TRANSACTIONS 
OF 
VASSAR BROTHERS INSTITUTE, 
1886-1887. 
NOVEMBER 9, 1886—THIRTY-FOURTH REGULAR MEETING. 
Two hundred twenty-five members and guests present. 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
GENIUS AND MENTAL DISEASE. 
BY WILLIAM G. STEVENSON, M.D., PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUTE. 
Members of the Institute, Ladies and Gentlemen: As 
an expression of energy the human mind is the highest ; 
as a product of creative power through organic evolution 
it is Supreme, and as a mystery in nature it is the most 
profound. It were comparatively an easy task to explain 
psychological phenomena by asserting, as did the meta- 
physicians of the past, and as some do even at the 
present, that the human brain—the physical sanctuary 
of thought—is merely an instrument through which va- 
rious spiritual beings operate, producing at one time the 
prophetic utterances of the seer, at another time the 
gifted words of genius, and yet again the extravagant 
and discordant expressions of madness. This was the 
‘‘working hypothesis’’ of Pagan antiquity in its efforts 
to explain the utterances of its oracles, and also of the 
