A STUDY OF BRITISH GENIUS. 445 



ment, an essential constituent in the man's genius. The mistake 

 usually made is to exaggerate the insane character of such a fermenta- 

 tive element, and at the same time to ignore the element of sane and 

 robust vigor which is equally essential to any high degree of genius. 

 We may perhaps accept the ancient dictum of Aristotle as reported by 

 Seneca : 'ISTo great genius without some mixture of insanity.' But we 

 have to remember that the 'insanity' is not more than a mixture, and it 

 must be a finely tempered mixture. 



This conclusion, suggested by our survey of British persons of pre- 

 eminent intellectual aptitude, is thus by no means either novel or mod- 

 ern. It is that of most cautious and sagacious inquirers. The saine 

 position was, rather vaguely, adopted by Moreau (de Tours) in his 

 PsycJiologie morhide dans ses rapports, etc., published in 1859, though, 

 as his book was prolix and badly written, his proposition has often been 

 misunderstood. He regarded genius as a 'neurosis,' but he looked 

 upon such 'nevrose' as simply "the synonym of exaltation (I do not 

 say trouble or perturbation) of the intellectual faculties, . . . The 

 word 'neurosis' would indicate a particular disposition of the faculties, 

 a disposition still in part physiological, but overflowing these physio- 

 logical limits"; and he presents a genealogical tree with genius, in- 

 sanity, crime, etc., among its branches; the common root being 'the 

 hereditary idiosyncratic nervous state.' J. Grasset, again, more re- 

 cently (La superiorite intellectuelle et la nevrose, 1900), while not re- 

 garding genius as a neurosis, considers that it is united to the neuroses 

 by a common trunk, this trunk being a temperament and not a disease. 

 The slight admixture of morbidity penetrating an otherwise healthy 

 constitution, such as the present investigation suggests as of frequent 

 occurrence in genius, results in an organization marked by what 

 Moreau calls a 'neurosis' and Grasset a 'temperament.' 



It has been necessary to state, as clearly as may be possible, the 

 conclusions suggested by the present study as regards the pathological 

 relationships of genius, because, although those conclusions are not 

 essentially novel, the question is one that is apt to call out extravagant 

 answers in one direction or another. The most fruitful part of our 

 investigation seems, however, to lie not in the aid it may give towards 

 the exact definition of genius — for which our knowledge is not 

 sufficient — but in the promising fields it seems to open out for 

 the analysis of genius along definite and precise lines. The time 

 has gone by for the vague and general discussion of genius. We are 

 likely to learn much more about its causation and nature by fol- 

 lowing out a number of detailed lines of inquiry on a carefully 

 objective basis. Such an inquiry, as we have seen, is difficult on 

 account of the defective nature of the material and the lack of ade- 

 quate normal standards of comparison. Yet even with these limita- 



