GENIUS AND MENTAL DISEASE. 673 



the personal mental outfit of almost every one whose individuality is 

 sufficiently marked to make him worthy of notice ; but these pecul- 

 iarities or eccentricities are not essentially morbid, neither do they 

 give affirmative evidence that genius is related to madness. Such 

 peculiarities belong to all orders of mind — the humble as well as the 

 exalted — and can not, therefore, have an exclusive application. 



Add to the personal eccentricities of Pope, Byron, Johnson, Car- 

 lyle, and Swift the temper which at times became in them extravagant 

 rage, and the proof is yet no stronger that genius and insanity are but 

 different types of mental disease ; for passion and appetite are, in all 

 their forms, expressions of organic life and common to humanity, and 

 therefore, as universal factors, they can not be dissociated and made 

 to bear witness either for or against the subject before us. It has 

 already been admitted that eccentricities of character imply a want 

 of mental poise or equilibrium, which is even more apparent in the 

 extravagant passions which at times hold individuals under despotic 

 control, and often indicate decided moral obliquity. This I do not 

 deny, but yet affirm that the violent passion at times observed in one 

 of exalted powers of mind is no more evidence in favor of the kinship 

 between these powers and mental disease, than is the same passion, 

 when displayed in a low and vulgar mind, proof that stupidity is a 

 congener of madness. Mr. Madden is quite as justified in asserting 

 that " the maladies of genius have their main source in dyspepsia," or 

 I in affirming that, because some eminent men have been physically 

 puny and ill-formed, therefore their genius is related to, and depend- 

 ent upon, bodily imperfections. 



In trying to establish the kinship between mental greatness and 

 disease, Mr. Sully states, what I do not deny, that " a number of great 

 men have died from disease of the nerve-centers," naming Pascal, 

 Cuvier, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Heine — none of whom, however, 

 were insane. 



That genius should be subject to " all the ills that flesh is heir to " 

 challenges neither surprise nor dissent ; but to hold this as evidence 

 in support of the idea that " the extreme mind is near to extreme mad- 

 ness " is, as it seems to me, an erroneous interpretation of physiological 

 and pathological facts. To prove that Pascal died in convulsions 

 from an acute brain trouble, in connection with a disease of bodily 

 organs, and that Mendelssohn and Rousseau died of apoplexy, and 

 Heine of spinal disease, is not proof that there was any essential weak- 

 ness or disease of nerve-element, but rather is it evidence of disease of 

 blood-vessels through faulty nutrition. When haemorrhage occurs in 

 the brain, its substance is disorganized, as it might be if any other for- 

 eign substance were forced into it, and nervous disturbance very natu- 

 rally follows ; and possibly secondary nervous or mental disease, but 

 it is not correct to speak of the primary apoplexy as a disease of the 

 brain, or to infer that, because a person of high mental endowments 



