This man was born at Arcidosso, in 1834. His father, a carter, appears to have been given to drink, but was of great strength. He had some relatives who were suicidal, and others insane; one, in particular, died a religious maniac, and believed himself to be the Eternal Father. Lazzaretti’s six brothers were all strong men, of gigantic stature, ranging from 1·90 to 1·95 m. in height (which,however, is not uncommon in that part of the country), of quick wits and tenacious memory.
David was distinguished from the rest by his superior stature, by the distinction and regularity of his features, by greater intelligence, by the large size of his head, which was dolichocephalic in form, and by his eyes, which some found fascinating, though to many (says the advocate Pugno) they seemed to have the character of possession and of insanity. It is asserted that he was hypospadic and perhaps impotent in his youth—anomalies of no slight importance, if we remember that Morel and, especially, Legrand du Saulle[422]have often discovered them in hereditary madmen.
Even from his childhood, he showed those contradictions, those tendencies to extremes in character, which are frequent precursors of insanity. Thus, when a boy he wished to become a monk; later on, after he had taken to his father’s trade, he began to lead an irregular life, and gave himself up to alcoholic intemperance. In the meantime, however, he cultivated his mind by a course of reading which was singular for a man in his position, including Dante and Tasso; and at fifteen he was called “Thousand Ideas” from the strange songs he invented,[423]though he could never succeed in learning the rules of grammar. He was quarrelsome, used the foulest language, and was dreaded by all, so much so that, one day, on the occasion of a festival, unarmed and followed only by his brothers, he put to flight the entire population of Castel del Piano. Yet he was easily excited by a speech, a poem, a sermon, a play—anything that appeared noble and great. He had an extreme veneration for Christ and Mahomet, whom he used to call the two greatest men that had ever appeared in the world.
According to his own confessions, he had, at the age of fourteen, various hallucinations of the same kind as those which proved so fatal to him in 1878. It is certain, besides, that, at one time in his youth, he had a strong sympathy for a Jewess of Pittigliano, awakened by theeloquence with which she defended her religion. Yet at that time he was accustomed to say that there were three things he abhorred—women, churches, and dancing.
In 1859, at twenty-five, he enlisted as a volunteer in the cavalry; and in 1860, he took part in Cialdini’s campaign, but rather as an officer’s servant than as a soldier. Before starting, he wrote a patriotic hymn, which was sent to Brofferio, and surprised him by the novelty of its thoughts and the beauty of some of the verses, contrasting strangely with the roughness of the phraseology, and the numerous grammatical errors.
After this, he again returned to his trade as a carter, and at the same time to his habits of debauchery and foul language. He also rejoined his wife, whom he had married three years previously, and for whom he felt a poetic affection which he carried so far as to write love-songs to her. Here, again, his ambitious ideas reappeared, and induced him anew, though so uncultivated, to seek fame through his verses and tragedies, which read like burlesques.
Gradually, his fantastic delusions took another direction. In 1867, at thirty-three, he had—whether as an effect of drink, or of political excitement—a return of the religious hallucinations of 1848, in a more marked form than previously. One day he disappeared, in consequence of a vision of the Madonna, who had commanded him to go to Rome, and remind the Pope (who at first refused to receive him, but afterwards treated him with courtesy, though, it is said, not without advising him to try the remedy of a good shower-bath) of his divine mission. He then went to the hermitage of Montorio Romano, in the Sabine mountains, inhabited by a Prussian monk named Ignazio Micus. The latter kept him with him for three months in the “Grotto of the Blessed Amadeus,” directing him in his theological studies.
It is very probable—though on this point we can only conjecture, as all direct evidence is wanting—that this monk assisted him to make the tattoo-marks on his forehead, which he claimed to have received from the hand of St. Peter, and which he hid under a lock of hair from the gaze of the profane, showing them only to true believers.
This tattooing, according to the testimony of medical men, consists of an irregular parallelogram, on the upper side of which are thirteen dots, disposed in the form of a cross. To this mark, and to two others which he afterwards produced on himself, on the deltoid muscle and the inside of the leg, he attributed—through a tendency common among the insane—a strange and mysterious significance, as seals of a special covenant with God.
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From that moment a complete change took place in him, such as is often observed in the insane.[424]From being quarrelsome, blasphemous, and intemperate, he became tractable, gentle, and abstemious to the point of living on bread and water in Sabina, and, in thetemporaon the mountains, on herbs with salt and vinegar. At other times he had no other food but polenta, orsoupe-maigre, or bread with onions or garlic. On the island of Monte Cristo, in 1870, he lived for over a month on six loaves, garnished with a few herbs;[425]and in the French monastery, he got through several days on two potatoes a day. What must have appeared still more strange, and surprised even cultured minds, was the fact that the chaotic and burlesque writer became sometimes elegant, always effective—full of vigorous images supplied by a piety comparable alone to that of the early Christians.
This, in fact, struck the clergy of the district, who,rightly seeing in him a repetition of the ancient prophets, took him seriously, all the more that, according to their usual custom, they perceived the means of making a profit out of him and getting a church rebuilt.
The people, already justly astonished at his changed ways of life, no less than by his tattooings, his inspired speech, his long neglected beard and grave bearing, rushed in masses to hear him, encouraged by the priests.
A procession was then organized, in which Lazzaretti, accompanied by priests and by some of the most influential among the laity, marched to Arcidosso, Roccalbegna, Castel del Piano, Pian Castagnaio, Cinigiano, and Santafiora. In all these places he was received with rejoicings by the people on their knees; and the parish priests kissed his face and his hands and even his feet. The construction of the church was begun, and contributions to the building fund flowed in abundantly. But though numerous, the amounts were small, the mountaineers being unable to give much. The notion was then suggested of employing the labour of their arms.
The site of the church had been selected not far from Arcidosso—about a hundred paces from the village, at the spot calledLa Croce dei Canzacchi, where, by a strange fatality, he was to receive his death-shot.
The faithful assembled by thousands to begin the building. Men, women and children were employed in carrying fascines, beams of wood, and stones. But, unfortunately, architecture, like grammar, has rules; and in carrying them out prophetic inspiration is of little use without training. Thus, as Lazzaretti’s verses remained lame, so the materials collected with so much labour remained a useless heap, like the tower which was to reach to heaven, and never became more than a pile of stones.
In January, 1870, he founded the “Society of the Holy League,” a mutual assistance society which he called the symbol of charity. In March of the same year, after having assembled his followers at a Last Supper, he set out, accompanied by Raffaello and Giuseppe Vichi, for the island of Monte Cristo, where he remained for some months, writing epistles, prophecies, and sermons. He then returned to Montelabro, where he wrote down thevisions or prophetic inspirations which he had, and where he was arrested for sedition (April 27th). After his liberation,[426]he founded a society to which he gave the name of “Christian Families.” This was considered, very erroneously, as a proof of continued fraud; and he was arrested, but discharged, through the efforts of the advocate Salvi, after seven months’ imprisonment.
In 1873, Lazzaretti, in obedience to other divine commands, started on a journey, passing through Rome, Naples, and Turin, whence he proceeded to the Chartreuse at Grenoble. Here he wrote the Rules and Discipline of the Order of Penitent Hermits, invented a system of cipher, with a numerical alphabet, and dictated the “Book of the Heavenly Flowers,” in which it is written that “The great man shall descend from the mountains, followed by a little band of mountain burghers.” To which are added the visions, dreams, and divine commands which he believed himself to have received in that place.
On his return to Montelabro he found an immense crowd, attracted both by devotion and curiosity, encamped on the summit of the mountain, to whom he addressed a sermon on the text, “God sees us, judges us, condemns us.” For this he was denounced to the authorities as tending to overthrow the government and promote civil war.
In the night of Nov. 19, 1874, he was arrested a second time, and brought before the court at Rieti. This time the authorities were desirous of obtaining the opinion of non-specialist experts, who, with inexplicable want of perception, pronounced him to be of sound mind and a cunning knave.[427]Thus, in spite of his strange publications and his tattoo marks, he was condemned to fifteen months’ imprisonment, and one year of police supervision, for fraud and vagabondage.
The sentence, however, was referred to the Court ofAppeal at Perugia; and on the 2nd of August, 1875, he was allowed to return to Montelabro, where he reconstituted his society, and placed the priest Imperiuzzi at the head of it. His health had suffered in prison, and for this reason—perhaps, also, to avoid new arrests, and to enjoy the glory of easy martyrdom among the Legitimist fanatics—he went to France in October. Being mysteriously carried, as he expresses it, by the Divine power, into the environs of a town in Burgundy, he produced a book, which with good reason he calls “mysterious,” entitled “My Wrestling with God,” or “The Book of the Seven Seals, with the description and nature of the Seven Eternal Cities”—a mixture of Genesis and Revelation, with sentences and rhapsodies entirely of an insane character. He also wrote a manifesto addressed to all the princes of Christendom, in which he calls himself the great Monarch, and invites them to make alliance with him, for, “at an unexpected time the end of the world shall be manifested to the Latin nation in a way quite opposed to human pride.” In the same document he declares himself Leader, Master, Judge, and Prince over all the potentates of earth. These writings were copied for him by the priest Imperiuzzi, who corrected the most conspicuous mistakes; and many of them attained not only the undeserved honour of appearing in print, but also that of being translated into French, by the aid of M. Léon du Vachat, and various Italian and foreign reactionaries, who had taken Lazzaretti seriously.
However, a short time after, he was so far carried away by delirium as to begin inveighing against the corruptions of the priesthood and the practice of auricular confession, for which he wished to substitute a public one. Thereupon the Holy See declared his doctrines false and his writings subversive, and the same man who had formerly written a work[428]in favour of the Pope, now wrote, and despatched on May 14, 1878, an exhortation addressed to his brethren of the Order of Hermits, against Papal idolatry, and the beast of the seven heads. After all this, with the usual contradictoriness of the insane, he went to Rome tolay aside his symbolic seal and his rod, and retracted before the Holy Office; yet, afterwards, returning to Montelabro, he continued to deliver addresses against the Catholic Church, which, he said, had become a shopkeeping church, and against thepriests, true atheists in practice, who, not believing themselves, profit by the belief of others. Preaching the Holy Reformation, and declaring himself the Man of Mystery, the New Christ, Leader and Avenger, he exhorted believers to separate themselves from the world, and prove their separation by abstaining from food and from sexual intercourse, even in the case of married persons, who, however, if they indulged, were required to pray for at least two hours, naked, outside their bed, before the act. He issued paper money for considerable sums, in proportion to the means at the disposal of the community,i.e., up to 104,000 francs; but it should be noted that this was absolutely useless, being kept shut up in a closed vase. This idea savours unmistakably of insanity.
After announcing a great miracle, he caused to be prepared, with a part of the money collected, banners and garments for the members, embroidered with the animals which had appeared to him in his hallucinations—all of strange and grotesque shapes. He had a richer one made for himself, and, for the rank and file, a square piece of stuff to wear on the breast, which showed a cross, with two C’s reversed, ↄ † C, the usual emblem of the association.
In August, 1878, he assembled a larger number than ever, and, having prescribed prayers and fasts for three days and three nights, delivered addresses, some of which were public, others private and reserved for believers (who were divided into the various classes of Priest-Hermits, Penitentiary Hermits, Penitent Hermits, and simple associations of the Holy League and Christian Brotherhood) and caused the so-called Confession of Amendment to be made on the 14th, 15th, and 16th August. On the 17th, the great banner with the inscription, “The Republic is the Kingdom of God,” was raised on the tower. Then, having assembled all the members at the foot of a cross, erected for the purpose,the Prophet administered the solemn oath of fidelity and obedience. At this point, one of David’s brothers tried to persuade him to renounce his perilous enterprise, but in vain; for, on the contrary, he replied to those who pointed out the possibility of a conflict, “He would, on the following day, show them a miracle to prove that he was sent from God in the form of Christ, a judge and leader, and therefore invulnerable, and that every power on earth must yield to his will; a sign from his rod of command was enough to annihilate all the forces of those who dared oppose him.” A member having remarked on the opposition of the government, he added that “he would ward off the balls with his hands, and render harmless the weapons directed against himself and his faithful followers; and the Government Carbineers themselves would act as a guard of honour to them.” More and more intoxicated with his delirium, he wrote in all seriousness to the Delegate of Public Safety—to whom he had already shown the preparations, and, later on, given a half-promise to countermand the procession—“That he was no longer able to do so, having received superior orders to the contrary from God Himself.” He threatened unbelievers with the Divine wrath, if, through want of faith, they rebelled against his will.
With such intentions, on the morning of August 18th, he set out from Montelabro at the head of an immense crowd, going down towards Arcidosso. He was dressed in a royal cloak of purple embroidered with gold ornaments, and crowned with a kind of tiara surmounted by a crest adorned with plumes; and he held in his hand the staff which he called his rod of command. His principal associates were dressed, less richly than himself, in strangely-fashioned robes of various colours, according to their position in the hierarchy of the Holy League. The ordinary members were dressed in their every-day clothes, without other mark of distinction than the emblematic breastplate previously described. Seven of the graduates of the Brotherhood carried as many banners with the motto, “The Republic is the Kingdom of God.” They sang the Davidian hymn, each stanza of which ended with the refrain, “Eternal is the Republic,” &c. It is needlessto relate what took place in those last hours. The man who had shortly before called himself the King of kings, and believed himself invulnerable, fell, struck by a shot fired by the orders, perhaps by the hand, of a delegate who had many a time been his guest. It appears that he exclaimed as he fell, under the influence of a last delusion, “The victory is ours!”
It is certain that the procession he had arranged was not only unarmed, but appeared to be in every way calculated to turn out perfectly harmless. Nocito has well remarked that an examination of the strange emblematic properties of the League proved beyond all doubt that the Government had mistaken a monomaniac for a rebel.
He took his stand on that passage of the Nicene Creed, which states that Christ rose from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, “Whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” Having waited in vain for the appearance of Christ, he came to believe that this part must be reserved for him. Christ had twelve apostles, therefore he wished to have twelve. Christ had included St. Peter among the number, and Lazzaretti also determined to have a St. Peter, who was distinguished by the badge of a pair of crossed keys on his breast. In imitation of the forty days’ fast, Lazzaretti fasted in mid-winter, in the island of Monte Cristo, and there received communications from God amid the noise of the tempest, the crash of thunders, and the shaking of the whole island. There, too, he held a sort of Last Supper with his disciples, on January 15, 1870, in the course of which he said, “Thus it has pleased Him who directs me in all my works. Know that this supper carries with it the greatest of mysteries; think that you are in a place which God has chosen for His dwelling—or, to speak more correctly, for His adoration. Here, here, not far from us, on this soil, shall be raised marvellous pyramids in honour of His most Holy Name, and the said pyramids shall be an oracle of the Divine Majesty.”
To say the truth, he did not, at this supper, institute any sacrament. But that nothing might be wanting in his mad idea of imitating Jesus Christ, he evolved asacrament of his own—that of the Confession of Amendment—at bottom a slight variation of auricular confession.
All this, however, was not sufficient. David Lazzaretti was determined to have histransfigurationand hisearthquake, and promised them for August 18, 1878.
When the surgeon was hesitating to operate on one of his sons for calculus, he took the knife out of his hand, and performed the operation. The boy died under it, but Lazzaretti, quite undisturbed, kept on repeating, “The son of David cannot die.”
At thepost-mortemexamination, a second tattoo mark was discovered on his body. This was the usual cross, placed inside a reversed tiara. His brothers, questioned on the subject, replied that he had had a golden seal made in France, which he called theimperial seal, and that after immersing it in boiling oil, he had branded, first his own flesh, and then that of his sons and his wife. With this impression (which is, in fact, a convincing proof of the insensibility to pain peculiar to the insane, and of their tendency to express their eccentric ideas by means of figures and symbols) he claimed to leave a visible sign of the descent which, in common with all his family, he boasted from the Emperor Constantine.
However, not satisfied with descent from a royal race, he also wanted to rule the world in his own person, though afterwards he was willing to content himself with the creation of a prince whom he would invest with it. In a manifesto addressed “to all Christian princes,” he makes the following proclamation:—
“I address myself to all the princes of Christendom—Catholics, schismatics, or heretics—provided only they have been baptized. It matters little whether or not they have been invested with power or the government of nations, so long as they are sprung from royal blood. I call them all, and the first one who shall present himself to me, who is not under twenty years of age, or over fifty, and has no bodily imperfection, I constitute him king in my stead.”
The strange thing is, that he was taken at his word by the Comte de Chambord, who sent an embassy to him.
“I have need,” he continued, “of a Christian alliance. I am decided, to-day, to hasten this great enterprise; and if they (the Christian princes) do not come to me within the fixed time of three years, from the date of publication of this programme, I will leave Europe and go to the unbelieving nations to do with them what I have not been able to do with Christians.
“But in that case, woe to all of you, princes of Christendom. Ye shall be punished by the seven heads of the great Antichrist, which shall arise in the midst of Europe, and, above all, by a youth, who, after my departure, shall advance from the regions of the north towards Central France, and shall pretend to be that whichI myselfam.”
From henceforward, there appears in David Lazzaretti, the fixed idea of being the King of kings and Prince of all princes. To the head of the municipal body of Arcidosso, who would not obey him, he said, “I am the King of kings, the Monarch of all monarchs, I bear on my shoulders all the princes of the world. All the carbineers and soldiers there are, are mine, and dependent on me, and there are no ropes that can bind me.” To Minucci, who was trying to escape unnoticed, he said, “You do not know that I am the Prince of princes, the King of all the earth, and if you try to run away, I will have you stoned alive.”
The witness G. B. Rossi was present at the sermon on the 17th, and heard David say that he was the King of kings, Christ the Judge; that the Pope was no longer to reside at Rome, but that he (Lazzaretti), on certain conditions, would provide him with another residence, and that the king of Italy, too, would be his subject.
The witness Mariotti also deposed that he had heard David say in his sermon, “that he had no fear of force, and that, even with a million of soldiers, it was impossible for a subject to arrest his monarch.”
Lastly—not to lengthen the series of proofs—the witness Giuseppe Tonini heard him assert, in the sermon, that he was “the King of kings, and commanded the whole world;” while the witness Valentino Mazzetti says that Lazzaretti was determined to hold the procession of Aug. 18th at any cost, and said, “Do you think they aregoing to arrest us? No, no, it is not possible for subjects to arrest their monarch.”
The emblematic device he adopted is worth noting: the double C, to which he attached so much importance, representing the first and second Christ,i.e., Christ, the son of St. Joseph of Nazareth, and Christ, the son of the late Joseph Lazzaretti of Arcidosso. In truth, it is not in any way comprehensible what relation Christ could hold to Constantine, the latter to David, and all these to Lazzaretti. But the relation exists precisely in those strange contradictions and absurdities, which—amid the persistence of thePrinceidea—constantly come to the surface in monomaniacs, so that some have wished to class their disease as dementia. In fact, although they keep up the character, so to speak, far better than general paralytics, and try to give a plausible appearance to their delirium, yet, oftentimes, when overpowered with the necessity of finding a vent for their persistent ambitious idea, they pay no attention to the contradictions they fall into. A Pavia embroideress, believing herself a descendant of the Bonaparte family, modelled her dress, language, and aspect with great success on those of the members of the reigning families. Yet, while she asserted herself to be the daughter of Marie Louise, she at the same time claimed Victor Emmanuel as her father; as, on other occasions, she tried to persuade us that she had found the poison of vipers in the eggs she was eating.
Thus, though at first calling on the Pope to liberate Italy, Lazzaretti, when excommunicated, or merely treated with contempt by the Pope, wrote against Papal idolatry. Though he wished to die a member of the Catholic Apostolic Church, he inveighed against auricular confession, which is the very pivot of Catholicism; and, while he called himself the son of David, he also wished to be thought the son of Constantine.
Passanante.—Passanante, the would-be regicide of Naples, has no morbid hereditary antecedents.[429]At the age of 29, his height was 1·63 m., and his weight 51½ kilogrammes,i.e., 14 kilogrammes less than the Neapolitan average. His head may be described as almost sub-microcephalic—cephalic index 82, probable capacity 1513. His features show the characteristics of the Mongol and thecretin—small and deeply-set eyes abnormally far apart, zygomatic bones highly developed, beard scanty. The pupils show a low degree of mobility; and the genitals are atrophied—a fact connected with that of almost complete anaphrodisia. On the other hand, the liver and spleen are hypertrophied, which partly explains the increase of the temperature (varying from 38° to 37·8° at the arm-pits) the weakness of the pulse (88), and the very slight degree of strength, which, moreover, is less on the right side (60 kil.) than on the left (78 kil.). This last fact—which perhaps arises from an old burn on the hand—is most important, because rendering the complete carrying out of the crime improbable, especially taking into account the clumsy weapon with which he was armed, and the unfavourable position which was the only one he could take. The sensibility was perverted—the tactile presenting 5 mm. on the back of the hand (where the normal sensitiveness is from 16 to 20), and 7 on the forehead, where it is usually from 20 to 22 (that on the palm of the hand was not registered). On the contrary, the sensitiveness of the skin to puncture was much weakened. In prison he had attacks of delirium accompanied by hallucinations.
All these characteristics are clear indications of disease, both in the abdominal viscera, and in the nervous centres. This result is even more evident from the psychological study of the case. A merely superficial examination might have induced the belief that his affections and moral sentiments were normal. He showed, indeed, a horror of crime, lived a most frugal and abstemious life; and, while sometimes over-religious, sometimes exaggeratedly patriotic, always appeared to prefer the advantage of others to his own. He thus presented to those unversed in the study of mental pathology, the appearance, as it were, of a martyr to an idea which had been maturing for years, the mouthpiece and tool of a powerful sect, who might call for execration politically, but as an individual commanded respect.
This view, however, is at once seen to be fallacious,(even leaving aside the delirium, which might have been the effect of imprisonment), if we remember that, as has already been said, frugality and unselfishness are special characteristics of the mattoid, and, not seldom, also of the insane, some of whom seem to have more affection for their country, and for humanity in general, than for their families and themselves, and if we notice the indifference or even pleasure with which, in his writings, he refers to the murders committed by his countrymen, when, “to the sound of axes, they make foreigners give them money,” above all, the enjoyment with which he records the cruel practical joke played on a poor man who was very fond of his cherry tree, by digging up the latter, bringing it back stripped of its fruit, and leaving it at his front door. This morbid apathy is especially revealed in the want of emotion shown after the crime, in the face of the anger of the populace which was let loose against him. Yet even the greatest fanatics among political assassins, such as Orsini, Sand, and Nobiling, have been overwhelmed by emotion after the deed, and have often attempted suicide.
The true motive of the act is quite sufficient to prove this: being dismissed from his situation on account of his political vagaries, arrested as a vagabond, and, in addition, ill-used by the police, he thought—with a vanity as boundless as his impotence to gratify it, or even to live—of imitating the heroes he had heard talked of in the clubs (and against whom he had himself declaimed), so as to find a way of ending his life by the hand of another.
“As I found myself ill-used by my employers, and felt a horror of life, I formed the design of assassinating the king, so as not to have to kill myself,” he said to the magistrate, immediately after his arrest. To the judge Azzaritti, “I attempted the king’s life in the certainty that I should be killed.” In fact, two days previously, he had been much more occupied with his dismissal from his place than with projects of regicide; and at his arrest he did all he could to make his situation more serious, reminding the delegate that he had forgotten his revolutionary card on which was written, “Death to theKing! long live the Republic!” It was a case ofindirectsuicide, such as Maudsley, Crichton, Esquirol,[430]and Krafft-Ebing have recorded in great numbers. These, however, are only committed by the insane, or by cowardly and immoral men; and I insist upon this motive all the more that he formed at the same time the means of satisfying that incoherent vanity which in him predominated over the love of life. It is well known that many vain suicidal maniacs enjoy the sight of their own death surrounded by pomp, like the Englishman who had a mass composed and executed in public, and shot himself while theRequiescatwas being chanted.
If, therefore, we find in him any fanaticism, it is not for politics, but for his own ridiculous and ungrammatical effusions. When he lost his temper and shed tears at the trial, the outburst was not provoked by any insult to his party, but by a refusal to permit the reading of one of his letters, and when his reputation as a scullion was attacked by the assertion that he was continually reading instead of washing up the dishes, which he flatly denied, though the implied proof of unsoundness of mind would have been entirely in his favour.
His intelligence might be called unusual and original rather than superior to the average; and appeared much more brilliant in his conversation than in his writings—in which it is difficult to find a vigorous expression, such as we so frequently meet with in the works of the insane, as distinguished from mattoids.
However, searching here and there amid the enormous mass of his writings, and piecing out their gaps, we meet with some few fragments which are both original and curious. For example, though grotesque enough, his idea of having deputies and officials chosen by lot, like soldiers for the conscription, “that they may not be so proud,” is not without originality. Equally striking is the idea of forcing the convicts, who pass their time in enforced idleness, to cultivate waste lands, of calling out the youngmen for conscription before they have chosen a trade, and of crying after the Emperor William who “wants five milliards from France”: “He who sows thorns should be made to walk barefoot.” Good, too, in its way, though somewhat Turkish, is that of establishing a free inn for travellers in every village.
Still more remarkable is this, which, if it had not been written some time previously, might be taken as referring to his own case: “It is blamable that the authorities should exercise severity of punishment towards a man whose only idea is to change the form of government and attack the head of the State. The country is the mother of all without distinction; to all, without distinction, the law should be sister of death, which has no respect for any, but cuts them down when their time has come.”
His contrast between man isolated and man in association with his fellows is worthy of Giusti. “When you see him alone he is weak as a glass tumbler—if you see a glass, think of the strength of man, there is no great difference; but, united, men become hard and have the strength of a thousand Samsons.”
Where he really appeared superior to the average was in hisviva-voceanswers. Thus: “History studied practically among the people is more instructive than the history studied in books. The people is the best teacher of history,” &c. To justify the literary pretensions which seemed so inconsistent with his position as a poor cook, he replied, “Where the learned man goes astray, the ignorant often triumphs.”
When asked what takes place in the conscience when one is about to commit a bad action, he replied, “In us there are, as it were, two wills—one pushing us on, the other holding us back,—and the one that proves strongest determines the action.”
But it is precisely in his intermittent flashes of political insight, so strange in his position, that a morbid abnormality becomes evident. For it must be remarked that they constitute rather the exception than the rule. What we find, as a rule, is the commonplace and the absurd. In the same code he proposes to hang coiners and burn thieves, and abolish the death penalty! Hewishes to kill the king, yet in another article he demands for him a pension of two-and-a-half millions![431]
Guiteau.—The same thing may be said of Guiteau, who presented an enormous number of degenerative characteristics. His handwriting is quite that of the mattoid; and he was descended from a family which counted among its members many lunatics and fanatics. Advocate, theologian, politician, and swindler, he had tried all trades, and claimed to have made a great discovery about the birth of Christ. The fact is that he had spoilt a great deal of paper, and issued one or two journals and ridiculous works onThe Existence of Helland onTruthwhich he believed to be written under Divine dictation. He thought that God would pay his debts as a reward for his eccentric preachings; it was in obedience to a Divine command that he killed Garfield—yet it was only done in revenge for his failure to appoint him U.S. consul at Liverpool, ambassador to Austria, &c.—which showed great ingratitude on Garfield’s part, considering the trouble Guiteau had taken, in his own belief, to secure his election as President.[432]
South Americans.—The number of great men in the Argentine Republic suffering from cerebral affections is so considerable that it has enabled Mejia to compose on this subject a work which is among the most curious and valuable produced in the New World.[433]
Thus, according to Mejia, Rivadura was a hypochondriac, and died of softening of the brain. Manuel Garcia also suffered from hypochondria, and finally succumbed to a brain affection. Admiral Brown was subject to the delusion that he was persecuted. Varela was epileptic, Francia was a melancholiac, Rosas was morally insane, and Monteagudo was hysterical.
Characterlessness—Vanity—Precocity—Alcoholism—Vagabondage—Versatility—Originality—Style—Religious doubts—Sexual abnormalities—Egoism—Eccentricity—Inspiration.
Characterlessness—Vanity—Precocity—Alcoholism—Vagabondage—Versatility—Originality—Style—Religious doubts—Sexual abnormalities—Egoism—Eccentricity—Inspiration.
THEconception of the morbid and degenerative character of genius is confirmed and completed more and more when its isolated phenomena are subjected to a more rigorous examination, and, as in chemical reactions, to mutual contact. If, in fact, we analyze the lives and works of those great diseased minds which have become famous in history, we find that they can at once be distinguished by many characteristic traits from the average man, and also, in part, from other geniuses, who have completed their life’s orbit without trace of madness.
I. These insane geniuses have scarcely any character. The full, complete character, “which bends not for any winds that blow,” is the distinctive mark of honest and sound-minded men.
Tasso, on the contrary, declaims against courts, and yet, even to his last hour, we find him perpetually coming back to beg their grudging favours. Cardan accuses himself of lying, evil-speaking, and gambling. Rousseau, though so sensitive, abandons to want the tenderest and kindest of friends, casts off his children, calumniates others and himself, and apostatizes three times over—from Catholicism, from Protestantism, and, what is worse, from the religion of philosophy.
Swift, though an ecclesiastic, wrote the obscene poem of the loves of Strephon and Chloe, and belittled the church of which he was a dignitary, though his pride reached the proportions of delirium.
Lenau, religious to fanaticism inSavonarola, shows himself in theAlbigenseseven cynically sceptical; he knows it, confesses it, and laughs at it.
Schopenhauer denounced women, and at the same time was too warm an admirer of the sex; he professed to believe in the happiness of Nirvana, and then predicted for himself more than a hundred years of life.
II. Genius is conscious of itself, appreciates itself, and, certainly, has no monkish humility. Yet the conceit seething in diseased brains passes the limits of all truth and probability. Tasso and Cardan covertly, and Mahomet openly, declared themselves inspired by God, and the slightest criticism, therefore, appeared to them as deadly persecution. Cardan wrote of himself, “My nature is placed on the very limits of human substance and conditions, and within the confines of the immortals.”[434]Rousseau believed that all men, and sometimes even the elements, were in a conspiracy against him. Perhaps it is on this very account that we have seen almost all these unhappy great spirits fly from association with other men. Swift humiliated and insulted cabinet ministers, and wrote to a duchess desirous of making his acquaintance that the greater men were, the lower must they bow before him. Lenau had inherited the pride of rank from his mother, and in his delirium believed himself king of Hungary.
III. Some of these unfortunate men have given strangely precocious proofs of their genius. Tasso could speak when six months old, and knew Latin at the age of seven. Lenau, at a very early age, composed most touching sermons, and played the bagpipes and the violin with astonishing skill. Cardan at eight had apparitions and revelations of genius. Ampère was a mathematician at thirteen. Pascal, at ten, inspired bythe noise made by a plate struck with a knife, worked out a theory of sound, and at fifteen composed his celebrated treatise on Conic Sections. Haller preached at four, and devoured books at five.
IV. Many of them have been excessive in their abuse of narcotics, or of stimulants and intoxicants. Haller was in the habit of taking enormous doses of opium, and Rousseau was excessive in his use of coffee. Tasso was renowned as a drinker, as also the modern poets Kleist, Gérard de Nerval, Musset, Murger, Majláth, Praga, and Rovani, as well as the very original Chinese writer Li-Tai-Pô, who was inspired by alcohol, and died of it. Lenau also, in his latter years, was an immoderate consumer of wine, coffee, and tobacco. Baudelaire abused opium, tobacco, and wine. Cardan confessed himself an indefatigable drinker. Poe was a dipsomaniac; so was Hoffmann.
V. Nearly all of these great men, moreover, showed anomalies of the reproductive functions. Tasso, who was guilty of exaggerated licentiousness in his youth, was rigidly chaste after his thirty-eighth year. On the other hand, Cardan, impotent in his youth, gave himself up to excess at thirty-five. Pascal, sensual in his early youth, afterwards believed even a mother’s kiss to be a crime. Rousseau was affected by hypospadias and spermatorrhœa, and, like Baudelaire, was subject to a sexual perversion. Newton and Charles XII., so far as is known, were absolutely continent. Lenau wrote, “I have the painful conviction that I am unsuitable for marriage.”[435]
VI. Instead of preferring the quiet seclusion of the study, they cannot rest in any place, and have to be continually travelling. Lenau removed from Vienna to Stokerau, and then to Gmünden, and finally emigrated to America. “I need,” he said, “a change of climate every now and then to stir up my blood.”[436]Tasso was continually travelling from Ferrara to Urbino, Mantua, Naples, Paris, Bergamo, Rome, and Turin. Poe was the despair of his editors, because he was continually wandering about between Boston, New York, Richmond, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Giordano Bruno wandered toPadua, Oxford, Wittenberg, Magdeburg, Helmstädt, Prague, and Geneva.
Rousseau, Cardan, Cellini were constantly staying now at Turin, now at Paris, now at Florence, Rome, Bologna, or Lausanne. “Change of place,” says Rousseau,[437]“is a necessity for me. In the fine season, I find it impossible to remain for more than two or three days in one place without suffering.”
VII. Sometimes they change their career and course of study several times in succession, as though the mighty intellect could not find rest and relief in a single science.[438]Swift, in addition to his satiric poems, wrote on the manufactures of Ireland, on theology, on politics, and on the history of the reign of Queen Anne. Cardan was at the same time a mathematician, physician, theologian, and literary man. Rousseau was painter, music-master, charlatan, philosopher, botanist, and poet; and Hoffmann, magistrate, caricaturist, musician, romance-writer, and dramatist.
Tasso—as did Gogol after him—attempted all varieties of poetry, epic, dramatic, and didactic, in all metres. Newton and Pascal, in moments of aberration, abandoned physics for theology. Lenau cultivated medicine, agriculture, law, poetry, and theology.
VIII. These energetic and terrible intellects are the true pioneers of science; they rush forward regardless of danger, facing with eagerness the greatest difficulties—perhaps because it is these which best satisfy their morbid energy. They seize the strangest connections, the newest and most salient points; and here I may mention that originality, carried to the point of absurdity, is the principal characteristic of insane poets and artists. Ampère always sought out the most difficult problems in mathematics—the abysses—as Arago has noted.
Rousseau, in theDevin du Village, had attempted themusic of the future, afterwards tried again by another insane genius, Schumann. Swift used to say that he only felt at his ease when treating the most difficult subjects, and those most out of the line of his habitual occupations. In fact, in hisDirections to Servants, he seems, not a theologian or a politician, but a servant himself. HisConfession of a Thiefwas believed to have been really written by a well-known criminal, so that the latter’s accomplices, thinking that they were discovered, gave themselves up to justice. In the prophecies of Bickerstaff, he assumed the character of a Catholic, and succeeded in deceiving the Roman Inquisition.
Walt Whitman is the creator of a rhymeless poetry, which the Anglo-Saxons regard as the poetry of the future, and which certainly bears the imprint of strange and wild originality.
Poe’s compositions (says Baudelaire, one of his greatest admirers) seem to have been produced in order to show that strangeness may enter into the elements of the beautiful; and he collected them under the title ofArabesques and Grotesques, because these exclude the human countenance, and his literature wasextra-human. Here, too, we note the predilection of insane artists for arabesques, and, moreover, for arabesques which suggest the human figure.[439]
Baudelaire himself created the prose poem, and carried to the highest point the adoration of artificial beauty. He was the first to find new poetic associations in the olfactory sense.[440]
IX. These morbid geniuses have a style peculiar to themselves—passionate, palpitating, vividly coloured—which distinguishes them from all other writers, perhaps because it could only arise under maniacal influences. So much so that all of them confess their inability to compose, or even to think, outside the moments of inspiration. Tasso wrote, in one of his letters, “I am unsuccessful, and find difficulty in everything, especiallyin composition.”[441]“My ideas,” Rousseau confesses, “are confused, slow in arising and developing themselves, nor can I express myself well except in moments of passion.” The eloquent and vivid exordiums of Cardan’s works, so different from the rest of his tedious books, show what a difference there was between the first and last moments of his inspiration. Haller, though a successful poet himself, used to say that the whole art of poetry consisted in its difficulty. Pascal began his 18thProvincial Letterthirteen times.
Perhaps it was this analogy in character and style that was the cause of Swift’s and Rousseau’s predilection for Tasso, and drew the severe Haller towards Swift; while Ampère was inspired by Rousseau’s eccentricities, and Baudelaire by those of Poe (whose works he translated) and of Hoffmann, whom he idolized.[442]
X. Nearly all these great men were painfully preoccupied by religious doubts, raised by the intellect, and combated, as a crime, by the timid conscience and morbid emotions. Tasso was tormented by the fear of being a heretic. Ampère often said that doubts are the worst torture of man. Haller wrote in his journal, “My God! give me—oh! give me one drop of faith: my mind believes in Thee, but my heart refuses—this is my crime.” Lenau used to repeat, towards the end of his life, “In those hours when my heart is suffering, the idea of God passes away from me.” In fact, the real hero of hisSavonarolais Doubt,[443]as is now admitted by all critics.
XI. All insane men of genius, moreover, are much preoccupied with their ownEgo. They sometimes know and proclaim their own disease, and seem as though they wished, by confessing it, to get relief from its inexorable attacks.
It is quite natural that, being men of great intellect and therefore acute observers, they should at last notice their own cruel anomalies and be struck by the spectacle of theEgowhich obtruded itself so painfully on their notice. Men in general, but more particularly the insane, love to speak of themselves, and on this theme they evenbecome eloquent. All the more should we expect it in those whose genius is accompanied and quickened by mania. It is thus we get those wonderful records of passion and grief, monuments of phrenopathic poetry, which reveal the great and unhappy personality of the writer. Cardan wrote, not only his autobiography, but also poems on his misfortunes, and the workDe Somniis, entirely composed of his dreams and hallucinations. The poems of Whitman are the glorification of theEgo. Rousseau, in hisConfessions, Dialogues, Rêveries, like De Musset in hisConfessions, and Hoffmann inKreisler,[444]only give a minute description of themselves and their own madness.
Thus also Poe, as Baudelaire has well remarked, took as his text the exceptions of human life, the hallucination which, at first doubtful, afterwards becomes a reasoned conviction; absurdity enthroned in the region of intellect and governing it with a terrible logic; hysteria occupying the place of the will; the contradiction between the nerves and the mind carried so far that grief is driven to utter itself in laughter.
Pascal, who was driven by delirium into exaggerated humility, who said that Christianity suppressed theEgo, has not written his autobiography; yet he, too, showed traces of his hallucinations in the celebrated Amulet, and, in hisPensées, subtly described himself when speaking of others. It is certain that he was alluding to himself when he wrote that “extreme genius is close to extreme folly, and men are so mad that he who should not be so would be a madman of a new kind;” and when he observed that “maladies influence our judgment and sense; and while great ones perceptibly alter them, even slight ones cannot but influence them in proportion;” and that “men of genius have their heads higher, but their feet lower than the rest of us; they are all on the same level, and stand on the same clay as ourselves, children, and brutes.”
Haller, in his diary, gives detailed notes of his own religious delusions, and often confesses to having completely changed his character in the course of twenty-four hours,and being “giddy, mad, persecuted by God, and scorned and despised by men.”
Lessmann who, at a later time, hanged himself, wrote the humorousDiary of a Melancholiac(1834). Tasso, in his letter to the Duke of Urbino, and in the stanza already quoted, clearly depicted his own insanity. “Francesco,” he says elsewhere, “O Francesco, within my infirm limbs I have an infirm soul.”[445]It is a curious fact that, shortly before his first attack of mania, he wrote these words, “As I do not deny that I am mad, I must believe that my madness has been caused by drunkenness or love, since I know well that I drink to excess,” &c.[446]
Dostoïeffsky continually introduces semi-insane characters, and especially epileptics, inBesiandThe Idiot, and moral lunatics inCrime and Punishment.
Gérard de Nerval was the author ofAurelia, which has been well called the “Song of Songs of Fever,” and is a mixture of poetry and gibberish. Barbara wroteLes Détraqués. Buston described his own hallucinations. Allix, though not a medical man, wrote on the treatment of the insane. Lenau, twelve years before he actually succumbed to the attacks of insanity, had foreseen and described it. All his poems depict, in colours painfully vivid, suicidal and melancholic tendencies. The reader may judge of this from the mere titles of some of his lyrics, “To a Hypochrondriac,” “The Madman,” “The Diseased in Soul,” “The Violence of a Dream,” “The Moon of Melancholy.”
I do not think that it is possible to find, in the most doleful pages of J. Ortis so accurate and vividly coloured a description of suicidal tendencies as in the following extract from theSeelenkranke, “I carry a deep wound in my heart, and will carry it in silence to the grave; my life is broken from hour to hour. One alone could comfort me, ... but she lies in the grave.... O my mother! let thyself be moved by my entreaties, if thy love still survives death, if it is still permitted thee to care for thy child.... Oh! let me soon escape from life! I longfor the night of death! Oh! only help thy crazy son to lay aside his grief.” HisTraumgewaltenis, as I have already observed, a terribly truthful picture of that hallucination which preceded or accompanied the first attack of suicidal mania; and here the reader can easily trace in the phrases and ideas that disconnected and fragmentary character which is the mark of the delirious paralytic.
Here is a specimen—“The dream was so terrible, so wild, so frightful, that I wish I could tell myself it was nothing but a dream; ... yet I continue to weep, and to feel that my heart beats; I awaken, and find the sheets and the pillow wet.... Did I seize them in my dream and wipe my face? I do not know.... While I was sleeping, my hostile guests have been holding an orgy here.... Now they are gone, those savages, they are gone, but I find their traces in my tears. They have fled, and left the wine on the table,” &c.
He had previously, in theAlbigenses, dropped some allusions to the terrible impression made on him by his dreams: “Terrible, often, is the might of dreams; it shakes, pains, presses, threatens, and if the sleeper does not awaken in time, in the twinkling of an eye, he is a corpse.”[447]
XII. The principal trace of the delusions of great minds is found in the very construction of their works and speeches, in their illogical deductions, absurd contradictions, and grotesque and inhuman fantasies. Thus Socrates was clearly of unsound mind when, after havingall but arrived, intuitively, at Christian morality and Judaic monotheism, he directed his steps in accordance with a sneeze, or the voice and signs of his imaginary genius. Thus Cardan, who had anticipated Newton in discovering the laws of gravitation, and Dupuis in theology—who, in his bookDe Subtilitate, explains as hallucinations the strange and portentous symptoms of the possessed, and also of some of those hermits who were accounted saints, comparing them to the delirium of quartan fever—Cardan was insane, when he attributed to the influence of a genius, not only his scientific inspirations, but the creaking of the table and the vibration of the pen, when he declared that he had been several times bewitched, and when he produced his bookOn Dreams, which speaks to the mental pathologist as a pseudo-membrane would to the physical. In this, at first, he puts on record the most accurate and curious observations on the phenomena of dreams—e.g., how severe physical pains act with less energy, slight ones with greater—a fact recently confirmed by psychiatrists; that the insane are much given to dreaming; that in a dream, as on the stage, a long series of ideas passes in a very short space of time; and finally (and this is a remark of much justice) that men have dreams either entirely analogous to, or entirely at variance with, their own habits. But, after these clear and undoubted proofs of genius, he re-affirms one of the most absurd and contemptible theories ever held by the populace of ancient times, namely, that the slightest accidental circumstance of a dream must be the revelation of a more or less distant future. Thus he draws up, with the sincerest conviction, a dictionary, identical in form and origin (which last is undoubtedly pathological) with Cabalistic productions. Every object, every word, which may find a place in a dream, is there attached to a series of allusions which serve to interpret each other.Fathermay signify author, husband, son, commander.Feet, foundation of a house, arts, workmen, &c. Ahorse, appearing in a dream, may signify flight, riches, or a wife.Shoemakerandphysicianare interchangeable in meaning. In short, it is not actual analogies which prevail, but analogies in words, in sounds, even in terminations.Oriorandmoriorhave an equal prophetic value, because “since they differ from each other only by a single letter, the one passes over to the other.” We are seized with compassion for human nature and for ourselves, when we find him relating that a knight who suffered from the stone always, if he dreamed of food, had an attack on the following day, and addingcibos enim et dolores degustare dicimus—as though nature were in the habit of amusing herself by making puns in Latin. Yet this was the man who had intuitively divined the admirable theory of painful sensations in sleep already alluded to, and who, a physician, and one of no mean distinction, had clearly conceived the sympathetic action of the solar plexus.
Newton himself can scarcely be said to have been sane when he demeaned his intellect to the interpretation of the Apocalypse, or the horns of Daniel; nor, again, when he wrote to Bentley, “By means of the law of attraction, one can very well understand the elongated orbits of comets; but as to the nearly circular orbits of planets, I see no possibility of obtaining their lateral difference, and this can only be accomplished by God.” Yet in hisOptics, Newton had inveighed against those who, after the manner of the Aristotelians admit occult properties in matter, thus arresting the researches of natural philosophers, without leading to any conclusion. In fact, a century later, the true cause, which had escaped Newton’s observations, was discovered by La Place.
Ampère believed, in all sincerity, that he had found the method of squaring the circle.
Pascal, though he had been the first to study the laws of probability, believed that the touch of a relic had power to cure a lachrymal fistula—a statement which he printed in one of his works.
Rousseau makes of his own maniacal savagery the ideal type of man, and believes that every natural production, if agreeable to the sight or taste, must be innocuous, so that arsenic, according to him, could not be harmful. His life is made up of contradictions: he prefers the country, and lives in the Rue Platonière; he writes a treatise on education, and sends his children to the foundling hospital; he adjudicates on the claims of the variousreligions with the acuteness of an unbiassed sceptic, and throws stones at trees in order to divine the future and decide the question of his own salvation; nay, he writes to the Deity, and lays his letters on the altars of churches, as though they were His exclusive abode.
Baudelaire finds the sublime in the artificial—“like the rouge which enhances the beauty of a handsome woman.” He carries out an insane idea by describing a metallic landscape, with neither water nor vegetation. “All is rigid, polished, shining; without heat and without sun; in the midst of the eternal silence the blue water is enclosed, like the ancient mirrors, in a golden basin.” He finds his ideal in the Latin of the Decadence, “the only tongue which can thoroughly render the language of passion,” and adores cats to such a degree as to address three poems to them.
Lenau, in his “Moon of the Hypochondriàc,” sees, contrary to the usual practice of poets, in the cold moon, without water and without atmosphere, “the sexton of the planets, who, with a silver thread entwined, enchains the sleepers and draws them to death; she beckons with her finger, leads sleep-walkers astray, and counsels the thief.” Though, as a young man, he had frequently expressed his opinion that “mysticism is a symptom of insanity,” he often showed mystical tendencies, especially in his later poems.
In the Koran, there is not a single chapter which has any connection with another; on the contrary, it often happens that, in the course of a singlesura, the ideas are interrupted, and follow each other almost at random. “On Mahomet,” writes Morkos, “the most contradictory verdicts may be pronounced, for it is impossible to deny his great excellence, while at the same time there is no disguising the fact that we find in him the most signal artifices of imposture, the grossest ignorance, and the greatest imprudence.”
It appears to me, moreover, that the great writers who have been under the dominion of alcohol, have a style peculiar to themselves, whose characteristics are a deliberate eroticism, and an inequality which is rather grotesque than beautiful, owing to too unrestrainedfancy, frequent imprecations and abrupt transitions from the deepest melancholy to obscene gaiety, and a marked preference for such subjects as madness, drink, and the gloomiest scenes of death. “Poe,” says Baudelaire, “likes to place his figures against greenish or violet backgrounds, surrounded by the phosphorescence of decay, and the atmosphere of storms and orgies. He throws himself into grotesquery for the love of the grotesque, into horror for the love of the horrible.”
The same thing is done by Baudelaire himself, who loves to describe the effects of alcohol or opium.
“There are days when my heart faints in me, and the mud overwhelms me,”[448]sang poor Praga, who killed himself with alcohol, and who, singing the praises of wine, blasphemed thus:
“Let it come—the reproach of the sober man; come—the contempt of the human race,—come, the hell of the Eternal Father: I will go down into it with my glass in hand.”[449]
Steen, the drunken painter, usually painted drinking scenes. Hoffmann’s drawings ended in caricatures, his tales in extra-human extravagancies, his music in a senseless succession of sounds.
Alfred de Musset saw in the ladies of Madrid,