Many men of genius, on the other hand, have been spoilt by wealth and power. Jacoby has shown that unlimited power hastens degeneration, and tends to produce megalomania and dementia in those who possess it.

The influence of education has been investigated less than it deserves. Without the school, many believe there would be no genius. What, it is said, would have become of Metastasio, if he had not been picked up and educated? Giotto would merely have amazed the shepherds of his native valleys by daubing the walls of some chapel. Paganini would have been unheard of. Pitré, in his admirable book, Usi e costumi della Sicilia, writes at length of certain wonderful poetasters, who narrate fantastic lays of knighthood to the people of Palermo, yet they can neither read nor write. Who knows what they would do if they were educated?

Those who have been among the mountains know the works produced by certain shepherds. They are made with coarse instruments, yet they reveal marvellous taste and delicacy. Such men give us the impression of so many aborted Michelangelos; they are men of genius who have lacked the opportunity of manifesting themselves.

But these facts do not neutralize others which show the pernicious influence of the school on genius. Hazlitt well said that whoever has passed through all the grades of classical instruction without having become a fool, may consider himself to have escaped by miracle. Darwin feared to send his sons to school. Who can describe the martyrdom of the child of genius compelled to spend his brains over a quagmire of things in which he will succeed the less the more he is attracted in other directions? He rebels, and then begins a fierce struggle between the pupil of genius and the professor of mediocrity, who cannot understand his fury and his instincts, and who represses and punishes them. Balzac, who proved this, and was driven away from school after school, has minutely analyzed this bitterness of the college in his wonderful study, Louis Lambert. One shudders on thinking of the youth of such lofty and serene intelligence, treated with contempt as stupid and idle, and his discourse on will which had cost him so much labour destroyed unread by an ignorant master. And so, also, it was with Vallès. Verdi was unanimously rejected at the Conservatorio of Milan in 1832, even as a paying pupil. Rossini was regarded as an idiot by his fellow-pupils, and by his teacher, as also was Wagner. Coleridge has written with bitterness of his schooldays, when, he says, his nature was always repressed. Howard was considered so stupid at school that he was sent to a druggist’s. Pestalozzi was looked upon as a silly and incapable boy, whose spelling and writing were incorrigibly bad. Crébillon as a youth was regarded as roguish and lazy, and when he left the university he was labelled: Puer ingeniosus, sed insignis nebulo. Cabanis as a boy showed very early signs of uncommon intelligence, but the severe discipline of school only served to make him a dissembler, and he was finally expelled. Diderot was regarded as the shame of his house. Verdi, Rossini, Howard, Cabanis, would not allow themselves to be defeated, but how many, discouraged, have lost faith in themselves! It is useless to say that this struggle for existence results in the survival of the fittest; for even the weakest men of genius are worth more than mediocrities, and it is a sin to lose a single one. We are not here dealing with a phenomenon like that presented by the struggle of lower organisms. The case is even opposed, since their great sensibility renders men of genius more fragile. The persecutions of the school, tormenting these beings when they are in their first youth and most sensitive, cause us to lose those who, being more fragile, are better. Here, therefore, the struggle for existence suppresses the strongest, or at all events the greatest. The worst of this is that there is no remedy. Teachers are not men of genius, and in any case they cannot, and should not, look to anything but the manufacture of mediocrity. At all events, let no obstacles be put in the way of genius.

PART III.
GENIUS IN THE INSANE.

CHAPTER I.
Insane Genius in Literature.

Periodicals published in lunatic asylums—Synthesis—Passion—Atavism—Conclusion.

The connection which, as we have seen, exists between genius and insanity is confirmed by the over-excitement of the intelligence, and the temporary appearance of real genius frequently observed among the insane.

“It seems,” writes Charles Nodier, “as if the divergent and scattered rays of the diseased intellect were suddenly concentrated, like those of the sun in a lens, and then lent to the speech of the poor madman so much brilliancy that one may be permitted to doubt whether he had ever been more learned, clear, or persuasive while in full possession of his reason.”[282]

“Madness,” writes Théophile Gautier,[283] “which creates such enormous gaps, does not always suspend all the faculties. Poems written during complete dementia often observe the rules of quantity extremely well. Domenico Theotocopuli, the Greek painter, whose master-pieces are admired in the Spanish churches, was insane. We have seen in England, scenes of lions and stallions fighting, the work of an insane patient, done on a board with a red-hot iron, which looked like some of Géricault’s sketches rubbed in with bitumen.”