Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/407

Rh in his fancy. The true poet does not versify because he would, but because he must. The comparison of traits applied to a considerable number of typical "men of genius" leads to the conclusion that the word does not express any one psychological concept, and that nobody has succeeded in giving a pregnant definition of the quality or is likely to do so. As insanity is equally indefinable, and it is impossible to draw a sharp line between mental sanity and mental derangement, it may seem useless to attempt to compare two such indefinite quantities; still, the comparison may possibly enrich our knowledge and lead us toward a recognition of the truth.

It is no newfangled notion that genius and insanity are connected. It has been reiterated from Plato down. The chief condition of mental sanity is a well-proportioned development of the different psychical factors. But as in the development of the different mental faculties, so also in their proportion to one another, a certain latitude of health is to be allowed. In one man fancy is preponderant; in another, consecutive thought; while a third may have particularly strong feelings as his characteristic. Yet we have no reason to say that these minds transgress the border of health. It is the difference in the relation of the different psychical elements that makes the diversity of men's characters. Now, we know that there are no two characters in the world that are precisely alike. It follows that there is no norm for these relations. The higher the grade of development of the genius and of the individual, the more prominent will differences of psychical factors become, and a correspondingly greater latitude of health must be allowed.

A comparison is instituted between the different symptoms of exaggerated proportions in development which have been discovered in great men, and an endeavor to ascertain the distinctions between these and symptoms of insanity. Among these symptoms are hallucinations, to which the soundest of men have been found more or less subject, over-exuberance of fancy, and self-abandonment in the restless strife for some ideal goal. In great artists and scholars, on the one hand, and in the insane on the other, there is a great, irresistible impulse which fills them to overflowing and makes them forget all personal considerations. But while in the former the restless compulsion to create, the hot aspiration is the kernel of the highest and noblest perfection of man, in the latter there is a morbid impulse which is usually directed to the silliest things. Formerly such a state was called a monomania, since this irresistible impulse seemed to be the only pathological symptom; but careful observation has shown that there is always a more general psychical malady, usually the consequence of arrested development. It is perfectly astonishing with what