62 GENIUS AND MENTAL DISEASE. 
measure the intellectual greatness of genius or tell the 
story which belongs to the degeneration of the reasoning 
mind ! 
That there may be a close relationship between genius 
and madness is a proposition which impresses us, at first, 
as a violation of the order of nature; but when we think ~ 
that the unity of nature includes in its cycle not the 
world of matter alone, but living things and mind— 
wherein are wrought marked differences of form and ex- 
pression through gradations so imperceptible that we do 
not discern the real points of transition—and reflect, 
further, upon the changing forms of certain nervous dis- 
eases and morbid predispositions in their ‘‘ pathological 
evolution through generations,’’ and recall the fact that 
some originating minds have been touched with insanity 
or, perhaps, it might be said, in some cases, that so much 
of madness has been accompanied with expressions of 
such intellectual greatness, the question of kinship be- 
tween genius and madness becomes one of deep physio- 
logical and psychological interest. 
The quality of mind known as genius involves, in con- 
nection with the reasoning faculties, the special exercise 
of imagination in its higher creative or constructive 
forms ; and in understanding this faculty we have an in- 
sight into the marvelous nature of genius. 
It may be said that imagination is that faculty which, 
in its lower or constructive form, works within the limits 
of recollection, and transforms the materials of sense- 
experience into pictures of thought, and recombines them 
into forms of greater beauty and usefulness ; while in its 
higher or creative form it distills therefrom truths which 
reason has not yet discerned, and idealizes beauties and 
excellences which excite our admiration and exalt our 
emotions. 
When thought symbolizes to the mind ‘‘the forms of 
things unknown,”’ it is because the imagination—leap- 
