sis. This array of illustrious names will probably impose upon the careless reader; the more so as M. Moreau does not pretend that all men of genius are actually mad, but only that their genius is founded on a diseased organic condition of the nervous system, similar to that observed in idiots and madmen. The purpose of this biographical array is to show that men of genius have been temporarily insane, or subject to hallucinations; and when this has not been the case in the men themselves, it has been observed in their relatives. If a man of preeminent ability comes from a family in which one or more cases of epilepsy, halluncination, melancholy, monomania, or idiocy, have been recorded, M. Moreau conceives that this fact illustrates his hypothesis, since it shows that the organic conditions of insanity were in the family, and these organic conditions must have been inherited. Let us inquire into the family history of Tom Sayers; we shall probably meet with an aunt, or a sister, or some near relative, who died of consumption, or was paralytic; and we shall then be able to prove that the noble chest, and the dreadful "right-handers" of our champion result from the same organic conditions as those which fill the hospitals and swell the mortality lists.

80:

Perhaps our readers imagine that we are misrepresenting M. Moreau in this absurd instance. Let us therefore proceed to cite a parallel case. Sayers is powerful enough, but his aunt we will suppose to be "weak as a rat." Hegel likewise was a powerful thinker, and not in the least suspected of being mad-but M. Moreau notes that Hegel's sister was She imagined herself to be a parcel which they were about to cord and seal up before dispatching it by the carrier; every stranger made her tremble; she drowned herself." With such a key to interpret phenomena, biographical evidence ought not to be scanty. Nevertheless, a calm consideration of the evidence collected by M. Moreau shows that it is extremely scant, the great majority of the cases having no legitimate bearing on the question.

His list commences with Socrates, a great name certainly, and one which we can not strike off, if we are to accept the statements of Plato and Xenophon, which exhibit the hallucinations of their master. Granting, however, that there was in So

crates a tendency to become so absorbed in ideas as to be totally insensible to what was passing around-granting that his Demon was not a figure of speech, but an hallucination—we can not be equally compliant in the case of Aristotle, whom M. Moreau claims, on the strength of idle rumors of his having committed suicide at seventy. If we admit that Brutus had the vision of Cæsar before the fatal battle of Philippi, instead of simply dreaming it, he must be placed on the list; but it is surely tasking our credulity too far when we are asked to place Scott and Goethe there, on the strength of two momentary illusions. Two men of immense genius, more entirely removed from every suspicion of insanity, could not be named; they had not even the fanaticism, the eccentricity, the irritability, so often seen in conjunction with intense intellectual activity. What, then, are the facts which M. Moreau takes to be evidence in his favor? It is clear that his knowledge of the men is scant enough; but he alludes to the following anecdotes:

"Those who have seen Abbotsford," writes Mr. Adolphus, "will remember that there is at the end of the hall, opposite to the library, an arched doorway leading to other rooms. One night some of the party observed that by an arrangement of light, easily to be imagined, a lu- · minous space was formed upon the library door, in which the shadow of a person standing in the opposite archway made a very imposing appearance, the body of the hall remaining quite dark. Sir Walter had some time before told his friends of the deception of sight which made him for a moment imagine a figure of Lord Byron standing in the hall."* Mr. Adolphus alluded to Scott's Letters on De monology and Witchcraft, in which the following narrative is given: "Not long after the death of a late illustrious poet, who had filled, while living, a great station in the public eye, a literary friend, to whom the deceased had been well known, was engaged during the darkening twi light of an autumn evening, in perusing one of the publications which professed to detail the habits and opinions of the dis tinguished individual who was now no more. As the reader had enjoyed the intimacy of the deceased to a considerable

degree, he was deeply interested in the publication, which contained some particulars relating to himself and other friends. A visitor was sitting in the apartment, who was also reading. Their sitting-room opened into an entrance-hall, rather fantastically fitted up with articles of armor, skins of wild animals, and the like. It was when laying down his book, and passing into this hall, through which the moon was beginning to shine, that the individual of whom I speak saw, right before him, and in a standing posture, the exact representation of his departed friend, whose recollection had been so strongly brought to his imagination. He stopped for a single moment, so as to notice the wonderful accuracy with which fancy had impressed upon the bodily eye the peculiarities and posture of the illustrious poet. Sensible, however, of the delusion, he felt no sentiment save that of wonder at the extraordinary accuracy of the resemblance, and stepped onwards towards the figure, which resolved itself, as he approached, into the various articles of which it had been composed. These were merely a screen, occupied by a greatcoat, shawls, plaids, and other such articles as are usually found in a country entrancehall."

If this is to be classed among hallucinations, and on the strength of it, Scott counted as one having a nervous system in the organic condition which produces insanity, it is clear that we are all mad, since we are all liable to similar deceptions in the twilight; we see a footpad pointing a pistol at our heads the footpad being the stump of an old tree. Nay, to short-sighted persons, similar deceptions take place in broad daylight. The present writer is frequently amused at the distinctness with which he sees dogs wagging their tails, cows nibbling the grass, and men or women approaching him, and as he gets nearer to them they gradually resolve themselves into logs of wood, mile-stones, or bushes.

might with more excuse have ranked him among les hallucinés.

The illustration drawn from Goethe's life is more to the point, if we accept the truth of the narrative, which, however, Goethe's biographer is indisposed to accept. The poet describes his taking leave of Frederika: "Those were painful days, of which I remember nothing. When I held out my hand to her from my horse, the tears were in her eyes, and I felt sad at heart. As I rode along the footpath to Drusenheim a strange fantasy took hold of me. I saw in my mind's eye my own figure riding towards me, attired in a dress I had never worn-pike-gray, with silver lace. I shook off this fantasy, but eight years afterwards I found myself on the very road going to visit Frederika, and that too in the very dress I had seen myself in in the fantasm, although my wearing it was quite accidental." On this Mr. Lewes remarks: "The reader will probably be somewhat skeptical respecting the dress, and will suppose that this prophetic detail was transferred to the vision by the imagination of later years.' In a note Mr. Lewes adds, that in Goethe's correspondence with the Frau von Stein, there is a letter written a day or two after the visit, describing it, but singularly enough containing no allusion to this surprising coïncidence. The whole story wears a very incredible aspect; and considering that Goethe was narrating in his old age an event said to have happened in his boyhood, it is easy to conceive some confusion and substitution of details. Unless we suppose this, we must suppose an actual vision of his future self in clothes then unwoven and unthought of! This would prove that he was gifted with prescience; it would not prove that he was insane.

or

mind is servile to the appearance. Scott

66

M. Moreau has better examples than

was not before him; had he declared that his vision was real, produced objectively

Lewes's Life and Works of Goethe, vol. i.

tionable, and not a few that are absurd. Cato may have been mad when he committed suicide: if M. Moreau is struck by several indications of insanity in Plutarch's narrative, we are willing to let Cato's name retain its place on the list; as also that of Charlemagne, to whom St. James appeared in the Milky Way, and revealed the spot in Galicia where his bones lay buried, at the same time ordering Charlemagne to conquer Spain, and build there a church and a tomb. Peter the Great and Charles V. have an indubitable right to figure among mad statesmen. The mother of Charles was insane, and hence styled Jeanne la folle. His grandfather Ferdinand of Aragon was profoundly melancholy, and he himself was epileptic. So was Julius Cæsar. Richelieu had occasional attacks of insanity, in which he fancied himself a horse; he would prance round the billiard-table, neighing, kicking out at his servants, and making a great noise, until, exhausted, by fatigue, he suffered himself to be put to bed and well covered up. On awaking he remembered nothing that had passed. His sister, the Marquise de Brézé, had a droll hallucination: 66 Elle croyait avoir une derrière de cristal, ne voulait pas s'asseoir de peur de le casser, et le tenait soigneusement entre ses deux mains de peur qu'il ne lui arrivât malheur."

Cromwell had fits of hypochondria. Dr. Francia was unequivocally insane. Dr. Johnson was hypochondriacal, and declared that he once distinctly heard his mother call to him "Samuel!" when she was many miles distant. Rousseau was certainly insane. Saint Simon is said to have committed suicide under circumstances indicating insanity. Fourrier "passed his life in a continual hallucination." Cardan, Swedenborg, Lavater, Zimmer. mann, Mohammed, Van Helmont, Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Dominic, all had visions. Even Luther had his hallucinations; Satan frequently appeared, not only to have inkstands thrown at his sophistical head, but to get into the reformer's bed and lie beside him. Jeanne d'Arc gloried in her celestial visions.

No one will be surprised to find numerous examples of the "organic condition" among the founders of sects, or among artists; but several of those cited by M. Moreau are rather examples of his credulity than of any thing else. Thus we read: "Petrarch was found dead in his

library, his head leaning on a book.” Can you detect the connection between this fact, and the proposition that genius is a disease of the nervous center? Again we read of Malherbe, that his thickness of utterance spoiled the effect of his verses when he recited them; he also spat more than even a Frenchman thinks becoming, and drew down upon him this mot from the chevalier Marin: "Qu'il n'avait jamais vu d'homme plus humide, ni poëte plus sec." If the salivary standard is to be applied, we fear that France, Germany, Italy, and America, will yield a long list of madmen.

Handel, Milton, and Delille were blind; Richardson and Labruyère died of apoplexy - and to M. Moreau blindness, or apoplexy, is ample proof of a predisposition to insanity. David the painter, and Rude the sculptor, were not themselves actually insane, but the son of David died of apoplexy, and the father of Rude was afflicted with paralysis what more can be needed to prove a family predisposition? Alfred de Musset became a confirmed drunkard-clear proof! Guercino squinted-need more be said? If more be needed, more is ready; for did not Ludovic Caracci say of Guercino that he was a prodigy whose works, although the products of a young man, amazed the greatest painters?

Let not the reader imagine we are inventing absurdities for M. Moreau; all these examples are gravely adduced by him as evidence; and they serve to give the measure at once of his scientific capacity, and his theoretic courage. A more circumspect writer could have collected sufficient examples to produce an effect, without betraying his weakness by such as those just cited.

Lucretius, Tasso, Swift, Cowper, Chatterton, are melancholy cases about which there is no dispute. Shelley had hallucinations. Bernardin St. Pierre, while writing one of his works, was "attacked by a strange illness" -lights flashed before his eyes; objects appeared double and in motion; he imagined all the passers by to be his enemies. Heine died of a chronic disease of the spine. Metastasio early suffered from nervous affections. Molière was liable to convulsions. Paganini was cataleptic at four years old. Mozart died of water on the brain. Beethoven was bizarre, irritable, hypochondriacal. Donizetti died in an asylum.

Chatterton and Gilbert committed suicide. Chateaubriand was troubled with suicidal thoughts; and George Sand confesses to the same. Sophocles was accused of imbecility by his son-but this was after he was eighty. Pope was deformed; and, according to Atterbury, he had mens curva in corpore curvo. He believed that he once saw an arm projecting from the wall of his room.

Among the less impassioned heroes of philosophy the examples are confessedly rarer; yet Newton, Pascal, and Auguste Comte, are illustrious and indisputable examples. Albertus Magnus also

must be named. He had a vision of the Virgin, who asked him whether he preferred excelling in theology or in philosophy; he chose the latter; whereupon she assured him that he would be incomparable in it, but as a punishment for his rejection of theology, he was to sink into complete imbecility before he died. Linnæus died " en état de démence sénile." Other names might doubtless be added; but it is only such a mind as our author's that could see a proof of insanity in Kepler's belief of the world being an organism; or in Montesquieu's blindness. To such a mind it is even conceivable that the deaths of Voltaire and Wellington in extreme old age by apoplexy, are illustrations of the hypothesis that preeminence of intellect is due to organic disease of the

nervous centers.

The collection of biographical facts made by M. Moreau is thus seen to be wholly inadequate to his purpose; not only are the majority of them questionable, but were they all of the same unequivocal character as the cases of Tasso, Newton, and Cowper, they would not warrant his deduction. They would prove that many men of genius were insane, or predisposed to insanity; but not that genius issued from the same organic condition as insanity; nor that there was any direct necessary connection between the two.

It is often said, and by M. Moreau's method it would be easy to prove, that poverty forms one of the necessary conditions of genius. Biography would show that many, if not most illustrious intellects were developed amidst the res angusta domi. The men were poor, or at any rate had poor relatives. Want stimulated their energies. The struggle for existence developed their strength. With

a list of well-known instances, and a few eloquent declamations, the hypothesis might be considered established. Nevertheless it would not be difficult to confute it. A few examples-one would sufficeof unmistakable genius reared in affluence or comfort would show that there was no necessity for poverty as the stimulus and condition of intellectual preeminence; while a glance at the thousands of highly educated men, unquestionably poor and unquestionably common-place, struggling with want, yet doomed by congenital mediocrity, would show that no amount of such stimulus as poverty can supply will add a cubit to the intellectual stature. Genius is often accompanied by want, but it is something altogether distinct from "impecuniosity." In like manner it is often accompanied by eccentricity or insanity, but it is something altogether distinct from nervous disease.

If instead of allowing attention to fall on the few cases of genius coëxisting with disease, we glance at the numberless cases of nervous disease which reveal no intellectual preeminence, but only a desolation of stupidity or a sterile excitability we shall see reason to place M. Moreau's hypothesis on a level with that which assumes poverty to be the necessary condi tion of genius. Every experienced keeper of an asylum will testify to the painful mediocrity of his patients in spite of their excitability; and in our ordinary experience we see how it is by no means the most excitable people who are the most eminent. Very shallow natures are often very excitable; and some forms of idiocy are distinguished by restlessness and vi vacity. It is perfectly true that of two equally-developed brains the more excit able will be the more powerful; but intellectual preeminence depends rather on the development of the brain than on the vivacity of the temperament.

This truth is the more to be insisted on, since the cause of the resemblances observable between genius and insanity is the excitability common to both; whereas the cause of the essential differences between them is the organic perfection of the one, and the organic imperfection of the other.

When a man of genius is in a state of intense excitement, he is at the culmination of his power; and so long as his nervous mechanism is uninjured or unhindered in its action, there is an infinite dis