Putting aside British genius, however, one finds that it has been almost a commonplace of alienists and neurologists, even up to the present day, to present glibly a formidable list of mighty men of genius as victims of epilepsy. Thus I find a well-known American alienist lately making the unqualified and positive statement that "Mahomet, Napoleon, Molière, Handel, Paganini, Mozart, Schiller, Richelieu, Newton and Flaubert" were epileptics, while still more recently a distinguished English neurologist, declaring that "the world's history has been made by men who were either epileptics, insane, or of neuropathic stock," brings forward a similar and still larger list to illustrate that statement, with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Apostle Paul, Luther, Frederick the Great and many others thrown in, though unfortunately he fails to tell us which members of the group he desires us to regard as epileptic. Julius Caesar was certainly one of them, but the statement of Suetonius (not an unimpeachable authority in any case) that Caesar had epileptic fits towards the close of his life is disproof rather than proof of true epilepsy. Of Mahomet, and St. Paul also, epilepsy is alleged. As regards the first, the most competent authorities regard the convulsive seizures attributed to the Prophet as perhaps merely a legendary attempt to increase the awe he inspired by unmistakable evidence of divine authority. The narrative of St. Paul's experience on the road to Damascus is very unsatisfactory evidence on which to base a medical diagnosis, and it may be mentioned that, in the course of a discussion in the columns of the British Medical Journal during 1910, as many as six different views were put forward as to the nature of the Apostle's "thorn in the flesh." The evidence on which Richelieu, who was undoubtedly a man of very fragile constitution is declared to be epileptic, is of the very slenderest character. For the statement that Newton was epileptic there is absolutely no reliable evidence at all, and I am quite ignorant of the grounds on which Mozart, Handel and Schiller are declared epileptics. The evidence for epilepsy in Napoleon may seem to carry slightly more weight, for there is that in the moral character of Napoleon which we might very well associate with the epileptic temperament. It seems clear that Napoleon really had at times convulsive seizures which were at least epileptoid. Thus Talleyrand describes how one day, just after dinner (it may be recalled that Napoleon was a copious and exceedingly rapid eater), passing for a few minutes into Josephine's room, the Emperor came out, took Talleyrand into his own room, ordered the door to be closed, and then fell down in a fit. Bourrienne, however, who was Napoleon's private secretary for eleven years, knew nothing about any fits. It is not usual, in a true epileptic fit, to be able to control the circumstances of the seizure to this extent, and if Napoleon, who lived so public a life, furnished so little evidence of epilepsy to his environment, it may be regarded as very doubtful whether any true epilepsy existed, and on other grounds it seems highly improbable.[3]
Of all these distinguished persons in the list of alleged epileptics, it is naturally most profitable to investigate the case of the latest, Flaubert, for here it is easiest to get at the facts. Maxime du Camp, a friend in early life, though later incompatibility of temperament led to estrangement, announced to the world in his Souvenirs that Flaubert was an epileptic, and Goncourt mentions in his Journal that he was in the habit of taking much bromide. But the "fits" never began until the age of twenty-eight, which alone should suggest to a neurologist that they are not likely to have been epileptic; they never occurred in public; he could feel the fit coming on and would go and lie down; he never lost consciousness; his intellect and moral character remained intact until death. It is quite clear that there was no true epilepsy here, nor anything like it.[4] Flaubert was of fairly sound nervous heredity on both sides, and his father, a distinguished surgeon, was a man of keen intellect and high character. The novelist, who was of robust physical and mental constitution, devoted himself strenuously and exclusively to intellectual work; it is not surprising that he was somewhat neurasthenic, if not hysterical, and Dumesnil, who discusses this question in his book on Flaubert, concludes that the "fits" may be called hysterical attacks of epileptoid form.
It may well be that we have in Flaubert's case a clue to the "epilepsy" of the other great men who in this matter are coupled with him. They were nearly all persons of immense intellectual force, highly charged with nervous energy; they passionately concentrated their energy on the achievement of life tasks of enormous magnitude, involving the highest tension of the organism. Under such conditions, even in the absence of all bad heredity or of actual disease, convulsive discharges may occur. We may see even in healthy and sound women that occasionally some physiological and unrelieved overcharging of the organism with nervous energy may result in what is closely like a hysterical fit, while even a violent fit of crying is a minor manifestation of the same tendency. The feminine element in genius has often been emphasised, and it may well be that under the conditions of the genius-life when working at high pressure we have somewhat similar states of nervous overcharging, and that from time to time the tension is relieved, naturally and spontaneously, by a convulsive discharge. This, at all events, seems a possible explanation.
It is rather strange that in these recklessly confident lists of eminent "epileptics" we fail to find the one man of distinguished genius whom perhaps we are justified in regarding as a true epileptic. Dostoievsky appears to have been an epileptic from an early age; he remained liable to epileptic fits throughout life, and they plunged him into mental dejection and confusion. In many of his novels we find pictures of the epileptic temperament, evidently based on personal experience, showing the most exact knowledge and insight into all the phases of the disease. Moreover, Dostoievsky in his own person appears to have displayed the perversions and the tendency to mental deterioration which we should expect to find in a true epileptic. So far as our knowledge goes, he really seems to stand alone as a manifestation of supreme genius combined with epilepsy. Yet, as Dr. Loygue remarks in his medico-psychological study of the great Russian novelist, epilepsy only accounts for half of the man, and leaves unexplained his passion for work; "the dualism of epilepsy and genius is irreducible."
There is one other still more recent man of true genius, though not of the highest rank, who may possibly be counted as epileptic: Vincent van Gogh, the painter.[5] A brilliant and highly original artist, he was a definitely abnormal man who cannot be said to have escaped mental deterioration. Simple and humble and suffering, recklessly sacrificing himself to help others, always in trouble, van Gogh had many points of resemblance to Dostoievsky. He has, indeed, been compared to the "Idiot" immortalised by Dostoievsky, in some aspects an imbecile, in some aspects a saint. Yet epilepsy no more explains the genius of van Gogh than it explains the genius of Dostoievsky.
Thus the impression we gain when, laying aside prejudice, we take a fairly wide and impartial survey of the facts, or even when we investigate in detail the isolated facts to which significance is most often attached, by no means supports the notion that genius springs entirely, or even mainly, from insane and degenerate stocks. In some cases, undoubtedly, it is found in such stocks, but the ability displayed in these cases is rarely, perhaps never, of any degree near the highest. It is quite easy to point to persons of a certain significance, especially in literature and art, who, though themselves sane, possess many near relatives who are highly neurotic and sometimes insane. Such cases, however, are far from justifying any confident generalisations concerning the intimate dependence of genius on insanity.
We see, moreover, that to conclude that men of genius are rarely or never the offspring of a radically insane parentage is not to assume that the parents of men of genius are usually of average normal constitution. That would in any case be improbable. Apart from the tendency to convergent heredity already emphasised, there is a wider tendency to slight abnormality, a minor degree of inaptness for ordinary life in the parentage of genius. I found that in 5 per cent. cases (certainly much below the real mark) of the British people of genius, one parent, generally the father, had shown abnormality from a social or parental point of view. He had been idle, or extravagant, or restless, or cruel, or intemperate, or unbusinesslike, in the great majority of these cases "unsuccessful." The father of Dickens (represented by his son in Micawber), who was always vainly expecting something to turn up, is a good type of these fathers of genius. Shakespeare's father may have been of much the same sort. George Meredith's father, again, who was too superior a person for the outfitting business he inherited, but never succeeded in being anything else, is another example of this group of fathers of genius. The father in these cases is a link of transition between the normal stock and its brilliantly abnormal offshoot. In this transitional stage we see, as it were, the stock reculer pour mieux sauter, but it is in the son that the great leap is made manifest.
This peculiarity will serve to indicate that in a large proportion of cases the parentage of genius is not entirely sound and normal. We must dismiss absolutely the notion that the parents of persons of genius tend to exhibit traits of a grossly insane or nervously degenerate character. The evidence for such a view is confined to a minute proportion of cases, and even then is usually doubtful. But it is another matter to assume that the parentage of genius is absolutely normal, and still less can we assert that genius always springs from entirely sound stocks. The statement is sometimes made that all families contain an insane element. That statement cannot be accepted. There are many people, including people of a high degree of ability, who can trace no gross mental or nervous disease in their families, unless remote branches are taken into account. Not many statistics bearing on this point are yet available. But Jenny Roller, in a very thorough investigation, found at Zurich in 1895 that "healthy" people had in 28 per cent. cases directly, and in 59 per cent. cases indirectly and altogether, a neuropathic heredity, while Otto Diem in 1905 found that the corresponding percentages were still higher—33 and 69. It should not, therefore, be matter for surprise if careful investigation revealed a traceable neuropathic element at least as frequent as this in the families which produce a man of genius.
It may further, I believe, be argued that the presence of a neuropathic element of this kind in the ancestry of genius is frequently not without a real significance. Aristotle said in his Poetics that poetry demanded a man with "a touch of madness," though the ancients, who frequently made a similar statement to this, had not our modern ideas of neuropathic heredity in their minds, but merely meant that inspiration simulated insanity. Yet "a touch of madness," a slight morbid strain, usually neurotic or gouty, in a preponderantly robust and energetic stock, seems to be often of some significance in the evolution of genius; it appears to act, one is inclined to think, as a kind of ferment, leading to a process out of all relation to its own magnitude. In the sphere of literary genius, Milton, Flaubert, and William Morris may help to illustrate this precious fermentative influence of a minor morbid element in vitally powerful stocks. Without some such ferment as this the energy of the stock, one may well suppose, might have been confined within normal limits; the rare and exquisite flower of genius, we know, required an abnormal stimulation; only in this sense is there any truth at all in Lombroso's statement that the pearl of genius develops around a germ of disease. But this is the utmost length to which the facts allow us to go in assuming the presence of a morbid element as a frequent constituent of genius. Even then we only have one of the factors of genius, to which, moreover, undue importance cannot be attached when we remember how often this ferment is present without any resultant process of genius. And we are in any case far removed from any of those gross nervous lesions which all careful guardianship of the race must tend to eliminate.
Thus we are brought back to the point from which we started. Would eugenics stamp out genius? There is no need to minimise the fact that a certain small proportion of men of genius have displayed highly morbid characters, nor to deny that in a large proportion of cases a slightly morbid strain may with care be detected in the ancestry of genius. But the influence of eugenic considerations can properly be brought to bear only in the case of grossly degenerate stocks. Here, so far as our knowledge extends, the parentage of genius nearly always escapes. The destruction of genius and its creation alike elude the eugenist. If there is a tendency in modern civilisation towards a diminution in the manifestations of genius—which may admit of question—-it can scarcely be due to any threatened elimination of corrupt stocks. It may perhaps more reasonably be sought in the haste and superficiality which our present phase of urbanisation fosters, and only the most robust genius can adequately withstand.