[553] “Deutsch-evangelische Bl.,” 29, Halle, 1904, p. 303 ff.
[554] See above, p. 109 ff.
[555] P. 316.
[556] “Archiv f. Psychiatrie,” 11, Berlin, 1880-1, p. 798 ff.
[557] P. 799. Cp. above, p. 100 ff.
[558] Möbius proceeds on the principle that “in each of us what is healthy is mixed with what is morbid and the more anyone rises above the average, the further he departs from the normal.” “The pathological element is part of every eminent man.” This, according to Möbius, is particularly the case with the genius. Hence, in his studies, it is his aim to show how psychiatry “may be used for appreciating great men.” Möbius intended to deal in detail with the pathology of Luther but was prevented by death from carrying out his plan. In his study on Schopenhauer (“Ausgewählte Werke,” Bd. 4)—who according to him was certainly not insane in the ordinary sense—he says: “I consider Schopenhauer one of the best instances to prove that it is only pathology which teaches us rightly to understand great writers and their works.… Schopenhauer became the philosopher of pessimism because, from the beginning, he was a sickly man. It was not the recognition of the evils in the world that made him take this line, but he deliberately sought out and described the evils because he needed to vindicate his own pessimism. He had displayed the latter even as a boy, having inherited it from his father, and his morbid disposition influenced his whole mode of thought.”
[559] In “Schmidts Jahrb. der in- und ausländischen gesamten Medizin,” ed. P. J. Möbius and H. Doppe, 288, Leipzig, 1905, Hft. 12, Dec., p. 264 in the notice of my articles “Ein Grundproblem aus Luthers Seelenleben,” in the “Köln. Volksztng.,” Lit. Beilage, 1905, Nos. 40 and 41.
[560] [Above, p. 173.]
[561] [Emil Kraepelin, “Psychiatrie, Ein Lehrbuch für Studierende und Ärzte,”⁶ Leipzig, 1899, Cap. ix.: “Das manisch-depressive Irresein,” pp. 359-425.]
[562] “Dr. Martin Luthers Krankheiten und deren Einfluss auf seinen körperlichen und geistigen Zustand,” Stuttgart, 1908.