Balzac in one of his novels gives utterance to the following thought: "Genius is a terrible disease. Every writer of genius cherishes in his heart a monster which devours all his emotions as soon as he gives birth to them. Which is to be the conqueror? Will the disease vanquish the man, or the man the disease? He must be a great man who can establish a perfect equilibrium between his genius and his character. Unless the poet be a giant, unless he be possessed of the shoulders of a Hercules, he must inevitably remain bereft of heart, or else bereft of talent."

Here, unfortunately, Balzac breaks off his dissertation, and does not state what in his opinion is the cause of this disease of genius, why the development and power of the artistic personality stand in many respects in inverse ratio to the development and power of the moral type, or on what fundamental ground depends that primary antagonism between these two elements which is so often to be observed in the daily experience of life. Every one knows, for instance, that writers of talent, artists or musicians, are in the majority of cases men of the most unpractical nature, that their eccentricities and irresponsibility verge not uncommonly on complete moral disintegration, that they are bad fathers of families and bad husbands, and that while expressing great sensitiveness in the forcible language of their works, they very often show themselves in real life to be at heart hard and unfeeling egotists. An enquiry into the origin of the causes responsible for the deep contrast which exists between the Æsthetic and ethical points of view, between the artist and the man, between genius and character, would undoubtedly open up one of the most interesting chapters in the history of creative psychology.

Let us take, as an illustration of our thesis, the tragic scene of the destruction of Laocoon, as described in the Æneid. Picture the horror and anguish with which the citizens of Troy witness the seizure and suffocation of Laocoon and his children by the gigantic serpents. The onlookers are filled with terror, grief, and a desire to save the unfortunate victims. In bringing out the psychic differences of constitution among the crowd, the crucial moment of action plays a most important rÔle, developing the instinct of self-preservation among the more timid ones, or the efforts of the more manly to lend their aid. Then imagine a sculptor moving about in this wavering and undecided crowd, and studying the terrible tragedy which is being enacted before his eyes as a fit theme for a future work of art. He alone remains an unmoved spectator amid the general confusion, lamentation, cries, and prayers. His moral instincts are all absorbed in an intense Æsthetic curiosity. Tears would hinder his vision, and he keeps them sternly back, because it is imperatively necessary for him to see every form, every outline of the muscles distorted under the crushing force of the snakes' huge coils. Every detail of the picture which in the others awakens loathing and terror, evokes in him a joy that is outside the ken of other men. While they weep and waver, the artist rejoices in the expression of agony on the countenance of Laocoon, rejoices that the father is unable to bring aid to his children, that the serpents are compressing their bodies with irresistible force. The next moment, perchance, the man will have conquered the artist. But the deed is done, the fact remains, the moment of cruel contemplation has had the power to brand upon his heart its ineradicable impression.

A series of similar episodes must sooner or later create in the mind of the artist the habit of withdrawing himself from life, of regarding it from one side, from without, from the point of view no longer of a living human being, but from that of an unmoved observer, who seeks in all that comes to pass before his eyes only some material for his own artistic reproduction. And in proportion as his powers of imagination and observation increase, so in equal measure must his sensitiveness and the exercise of that power of will which is indispensable for all moral activity diminish. If nature has neither endowed the mind of the artist with an adamantine stoicism, nor filled his heart with an inexhaustible spring of love, his Æsthetic qualities will little by little devour his ethical instincts; genius may, in the words of Balzac, "consume" the heart. In such a case as this, the categories of good and evil which people have most to do with in real life, i.e., the will and the passions, are confused in the artist's mind with the categories of the beautiful and the ugly, the characterless and the characteristic, the artistically interesting and the inane. Wickedness and vice attract the imagination of the poet, if only they be concealed under forms that are externally beautiful and attractive; while virtue looks dull and insignificant unless she can afford some material for a poetical apotheosis.

But the artist excels not only in the quality of being able to contemplate objectively and dispassionately the emotions of others, he is unique also in this, that he can, as an impartial observer, subject his own heart to the same hard, Æsthetic scrutiny that he applies to the actions of others. Ordinary people can, or at least believe that they can, entirely recover from the emotions which may have seized upon them, be they transports of love or hatred, of joy or sorrow. An honourable man, when he makes his vow of love to a woman, honestly believes in the truth of that vow—it never enters his head to inquire whether he really is as much in love as he says he is. One would on the face of things expect a poet more than other men to be inclined to give way to emotion, to be credulous, and to let himself be carried away; but in reality there always remains in his soul, however deeply it may be swayed by passion, the power to look into its own depths as into those of a character in a dream or novel; to follow with attention, even in moments of complete intoxication, the infinite intangible changes of his emotions, and to focus upon them the force of his merciless analysis.

Human emotions are hardly ever simple or unalloyed: in the majority of cases they are composed of a mixture of parts differing immensely in the values of their components. And a psychological artist involuntarily discovers so many contradictions in himself and in others, even in moments of genuine exaltation, that by degrees he comes to lose all faith in his own rectitude, as well as in the rectitude of others.