March 5, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



405 



brass" — a similie that can hardly be called con- 

 vincing. In this chapter he also attacks the 

 position of Lombroso and those few alienists 

 who teach that genius is a morbid psychosis. 

 We feel sure that Dr. Hirsch is in close har- 

 mony with the views of most modern alienists 

 in this argument, and that he opens himself to 

 uo criticism, except, perhaps that he tells us 

 only what is generally known ; but Dr. 

 Hirsch writes lucidly and with learning upon 

 this subject. In his criticism on the attempts 

 to make out a large number of great men 

 epileptics or hallucinants, we note a little 

 deficienc5' in his description of Luther's his- 

 torical hallucination about the devil. The com- 

 pleted story leaves little doubt that Luther 

 did have such a hallucination, though the 

 fact is not very significant or important. The 

 next chapter, on 'degeneration,' is an excel- 

 lent description of this condition and so much 

 in harmony with the views of Nordau that 

 we are left wondering where the antagonism 

 between the author and the Nordau monster is 

 to appear. Up to the middle of the book, in fact, 

 the two authors might coo together like turtle 

 doves. It is in the last three chapters on ' Sec- 

 ular Hysteria,' 'Art and Insanity,' 'Richard 

 Wagner and Psychopathology, ' that we find 

 Dr. Hirsch tasking his resources and his rhetoric 

 in showing the errors and extravagances of his 

 opponent. These chapters are interesting, but 

 are essentially polemical and do not have any 

 particular bearing on Genius and Insanity — a 

 fact which does not matter very much except in 

 marring the scientific physiognomy of the book. 

 Dr. Hirsch denies that this is an age of hysteria 

 and of neuropathic temperaments. Unfortu- 

 nately he does not furnish any particular facts 

 in support of his denial. He says, "spiritualism 

 has in the main died out," but this is not the 

 case in the United States at least. He cites 

 the epidemics of hysteria of the Middle Ages 

 as evidence of psychopathy in those times ; but 

 their existence, it may be fairly assumed, was 

 not by any means proof of a prevalent neu- 

 ropathy as much as it was of ignorance, re- 

 ligious zeal and church politics. No doubt 

 very sturdy and lethargic natures danced 

 with the rest of the populace in the epidemics 

 of those times and did it out of a healthy fright. 



or puerile imitativeness or ignorant passion. 

 The existence of false beliefs among an untutored 

 race does not argue degeneracy by any means. 

 The question at issue is in reality simply this: 

 Whether there are or are not more neuropathic 

 people per hundred of the population now than 

 a century or two centuries ago. We confess to 

 the opinion that there is now more of this neu- 

 ropathic constitution. The statistics of crime, 

 alcoholism, insanity and nervous diseases ; the 

 fact that a larger proportion of the population 

 are brain workers living on a higher mental 

 plain than in former times; the diffusion of syph- 

 ilis, the stimulating influences of modern civ- 

 ilization, the press, the telegraph, the rail- 

 road ; the gradual increase of urban at the 

 expense of rural populations, all justify this 

 position, which I believe only a blind or 

 sentimental optimism can deny. This does 

 not necessarily mean, however, that we are ' in 

 the midst of a black death of degeneracy and 

 hysteria,' but only that there we have now pro- 

 portionately more nervous systems which are 

 highly organized and unstable. We doubt if 

 even Dr. Hirsch will deny this, and it is mainly 

 the exaggerated and intense emphasis laid upon 

 the matter by Nordau which has brought out 

 such a crop of amateur optimists. We are, I 

 should add, combating this condition with ever 

 increasing diligence and, I trust, success. 



There seems to be little doubt that a man 

 may be insane and still produce art of a high, 

 if not of the highest quality. Here is where an 

 endless controversy, however, is let in. For one 

 party asserts that certain art work is of the high- 

 est class, hence the author is not insane. The 

 other, with equal positiveness, avers that the man 

 is insane, hence his work can not be of the high- 

 est class. I do not propose to be dropped into this 

 controversial cauldron. It is, I believe, however, 

 a pretty safe thesis to say that if a man is insane 

 his work cannot be of the highest class or rank 

 with that of a genius, since the fundamental 

 quality of insanity is a more or less completely 

 developed dementia, and a certain positive de- 

 fect in the association processes. This has not 

 prevented men of genius, originally sane, from 

 doing some kinds of great work after mental 

 disease had come upon them, through the sheer 

 inertia of their marvelous aptitudes. 



