THE OENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 531 



emotional experience which crystallize into single creations of art. 

 They depend upon " inspiration " — a word which is responsible 

 for half the overrating of such men, and for a good many of their 

 illusions. Not that they do not perform great feats in the several 

 spheres in which their several " inspirations " come ; but with it 

 all they do present the sort of unbalance and fragmentary intel- 

 lectual endowment which allies them, in particular instances, to 

 the classes of persons whom the theories I am discussing have in 

 view. It is only to be expected that the kind of sharp jutting 

 variation in the emotional and aesthetic realm which the great 

 artist often shows should carry with it irregularities in heredity 

 in other respects. 



Besides, the very habit of this kind of genius, the habit of 

 living by inspiration, puts a premium upon any half-hidden 

 peculiarities which he may have, both in the remark of his asso- 

 ciates and in the conduct of his own social duties. He gets to 

 be considered the social exception, the anomaly, the man to be 

 indulged ; and his own sense of the greatness and peculiarity of 

 his gifts leads him to claim the indulgence. I honestly think that 

 a due imposition of certain social penalties upon men like Byron 

 in the crises of their existence would at once have purified their 

 lives and dignified their art ; while at the same time it would 

 have removed some of the best examples of Nordau and the rest, 

 and suppressed the stimulus to the same kind of social deformity 

 in later men of talent. Mark you, I do not discredit the superb 

 art of these examples of the literary and artistic " degenerate " ; 

 that would be to make some of the highest ministrations of 

 genius, to us men, random and illegitimate, and to deny to 

 humanity some of its most exalting and intoxicating sources of 

 inspiration. But I do still say that wherein such men move and 

 instruct us they are in these spheres above all things sane with 

 our own sanity, and wherein they are insane they do discredit to 

 the inheritance to which their better gifts make legitimate claim. 



One of Balzac's characters again hits the nail on the head. 

 " My dear mother," says Augustine, in the Sign of the Cat and 

 Backet, "you judge superior people too severely. If their ideas 

 were the same as other folks they would not be men of genius." 



"Very well," replies Madame Guillaume, "then let men of 

 genius stop at home and not get married. What ! A man of 

 genius is to make his wife miserable ? And because he is a 

 genius it is all right ! Genius ! genius ! It is not so very clever 

 to say black one minute and white the next, as he does, to inter- 

 rupt other people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you 

 know which foot you are to stand on, to compel his wife never to 

 be amused unless my lord is in gay spirits, and to be dull when 

 he is dull." 



