Genius, the author claims, is a variety of psychosis, an instance of degeneration. Degeneration of certain parts is the condition of the acquisition of others; thus the loss of a number of ribs and muscles, of a tail, etc., has in man been compensated by the acquisition and development of the brain; and so in the genius the possession of very great intellectual or emotional faculties has been counterbalanced by the loss of equilibrium in the other parts. Moreover, there are no exceptions in nature; the occurrence of insanity, abnormalities, and eccentricities in a few cases leads us inevitably to the conclusion that there are correspondent defects in all others. And this we find to be true in all historical instances. Popular speech and tradition have identified genius and demency: in Hebrew and Sanskrit the words prophet and insane are synonymous; and so we have the proverbs—'Children and fools speak the truth,' 'Un fol avise bien un sage,' 'Saepe etiam est morio valde opportune locutus.' The line of demarcation between the two is hardly traceable. Genius is the exception, a deviation from the common type of humanity, and nature avenges the aberration by denying it permanency and inflicting upon it abnormality. Whether degeneration or progression, genius is unusual and unstable. But one thing distinguishes genius from mental alienation, and it is this—that genius possesses the power of inhibition, of concentration, of critique, and far-sightedness, while demency has no control of the ideas it has formed; both possess the swift and unerring power of origination; the one can command what it has originated, the other cannot.
It must be admitted that the method employed for the verification of this thesis, is not absolutely safe. Wherever an eccentricity in a man of genius is found, it is accredited to psychosis, even though the genius in question be upon the whole more normal than the average "normal" man; as, for instance, Goethe. If the same method were applied to all men, would not normality be the exception and abnormality the rule?
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DAS BEWUSSTSEIN UND SEIN OBJECT. By Dr. Joh. Wolff, Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Freiburg (Switzerland). Berlin:
Mayer & Müller.
This is a huge closely printed volume of six hundred and twenty pages. It is the enlargement and development of a treatise offered several years ago to the faculty of the University of Bonn, upon application by Dr. Wolff for a University instructorship, and contains the results of the author's thoughts and researches since that time upon the subject there dealt with.
Among many valuable isolated speculations and suggestions, we find fundamental theses with which it is impossible for us to agree. Thus, Dr. Wolff says that when he speaks of soul he means 'a substance, a substratum, a vehicle, a cause of psychical phenomena, and not a phenomenon or sum of phenomena'; and he says it is no more a pre-judgment or prejudice on his part to begin with this thesis than it is on the part of those who hold a different view to begin with the opposed one,—in fact less so, since he starts from the notion which all men hold in common, while the others do not.
Does the mathematician, in propounding a new method, or a physicist in explaining an unsolved problem, proceed from the mathematical and physical notions all men hold in common? And if the soul is made an object of scientific research, why should an exception be made of it? It is not so much what we begin with as what we end with, and it is perhaps superfluous to say that Dr. Wolff has ended where he began—with the simplicity, the substantiality, the unity, and the permanency of the ego.
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PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.
We had originally intended, in this first number of The Monist, to present to our readers a comprehensive statement of the courses announced by American Universities in the departments of Philosophy, Ethics, and Psychology; first, in order to supply students proposing to pursue these studies and others interested, with information at first-hand, and secondly to give the non-academic world, which is considerable, an insight into what our higher professional schools are doing in these branches.