670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Or Shakespeare, -when he says : 



" The lunatic, the lover, and the poet 

 Are of imagination all compact." 



In support of this essential union, Montaigne, Diderot, Pascal, Lamar- 

 tine, and others, have subscribed their names, but in terms more gen- 

 eral than specific, and with more rhetorical beauty than philosophic 

 strength ; while Moreau boldly affirms that genius is a nervous disease. 



Charles Lamb, himself at times oppressed with mental gloom, stands 

 almost alone in defense of "the sanity of true genius." With this 

 view I am in accord, and, that the justification of this position may be 

 seen, I desire to review the facts commonly cited against it. 



Sophocles — poet, statesman, commander — was obliged to make a 

 defense against the charge of insanity, instituted by ungrateful and 

 avaricious children. He answered by reciting the tragedy of " CEdipus 

 at Colonos," which he had just finished, and he then asked the judges 

 if the author of such a work could be regarded as mad. The reply 

 was, " No ! " and he was acquitted. 



Lucretius — "writer of the purest Latin, and author of 'De Rerum 

 Natura,' the most exalted poem of the age'' — whose mind combined 

 the "contemplative enthusiasm of a philosopher, the earnest purpose 

 of a reformer and moral teacher, and the profound pathos and sense of 

 beauty of a great poet," has been used to illustrate the kinship of 

 genius and madness upon the unreliable evidence that he lost his rea- 

 son from the effect of a " love-philter " (a very ridiculous absurdity) 

 which had been given to him ; and after writing several books, during 

 his lucid intervals, he committed suicide. 



Were this allegation true, it could only show the baneful effect of 

 a drug upon his brain, which is quite apart from the influence of any 

 psychic cause. The historic facts are too few and insufficient to 

 justify any statement as to the life and personal character of this 

 man, who exerted such an influence over others by his writings, and 

 yet, like Homer, was content to let his personality " pass through life 

 unnoticed." Coesar, Catullus, and Cicero were his contemporaries, 

 and yet we know of him only through a brief record given by Jerome 

 four hundred years after the poet's death. Independent of the his- 

 toric doubts as to his insanity, the theory which makes a drug its 

 potent cause, should at least find reason for not uniting to it his 

 genius. 



That Socrates had his " demon," or guardian angel, may be true ; 

 but, if so, the hallucination corresponded with the accepted belief of 

 the age, and therefore signifies nothing against his mental integrity. 



Neither is there justification in using such illustrious names as 

 Descartes, Newton, and Goethe, to prove that madness holds its court 

 so near the temple of greatness. 



It is true that Descartes, in an hour of deep intellectual abstrac- 



