82 GENIUS AND MENTAL DISEASE. 
and his imagination conspired to lift him into the higher 
realms of an idealism which was the antithesis of things 
as commonly seen, and his mind grew and strengthened 
until, at the age of thirty years, obedient to the ‘‘in- 
finite malice of destiny,”’ he died. 
Because Lord Chatham suffered at one time from 
melancholy, the direct resuit of suppressed gout, it in 
no way proves that his genius was allied with madness, 
for the same clinical facts are observed in all orders of 
mind. 
Since, therefore, every degree of mental disorder from 
the simplest feeling of depression to the wildest mania, 
regardless of the quality of mind, may follow from the 
undue retention in the blood of the waste products of 
tissue-change, either alone or combined with other mor- 
bid bodily conditions, there seems to be but little justifi- 
cation in asserting that ‘‘there is no great genius without 
a mixture of insanity.”’ 
In the history of political literature the name of Ed- 
mund Burke stands among the first, and is representa- 
tive not only of that illuminating power which belongs 
to lofty minds, but of the genius which comes ‘‘as the 
consummation of the faculty of taking pains.’’ Year 
after year his voice sounded in behalf of the ‘‘ sacred- 
ness of law, the freedom of nations, the justice of rulers,” 
and the imagery of his thought—imposing in its majesty 
—‘‘carries us into regions of enduring wisdom.’’ For 
nearly threescore years his mind retained the dignity 
and calm of lofty greatness, and seemed to totter from 
its balance only when he breathed the torrid heat of fury. 
which was sweeping over France and gathering wrath 
against the horrid atrocities of ‘‘’89.’? He had before 
him the vision of Marie Antoinette, ‘‘ glittering like the 
morning star, full of life and splendor and joy,’ and felt 
that, through unbelief and passion, the props of stable 
government and morals were being broken and de- 
