GENIUS AND MENTAL DISEASE. 665 



environment limits and modifies the development of the capacities of 

 the organization. 



The explanation of genius through the operation of the biologic 

 law of heredity is very satisfactory so long as antecedent and sequence 

 bear to each other definite and ascertainable relations ; but trouble 

 begins when the genetic record fails in its apparent unity — as when 

 genius and mediocrity have kinship. 



Whence came the genius of Phidias, which enabled him with such 

 immortal art to create in carved ivory and fretted gold the Lemnian 

 statue of the Parthenon and the Zeus of Olympia ; whence came the 

 power of Michael Angelo, Salvator Rosa, Leonardo da Vinci, and Ru- 

 bens, to paint in matchless beauty, on canvas and in fresco, the won- 

 drous imagery of their minds ; or of Beethoven, to record in his 

 symphonies the raptures of his soul ; or of Scott, to clothe with the 

 habiliments of life the ideals of his brain ; or of Spenser, Burns, and 

 Byron, to write with such rhythmic beauty ; or of Goethe, to garnish 

 with poetic dress the deep philosophy of his thought ? In what cloud- 

 land of the past were hidden the possibilities of Dante and Milton, 

 who made their visions of the eternal realms the subject of impassioned 

 verse — at once gorgeous in its rich tracery of thought, and sublime in 

 its pageantry of bliss and woe ? In what ancestral brain did sleep the 

 transcendent genius of Shakespeare that read every page "in Nature's 

 infinite book of secrecy " ; or did smolder the giant intellect of New- 

 ton, which w r eighed the planets and bound with the force of gravity 

 atoms and worlds in a bond of unity ? 



Such examples seem indicative of conditions powerful to modify, 

 transform, or deflect the action of the laws of heredity, and to cause 

 " indefinite variability " in psychological phenomena, as is done in ma- 

 terial forms. This variability, this new psychic manifestation, is robed 

 with the insignia of a new creation ; a new species has been born into 

 the realm of mind, displaying new and more exalted powers, but nev- 

 ertheless restrained in its action by the organization which, under law, 

 presides with such tyranny over every mental expression, and makes 

 us, to a greater extent than we commonly think, creatures of an inex- 

 orable destiny. The contrast between the exalted ideals and grand 

 achievements of genius, and the feeble, discordant expressions of mad- 

 ness, is as pathetic as it is striking. The citadel of thought has been 

 despoiled of its most precious adornment, and in the place where once 

 the Muses sat, mocking echoes now hold carnival, and " melancholy sits 

 on brood." 



To give a definition of insanity which shall prove acceptable to 

 medical psychology and to practical jurisprudence, is a more difficult 

 task than it may appear. This is because of the differences in the 

 appreciation of causes and effects in mental phenomena which exist 

 between minds trained in the technical details of physiological and 

 pathological knowledge, and those who witness merely a few of the 



