458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ed, or at least exaggerated, some of the alleged morbid characteristics 

 of the great ; and as a matter of fact there is good reason to suppose 

 that this falsifying of the record of greatness has taken place. I may 

 refer to the story of the madness and suicide of Lucretius, which is ex- 

 tremely doubtful, and may have grown out of a religious horror at the 

 supposed tendency of his writings. The story of Newton's madness, 

 again, which is given by a French biographer, and which is ably re- 

 futed by Sir David Brewster, may owe much of its piquancy to what 

 may be called the unconscious inventiveness of prejudice. Very possi- 

 bly the stories of the visions of Brutus, Cromwell, and others, have had 

 a like origin. 



Again, it will be said that even medical men wishing like others 

 to magnify their office may have been too ready in spying out the 

 symptoms of insanity. If they are fallible in dealing with the living 

 subject, all of whose physical and mental characteristics are accessible 

 to observation, how much more likely are they to err in diagnosing the 

 minds of the dead by help of a few fragmentary indications only ! I 

 think the force of this objection, too, must be allowed. "When, for ex- 

 ample, a French alienist thinks it worth while to write a book in order 

 to prove that the belief of Socrates in a controlling divinity {to 

 SaifjLoviov) was a symptom of mental disease, a layman may be par- 

 doned for demanding a mode of investigation more in accordance with 

 the proud claims of science to our absolute and unstinted confidence. 

 A well-informed and critical reader of M. Moreau's tables of bio- 

 graphical facts will not fail to challenge more than one statement 

 of his respecting the morbid characteristics of great men, ancient and 

 modern.* 



Allowing, however, for a margin of error, I do not think any 

 candid mind will fail to see that such a body of facts as remains is 

 sufficient to justify us in drawing a conclusion. If men of the highest 

 intellectual caliber were not more liable to mental and nervous dis- 

 orders than others, no such list out of the short roll of great names 

 could have been obtained. No elaborate calculations are needed, I 

 think, to show that mental malady occurs too often in the history of 

 genius.f 



One might perhaps try to evade the unpalatable conclusion by say- 

 ing that there is genius and genius ; that it is weakly, one-sided, and 

 bizarre originality which exhibits these unhealthinesses, whereas the 

 larger and more vigorous productiveness of an Aristotle, a Shake- 

 speare, or a Goethe, is free from such blemishes.^ I think, however, 



* As when he sees in Swift's witty pamphlet on Ireland a distinct presage of oncom- 

 ing insanity. In some cases he is inexact in stating his facts, as when he says that Saint- 

 Simon committed suicide. 



f The proportion is the more striking, because it is not known that insanity is par- 

 ticularly frequent among the more highly educated class of the community. 



\ This seems to be the idea of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes when he distinguishes 

 between poets of "great sun-kindled constructive imagination" and those who have "a 



