all those ethical and sesthetical ideas(however important) that we have been accustomed toassociate with these terms ; for an empirical study is con-cerned with facts, rather than with sentiments, emotions, orideals connected with such facts.

INSANITY.

Krafft-Ebing* defines insanity, from the anatomical pointof view, as a diffuse disease of the brain, accompanied withnutritive, inflammatory, and degenerative changes. Thedivision between mental and brain diseases is purely a prac-

* “ Psychiatric,” 1890.Copyrighted 1893, by the Arena Publishing Co.

2 THE AKENA.

tical one, and not strictly scientific. Mental diseases are aspecial class of cerebral diseases, and from a clinical stand-point are distinguished by psycho-functional disturbances.Insanity is not only a disease of the brain, but also a diseasedalteration of the personality. One difficulty in distinguish-ing between sanity and insanity is due to the fact that themanifestations of one can correspond exactly to those of theother. The first symptoms are not generally intellectual, butemotional ; there is abnormal irritability. The fluctuatingline between sanity and insanity, as frequently seen in publicand private life, can, says Krafft-Ebing, oscillate between theextremes of genius and mental disease. Such men showpeculiarities in thought, feeling, and action ; they are calledstrange or foolish because the great majority of men feel oract otherwise. So their combinations of ideas are uncommon,new, striking, and often interesting; yet they are not capableof making use of these new thoughts. Such individuals arenot yet insane, but still they are not quite right. They formthe passage over to insanity; they are on the threshold.They are so eccentric as to be said to have a strain of madnessin them. Maudsley * calls this an “ insane temperament ”

;

it is characterized by a defective or unstable condition ofnerve element, a tendency to sudden caprices, to act inde-pendently of the social organism ; a personal gratificationthat seems to others a sign of great vanity. But they are soengrossed in their own impulses as not to be conscious ofhow it affects others. In Maudsley’s opinion, this predispo-sition to insanity lies close to genius in some cases. He sayssuch pseudo-geniuses are numerous in public life; theybelieve themselves on the way to weighty discoveries andhumanitarian enterprises, which turn out to be unfruitful ;

some are inventors, improvers of the world, revolutionaryheroes, creators of new sects, to whose plans an agitatedpublic sometimes lends a willing ear, but whose work neces-sarily fails, because it is only a “ mental flash of a puzzledhead,” and not a ripened result out of the development ofcivilization.

Some persons having this insane temperament may becalled mattoids, to use Lombroso’s expression. They arestrikingly peculiar, eccentric, and original, but generally inuseless ways; they show disproportionate development; they

* “ Pathology ofMind.”

3INSANITY AND GENIUS.

are closely allied by heredity to mental disease, and maygradually develop into this state. Thus one member of afamily may show genius, another be insane or epileptic.This may indicate an extreme sensibility in the family, whichunder different conditions of life and body has taken differ-ent forms. This extreme nervous sensibility may endow aperson with genius, but not the highest genius; for he lacksthe power of the critical sense and the vast intelligence ofthe genius, which permits him to correct his wild imagina-tion. The insane temperament shows originality, but lacksthe critical spirit; the ordinary normal mind has somecritical spirit, but lacks originality; the genius possesses bothoriginality and critical power.

Clouston says that there are a number of examples ofinsane temperaments ranging from inspired idiots to inspiredgeniuses ; that De Quincey, Cowper, Turner, Shelley, Tasso,Lamb, and Goldsmith may be reckoned as having had in somedegree the insane temperament. Some are original, but inthe highest degree impracticable and unwise in the conven-tional sense of the term. Another form of this temperamentis sometimes illustrated in spiritualism, thought reading,clairvoyancy, and hypnotism.

The pseudo-genius, or mattoid, is, then, one who has theinsane temperament, with originality gmd particular talentsin certain lines, and often displays a mixture of insanityand genius. In the words of Maudsley, he desires to setthe world “ violently right' 1' 1; under mental strain he is im-pulsive, and may be attacked with derangement. A weakerand much less important class of mattoids is the egotisticvariety, with no capacity to look at self from an outsidestandpoint. This self-feeling may widen into the family,but develops no further. This class considers its odditieshigher than the virtues of others. Another phase is illus-trated by those who have little sympathy for their own kind ;

they often have extreme affection for some dog or cat, andsuppose that they are exceedingly humanitarian becausethey love animals more than human beings.

Hammond * says that “the discrimination of the veryhighest flights of genius from insanity is a difficult, and attimes an impossible, undertaking, for they may exist in oneand the same person.” Hammond also is of the opinion

* “ Treatise on Insanity,” New York, 1883.

4 THE ARENA,

that more people of great genius exhibit manifestations ofinsanity than do persons with ordinary mental faculties. Hementions as showing symptoms of insanity, or at the close oflife passing into fatuity, Tasso, Burns, Swift, Mozart, Haydn,Walter Scott, Blake, and Poe.

Schiile * defines insanity as a disease of the person, restingupon and caused by a brain affection. Here it is to beunderstood, psychologically speaking, that a pathologicalsymptom does not constitute the essence of a mental disturb-ance, be the thought ever so broken or the disposition oraction ever so anomalous. Hallucinations under certain con-ditions can appear temporarily, or superstition can comewithin the range of specific mental disease, and yet thereis no insanity. In true mental disease the whole person mustbe included, so that in his thoughts, feelings, and actionshe is no more determined by motives which may be changedby reflection and conclusion, but by irremovable feelings andideas upon the ego, which, if called up, exercise an incon-testable superior power. It is the mental compulsion thatconstitutes the essence of mental derangement. The patientoften stands under its power as a whole personality ; atanother time he is theoretical or reflective as to this forceover him ; but the distinctive point is that he cannot clearit away, nor overcome it through logic, nor stop it by hiswill. This compulsion is grounded in a fundamental organicbrain disease.

According to Arndt, f our manner of knowing, feeling, andwilling is differently developed, and shows itself in feebleor strong constitutions, as nervousness, weakness, or insanity;or as gift, talent, or genius. Every mental disease is a reac-tion of the nervous system impaired in its nutrition, espe-cially the nutrition of the brain. Arndt’s idea is that whena nervous condition appears occasionally in parents and grand-parents, it sooner or later passes over into mental disease, asseen in children of aged parents born late, or in children ofparents with talent or genius. In the first case (in childrenborn late) this nervous condition develops with the decreaseof vital energy ; in the second case it comes from the natureof the higher endowment or genius. This endowment orgenius is an expression of a highly organized nervous system,

* “ Klinische Psychiatrie.”t “ Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie.”


more particularly that of the brain. Thus it is that allhigher gifts, including genius, are very frequently subject toall kinds of diseased conditions, peculiarities, idiosyncrasies,and perversities. Arndt mentions as examples among poets,Tasso, Lenau, Heinrich, Von Kleist, Holderin, Gutzkow;among artists, Robert Schumann, Carl Blechen; amongscientists, Pascal, Frederic Sauvages, John Muller, Robertvon Meyer ; among statesmen and generals, Tiberius and theDuke of Marlborough. A large number of geniuses werethe last of their kind; as Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aris-totle, Caesar, Augustus, Galenus, Paracelsus, Newton,Shakespeare, Leibnitz, Kant, Voltaire, Gustave Adolphus,Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Linn6, Cuvier, Byron, andAlexander von Humboldt. The family of Schiller has diedout in its male members. This dying out of genius can onlybe explained, according to Arndt, by the weakness of theorganizations, and the resulting hyperaesthesia. This also isan explanation of the fact that the brothers and sisters ofgeniuses are often mediocre and sometimes weak minded.

GENIUS.

Moreau of Tours * holds that genius is the highest ex-pression, the ne plus ultra of intellectual activity, which isdue to an over-excitation of the nervous system and in thissense is neurotic; that disease of the nervous centres is ahereditary condition, favoring the development of the intel-lectual faculties. He maintains, on the basis of biographicalfacts, that among distinguished men one finds the largestnumber of insane; that the children of geniuses are inferioreven to those of average men, owing to convulsions andcerebral diseases in infancy. Genius is always isolated; it isa summum of nature’s energy, after which her procreativeforces are exhausted. Mental dynamism cannot be exaltedto genius, unless the organ of thought is in a condition analo-gous to that of an abnormal irritability, which is also favor-able to the development of hereditary insanity. When themind reaches its highest limit it is in danger of falling intodementia. The cerebral troubles of great men, from simplenervousness to normal perturbation, are the natural, if notnecessary effects, of their organization.

* “Psychologie Morbide.”

6 THE ARENA

* L61ut also considers genius a nervous affection, a semi-morbid state of the brain, f Nisbet holds that genius andinsanity “ are but different phases of a morbid susceptibilityof, or a want of balance in, the cerebro-spinal system.”“ Whenever a man’s life is at once sufficiently illustrious andrecorded with sufficient fulness, he inevitably falls into themorbid category.” Huxley says: “ Genius, to my mind, meansinnate capacity of any kind above the average mental level.From a biological point of view, I should say that a ‘ genius ’

among mien stands in the same position as a ‘ sport ’ amonganimals and plants, and is a product of that variability whichis the postulate of selection. I should think it probablethat a large proportion of ‘ genius sports ’ are likely to cometo grief physically and socially, and that the intensity offeeling, which is one of the conditions of what is commonlycalled genius, is especially liable to run into the fixed ideaswhich are at the bottom of so much insanity.” Lombroso f Jsays that from an anatomical and biological study of men ofgenius, who are semi-insane, from an investigation of thepathological causes of their apparition, marks of which arealmost always left in their descendants—with all this in view,there arises the conception of the morbid, degenerative natureof genius.

While, then, some alienists hold that genius is a pathologi-cal condition of the nervous system, a hyperesthesia, a ner-vous or mental disease, others do not go so far; yet all seemto be agreed that the relation between insanity and genius isvery close.

As an introduction to the biographical study of genius,it will be interesting to give the opinions of geniuses them-selves.

Aristotle says that under the influence of a congestion ofthe head there are persons who become poets, prophets, andsibyls. Plato § affirms that delirium is not an evil buta great benefaction when it emanates from the divinity.Democritus || makes insanity an essential condition of poetry.Diderot says, “ Ah, how close the insane and the genius

* “ D6mon de Socrate.”t “ The Insanity of Genius,” London, 1891.t “ L’Homme de Gdnie.”§ Phaedo.|| Horace, ars Poetica.> Dictionnaire Encyclop6dique.

INSANITY AND GENIUS. 7

touch; they are imprisoned and enchained, or statues areraised to them.” Voltaire says : “ Heaven, in forming us,mixed our life with reason and insanity; the elements of ourimperfect being; they compose every man, they form hisessence.” Pascal says :

“ Extreme mind is close to extremeinsanity.’' Mirabeau affirms that common sense is the ab-sence of too vivid passion; it marches by beaten paths, butgenius never. Only men with great passions can be great.Cato * said, before committing suicide, “ Since when have Ishown signs of insanity ? ” Tasso said, “ I am compelled tobelieve that my insanity is caused by drunkenness and bylove ; for I know well that I drink too much.” Cicero speaksof the “furor poeticus ,” Horace of the “amabilis insania,”Lamartine of “ the mental disease called genius.” Newton, ina letter to Locke, says that he passed some months withouthaving a “ consistency of mind.”

Chateaubriand says that his chief fault is weariness, dis-gust of everything, and perpetual doubt. Dryden says, “ Greatwit to madness nearly is allied.” Lord Beaconsfield says:“ I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion ismortifying, that there is only a step between his state whodeeply indulges in imaginative meditations and insanity.I was not always sure of my identity or even existence, for Ihave found it necessary to shout aloud to be sure thatI lived.”-);

Schopenhauer confessed that when he composed his greatwork, he carried himself strangely, and was taken for insane.He said that men of genius are often like the insane, givento continual agitation. Tolstoi acknowledged that philo-sophical scepticism had led him to a condition bordering on in-sanity. George Sand says of herself, that at about seventeenshe became deeply melancholic; that later she was temptedto suicide ; that this temptation was so vivid, sudden andbizarre that she considered it a species of insanity. Heine Jsaid that his disease may have given a morbid character tohis later compositions.

However paradoxical such sayings may seem, a seriousinvestigation will show striking resemblances between thehighest mental activity and diseased mind. Asa proof of

* Plutarch.t “Contarini Fleming.”$ “ Correspondance Paris, 1877.

8 TIIE ARENA,

this, we will give a number of facts, to which many moremight be added.

BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS SHOWING ECCENTRICITIES, NERVOUSDISEASES, AND SYMPTOMS OF INSANITY.

The difficulty of obtaining facts of an abnormal or patho-logical nature and otherwise unfavorable, is obvious. Au-thors have not only concealed such data, but have notdeemed them important enough to record. It is due to themedical men, whose life brings them closest to abnormal real-ity, that such facts have been gathered. If it be said thatthe abnormal or exceptional must be taken with some cau-tion, because it is natural for the mind to exaggerate strikingcharacteristics, it must be remembered that such facts, whenunfavorable to reputation, are concealed. In the study ofany exceptional or abnormal individual, as the insane orgenuis, one finds much more concealed than is known.

Socrates had hallucinations from his familiar genius ordemon. Pausanias, the Lacedaemonian, after killing a youngslave, was tormented until his death by a spirit, which pur-sued him in all places, and which resembled his victim.Lucretius was attacked with intermittent mania. Bayle saysthis mania left him lucid intervals, during which he composedsix books, “De IlerumNatural He was forty-four years of agewhen he put an end to his life. Charles the Fifth had epi-leptic attacks during his youth ; he stammered. He retreatedto a monastery, where he had the singular fantasy of cele-brating his own funeral rites in his own presence. Hismother (Jane of Castile) was insane and deformed; hisgrandfather (Ferdinand of Arragon) died at the age of sixty-two, in a state of profound melancholia. Peter the Great,during infancy, was subject to nervous attacks, which degen-erated into epilepsy. ‘One of his sons had hallucinations,another convulsions. Csesar was epileptic, of feeble consti-tution, with pallid skin, and subject to headaches. Limffi,a precocious genius, had a cranium hydrocephalic in form.He suffered from a stroke of paralysis. At the end of oneattack he had forgotten his name. He died in a state ofsenile dementia. Raphael experienced temptations tosuicide.* Pascal,f from birth till death, suffered from ner-

* “ Raphael,” pages de la vingtieme auntie,t “ L’Amulette de Pascal,” 1846.


vous troubles. At one year of age he fell into a languor,during which he could not see water without manifestinggreat outbursts of passion ; and still more peculiar, he couldnot bear to see his father and mother near one another. In1627 he had paralysis from his waist down, so that he couldnot walk without crutches ; this condition continued threemonths. During his last hours he was taken with terribleconvulsions, in which he died. The autopsy showed pecu-liarities. His cranium appeared to have no suture, unless,perhaps, the lamboid or sagittal. A large quantity of thebrain substance was very much condensed. Opposite theventricles there were two impressions, as of a finger in wax.These cavities were full of clotted and decayed blood, andthere was, it is said, a gangrenous condition of the duramater. Walter Scott, during his infancy, had precarioushealth, and before the age of two was paralyzed in hisright limb. He had a stroke of apoplexy. He had this visionon hearing of the death of Byron: Coming into the dining-room, he saw before him the image of his dead friend; onadvancing toward it, he recognized that the vision was dueto drapery extended over the screen. *

Voltaire, like Cicero, Demosthenes, Newton, and WalterScott, was born under the saddest and most alarming condi-tions of health.. His feebleness was such that he could notbe taken to church to be christened. During his first yearshe manifested an extraordinary mind. In his old age hewas like a bent shadow.f He had an attack of apoplexy atthe age of eighty-tliree. His autopsy showed a slight thick-ness of the bony walls of the cranium. In spite of hisadvanced age, there was an enormous development of the

Michael Angelo,§ while painting “ The LastJudgment,” fell from his scaffold and received a painfulinjury to the leg. He shut himself up and would not seeany one. Bacio Rontini, a celebrated physician, came byaccident to see him. He found all the doors closed. Noone responding, he went into the cellar and came upstairs.He found Michael Angelo in his room, “resolved to let him-self die.” His friend, the physician, would, not leave him.He brought him out of the peculiar frame of mind into which

* “ Edinburg Medical and Surgical Journal,” January, 1843.t Sfegur, “ Mem.,” 1.1.t R. Parise, “ Philosophic et Hygiene.”§ “Histoire de la Linture en Italie” (Reveille-Parise).

10 THE ARENA.

he had fallen. The elder brother of Richelieu, the cardinal,was a singular man ; he committed suicide because of arebuke from his parents. The sister of Richelieu wasinsane. Richelieu himself had attacks of insanity; hewould figure himself as a horse, but afterwards would haveno recollection of it. Descartes, after a long retirement, wasfollowed by an invisible person, who urged him to pursue hisinvestigations after the truth. Goethe was sure of havingperceived the image of himself coming to meet him. Goethe’smother died of an apoplectic attack. Cromwell, when atschool, had an hallucination in his room ; suddenly the cur-tains opened, and a woman of gigantic stature appeared tohim, announcing his future greatness. In the days of hispower he liked to recount this vision. Cromwell had violentattacks of melancholic humor; lie spoke of his hypochon-dria. His entire moral life was moulded by a sickly andneuropathical constitution, which he had at birth.

Rousseau was a type of the melancholic temperament,assuming sometimes the symptoms of a veritable pathetic in-sanity. He sought to realize his phantoms in the least sus-ceptible circumstances ; he saw everywhere enemies andconspirators (frequent in the first stages of insanity). Once,coming to his sailing vessel in England, he interpreted theunfavorable winds as a conspiracy against him, then mountedan elevation, and began to harangue the people, althoughthey did not understand a word he said. In addition to hisfixed ideas and delirant convictions, Rousseau suffered fromattacks of acute delirium; a sort of maniacal excitation. Hedied from an apoplectic attack.

As space forbids giving further details, we will mentionsome persons of great talent or genius who have shown symp-toms of insanity : Saint Simon, Swedenborg, Haller, Comte,Loyola, Luther, Jeanne cl’Arc, Mohammed, Moliere, Lotze,Mozart, Condillac, Bossuet, Madame de Stael, Swift, John-son, Cowper, Southey, Shelley, Byron, Goldsmith, Lamb,Poe, Carlyle, Keats, Coleridge, Burns, George Eliot, Alfredde Musset, George Sand, Wellington, Warren Hastings, Bach,Handel, Newton, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Alexander theGreat, and Napoleon.

Additional biographical data concerning the differenttypes of genius might be added, and many will occur toany one who has read the lives of great men. In certain


instances the authority for some of the facts might bequestioned, but the great majority will remain.

Precocity is a symptom of genius and insanity. Dantecomposed verses at nine; Tasso and Mirabeau at ten; Comteand Voltaire and Pascal were great thinkers at thirteen;Niebuhr at seven; Jonathan Edwards, Bossuet and Popeat twelve; Goethe before ten; Victor Hugo and atfifteen. Handel and Beethoven composed at thirteen; Mozartgave concerts at six; Raphael was renowned at fourteen.Yet some great men were regarded as poor pupils; as, for ex-ample, Pestalozzi, Wellington, Balzac, Humboldt, Boccaccio,Linn6, Newton, and Walter Scott.

Originality is very common, both to men of genius andthe insane but in the latter case it is generally without pur-pose. Hagen makes irresistible impulse one of the charac-teristics of genius, as Schiile (see above) does of insanity.*Mozart avowed that his musical inventions came involunta-rily, like dreams, showing an unconsciousness and sponta-neity which are also frequent in insanity. Socrates saysthat poets create, not by reflection, but by natural instinct.Voltaire said, in a letter to Diderot, that all manifestationsof genius are effects of instinct, and that all the philosophersof the world together could not have given “ Les AnimauxMalades de la Peste,” which La Fontaine composed withoutknowing even what he did. According to Goethe, a certaincerebral irritation is necessary to poets. Klopstock declaredthat in dreams he had found many inspirations for his poems.Thus as the great thoughts of genius often come spontane-ously, so it is with the ideas of the insane.

Geniuses are inclined to misinterpret the acts of others,and consider themselves persecuted. These are well-knowntendencies of the insane. Boileau and Chateaubriand couldnot hear a person praised, even their shoemaker, without feel-ing a certain opposition. Schopenhauer became furious andrefused to pay. a bill in which his name was written witha double “p.” Unhealthy vanity is also common in theambitions of monomaniacs.

Alienists hold, in general, that a large proportion of men-tal diseases is the result of degeneracy; that is, they arethe offspring of drunken, insane, syphilitic, and consump-tive parents, and suffer from the action of heredity. The

* “ KlimscbeFsychiatrie.”

12 THE AUENA,

most frequent characteristics of mental diseases are : apathy,weakness or loss of moral sense, impulsiveness, propensityto doubt, verbosity or exaggerated acuteness, extreme vanityor eccentricity, excessive preoccupation with one’s own per-sonality, mystical interpretations of simple facts, hallucina-tions, abuse of symbols or special terms, sometimes suppress-ing every other form of expression, and a general psychicaldisproportion through an excessive development of certainfaculties, or by absence of others. The reader is particularlyrequested to note these psychical symptoms of insanity; foralmost all of them, as we shall see, are found in men ofgenius. If X were substituted for insanity, and T for gen-ius, so as to dispel preconceived notions, an impartial observerwould be very liable to say that the characteristics of X andY bring them under the same general category. Also someother physical characteristics of the insane are almost as fre-quent in geniuses. They are : ff&ymmetry of face and head,irregularity in teeth, and rachitism. In the insane are fre-quently found abnormally large or small ears or mouth; hare-lips, hypertrophy of the under lip; gums wide or one-sided;bent nose; hands unequal in size; abnormal growth of hairover body; growth of beard on women and defective eye-brows, etc. Cerebral ansemia is frequent, and liypersemiavery frequent, in the insane. Wildermuth, from an investi-gation of one hundred and twenty-seven idiots, found sixty-nine normal craniums. Meynert * says that one hundredand fourteen out of one hundred and forty-two idiots showsigns of degeneration.

In order that some of the results may be seen more indetail, we give some tables.f

Table I.

* Meynert, “ Klinische Vorlesungen iiber Psychiatric,” 1890.t Welcher’s Schiller’s Schadel, etc.

Cranial Capacityin Cubic

Centimeters.

Men.Average of 30 normal craniums 1,450Average of 10 epileptic craniums 1,523

Women.Average of 30 normal craniums 1,300Average of 14 epileptic craniums 1,346


Here in Table I. (as in the case of men of talent andgenius in the following Table II.) we see that the abnormalexceed the normal in brain development; that is to say, inthese cases the insane and genius both exceed the normalman in cranial capacity or weight *of brain.

Table II.

Taking now five hundred and fifty-one millimeters as anaverage horizontal circumference of the head, it will be seenthat Napoleon, Darwin, Wagner, Schwann, and Miiller ex-ceed the normal. The averages of brain weight for thedifferent ages, given by Welcher, are not absolute, but suffi-ciently near the truth for comparison.

Table III.

Men of Talentand Genius. Age.

Weightof Brain

inGrammes.

MediumWeight ofAverageBrain at

Same Age.

CranialCapacity in

CubicCentimeters.

HorizontalCircumfer-

ence inMillimeters.

Webster (statesman) . . TO 1,520 1,303Thackeray (humorist) 52 1,660

1,8291,368 - —

Cuvier (scientist) . . . 03 1,340 - —

Gauss (mathematician) . 78 1,4921,485

1,246 - _

Broca (anthropologist) . 65 1,331 _ _

Kant (philosopher) . . - -- 1,740 _

Napoleon I. (general) - *-• - -- 564

Darwin (scientist) . . . - -- - 563

Wagner (musician) . . - -- - 600

Dante - _ _ 1,493 _

Schumann, Robert . . _ . - _ 1,510 _

Schwann (scientist) . . - - -_ 565

Napoleon III - 1,500 -— _

Muller (scientist) . . - - - - 614Liebig (chemist) . . . 70 1,352 1,303 1,550 —

Whewell (philosophy . 72 1,390 - --

Average of 35 men oftalent 65 1,474 1,319 -

-

WeightofBrain.

Numberof Brains,

MelancholiaManiaOld casesTransition forms . •

1,490.831,488.461,4541,447.05

9152315

62

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If 1,350 grammes is taken as an average weight for a brain,Table III. gives 62 insane much above the normal; but thisis 62 out of 579 brains weighed. If we take the totals ofthe 579, as given in Table IV., all are below the averageexcept the maniacs among men. The extreme divergencefrom the average may be regarded as abnormal and in thelight of anomalies. To show more clearly the anomalousnature of the brains of the insane, Table Y. is given.

Table IY.

We see, therefore, from these tables that particular indi-viduals, among the insane and people of genius, both showextremely large cerebral capacity ; but that in general theinsane are much below the normal, while the genius isabove in brain capacity or brain weight.

Table Y.

Bischoff found some of the heaviest brains (weighing 1,650,1,678, 1,770, and 1,925 grammes) among common and un-known laborers. But such cases are very rare; so much so,that the average is not affected. De Quatrefages says thatthe largest brain has been found in a lunatic, and the nextlargest in a genius. The main fact brought out by thetables is the large number of anomalies and deviations fromthe normal in both insanity and genius.

Total: Melancholia Men .. 1,295.18

Women . 1,210.37“ Mania Men . . 1,376.41

Women . 1,221.09“ Old cases Men . . 1,319.22

Women . 1,175.74“ Paralytics Men . . 1,214.82

Women 1,068.24“ Transition forms Men . . 1,336.03

Women . 1,190.03

Melancholia Men . . v 53 1,052Women 51 1,035.65

Mania Men . . 39 -

Women . 53 1,035Old cases .

. Men . . 86 -

Women . 31 1,057.40Paralytics Men .

. 145 1,032.81Women . 29 1,048.88

Transition forms Men .. 43 -

Women . 49 1,055.06


CONCLUSION.

The facts cited thus far would seem to indicate that geniusis not only abnormal, but often passes into a pathologicalform. But it may be asked more particularly as to what ismeant by pathological and abnormal.

The modern and fundamental conception of disease is anexcess of normality. This statement can be supported by thehighest medical authorities. Virchow* says that substratumupon which pathological manifestations play is a repetition orreproduction of the normal morphological stratum; its patho-logical character consists in this, that the stratum arises inan unfit way, or at the wrong place or time ; or it may de-pend upon an abnormal increase of the tissue elements,resulting in deviation, which becomes degeneration. Thusin pathological relations, there is a preservation of specificnormal characteristics; nothing new arises functionally.Pathology is in'potentia in physiology.

According to Perl, pathological phenomena are distin-guished from the normal by their unequal and little constancy.Cohnlieim affirms that physiological laws hold their validityin diseased organisms ; that abnormal means a considerabledeviation from the type. fZiegler says that disease isnothing else than a life whose manifestations deviate in partfrom the normal.

In saying that genius manifests the symptoms of a neuro-sis or psychosis, we mean an excessive nervous or cerebralaction. Many forms of insanity are also manifestations ofsimilar excessive action. Such action in one individual cangive rise to most wonderful, original, and brilliant ideas, andwe call it genius j in another individual it produces alsowonderful and original thoughts, but highly absurd, and wecall it insanity. But it appears that the fundamental causein both genius and insanity is the same: it is the excessivepsychical or nervous energy.

Some of the flights of genius are most brilliant and fascin-ating, yet they are none the less abnormal; and when thisabnormality reaches a certain degree, it can become patho-logical. Thus Don Quixote has wonderful ideas; he is anardent soul with brilliant thoughts superior to the opinions

* “ CellularPathologie.”t “ Allegemeine Path. Anatomie.”

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of his contemporaries. Yet he renders no account of realthings; he is in the air; he takes his imaginations for reali-ties; sees everything in his dream; he is without criticalspirit, and has little balance. Edgar Poe is full of fantasy,invention, original creations, extreme notions, regardless ofcritical spirit. Poe was somewhat dipsomaniac. While hiswritings are remarkable, yet they have elements similar tothe wanderings of the insane.

Some characteristics of genius are originality, egotism,vanity, indiscretion, and lack of common sense; precocity,sterility, irritability, impetuosity, melancholia, and suscepti-bility to visions and dreams. These characteristics belongalso to the insane. If it be said that it is cruel to comparemuch that we consider highest in the world with insanity,the reply is, that we might as well object to classing manamong the bipeds, because vultures are bipeds. Any analy-sis of genius that may show the closest relation to insanitycannot change genius itself. Faust and Hamlet remainFaust and Hamlet. The question is not a matter of senti-ment, but of facts. Genius and great talent are those formsof abnormality most beneficial to society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.ENGLISH.

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Insanity and genius

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