CHAPTER IV
THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION
We now pass from primitive to civilized man, from collective to individual creation, the characters of which it remains for us to study as we find them in great inventors who exhibit them on a large scale. Fortunately, we may dismiss the treatment of the oft-discussed, never-solved problem of the psychological nature of genius. As we have already noted, there enter into its composition factors other than the creative imagination, although the latter is not the least among them. Besides, great men being exceptions, anomalies, or as the current expression has it, "spontaneous variations," we may ask in limine whether their psychology is explicable by means of simple formulæ, as with the average man, or whether even monographs teach us no more concerning their nature than general theories that are never applicable to all cases. Taking genius, then, as synonymous with great inventor, accepting it de facto historically and psychologically, our task is limited to the attempt to separate characters that seem, from observation and experiment, to belong to it as peculiarly its own.
Putting aside vague dissertations and dithyrambics in favor of theories with a scientific tendency as to the nature of genius, we meet first the one attributing to it a pathological origin. Hinted at in antiquity (Aristotle, Seneca, etc.), suggested in the oft-expressed comparison between inspiration and insanity, it has reached, as we know—through timid, reserved, and partial statements (Lélut)—its complete expression in the famous formula of Moreau de Tours, "Genius is a neurosis."
Neuropathy was for him the exaggeration of vital properties and consequently the most favorable condition for the hatching of works of genius. Later, Lombroso, in a book teeming with doubtful or manifestly false evidence, finding his predecessor's theory too vague, attempts to give it more precision by substituting for neurosis in general a specific neurosis—larvated epilepsy. Alienists, far from eagerly accepting this view, have set themselves to combat it and to maintain that Lombroso has compromised everything in wanting to make the term too precise. There are several possible hypotheses, they say: either the neuropathic state is the direct, immediate cause of which the higher faculties of genius are effects; or, the intellectual superiority, through the excessive labor and excitation it involves, causes neuropathic disturbances; or, there is no relation of cause and effect between genius and neurosis, but mere coëxistence, since there are found very mediocre neuropaths, and men above the average without a neurotic blemish; or, the two states—the one psychic, the other physiological—are both effects, resulting from organic conditions that produce according to circumstances genius, insanity, and divers nervous troubles. Every one of these hypotheses can allege facts in its favor. We must, however, recognize that in most men of genius are found so many peculiarities, physical eccentricities and disorders of all kinds that the pathologic theory retains much probability.
There remain for consideration the sane geniuses who, despite many efforts and subtleties, have not yet been successfully brought under the foregoing formula, and who have made possible the enunciation of another theory. Recently, Nordau, rejecting the theory of his master Lombroso, has maintained that it is just as reasonable to say that "genius is a neurosis" as that "athleticism is a cardiopathy" because many athletes are affected with heart disease. For him, "the essential elements of genius are judgment and will." Following this definition, he establishes the following hierarchy of men of genius: At the highest rung of the ladder are those in whom judgment and will are equally powerful; men of action who make world-history (Alexander, Cromwell, Napoleon)—these are masters of men. On the second level are found the geniuses of judgment, with no hyper-development of will—these are masters of matter (Pasteur, Helmholtz, Röntgen). On the third step are geniuses of judgment without energetic will—thinkers and philosophers. What then shall we do with the emotional geniuses—the poets and artists? Theirs is not genius in the strict sense, "because it creates nothing new and exercises no influence on phenomena." Without discussing the value of this classification, without examining whether it is even possible,—since there is no common measure between Alexander, Pasteur, Shakespeare, and Spinoza,—and whether, on the other hand, common opinion is not right in putting on the same level the great creators, whoever they be, solely because they are far above the average, this remark is absolutely necessary: In the definition above cited the creative faculty par excellence—imagination—necessary to all inventors, is entirely left out.
We can, however, derive some benefit from this arbitrary division. Although it is impossible to admit that "emotional geniuses" create nothing new and have no influence on society, they do form a special group. Creative work requires of them a nervous excitability and a predominance of affective states that rapidly become morbid. In this way they have provided the pathological theory with most of its facts. It would perhaps be necessary to recognize distinctions between the various forms of invention. They require very different organic and psychic conditions in order that some may profit by morbid dispositions that are far from useful to others. This point should deserve a special study never made hitherto.