That the psychical function or intellectuality is frequently developed at the expense of the physical organism is well known, and that genius is seldom or never unaccompanied by physical and mental degeneration is a fact that can be no longer denied. I use the word degeneration in its broadest sense, and intend it to include all kinds of abnormalities. The facts noted above are by no means recent knowledge, but were vaguely recognized and commented on centuries and decades of centuries ago by the Hebrews and kindred races of people. The Hebrew word nabi means either madman or prophet, and it is now admitted that most of the prophets gave evidences of insanity as well as genius. The Greeks and the Romans recognized this kinship, and we read in the Bible of a certain Festus, who, when confronted by a man of genius, and being unable to answer his arguments, said to him, “Paul, much learning hath made thee mad!” Lauvergne, when speaking of the oxycephalic (sugarloaf) skull, an unquestionable example of degeneration, wrote many years ago, “This head announces the monstrous alliance of the most eminent faculty of man, genius, with the most pronounced impulses to rape, murder, and theft.”

The purpose of this paper is to show that wherever genius is observed, we find it accompanied by degeneration, which is evinced by physical abnormalties or mental eccentricities. It is a strange fact, however, and one not noticed by Lombroso, or any other writer, as far as I know, that mechanical geniuses, or those who, for the most part, deal with material facts, do not, as a rule, show any signs of degeneration. I have only to instance Darwin, Galileo, Edison, Watts, Rumsey, Howe, and Morse to prove the truth of this assertion. It is only the genius of Æstheticism, the genius of the emotion, that is generally accompanied by unmistakable signs of degeneration.

Saul, the first king of Israel, was a man of genius and, at times, a madman. We read that, before his coronation, he was seized with an attack of madness and joined a company of kindred eccentrics. His friends and acquaintances were naturally surprised and exclaimed: “Is Saul among the prophets?” i. e., “Has Saul become insane?” Again, we are told that he was suddenly seized with an attack of homicidal impulse, and tried to kill David. Before this time he had had repeated attacks of madness, which only the harp of David could control and subdue. David himself was a man whose mental equilibrium was not well established, as his history clearly indicates. He forsook his God, indulged in licentious practices, and was, withal, a very, immoral man at times. At his time, the Hebrews had reached a high degree of civilization. Abstract ethics had become very much developed, and any example of great immorality occurring during this epoch is proof positive of atavism or degeneration.

As I have intimated before, many of the ancient Hebrew prophets, who were unquestionably men of genius, gave evidences of insanity; notably Jeremiah, who made a long journey to the River Euphrates, where he hid a linen girdle. He returned home, and in a few days made the same journey and found the girdle rotten and good for nothing; Ezekiel, who dug a hole in the wall of his house, through which he removed his household goods, instead of through the door; Hosea, who married a prostitute, because God, so he declared, had told him so to do; and Isaiah, who stripped himself naked and paraded up and down in sight of all the people. King Solomon, a man of pre-eminent genius, was mentally unbalanced. The “Song of Solomon” shows very clearly that he was a victim of some psychical disorder, sexual in its character and origin. The poems of Anacreon are lascivious, lustful, and essentially carnal, and history informs us that he was a sexual pervert.

Swinburne’s poems show clearly the mental bias of their author, who is described as being peculiar and eccentric. Many of the men of genius who have assisted in making the history of the world have been the victims of epilepsy. Julius CÆsar, military leader, statesman, politician, and author, was an epileptic. Twice on the field of battle he was stricken down by this disorder. On one occasion, while seated at the tribune, he was unable to rise when the senators, consuls, and prÆtors paid him a visit of ceremony and honor. They were offended at his seeming lack of respect, and retired, showing signs of anger. CÆsar returned home, stripped off his clothes, and offered his throat to be cut by anyone. He then explained his conduct to the senate, saying that he was the victim of a malady which, at times, rendered him incapable of standing. During the attacks of this disorder “he felt shocks in his limbs, became giddy, and at last lost consciousness.” MoliÈre was the victim of epilepsy; so also was Petrarch, Flaubert, Charles V., Handel, St. Paul, Peter the Great, and Dostoieffsky; Paganini, Mozart, Schiller, Alfieri, Pascal, Richelieu, Newton, and Swift were the victims of diseases epileptoid in character.

Many men of genius have suffered from spasmodic and choreic movements, notably Lenau, Montesquieu, Buffon, Dr. Johnson, Santeuil, CrÉbillon, Lombardini, Thomas Campbell, Carducci, Napoleon, and Socrates.

Suicide, essentially a symptom of mental disorder, has hurried many a man of genius out into the unknown. The list begins with such eminent men as Zeno, Cleanthes, Dionysius, Lucan, and Stilpo, and contains the names of such immortals as Chatterton, Blount, Haydon, Clive, and David.

Alcoholism and morphinism, or an uncontrollable desire for alcohol or opium in some form or other, are now recognized as evidences of degeneration. Men of genius, both in the Old World and in the New, have shown this form of degeneration. Says Lombroso: “Alexander died after having emptied ten times the goblet of Hercules, and it was, without doubt, in an alcoholic attack, while pursuing naked the infamous Thais, that he killed his dearest friend. CÆsar was often carried home intoxicated on the shoulders of his soldiers. Neither Socrates, nor Seneca, nor Alcibiades, nor Cato, nor Peter the Great (nor his wife Catherine, nor his daughter Elizabeth) were remarkable for their abstinence. One recalls Horace’s line, ‘Narratur et prisci Cantonis sÆpe mero caluisse virtus.’ Tiberius Nero was called by the Romans Biberius Mero. Septimius Severus and Mahomet II. succumbed to drunkenness or delirium tremens.”

Among the men and women of genius of the Old World who abused the use of alcohol and opium, were Coleridge, James Thomson, Carew, Sheridan, Steele, Addison, Hoffman, Charles Lamb, Madame de StaËl, Burns, Savage, Alfred de Musset, Kleist, Caracci, Jan Steen, Morland Turner (the painter), GÉrard de Nerval, Hartley Coleridge, Dussek, Handel, GlÜck, Praga, Rovani, and the poet Somerville. This list is by no means complete, as the well-informed reader may see at a glance; it serves to show, however, how very often this form of degeneration makes its appearance in men of genius.

In men of genius the moral sense is sometimes obtunded, if not altogether absent. Sallust, Seneca, and Bacon were suspected felons. Rousseau, Byron, Foscolo, and Caresa were grossly immoral, while Casanova, the gifted mathematician, was a common swindler. Murat, Rousseau, Clement, Diderot, Praga, and Oscar Wilde were sexual perverts.

Genius, like insanity, lives in a world of its own, hence we find few, if any, evidences of human affection in men of genius. Says Lombroso: “I have been able to observe men of genius when they had scarce reached the age of puberty; they did not manifest the deep aversions of moral insanity, but I have noticed among all a strange apathy for everything which does not concern them; as though, plunged in the hypnotic condition, they did not perceive the troubles of others, or even the most pressing needs of those who were dearest to them; if they observed them, they grew tender, at once hastening to attend them; but it was a fire of straw, soon extinguished, and it gave place to indifference and weariness.”

This emotional anÆsthesia is indicative of psychical atavism, and is an unmistakable evidence of degeneration. Lombroso gives a long list of the men of genius who were celibates. I will mention a few of those with whom the English-speaking world is most familiar: Kant, Newton, Pitt, Fox, Beethoven, Galileo, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Gray, Dalton, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Lamb, Bentham, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Reynolds, Handel, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Schopenhauer, CamoËns, and Voltaire. La BruyÈre says of men of genius: “These men have neither ancestors nor descendants; they themselves form their entire posterity.”

There is a form of mental obliquity which the French term folie du doute. It is characterized by an incertitude in thought coÖrdination, and often leads its victims into the perpetration of nonsensical and useless acts. Men of genius are very frequently afflicted with this form of mental disorder. Dr. Johnson, who was a sufferer from folie du doute, had to touch every post he passed. If he missed one he had to retrace his steps and touch it. Again, if he started out of a door on the wrong foot he would return and make another attempt, starting out on the foot which he considered the correct one to use. Napoleon counted and added up the rows of windows in every street through which he passed. A celebrated statesman, who is a personal friend of the writer, can never bear to place his feet on a crack in the pavement or floor. When walking he will carefully step over and beyond all cracks or crevices. This idiosyncracy annoys him greatly, but the impulse is imperative, and he can not resist it.

Those who have been intimately associated with men of genius have noticed that they are very frequently amnesic or “absent-minded.” Newton once tried to stuff his niece’s finger into the bowl of his lighted pipe, and Rovelle would lecture on some subject for hours at a time and then conclude by saying: “But this is one of my arcana, which I tell to no one.” One of his students would then whisper what he had just said into his ear, and Rovelle would believe that his pupil “had discovered the arcanum by his own sagacity, and would beg him not to divulge what he himself had just told to two hundred persons.”

Lombroso has combed history, as it were, with a fine-tooth comb, and very few geniuses have escaped his notice. This paper, so far, is hardly more than a review of his extraordinarily comprehensive work; therefore, I will conclude this portion of it with a list of men of genius, their professions, and their evidences of degeneration, as gathered from his book:

Carlo Dolce, painter, religious monomania.

Bacon, philosopher, megalomania, moral anaesthesia.

Balzac, writer, masked epilepsy, megalomania.

CÆsar, soldier, writer, epilepsy.

Beethoven, musician, amnesia, melancholia.

Cowper, writer, melancholia.

Chateaubriand, writer, chorea.

Alexander the Great, soldier, alcoholism.

MoliÈre, dramatist, epilepsy, phthisis pulmonalis.

Lamb, writer, alcoholism, melancholia, acute mania.

Mozart, musician, epilepsy, hallucinations.

Heine, writer, melancholia, spinal disease.

Dr. Johnson, writer, chorea, folie du doute.

Malibran, epilepsy.

Newton, philosopher, amnesia.

Cavour, statesman, philosopher, suicidal impulse.

AmpÈre, mathematician, amnesia.

Thomas Campbell, writer, chorea.

Blake, painter, hallucinations.

Chopin, musician, melancholia.

Coleridge, writer, alcoholism, morphinism.

Donizetti, musician, moral anaesthesia.

Lenau, writer, melancholia.

Mahomet, theologian, epilepsy.

Manzoni, statesman, folie du doute.

Haller, writer, hallucinations.

Dupuytren, surgeon, suicidal impulse.

Paganini, musician, epilepsy.

Handel, musician, epilepsy.

Schiller, writer, epilepsy.

Richelieu, statesman, epilepsy.

Praga, writer, alcoholism, sexual perversion.

Tasso, writer, alcoholism, melancholia.

Savonarola, theologian, hallucinations.

Luther, theologian, hallucinations.

Schopenhauer, philosopher, melancholia, omniphobia.

Gogol, writer, melancholia, tabes dorsalis.

Lazaretti, theologian, hallucinations.

MallarmÉ, writer, suicidal impulse.

Dostoieffsky, writer, epilepsy.

Napoleon, soldier, statesman, folie du doute, epilepsy.

Comte, philosopher, hallucinations.

Pascal, philosopher, epilepsy.

Poushkin, writer, megalomania.

Renan, philosopher, folie du doute.

Swift, writer, paresis.

Socrates, philosopher, chorea.

Schumann, musician, paresis.

Shelley, writer, hallucinations.

Bunyan, writer, hallucinations.

Swedenborg, theologian, hallucinations.

Loyola, theologian, hallucinations.

J. S. Mill, writer, suicidal impulse.

LinnÆus, botanist, paresis.

The reader will observe that I have made use of the comprehensive word, writer, to designate all kinds of literary work except theology and philosophy. The above list is by no means complete, and only contains the names of those geniuses with whom the world is well acquainted.

When we come to the geniuses of the New World, we find that, though few in number, they, nevertheless, show erraticism and degeneration. Poe was undoubtedly a man of great genius, and his degeneration was indicated by his excessive use of alcohol. Aaron Burr was the victim of moral anÆsthesia, and Jefferson was pseudo-epileptic and neurasthenic. Randolph was a man of marked eccentricity, and Benedict Arnold was, morally, anÆsthetic. Daniel Webster was addicted to an over-indulgence in alcohol, likewise Thomas Marshall and the elder Booth. Booth also had attacks of acute mania. His son Edwin had paresis; so also had John McCullough, John T. Raymond, and Bartley Campbell. A distinguished statesman and politician, and a man who stands high in the councils of the nation, has, for a number of years, given evidence of mental obliquity by his uncontrollable desire for alcohol. No power, outside of bodily restraint, can control him and keep him from indulging his appetite for alcohol when this desire seizes him. One of the most noted poets of to-day, whose verses stir the heart with their pathos and bring smiles to the gravest countenances with their humor, was, for a number of years (and still is, so I have been told), an inordinate user of alcohol.

Robert Ingersoll was undoubtedly a man of genius and of considerable originality, and a close study of his writings shows conclusively his mental eccentricity. Judging wholly from his printed utterances, Mr. Ingersoll was only a superficial scientist and mediocre scholar. His power lay in his wonderful word imagery, and his intricately constructed verbal arabesques. He was a verbal symbolist. Symbolism, wherever found, and in whatever art, if carried to any extent, must necessarily be an evidence of atavism, consequently of degeneration.

Thomas Paine gave evidences of a lack of mental equipoise. We find scattered throughout his works the most brilliant, irrefutable, and logical truths side by side with the most inane, illogical, and stolid crudities. Among other men of genius who showed signs of degeneration we may include Alexander Stevens, Joel Hart, Adams, Train, Breckenridge, Webster, Blaine, Van Buren, Houston, Grant, Hawthorne, Bartholow, Walt Whitman. We must not confound genius and talent—the two are widely different. Genius is essentially original and spontaneous, while talent is to some extent acquired. Genius is a quasi abnormality, and one for which the world should be devoutly grateful. Psychos, in the case of genius, is not uniformly developed, one part, being more favored than the others, absorbs and uses more than its share of that element, whatsoever it be, which goes to make up intellectuality, hence the less favored or less acquisitive parts show degeneration.