“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, in the 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 any more 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 true morbus 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 the Idiot, 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 researches of 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.