GENIUS AND INSANITY. 463 



as a reflection on their contented view. On the other hand, his pe- 

 culiar leanings and aspirations are incomprehensible to them, and 

 stamp him as an alien. "II y a peu de vices," says Chamfort, with a 

 grim irony, " qui empechent un homme d'avoir beaucoup d'amis, 

 autant que peuvent le faire de trop grandes qualites." Hence the 

 profound solitude of so many of the earth's great ones, which even 

 the companionships of the home have not sufficed to fill up. And it 

 must be remembered that the ardent emotions of the man of genius 

 bring their extra need of sympathy. Even the consciousness of in- 

 tellectual dissent from others may become to a deeply sympathetic 

 nature an anguish. " I believe you know " (writes Leopardi to a 

 friend), " but I hope you have not experienced, how thought can 

 crucify and martyrize any one who thinks somewhat differently from 

 others." 



Such isolation is distinctly unfavorable to mental health. It de- 

 prives a man of wholesome contact with others' experience and ideas, 

 and disposes to abnormal eccentricities of thought. It profoundly 

 affects the emotional nature, breeding melancholy, suspicion of others, 

 misanthropy, and other unwholesome progeny. The " strange inte- 

 rior tomb life " of which Carlyle speaks is a striking example of the 

 influence of this isolation in fostering the minute germs of morbid de- 

 lusion. 



If now we turn to the process of intellectual origination, we shall 

 find new elements of danger, new forces adverse to the perfect serenity 

 of mental health. If the rich biographical literature of modern times 

 teaches us anything, it is that original production is the severest strain 

 of human faculty, the most violent and exhausting form of cerebral 

 action. The pleasing fiction that the perfectly-shaped artistic product 

 occurs to the creative mind as a kind of happy thought is at once dis- 

 pelled by a little study of great men's recorded experience. All fine 

 original work, it may be safely said, represents severe intellectual 

 labor on the part of the producer, not necessarily at the moment of 

 achievement, but at least in a preparatory collection and partial elabo- 

 ration of material. The rapidity with which Scott threw off his mas- 

 terpieces of fiction is only understood by remembering how he had 

 steeped his imagination for years in the life, the scenery, and the his- 

 tory of his country. 



It is to be remembered, too, that this swift and seemingly facile 

 mode of creation is by no means an easy play of faculty, akin to the 

 spontaneous sportiveness of witty talk. It involves the full tension of 

 the mental powers, the driving of the cerebral machine at full speed. 

 According to the testimony of more than one man of genius, this 

 fierce activity is fed and sustained by violent emotional excitement.* 



* Byron, Goethe, Dickens, and others attest to this. Compare what George Eliot says 

 about the way in which the third volume of " Adam Bcde " was produced (" Life," voL 

 ii, p. 155). 



