674 TIIE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



has thus suffered, therefore, as Lamartine says, "Genius bears within 

 itself a principle of destruction, of death, of madness." Cuvier, after 

 a life of incessant intellectual toil, with mind unclouded, died at the 

 age of sixty-three, from paralysis of the throat and lungs. Kepler, 

 sound in mind, died when sixty years old of fever, which some say 

 caused an abscess in the brain. The cause of Mozart's death is un- 

 known ; his sickness was of short duration. He thought himself poi- 

 soned, but the facts were hidden in the pauper-grave wherein his body 

 was unkindly thrown. Now, I protest that such cases give no evi- 

 dence of insane temperament, and in no way illustrate the kinship be- 

 tween mental greatness and disease. 



Again, it is said, and often with reason, that this kinship is shown 

 by the suicidal impulse, which " is only another phase of insanity." 

 That suicide or homicide may result, under this impulse, I doubt not, 

 but to make this fact of special value its numerical proportions should 

 at least be such as to make it a factor of constant value. Because 

 Goethe, Chateaubriand, George Sand, and Johnson have said that at 

 times they felt an impulse to commit suicide ; because Beethoven, 

 Schumann, and Cowper, who were at times morbid, really made the 

 attempt ; and Kleist, Beneke, and Chatterton succeeded in self-de- 

 struction — we are not justified in saying that the impulse or the act 

 itself came because genius contains an element of madness. Hundreds 

 who commit suicide every year do not possess genius; why, then, make 

 it the responsible agent for the few ? 



It is charitable to think that the misdeeds of our friends, or of those 

 whom we admire, are covered by the plea of irresponsibility through 

 insanity. Science, however, deals with facts, not sentiments. That 

 mental and motor impulses often occur which, because they are stronger 

 than volition, regard not the consciousness of right or wrong, there is 

 no doubt ; that these impulses are very frequently the product of a 

 morbid mind is also well attested, but the question before us is limited 

 to the relationship which genius bears to suicide, as one expression of 

 madness. 



I confess I can see only that relationship which exists in the organic 

 necessities which constitute the foundation of human thought and ac- 

 tion, and not the psychological relationship which makes the exaltation 

 of mind the destroyer of its life. 



The regularity and constancy of results which spring from the 

 varying conditions of race, climate, and occupations, as well as from 

 the social, political, and moral influences around us, clearly indicate, 

 what statistics prove, that madness is but one of many causes of sui- 

 cide. Now, since genius is itself exceedingly rare, and its union with 

 insanity still less frequently found, it is evident that suicide, although 

 occasionally committed by those of exalted minds, is altogether too 

 infrequent among them to justify us in claiming it as evidence in be- 

 half of the insanity of genius. Certainly, when we find that Kleist, 



