378 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



found to be not infrequent. Moreover, it certainly has a stimulating 

 influence on intellectual work. The more normal man of cheerful 

 disposition instinctively seeks the consolations of society. The melan- 

 choly man, like the shy man, is ill-adapted to society, and more 

 naturally seeks his consolations in a non-social field, such as that of 

 the intellect, often plunging more deeply into intellectual work the 

 more profound his melancholy becomes. "Wagner said that his best 

 work was done at times of melancholy, and among the eminent men 

 on our list several writers are mentioned who turned to authorship as 

 a relief to personal depression. It may also be said that not only is 

 melancholy a favorable condition for intellectual work, but that the 

 sedentary and nerve-exhausting nature of nearly all forms of intel- 

 lectual work in turn reacts to emphasize or produce moods of depression. 



There is another cause which serves to explain or to accentuate 

 the tendency of men of genius to melancholy. I refer to the attitude 

 of the world towards them. Every original worker in intellectual 

 fields, every man who makes some new thing, is certain to arouse hos- 

 tility where he does not meet with indifference. He sets otit in his 

 chosen path, ignorant of men, but moved by high ideals, content to 

 work in laborious solitude and to wait, and when at last he turns to his 

 fellows, saying, 'See what I have done for you !' he finds that he has 

 to meet only the sneering prejudices of the few who might have com- 

 prehended, and the absolute indifference of the many who are too 

 absorbed in the daily struggle for bread to comprehend any intellectual 

 achievement. The wise worker knows this and arms himself with 

 contempt, as a protection alike against the few and the many;* but 

 it has to be remembered that the prevailing temperament of men of 

 genius is one of great nervous sensitiveness and irritability — so that, 

 as Eeveille-Parise puts it, they are apt to 'roar at a pin-prick'— and 

 even when they are well aware what the opinion of the world is worth, 

 they still cannot help being profoundly affected by that opinion. Hence 

 a fruitful source of melancholy. 



The attitude of the world towards the man of original intellect is, 

 however, by no means one merely of disdain or indifference. It con- 

 stantly tends to become more aggressive. It is practically impossible 

 to estimate the amount of persecution to which this group of pre- 

 eminent British persons has been subjected, for it has shown itself 

 in innumerable forms, and varies between a mere passive refusal to 



* Thus of one of the great men of science on our list, Stephen Hales, it was 

 said that he could look "even upon those who did him unkind offices without 

 any emotion of particular indignation, not from want of discernment or sensi- 

 bility; but he used to consider them only like those experiments which, upon 

 trial, he found could never be applied to any useful purpose, and which he there- 

 fore calmly and dispassionately laid aside." 



