Essays in War-Time: Further Studies in the Task of Social Hygiene

by Havelock Ellis

We only arrive at the crucial question when we ask: Have the characters of the parents of men of genius been of such an obviously unfavourable kind that eugenically they would nowadays be dissuaded from propagation, or under a severe régime of compulsory certificates (the desirability of which I am far indeed from assuming) be forbidden to marry? Have the parents of genius belonged to the "unfit"? That is a question which must be answered in the affirmative if this objection to eugenics has any weight. Yet so far as I know, none of those who have brought forward the objection have supported it by any evidence of the kind whatever. Thirty years ago Dr. Maudsley dogmatically wrote: "There is hardly ever a man of genius who has not insanity or nervous disorder of some form in his family." But he never brought forward any evidence in support of that pronouncement. Nor has anyone else, if we put aside the efforts of more or less competent writers—like Lombroso in his Man of Genius and Nisbet in his Insanity of Genius—to rake in statements from all quarters regarding the morbidities of genius, often without any attempt to authenticate, criticise, or sift them, and never with any effort to place them in due perspective.[1]

It so happens that, some years ago, with no relation to eugenic considerations, I devoted a considerable amount of attention to the biological characters of British men of genius, considered, so far as possible, on an objective and impartial basis.[2] The selection, that is to say, was made, so far as possible, without regard to personal predilections, in accordance with certain rules, from the Dictionary of National Biography. In this way one thousand and thirty names were obtained of men and women who represent the flower of British genius during historical times, only excluding those persons who were alive at the end of the last century. What proportion of these were the offspring of parents who were insane or mentally defective to a serious extent?

If the view of Maudsley—that there is "hardly ever" a man of genius who is not the product of an insane or nervously-disordered stock—had a basis of truth, we should expect that in one or other parents of the man of genius actual insanity had occurred in a very large proportion of cases; 25 per cent. would be a moderate estimate. But what do we find? In not 1 per cent. can definite insanity be traced among the parents of British men and women of genius. No doubt this result is below the truth; the insanity of the parents must sometimes have escaped the biographer's notice. But even if we double the percentage to escape this source of error, the proportion still remains insignificant.

There is more to be said. If the insanity of the parent occurred early in life, we should expect it to attract attention more easily than if it occurred late in life. Those parents of men of genius falling into insanity late in life, the critic may argue, escape notice. But it is precisely to this group to which all the ascertainably insane parents of British men of genius belong. There is not a single recorded instance, so far as I have been able to ascertain, in which the parent had been definitely and recognisably insane before the birth of the distinguished child; so that any prohibition of the marriage of persons who had previously been insane would have left British genius untouched. In all cases the insanity came on late in life, and it was usually, without doubt, of the kind known as senile dementia. This was so in the case of the mother of Bacon, the most distinguished person in the list of those with an insane parent. Charles Lamb's father, we are told, eventually became "imbecile." Turner's mother became insane. The same is recorded of Archbishop Tillotson's mother and of Archbishop Leighton's father. This brief list includes all the parents of British men of genius who are recorded (and not then always very definitely) as having finally died insane. In the description given of others of the parents of our men of genius it is not, however, difficult to detect that, though they were not recognised as insane, their mental condition was so highly abnormal as to be not far removed from insanity. This was the case with Gray's father and with the mothers of Arthur Young and Andrew Bell. Even when we allow for all the doubtful cases, the proportion of persons of genius with an insane parent remains very low, less than 2 per cent.

Senile dementia, though it is one of the least important and significant of the forms of insanity, and is entirely compatible with a long and useful life, must not, however, be regarded, when present in a marked degree, as the mere result of old age. Entirely normal people of sound heredity do not tend to manifest signs of pronounced mental weakness or abnormality even in extreme old age. We are justified in suspecting a neurotic strain, though it may not be of severe degree. This is, indeed, illustrated by our records of British genius. Some of the eminent men of genius on my list (at least twelve) suffered before death from insanity which may probably be described as senile dementia. But several of these were somewhat abnormal during earlier life (like Swift) or had a child who became insane (like Bishop Marsh). In these and in other cases there has doubtless been some hereditary neurotic strain.

It is clearly, however, not due to any intensity of this strain that we find the incidence of insanity in men of genius, as illustrated, for example, by senile dementia, so much more marked than its incidence on their parents. There is another factor to be invoked here: convergent morbid heredity. If a man and a woman, each with a slight tendency to nervous abnormality, marry each other, there is a much greater chance of the offspring manifesting a severe degree of nervous abnormality than if they had married entirely sound partners. Now both among normal and abnormal people there is a tendency for like to mate with like. The attraction of the unlike for each other, which was once supposed to prevail, is not predominant, except within the sphere of the secondary sexual characters, where it clearly prevails, so that the ultra-masculine man is attracted to the ultra-feminine woman, and the feminine man to the boyish or mannish woman. Apart from this, people tend to marry those who are both psychically and physically of the same type as themselves. It thus happens that nervously abnormal people become mated to the nervously abnormal. This is well illustrated by the British men of genius themselves. Although insanity is more prevalent among them than among their parents, the same can scarcely be said of them in regard to their wives. It is notable that the insane wives of these men of genius are almost as numerous as the insane men of genius, though it rarely happens (as in the case of Southey) that both husband and wife go out of their minds. But in all these cases there has probably been a mutual attraction of mentally abnormal people.

It is to this tendency in the parents of men of genius, leading to a convergent heredity, that we must probably attribute the undue tendency of the men of genius themselves to manifest insanity. Each of the parents separately may have displayed but a minor degree of neuropathic abnormality, but the two strains were fortified by union and the tendency to insanity became more manifest. This was, for instance, the case as regards Charles Lamb. The nervous abnormality of the parents in this case was less profound than that of the children, but it was present in both. Under such circumstances what is called the law of anticipation comes into play; the neurotic tendency of the parents, increased by union, is also antedated, so that definite insanity occurs earlier in the life of the child than, if it had appeared at all, it occurred in the life of the parent. Lamb's father only became weak-minded in old age, but since the mother also had a mentally abnormal strain, Lamb himself had an attack of insanity early in life, and his sister was liable to recurrent insanity during a great part of her life. Notwithstanding, however, the influence of this convergent heredity, it is found that the total insanity of British men and women of genius is not more, so far as can be ascertained—even when slight and dubious cases are included—than 4.2 per cent. That ascertainable proportion must be somewhat below the real proportion, but in any case it scarcely suggests that insanity is an essential factor of genius.

Let us, however, go beyond the limits of British genius, and consider the evidence more freely. There is, for instance, Tasso, who was undoubtedly insane for a good part of his life, and has been much studied by the pathologists. De-Gaudenzi, who has written one of the best psychopathological studies of Tasso, shows clearly that his father, Bernardo, was a man of high intelligence, of great emotional sensibility, with a tendency to melancholy as well as a mystical idealism, of somewhat weak character, and prone to invoke Divine aid in the slightest difficulty. It was a temperament that might be considered a little morbid, outside a monastery, but it was not insane, nor is there any known insanity among his near relations. This man's wife, Porzia, Tasso's mother, arouses the enthusiasm of all who ever mention her, as a creature of angelic perfection. No insanity here either, but something of the same undue sensitiveness and melancholy as in the father, the same absence of the coarser and more robust virtues. Moreover, she belonged to a family by no means so angelic as herself, not insane, but abnormal—malevolent, cruel, avaricious, almost criminal. The most scrupulous modern alienist would hesitate to deprive either Bernardo or Porzia of the right to parenthood. Yet, as we know, the son born of this union was not only a world-famous poet, but an exceedingly unhappy, abnormal, and insane man.

Let us take the case of another still greater and more famous man, Rousseau. It cannot reasonably be doubted that, at some moments in his life at all events, and perhaps during a considerable period, Rousseau was definitely insane. We are intimately acquainted with the details of the life and character of his relations and of his ancestry. We not only possess the full account he set forth at the beginning of his Confessions, but we know very much more than Rousseau knew. Geneva was paternal—paternal in the most severe sense—in scrutinising every unusual act of its children, and castigating every slightest deviation from the straight path. The whole life of the citizens of old Geneva may be read in Genevan archives, and not a scrap of information concerning the conduct of Rousseau's ancestors and relatives as set down in these archives but has been brought to the light of day. If there is any great man of genius whom the activities of these fanatical eugenists would have rendered impossible, it must surely have been Rousseau. Let us briefly examine his parentage. Rousseau's father was the outcome of a fine stock which for two generations had been losing something of its fine qualities, though without sinking anywhere near insanity, criminality, or pauperism. The Rousseaus still exercised their craft with success; they were on the whole esteemed; Jean-Jacques's father was generally liked, but he was somewhat unstable, romantic, with no strong sense of duty, hot-tempered, easily taking offence. The mother, from a modern standpoint, was an attractive, highly accomplished, and admirable woman. In her neighbours' eyes she was not quite Puritanical enough, high-spirited, independent, adventurous, fond of innocent gaiety, but a devoted wife when, at last, at the age of thirty, she married. More than once before marriage she was formally censured by the ecclesiastical authorities for her little insubordinations, and these may be seen to have a certain significance when we turn to her father; he was a thorough mauvais sujet, with an incorrigible love of pleasure, and constantly falling into well-deserved trouble for some escapade with the young women of Geneva. Thus on both sides there was a certain nervous instability, an uncontrollable wayward emotionality. But of actual insanity, of nervous disorder, of any decided abnormality or downright unfitness in either father or mother, not a sign. Isaac Rousseau and Susanne Bernard would have been passed by the most ferocious eugenist. It is again a case in which the chances of convergent heredity have produced a result which in its magnitude, in its heights and in its depths, none could foresee. It is one of the most famous and most accurately known examples of insane genius in history, and we see what amount of support it offers to the ponderous dictum concerning the insane heredity of genius.

Let us turn from insanity to grave nervous disease. Epilepsy at once comes before us, all the more significantly since it has been considered, more especially by Lombroso, to be the special disease through which genius peculiarly manifests itself. It is true that much importance here is attached to those minor forms of epilepsy which involve no gross and obvious convulsive fit. The existence of these minor attacks is, in the case of men of genius, usually difficult to disprove and equally difficult to prove. It certainly should not be so as regards the major form of epilepsy. Yet among the thousand and thirty persons of British genius I was only able to find epilepsy mentioned twice, and in both cases incorrectly, for the National Biographer had attributed it to Lord Herbert of Cherbury through misreading a passage in Herbert's Autobiography, while the epileptic fits of Sir W.R. Hamilton in old age were most certainly not true epilepsy. Without doubt, no eugenist could recommend an epileptic to become a parent. But if epilepsy has no existence in British men of genius it is improbable that it has often occurred among their parents. The loss to British genius through eugenic activity in this sphere would probably, therefore, have been nil.