Among the objections to the celibacy of Genius, the strongest is supplied by the laws of heredity—the desirability of having their superior mental qualities—often associated with corresponding physical beauty—transmitted to the next generation. Genius, it is true, depends on so many fortuitous circumstances that cases of direct transmission from father to son are rare enough; and Mr. Galton’s researches show that “the ablest child of one gifted pair is not likely to be as gifted as the ablest of all the children of very many mediocre pairs;” and that “the more exceptional the gift, the more exceptional will be the good fortune of a parent who has a son who equals, and still more if he has a son who overpasses him.” Nevertheless, it remains true that “the children of a gifted pair are much more likely to be gifted than the children of a mediocre pair.” Just as a professor’s son is born with a brain naturally more plastic and receptive than that of a young savage or peasant, so the children of a Genius who has not shattered his health by overwork or dissipation are likely to be of a mental calibre superior to that of an ordinary professor’s son. So that it is the duty of a man of genius to get married even at a sacrifice of personal happiness—provided that sacrifice is not so great as to interfere with his intellectual duties.
GENIUS AND LOVE
If we take the word Genius in the Kantian, imaginative, or æsthetic sense, it may be said that all Geniuses are amorous; and that the degree of their greatness may as a rule be measured by their susceptibility to feminine charms. The most poetic part of the Scriptures is the Song of Solomon with its glowing pictures of feminine charms. Homer, though he lived long before the age of Romantic Love, spent his life in describing the mischief caused by Helen’s beauty. Among the Roman poets the most original was also the most amorous. As Professor Sellar remarks of Ovid, “In the most creative periods of English literature he seems to have been more read than any other ancient poet, not even excepting Virgil; and it was on the most creative minds, such as those of Marlowe, Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, and Dryden, that be acted most powerfully ... and although the spirit of antiquity is better understood now than it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, yet in the capacity of appreciating works of brilliant fancy we can claim no superiority over the centuries which produced Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton, nor over those which produced the great Italian, French, and Flemish painters,” to whom Ovid supplied such abundant material.
Coming to more recent times, we have seen that Dante, the first modern poet, was also the first modern lover, rarely if ever surpassed in rapturous adoration. How the greatest of the Spanish bards was influenced by feminine beauty may be inferred from the glowing descriptions of it and its influence in Don Quixote; and as for Shakspere, even had he not written Romeo and Juliet, his early poems alone would prove him to have been in his youth every inch a lover; for no one, not even with Shakspere’s imagination, could have painted such unique feelings with his realistic and infallible touch, unless he had felt them more than once and had them indelibly branded on his heart’s memory.
In the galaxy of German poets Goethe ranks first, owing to his manysidedness. Yet he lacked the very highest of literary gifts—wit; and in this respect as well as through his deeper insight into Modern Love, Heine must be rated higher than Goethe. Heine’s personal loves are but thinly covered over by the clear amber of his lyrics, in which they are imbedded. Goethe’s loves have become proverbial for their number—Kätchen, Friederike, Lili, Charlotte, Christiane, etc. Schiller, Wieland, Bürger, Bodenstedt, and the lesser lights might all have appended a D.L., or Doctor of Love, to their names.
Shelley, Mr. Hamilton tells us, “had an irresistible natural tendency to fall in love”; and Byron, speaking of one of his loves, says, “I had and have been attached fifty times since, yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness,” etc. And in the next chapter on “Genius in Love,” we shall meet with numerous similar cases of English, German, and French men of genius constantly in Love.
To account for this amorous propensity of Genius is easy enough. Genius means creative power allied with a taste for the Beautiful. This taste may be gratified by the contemplation of the beauties of Nature—the creative power by reproducing them on canvas or manuscript. But Nature’s masterpiece is lovely woman, who not only yields the highest gratification of artistic taste, but inspires Love: and what is Love but a creative impulse—a desire to link one’s name and personality, in future generations, with this embodiment of consummate human beauty?
Shakspere’s
“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind,”