“sous un col de cigneUn sein vierge et doré comme la jeune vigne.”
“sous un col de cigneUn sein vierge et doré comme la jeune vigne.”
“sous un col de cigneUn sein vierge et doré comme la jeune vigne.”
Murger admired women with green lips and yellow cheeks—no doubt through a species of colour-blindness, such as we have already met with among painters.
XIII. Nearly all of these great men—for instance, Cardan, Lenau, Tasso, Socrates, Pascal—attached great importance to their dreams, which, no doubt, assumed a more vivid and powerful colouring than those of sane persons.
XIV. Many presented voluminous but very irregular skulls; and, like madmen, have ended by serious alterations of the nervous centres. Pascal’s cerebral substance was harder than is normally the case, and the left lobe had suppurated. The brain of Rousseau revealed dropsy in the ventricles. Byron and Foscolo, great but eccentric geniuses, both showed premature ossification of the sutures. Schumann died of chronic meningitis and cerebral atrophy.
XV. The insane characters of men of genius are scarcely ever found alone. Thus melancholia was associated and alternated with exaggerated self-esteem in Chopin, Comte, Tasso, Cardan, Schopenhauer; with alcoholic mania, impulsive insanity, or sexual perversion in Baudelaire and Rousseau; with erratic and alcoholic mania and that of self-esteem, in Gérard de Nerval. In Coleridge, the mania of morphia was associated withfolie du doute.
XVI. But the most special characteristic of this form of insanity appears to reduce itself to an extreme exaggeration of two alternating phases, viz., erethism and atony, inspiration and exhaustion, which we see physiologically manifested in nearly all great intellects, even the sanest—phases to which they, all alike, give a wrong interpretation, according as their pride is gratified or offended. “An indolent soul, afraid of every kind of business, a bilious temperament, which suffers easily and is sensitive to every discomfort, seem as though they could not be combined in one character—yet they form the groundwork of mine.” Such is Rousseau’s confession in Letter II. Therefore, as the ignorant man explains the modifications of his ownegoby means of material and external objects, they often attribute to a devil, a genius, or a God, the happy inspiration of their exalted moments. Tasso, speaking of his familiar spirit, genius, or messenger, says, “It cannot be a devil, since it does not inspire me with a horror for sacred things; nor yet a natural creature, for it causes to arise in me ideas which I never had before.” A genius inspires Cardan with his written works, his knowledge of spiritual matters, his medical opinions; Tartini with his Sonata, Mahomet with the pages of the Koran. Van Helmont asserted that he hadseen a genius appear before him at all the most important moments of his life; and, in 1633, he discovered his own soul under the form of a shining crystal. William Blake often retired to the sea-shore to converse with Moses, Homer, Virgil, and Milton, with whom he believed himself to have been previously acquainted. When questioned as to their appearance, he replied, “They are shades full of majesty—grey, but luminous, and much taller than the generality of men.” Socrates was counselled in his actions by a genius who, as he expressed it, was better than ten thousand teachers; and he often advised his friends as to what they ought, or ought not to do, according as he had received instructions from his δαιμονἱον.
It is certain that the vivid and richly-coloured style of all these great men—the clearness with which they describe their most grotesque eccentricities, such as the Liliputian Academies, or the horrors of Tartarus, denote that they saw and touched, as it were, with the certainty of hallucination, all that they describe; that, in short, in them inspiration and insanity became fused, and resulted in a single product.
It may be said, indeed, of some—as of Luther, Mahomet, Savonarola, Molinos, and, in modern times, the chief of the Taeping rebels—that this false explanation of theafflatuswas of great service to them, giving to their speeches and prophecies that air of truth only resulting from a profound conviction, which alone can shake the popular ignorance and carry it in the wake of a new doctrine. This characteristic is common to the insanity of genius and the most trivial aberrations of eccentricity.
When inspiration and high spirits fail together, and depression of mind prevails, then these great unfortunate ones, interpreting their own condition still more strangely, believe themselves to have been poisoned, like Cardan; or to be condemned to eternal fire, like Haller and Ampère; or persecuted by inveterate enemies, like Newton, Swift, Barthez, Cardan, and Rousseau.
Moreover, in all these cases, religious doubt, raised by the intellect in despite of the heart, appears to the subjecthimself as a crime, and becomes both cause and instrument of new and real misfortunes.
XVII. Yet the temper of these men is so different from that of average people that it gives a special character to the different psychoses (melancholia, monomania, &c.) from which they suffer, so as to constitute a special psychosis, which might be called the psychosis of genius.
Want of character—Pride—Precocity—Alcoholism—Degenerative signs—Obsession—Men of genius in revolutions.
Want of character—Pride—Precocity—Alcoholism—Degenerative signs—Obsession—Men of genius in revolutions.
Butthese characteristics are not confined to insane genius; they are also met with, though far less conspicuously among the great men freest from any suspicion of insanity, those of whom the insane geniuses just mentioned are but the exaggeration and caricature. It is thus that the complete and perfect character, while conspicuously seen in Socrates, Columbus, Cavour, Christ, Galileo, Spinoza, is not to be found in Napoleon, Bacon, Cicero, Seneca, Alcibiades, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Machiavelli, Carlyle, Frederick II., Dumas, Byron, Comte, Bulwer Lytton, Petrarch, Aretino, Gibbon.
Self-esteem, carried to an almost incredible point, has been noticed in Napoleon, Hegel, Dante, Victor Hugo, Lassalle, Balzac, and Comte; and, as we have already seen, even in men of talent, but not of genius, as Cagnoli, Lucius, Porta, &c.
Precocity, moreover, does not fail to appear in normal men of genius, such as Mozart, Raphael, Michelangelo, Charles XII., Stuart Mill, D’Alembert, Lulli, Cowley, Otway, Prior, Pope, Addison, Burns, Keats, Sheffield, Hugo.
Among these we also find the abuse of alcohol, sexual deficiencies, or excesses followed by sterility, the tendency to vagrancy, and impulsive acts of violence, alternating, or associated, with convulsive movements. Bismarck once said to Beust, “Do you ever feel the wish to break anything as an amusement?” Like Gladstone and the BelgianMalon, he often takes exercise by cutting down trees like a woodman.
We have also found, in some of them, numerous anomalies in the shape of the skull and conformation of the brain. Degenerative symptoms, such as stammering, lefthandedness, precocity, sterility, abound in both, as well as divergences from ancestral character.
There is also seen in them that invasion, or rather possession, by their subject which transforms the creature of the imagination into a true hallucination, or an auto-suggestion. Flaubert says that his characters seized upon him, and pursued him, or that, more correctly speaking, he lived through them. When he described the poisoning of Madame Bovary, he felt the taste of arsenic on his tongue, and showed symptoms of actual poisoning so far as to vomit. Dickens, too, was affected by sorrow and compassion for his characters, as if they had been his own children.[450]
“To my mind,” writes Edmond de Goncourt, “my brother died of over-work, and more especially the elaboration of literary form, the chiselling of phrases, the labour of style. I can still see him taking up again pieces which we had written together, and which, at first, had satisfied us, working at them for hours, for half a day at a time, with an almost angry persistency....
“You must remember, in short, that all our work—and in this, perhaps, consists its originality, an originality dearly bought—has its root in nervous illness; that we drew our pictures of disease from our own experience, and that, by dint of analyzing, studying, dissecting ourselves, we at last attained a kind of super-acute sensitiveness, which was wounded on all sides by the infinite littlenesses of life. I saywe, for, when we wroteCharles Demailly, I was more diseased than he. Alas! he took the first place, later on.Charles Demailly!—it is a strange thing to write one’s own history fifteen years in advance.”[451]
The obsession of genius sometimes attains such a point as actually to create a double personality, and transform a philanthropist into an overbearing tyrant, a melancholy man into a jovial reveller.
Finally, we have found, even in the sanest and most complete genius, the incomplete and rudimentary forms of mania—as melancholy, megalomania, hallucinations, &c.—a fact which helps to explain the convictions of certain prophets and founders of dynasties, convictions so deeply rooted as to serve the purpose of inspiration, as far as the mass of the people were concerned. Maudsley says that one of the conditions essential to the originality of genius is a disposition to be dissatisfied with the existing state of things.
We have also met with the use of peculiar words which is so frequent a characteristic of monomania, and also those uncertainties which reach their extreme point in the madness of doubt.
The whole difference resolves itself, at bottom, into this: that in sane genius the symptoms are less exaggerated, the double personality is less conspicuous, the choice of subjects connected with madness less frequent (Shakespeare, Goncourt, and Daudet being exceptions), and the note of absurdity less emphasized. This, however, is scarcely ever wanting, inasmuch as nothing is closer to the ridiculous than the sublime.
It is also not without importance to note that, whenever genius appears in a race, the number of the insane also increases. Of this fact we have found remarkable proofs among the Italian, German, and English Jews. So much is this the case, that it is the custom, in German lunatic asylums, to reckon genius in the parents among the etiological elements of insanity. Both genius and insanity are influenced by violent passions at the time of conception, by advanced age, or alcoholism in the parents; and as, in all degenerate natures, genius is only exceptionally transmitted, it almost always assumes the form of more and more aggravated neurosis, and rapidly disappears, thanks to that beneficent sterility through which nature provides for the elimination of monsters. Though all the proofs we have given should have been forgotten,the fact would be quite sufficiently demonstrated by the pedigrees of Peter the Great, the Cæsars, and Charles V., in which epileptics, men of genius, and criminals, alternate with ever greater frequency, till the line ends in idiocy and sterility.[452]
In all these three types (insanity, insane genius, and sane genius), we see at work, with nearly equal intensity, the influence of race,[453]of hot climates, of diminutions (unless greatly exaggerated), in the degree of atmospheric pressure, and, in frequent cases, of maladies accompanied by a high temperature.
But the most convincing proof of all is offered by the insane who, though not possessed of genius, apparently acquire it, for a time, while under treatment. These cases prove that geniality, originality, artistic and æsthetic creation may show themselves in the least predisposed natures, as a consequence of mental alienation. Finally, not the least important proof is contained in the singular phenomenon of the mattoid, who, as distinguished from the really insane, has all the appearances, without the reality, of genius.
Taking all this into consideration, we may confidently affirm that genius is a true degenerative psychosis belonging to the group of moral insanity, and may temporarily spring out of other psychoses, assuming their forms, though keeping its own special peculiarities, which distinguish it from all others.
The identity of genius with moral insanity is seen in that general alteration of the affective instincts, which shows itself, more or less disguised, in all,[454]even in thoserare altruistic persons with a genius for goodness to whom the name of saints has been given. This also explains their longevity.
There is, beyond all doubt, some connection between all these observations, and the fact, established by Tamburini and myself, that the best artists of the asylums were all morally insane.
It should be remembered here, that the Klephts were brigands, and that the moral character of many great conquerors has been so far subject to alteration as to make of them true brigands on a large scale. Arved Barine, in noticing the beauty of countenance of certain brigands figured in my work inL’uomo Delinquente, has very justly observed[455]that “such a profession requires high intellectual endowments, and precisely the same as those needed by conquerors, who certainly have had no superabundance of moral sense. History proves that the moral sense is in no degree a function of the intellect. Great men have been so often devoid of it, that the world has been forced to invent for them a special morality which may be summed up in five words, frequently uttered by such—from Napoleon down to Benvenuto Cellini:Everything is permitted to genius.”
Men of genius are among the principal factors in true revolutions.[456]History records the saying of Tarquin that for the preservation of despotism it was necessary to cut down the tallest heads. Carlyle believed that the whole of history is that of great men. Emerson wrote that every new institution might be regarded as the prolonged shadow of some man of genius, Islamism of Mahomet, Protestantism of Calvin, Quakerism of Fox, Methodism of Wesley, Abolitionism of Clarkson, &c. Men of genius, wrote Flaubert,[457]summarise in a single type manyseparate personalities, and bring new persons to consciousness in the human race. This is one of the causes of their immense influence. And not only are they not misoneistic; they are haters of old things and ardent lovers of the new and the unknown. Garibaldi, when he pushed on into almost unknown regions of America, said, “I love the unknown.”[458]And Christ carried his idea of the new world, that was about to appear, as far as complete communism. Many men of genius rule beyond the tomb: Cæsar was never so powerful (wrote Michelet) as when he was a corpse; and so William the Silent. Max Nordau even claims that all human progress is owing to despots of genius. “Every revolution is the work of a minority whose individuality cannot conform to conditions which were neither calculated nor created for them.” The only real innovators known to history are tyrants endowed with ability and knowledge. “No revolution succeeds without a leader,” wrote Machiavelli; and elsewhere, “A multitude without a head is useless.” This is natural, because the man of genius, being essentially original and a lover of originality, is the natural enemy of traditions and conservatism: he is the born revolutionary, the precursor and the most active pioneer of revolutions.
Etiology—Symptoms—Confessions of men of genius—The life of a great epileptic—Napoleon—Saint Paul—The saints—Philanthropic hysteria.
Etiology—Symptoms—Confessions of men of genius—The life of a great epileptic—Napoleon—Saint Paul—The saints—Philanthropic hysteria.
WEmay, however, enter more deeply into the study of the phenomena of genius by the light of modern theories on epilepsy. According to the entirely harmonious researches of clinical and experimental observers, this malady resolves itself into localised irritation of the cerebral cortex, manifesting itself in attacks which are sometimes instantaneous, sometimes of longer duration, but always intermittent and always resting on a degenerative basis—either hereditary or predisposed to irritation by alcoholic influence, by lesions of the skull, &c.[459]In this way we catch a glimpse of another conclusion, viz., that the creative power of genius may be a form of degenerative psychosis belonging to the family of epileptic affections.
The fact that genius is frequently derived from parents either addicted to drink, of advanced age, or insane, certainly points to this conclusion, as also does the appearance of genius subsequently to lesions of the head. It is also indicated by frequent anomalies, especially of cranial asymmetry; the capacity of the skull being sometimes excessive, sometimes abnormally small; by the frequency of moral insanity, and of hallucinations; by sexual and intellectual precocity, and not rarely by somnambulism. To these we may add the prevalence of suicide, which is, on the other hand, very common among epileptic patients; the intermittence of bodily and mental functions, more particularly the occurrence of amnesia and analgesia; thefrequent tendency to vagabondage; religious feeling, manifesting itself even in the case of atheists, as with Comte; the strange terrors by which they are often seized (W. Scott, Byron, Haller); the double personality, the multiplicity of simultaneous delusions, so common in epileptic cases;[460]the frequent recurrence of delusions produced by the most trifling causes; the same misoneism; and the same relation to criminality, which finds its point of union in moral insanity. Add to this the origin and ancestry of criminals and imbeciles, which constantly show traces both of genius and epilepsy, as may be seen in the genealogical charts given of the families of the Cæsars and Charles V.;[461]and the strange passion for wandering, and for animals, which I have also often found in degenerated, and especially in epileptic, subjects.[462]
The distractions of mind for which great men are so famous, are often, writes Tonnini, nothing else but epileptic absences.[463]
The greatest proof of all, however, is that affective insensibility, that loss of moral sense, common to all men of genius, whether sane or insane, which makes of great conquerors, even in the most recent times, nothing else than brigands on a large scale.
Such conclusions may seem strange to persons unacquainted with the way in which the region of epilepsy has been extended in modern times, so that many cases of headache (hemicrania) or simple loss of memory, are now recognized as forms of epilepsy, though in disguise; their manifestation—as Savage has observed—causing the disappearance of every trace of the pre-existing epilepsy. It is sufficient, however, to recall to the reader the numerous men of genius of the first order who have been seized by motory epilepsy, or by that kindof morbid irritability which is well known to supply its place. Among these we find such names as Napoleon, Molière, Julius Cæsar, Petrarch, Peter the Great, Mahomet, Handel, Swift, Richelieu, Charles V., Flaubert, Dostoïeffsky, and St. Paul.[464]
To those acquainted with the so-called binomial or serial law, according to which no phenomenon occurs singly—each one being, on the contrary, the expression of a series of less well-defined but analogous facts—such frequent occurrence of epilepsy among the most distinguished of distinguished men can but indicate a greater prevalence of this disease among men of genius than was previously thought possible, and suggests the hypothesis of the epileptoid nature of genius itself.
In this connection, it is important to note how, in these men, the convulsion made its appearance but rarely in the course of their lives. Now it is well known that, in such cases, the psychic equivalent (here the exercise of creative power) is more frequent and intense.[465]
But, above all, the identity is proved to us by the analogy of the epileptic seizure with the moment of inspiration. This active and violent unconsciousness in the one case manifests itself by creation, and in the other by motory agitation.
The demonstration is completed when we come to analyse this creative inspiration orœstruswhich has often suggested epilepsy, even to those ignorant of the recent discoveries with regard to its nature. And this, not only on account of its frequent association with insensibility to pain, with irregularity of the pulse, and with an unconsciousness which is often that of a somnambulist, of its instantaneous occurrence and intermittent character; but also because it is not seldom accompanied by convulsive movements of the limbs, followed by amnesia, and provoked by substances or conditions which cause or increase the excessive flow of blood to the brain; or by powerful sensations; and also because it may succeed or pass into hallucinations.
This resemblance between inspiration and the epilepticseizure, moreover, is demonstrated by an even directer and more cogent proof—the confessions of eminent men of genius, which show how completely the one may be confounded with the other. Such confessions are those of Goncourt[466]and Buffon, and especially of Mahomet and Dostoïeffsky.
“There are moments,” writes the latter (inBesi)—“and it is only a matter of five or six seconds—when you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony. This phenomenon is neither terrestrial nor celestial, but it is an indescribable something, which man, in his mortal body, can scarcely endure—he must either undergo a physical transformation or die. It is a clear and indisputable feeling: all at once, you feel as though you were placed in contact with the whole of nature, and you say, ‘Yes! this is true.’ When God created the world, He said, at the end of every day of creation, ‘Yes! this is true! this is good!’ ... And it is not tenderness, nor yet joy. You do not forgive anything, because there is nothing to forgive. Neither do you love—oh! this feeling is higher than love! The terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself, and the rapture with which it fills you. If this state were to last more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it, and would have to disappear. During those five seconds, I live a whole human existence, and for that I would give my whole life and not think I was paying it too dearly.’
“ ‘You are not epileptic?’
“ ‘No.’
“ ‘You will become so. I have heard that it beginsjust in that way. A man subject to this malady[467]has minutely described to me the sensation which precedes the attack; and in listening to you, I thought I heard him speaking. He, too, spoke of a period of five seconds, and said it was impossible to endure this condition longer. Remember Mahomet’s water-jar; for the space of time it took to empty it, the prophet was rapt into Paradise. Your five seconds are the jar—Paradise is your harmony—and Mahomet was epileptic! Take care you do not become so also, Kiriloff!’ ”[468]
And in theIdiot(vol. i. p. 296):—
“ ... I remember, among other things, a phenomenon which used to precede his epileptic attacks, when they came on in a waking state. In the midst of the dejection, the mental marasmus, the anxiety, which the madman experienced, there were moments in which, all of a sudden, his brain became inflamed, and all his vital forces suddenly rose to a prodigious degree of intensity. The sensation of life, of conscious existence, was multiplied almost tenfold in these swiftly-passing moments.
“A strange light illuminated his heart and mind. All agitation was calmed, all doubt and perplexity resolved itself into a superior harmony, a serene and tranquil gaiety, which yet was completely rational. But these radiant moments were only a prelude to the last instant—that immediately succeeded by the attack. That instant was, in truth, ineffable. When, at a later time, after his recovery, the prince reflected on this subject, he said to himself, ‘Those fleeting moments, in which our highest consciousness of ourselves—and therefore our highest life—is manifested, are due only to disease, to the suspension of normal conditions; and, if so, it is not a higher life, but, on the contrary, one of a lower order.’ This, however, did not prevent his reaching a most paradoxical conclusion. ‘What matter, after all, though it be a disease—an abnormal tension—if the result, as I with recovered health remember and analyze it, includes the very highest degree of harmony and beauty; if at this moment I have an unspeakable, hitherto unsuspectedfeeling of harmony, of peace, of my whole nature being fused in the impetus of a prayer, with the highest synthesis of life?’
“This farrago of nonsense seemed to the prince perfectly comprehensible; and the only fault it had in his eyes was that of being too feeble a rendering of his thoughts. He could not doubt, or even admit the possibility of a doubt, of the real existence of this condition of ‘beauty and prayer,’ or of its constituting ‘the highest synthesis of life.’
“But did he not in these moments experience visions analogous to the fantastic and debasing dreams produced by the intoxication of opium, haschisch, or wine? He was able to form a sane judgment on this point when the morbid condition had ceased. These moments were only distinguished—to define them in a word—by the extraordinary heightening of the inward sense. If in that instant—that is to say, in the last moment of consciousness which precedes the attack—the patient was able to say clearly, and with full consciousness of the import of his words, ‘Yes, for this moment one would give a whole lifetime,’ there is no doubt that, as far as he alone was concerned, that moment was worth a lifetime.
“No doubt, too, it is to this same instant that the epileptic Mahomet alluded, when he said that he used to visit all the abodes of Allah in less time than it would take to empty his water-jar.”
I will add here some lines from theCorrespondanceof Flaubert:—
“If sensitive nerves are enough to make a poet, I should be worth more than Shakespeare and Homer.... I who have heard through closed doors people talking in low tones thirty paces away, across whose abdomen one may see all the viscera throbbing, and who have sometimes felt in the space of a minute a million thoughts, images, and combinations of all kinds throwing themselves into my brain at once, as it were the lighted squibs of fireworks.”
Let us now compare these descriptions of an attack, which might be called one ofpsychic epilepsy(and which corresponds exactly to the physiological idea of epilepsy—i.e., cortical irritation), with all the descriptions given us by authors themselves of the inspiration of genius. We shall then see how perfect is the correspondence between the two sets of phenomena.
In order the better to illustrate these strange displacements of function in epileptic subjects, I should call attention to an example, cited by Dr. Frigerio, of an epileptic patient who, at the moment of seizure, felt the venereal desire awaken, not in the generative organs, but in the epigastrium, accompanied by ejaculation.[469]
Let me add that, in certain cases, it is not only isolated paroxysms which recall the psychic phenomenology of the epileptic, but the whole life. Bourget remarks that, “for the Goncourts, life reduces itself to a series of epileptic attacks, preceded and followed by a blank.” And what the Goncourts wrote has always been autobiography. Zola in hisRomanciers Naturalistesgives us this confession by Balzac: “He works under the influence of circumstances, of which the union is a mystery; he does not belong to himself; he is the plaything of a force which is eminently capricious; on some days he would not touch his brush, he would not write a line for an empire. In the evening when dreaming, in the morning when rising, in the midst of some joyous feast, it happens that a burning coal suddenly touches this brain, these hands, this tongue: a word awakens ideas that are born, grow, ferment. Such is the artist, the humble instrument of a despotic will; he obeys a master.”
Let us glance at the pictures which Taine has given us of the greatest of modern conquerors, and Renan of the greatest of the apostles:—
“The principal characteristics of Napoleon’s genius,” says Taine, “are its originality and comprehensiveness. No detail escapes him. The quantity of facts which his mind stores up and retains, the number of ideas which he elaborates and utters, seem to surpass human capacity.
“In the art of ruling men his genius was supreme. His method of procedure—which is that of the experimental sciences—consisted in controlling every theory by a precise application observed under definite conditions.All his sayings are fire-flashes. ‘Adultery,’ said he to the Conseil d’Etat, when the question of divorce was under discussion, ‘is not exceptional; it is very common—c’est une affaire de canapé.’ ‘Liberty,’ he exclaimed, on another occasion (and he remained faithful all his life to the spirit of this exclamation), ‘is the necessity of a small and privileged class, endowed by nature with faculties higher than those of the mass of mankind;it may therefore be abridged with impunity. Equality, on the contrary, pleases the multitude.”
“He possesses a faculty which carries us back to the Middle Ages—an astoundingconstructiveimagination. What he accomplished is surprising; but he undertook far more, and dreamed much more even than that. However vigorous his practical faculties may have been, his poetic faculty was still stronger; it was even greater than it ought to have been in a statesman. We see greatness in him exaggerated into immensity, and immensity degenerating into madness. What aspiring, monstrous conceptions revolved, accumulated, superseded each other in that marvellous brain! ‘Europe,’ he said, ‘is a mole-hill; there have never been great empires or great revolutions save in the East, where there are six hundred millions of men.’ ”
In Egypt, he was thinking of conquering Syria, re-establishing the Eastern Empire at Constantinople, and returning to Paris by way of Adrianople and Vienna. The East allured him with the mirage of omnipotence; in the East he caught a glimpse of the possibility that, a new Mahomet, he might found a new religion. Confined to Europe, his dream was to re-create the empire of Charlemagne; to make Paris the physical, intellectual, and religious capital of Europe, and assemble within its precincts the princes, kings, and popes, who should have become his vassals. By way of Russia, he would then advance towards the Ganges, and the supremacy of India. “The artist enclosed within the politician has issued from his sheath; he creates in the region of the ideal and the impossible. We know him for what he is—a posthumous brother of Dante and Michelangelo; only these two worked on paper and in marble; it wasliving man, sensitive and suffering flesh, that formed his material.”
“Napoleon differs from modern men in character as much as do the contemporaries of Dante and Michelangelo. The sentiments, habits, and morality professed by him are the sentiments, habits, and morality of the fifteenth century. ‘I am not a man like other men,’ he exclaimed; ‘the laws of morality and decorum were not made for me.’
“Mme. de Staël and Stendhal compare Napoleon psychologically to the lesser tyrants of the fourteenth century—Sforza and Castruccio Castracani. Such, in fact, he was.
“On the evening of the 12th Vendemiaire, being present at the preparations made by the Sections, he said to Junot, ‘Ah! if the Sections would only place me at their head, I would answer for it that they should be in the Tuileries within two hours, and all these wretched Conventionnels out of it!’ Five hours later, being called to the assistance of Barras and the Convention, he opened fire on the Parisians, like a goodcondottiere, who does not give but lends himself to the first who offers, to the highest bidder, reserving for himself full liberty of action, and the power of seizing everything, should the occasion present itself....
“Never, even among the Borgias and Malatestas, was there a more sensitive and impulsive brain, capable of such electric accumulations and discharges.... In him, no idea remained purely speculative; each one, as it occurred, had a tendency to embody itself in action, and would have done so, if not prevented by force.... Sometimes the outburst was so sudden that restraint did not come in time. One day, in Egypt, he upset a decanter of water over a lady’s dress, and, taking her into his own room, under the pretext of remedying the accident, remained there with her for some time—too long—while the other guests, seated around the table, waited, gazing at each other. On another occasion he threw Prince Louis violently out of the room; on yet another, he kicked Senator Volney in the stomach.
“At Campo-Formio, he threw down and broke a chinaornament, to put an end to the resistance of the Austrian plenipotentiary. At Dresden, in 1813, when Prince Metternich was most necessary to him, he asked him, brutally, how much he received from England for defending her interests.
“Never was there a more impatient sensibility. He throws garments that do not fit him into the fire. His writing—when he tries to write—is a collection of disconnected and indecipherable characters. He dictates so quickly that his secretaries can scarcely follow him—if the pen is behindhand, so much the worse for it; if a volley of oaths and exclamations give it time to catch up, so much the better. His heart and intellect are full to overflowing; under pressure like this, the extempore orator and the excited controversialist take the place of the statesman.”
“My nerves are irritable,” he said of himself; and, in fact, the tension of accumulated impressions sometimes produced a physical convulsion; he was not seldom seen to shed tears under strong emotion. Napoleon wept, not on account of true and deep feeling, but because “a word—an idea by itself is a stimulus which reaches the inmost depth of his nature.” Hence, certain distractions, consequent upon vomitings or fainting fits, which caused, it is said, the loss of General Vandamme’s corps, after the battle of Dresden. Though the regulator is so powerful, the balance of the works is, from time to time, in danger of being deranged.
“An enormous degree of strength was necessary, to co-ordinate, to guide and to dominate passions of such vitality. In Napoleon, this strength is an instinct of extraordinary force and harshness—an egoism, not inert, but active and aggressive, and so far developed as to set up in the midst of human society a colossalI, which can tolerate no life that is not an appendix, or instrument of its own. Even as a child, he showed the germs of this personality; he was impatient of all restraint, and had no trace of conscience; he could brook no rivals, beat those who refused to render homage to him, and then accused his victims of having beaten him.
“He looks upon the world as a great banquet, open toevery comer, but where, to be well served, it is necessary for a man to have long arms, help himself first, and let others take what he leaves.
“ ‘One has a hold over man through his selfish passions—fear, greed, sensuality, self-esteem, emulation. If there are some hard particles in the heap, all one has to do is to crush them.’ Such was the final conception arrived at by Napoleon; and nothing could induce him to change it, because this conception is conditioned by his character; he saw man as he needed to see him. His egoism is reflected in his ambition—‘so much a part of his inmost nature that he cannot distinguish it from himself; it makes his head swim. France is a mistress who is his to enjoy.’ In the exercise of his power he acknowledges neither intermediaries, nor rivals, nor limits, nor hindrances.
“To fill his office with zeal and success is not enough for him; above and beyond the functionary, he vindicates the rights of the man. All who serve him must extinguish the critical sense in themselves; their scarcely audible whispers are a conspiracy, or an attack on his majesty. He requires of them anything and everything—from the manufacture of false Austrian and Russian bank-notes in 1809 and 1812, to the preparation of an infernal machine, to blow up the Bourbons in 1814. He knows nothing of gratitude; when a man is of no further use to him as a tool, he throws him away....
“During a dance, he would walk about among the ladies, in order to shock them with unpleasant witticisms; he was always prying into their private life, and related to the empress herself the favours which, more or less spontaneously, they granted him.
“What is still stranger, he carried the same methods of proceeding into his relations with sovereigns and ambassadors of foreign states. In his correspondence, in his proclamations, in his audiences, he provoked, threatened, challenged, offended; he divulged their real or supposed amorous intrigues (the bulletins 9, 17, 18, 19, after the battle of Jena, evidently accuse the Queen of Prussia of having had an intrigue with the Emperor Alexander), and reproaches them with a personal insult to himself, inthe employment of such or such a man. He requires of them, in short, to modify their fundamental laws: he has but a poor opinion of a government without the power of prohibiting things which may displease foreign governments.”[470]
This is the completest view of Napoleon ever given by any historian. To any one acquainted with the psychological constitution of the epileptic, it becomes clear that Taine has here given us the subtlest and precisest pathological diagnosis of a case of psychic epilepsy, with its gigantic megalomaniacal illusions, its impulses, and complete absence of moral sense.
It is not, therefore, only in moments of inspiration that genius approaches epilepsy; and the same thing may be said of St. Paul.
St. Paul[471]was of low stature, but stoutly made. His health was always poor, on account of a strange infirmity which he calls “a thorn in the flesh,” and which was probably a serious neurosis.
His moral character was anomalous; naturally kind and courteous, he became ferocious when excited by passion. In the school of Gamaliel, a moderate Pharisee, he did not learn moderation; as the enthusiastic leader of the younger Pharisees, he was among the fiercest persecutors of the Christians.... Hearing that there was a certain number of disciples at Damascus, he demanded of the high priest a warrant for arresting them, and left Jerusalem in a disturbed state of mind. On approaching the plain of Damascus at noon, he had a seizure, evidently of an epileptic nature, in which he fell to the ground unconscious. Soon after this, he experienced a hallucination, and saw Jesus himself, who said to him in Hebrew, “Paul, Paul, why persecutest thou me?” For three days, seized with fever, he neither ate nor drank, and saw the phantom of Ananias, whom, as head of the Christian community, he had come to arrest, making signs to him. The latter was summoned to his bed, and calm immediately returned to the spirit of Paul, who from that day forward became one of the most fervid Christians. Without desiring anymore special instruction—as having received a direct revelation from Christ himself—he regarded himself as one of the apostles, and acted as such, to the enormous advantage of the Christians. The immense dangers occasioned by his haughty and arrogant spirit were compensated a thousand times over by his boldness and originality, which would not allow the Christian idea to remain within the bounds of a small association of people “poor in spirit,” who would have let it die out like Hellenism, but, so to speak, steered boldly out to sea with it. At Antioch he had a hallucination similar to that of Mahomet at a later period; he felt himself rapt into the third heaven, where he heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.
Anomalies are also observable in his writings. “He lets himself be guided by words rather than ideas; some one word which he has in his mind overpowers him and draws him off into a series of ideas very far removed from his main subject. His digressions are abrupt, the development of his ideas is suddenly cut short, his sentences are often unfinished. No writer was ever so unequal; no literature in the world presents a sublime passage like 1 Corinthians xiii., side by side with futile arguments and wearisome detail.”[472]
Epilepsy in men of genius, therefore, is not an accidental phenomenon, but a truemorbus totius substantiæ, to express it in medical language. Hence we gather a fresh indication of the epileptoid nature of genius.
If, as seems certain, Dostoïeffsky described himself in theIdiot, we have another example of an epileptic genius, whose whole course of life is determined by the psychology peculiar to the epileptic—impulsivity, double personality, childishness, which goes back even to the earliest periods of human life, and alternates with a prophetic penetration, and with morbid altruism and the exaggerated affectivity of the saint. This last fact is most important, as bearing on the objection that the usual immorality of the epileptic would forbid us to connect this type with that of the saintly character. This objection, however, has been partly eliminated by the researchesof Bianchi, Tonnini, Filippi, according to whom there are cases, though rare (16 per cent.), of epileptic patients of good character, who even manifest an exaggerated altruism, though accompanied by excessive emotionalism.[473]
Hysteria, which is closely related to epilepsy, and similarly connected with the loss of affectivity, often shows us, side by side with an exaggerated egoism, certain bursts of excessive altruism, which, at the same time, have their source in, and depend on, a degree of moral insanity, and show us the morbid phenomenon in excessive charity.
“There are some ladies,” justly observes Legrand du Saulle,[474]“who, though remaining in the world, take an ostentatious part in all the good works going on in their parish; they collect for the poor, work for the orphans, visit the sick, give alms, watch by the dead, ardently solicit the benevolence of others, and do a great deal of really helpful work, while at the same time neglecting their husbands, children, and household affairs.
“These women ostentatiously and noisily proclaim their benevolence. They set on foot a work of charity with as much ardour as bogus company-promoters launch a financial enterprise which is to result in hyperbolical dividends.
“They go and come, in constantly increasing numbers; they instinctively act with a charming tact and delicacy, think of everything necessary to be done, whether in the midst of private mourning or public catastrophe, and affect to blush on receiving tributes of admiration from grateful sufferers, or deeply moved spectators.... Their ready tact and sympathy are surprising, and the greater the trouble, the more admirably do they seem to rise to the occasion—while the paroxysm lasts. When their feelings are calmed, the benevolent impulse passes away; being essentially mobile and spasmodic, they cannot do good deliberately and on reflection.
“The ‘charitable hysteric’ is capable of achieving feats of courage which have been quoted and repeated, and even become legendary.
“They have been known to show extraordinary presenceof mind, resource, and courage in saving the inmates of a burning house, or in facing an armed mob during a riot. If questioned on the following day, these heroines will be found in a state of complete prostration; and some of them candidly avow that they do not know what they have done, and were at the time unconscious of danger.
“At a time of cholera epidemic, when fear causes such ill-advised and reprehensible derelictions of duty, hysterical women have been known to show an extraordinary devotion; nothing is repugnant to them, nothing revolts their modesty or wearies out their endurance....
“For such persons, devotion to others has become a need, a necessary expenditure of energy, and, without knowing it, they pathologically play the part of virtue. People in general are taken in by it, and, for the sake of example, it is just as well. It was this consideration which induced me to ask and obtain a public acknowledgment of the services of a hysterical patient—at one time an inmate of a lunatic asylum—whose deeds of charity in the district where she lives are truly touching. While constantly active in attendance on the sick, and spending liberally on their behalf, she confines her personal expenditure to what is strictly necessary, her dress being the same at all seasons of the year. Now this lady shows a great variety of hysterical symptoms, becomes intensely excited on the slightest occasion, sleeps very badly, and is a serious invalid.
“Lastly, in private sorrows, the hysteric patient often departs from the normal manifestations of grief. At the loss of her children, she remains calm, serene, resigned; does not shed a tear, thinks of everything that ought to be done, gives numerous orders, forgets none of the most painful details, imposes on all around her the most dignified attitude, and attends the funeral without breaking down. People think that this mother is exceptionally gifted, and has a courage superior to others. This is a mistake; she is weaker than they—she is ‘suffering from disease.’ ”
In order fully to grasp the seeming paradoxes contained in these conclusions, we must remember that manyphilanthropists love their neighbours, but only at a distance, and nearly always at the expense of the more physiological, more general, affections—love for their family, their country, &c. We must remember Dostoïeffsky’s remark (inThe Brothers Karamanzov, i. p. 325) that “What one can love in one’s fellow is a hidden and invisible man; as soon as he shows his face, love disappears. One can love one’s fellow-men in spirit, but only at a distance; never close at hand.” One also recalls Sterne, who was overcome with emotion at the sight of a dead ass, and deserted his wife and his mother.
The greatest philanthropists—such men as Beccaria and Howard—have been harsh fathers and masters; even the Divine Philanthropist was, as we have seen, hard towards his own family.[475]
St. Paul, before his conversion, distinguished himself by his vehement and cruel persecution of the Christians.
It is well known how, only too often, the man of real and fervent religion has to forget his family and make a duty of celibacy and hatred to the other sex. Thus St. Liberata was angry with her husband for weeping at parting from their children; and, according to the legend, the mother of Baruch replied to her son when, during his martyrdom, he implored her for water in his anguish, “Thou shouldst desire no water now save that of heaven.”[476]
These cases, moreover, show that, very often, exaggerated altruism is itself only a pathological phenomenon, a hypertrophy of sentiment accompanied—as always happens in cases of hypertrophy—by loss and atrophy in other directions.[477]
We have seen in Juan de Dios, in Lazzaretti, Loyola, and St. Francis, of Assisi, saintliness showing itself, in true psychic polarization, as a perfect contrast to their former life in which the tendency to evil was strongly pronounced.
If we add to these phenomena, so frequent in epileptic and hysteric patients, all those others, of clairvoyance, thought-transference, transposition of the senses, fakirism, mental vision, temporary manifestations of genius, and monoideism, so frequently observed in these maladies, phenomena so strange that many scientists, unable to explain, endeavour to deny them, we can demonstrate the hysterical character of saintliness, even in its least explicable manifestations—those of miracles.[478]