Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/453

Rh the temperament of genius show a tendency to resemble each other.

I shall probably be asked to define precisely what the 'temperament' is that underlies genius. That, however, is a question which the material before us only enables us to approach very cautiously. There are two distinct tendencies among writers on genius. On the one hand are those who seem to assume that genius is a strictly normal variation. This is the standpoint of Galton. On the other hand are those, chiefly alienists, who assume that genius is fundamentally a pathological condition and closely allied to insanity. This is the position of Lombroso, who compares genius to a pearl,—so regarding it as a pathological condition, the result of morbid irritation, which by chance has produced a beautiful result,—and who seeks to find the germs of genius among the literary and artistic productions of the inmates of lunatic asylums.

It can scarcely be said that the course of our investigation, uncertain as it may sometimes appear, has led to either of these conclusions. On the one hand, we have found along various lines the marked prevalence of conditions which can scarcely be said to be consonant with a normal degree of health or the normal conditions of vitality; on the other hand, it cannot be said that we have seen any ground to infer that there is any general connection between genius and insanity, or that genius tends to proceed from families in which insanity is prevalent; for while it is certainly true that insanity occurs with remarkable frequency among men of genius, it is very rare to find that periods of intellectual ability are combined with periods of insanity, and it is, moreover, notable that (putting aside senile forms of insanity) the intellectual achievements of those eminent men in whom unquestionable insanity has occurred have rarely been of a very high order. We cannot, therefore, regard genius either as a purely healthy variation occurring within normal limits nor yet as a radically pathological condition, not even as an alternation—a sort of allotropic form—of insanity. We may rather regard it as a very highly sensitive and complexly developed adjustment of the nervous system along special lines, with concomitant tendency to defect along other lines. Its elaborate organization along special lines is built up on a basis even less highly organized than that of the ordinary average man. It is no paradox to say that the real affinity of genius—and I am now speaking of the highest manifestations of human intellect, of genius in so far as it can be distinguished from talent—is with congenital imbecility rather than with insanity. If indeed we consider the matter well we see that it must be so. The organization that is well adapted for