Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/692

670 Or Shakespeare, when he says:

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet &ensp;Are of imagination all compact."

In support of this essential union, Montaigne, Diderot, Pascal, Lamartine, and others, have subscribed their names, but in terms more general than specific, and with more rhetorical beauty than philosophic strength; while Moreau boldly affirms that genius is a nervous disease.

Charles Lamb, himself at times oppressed with mental gloom, stands almost alone in defense of "the sanity of true genius." With this view I am in accord, and, that the justification of this position may be seen, I desire to review the facts commonly cited against it.

Sophocles—poet, statesman, commander—was obliged to make a defense against the charge of insanity, instituted by ungrateful and avaricious children. He answered by reciting the tragedy of "Œdipus at Colonos," which he had just finished, and he then asked the judges if the author of such a work could be regarded as mad. The reply was, "No!" and he was acquitted.

Lucretius—"writer of the purest Latin, and author of 'De Rerum Natura,' the most exalted poem of the age"—whose mind combined the "contemplative enthusiasm of a philosopher, the earnest purpose of a reformer and moral teacher, and the profound pathos and sense of beauty of a great poet," has been used to illustrate the kinship of genius and madness upon the unreliable evidence that he lost his reason from the effect of a "love-philter" (a very ridiculous absurdity) which had been given to him; and after writing several books, during his lucid intervals, he committed suicide.

Were this allegation true, it could only show the baneful effect of a drug upon his brain, which is quite apart from the influence of any psychic cause. The historic facts are too few and insufficient to justify any statement as to the life and personal character of this man, who exerted such an influence over others by his writings, and yet, like Homer, was content to let his personality "pass through life unnoticed." Caesar, Catullus, and Cicero were his contemporaries, and yet we know of him only through a brief record given by Jerome four hundred years after the poet's death. Independent of the historic doubts as to his insanity, the theory which makes a drug its potent cause, should at least find reason for not uniting to it his genius.

That Socrates had his "demon," or guardian angel, may be true; but, if so, the hallucination corresponded with the accepted belief of the age, and therefore signifies nothing against his mental integrity.

Neither is there justification in using such illustrious names as Descartes, Newton, and Goethe, to prove that madness holds its court so near the temple of greatness.

It is true that Descartes, in an hour of deep intellectual