The Man of Genius

CHAPTER III.

The Influence of Race and Heredity on Genius and Insanity

Race – Insanity – The influence of sex – The heredity of genius – Criminal and insane parentage and descent of genius – Age of parents – Conception.

Race.– We have seen that in Italy the Greek and the Etruscan racial elements combine with the temperate and mountainous climate to produce men of genius; the influence of race calling forth genius even where the climate is not happy. We cannot otherwise explain the genius produced at Modena, Mantua, and Lucca, which possess the Etruscan origin, although not the delicious climate, of Florence. The Jews, again, offer us an eloquent example.

I have elsewhere shown (Uomo Bianco e l’Uomo di Colore and Pensiero e Meteore) how, owing to the bloody selection of mediæval persecutions, and owing also to the influence of temperate climate, the Jews of Europe have risen above those of Africa and the East, and have often surpassed the Aryans. It is not only a difference in general culture, but we find more precocious and extended mental work applied to different sciences. It is certainly thus in music, the drama, satirical and humorous literature, journalism, and in various branches of science. This has been statistically proved by various writers, as by Jacobs in a very careful study on the ability of the Jews in Western Europe and of Jews in general.247

In 100,000 celebrities —

“The two lists are approximately equal in antiquaries, architects, artists, lawyers, natural science, political economy, science, sculptors. Jews seem to have superiority as actors, chess-players, doctors, merchants (chiefly financiers), in metaphysics, music, poetry, and philology… Of course, Jews have no Darwin. It took England 180 years after Newton before she could produce a Darwin, and as Britishers are five times the number of Jews, even including those of Russia, it would take, on the same showing, 900 years before they produce another Spinoza, or, even supposing the double superiority to be true, 450 years would be needed.”

Jews have given to the world musicians like Meyerbeer, Halèvy, Gutzkow, Mendelssohn, Offenbach, Rubinstein, Joachim, Benedict, Moscheles, Cowen, Sullivan, Goldmark, Strauss; poets, novelists, humourists, &c., like Heine, Saphir, Camerini, Revere, Jung, Weill, Fortis, Gozlan, Moritz Hartmann, Auerbach, Börne, Ratisbonne, Kompert, Grace Aguilar, Franzos, Massarani, Lindau, Catulle Mendes; linguists like Ascoli, Benfey, Munk, Fiorentino, Luzzato, Oppert, Bernhardi, Friedland, Weil, Lazarus, Steinthal; physicians like Valentin, Hermann, Haidenhain, Schiff, Casper, Stilling, Gluge, Traube, Fraenkel, Kuhn, Cohnheim, Hirsch, Liebreich, Bernstein, Remak, Weigert, Meynert, Hitzig, Westphal, Mendel, Leidesdorf, Benedikt; philosophers like Spinoza, Maimon, Sommerhausen, Moses Mendelssohn; naturalists like Cohn; economists like Ricardo, Lassalle, Karl Marx; jurists and statesmen like Stahl, Gans, Beaconsfield, Crémieux. Even in sciences in which the Semite formerly showed no ability, such as mathematics and astronomy, we find such men as Goldschmidt, Beer, Sylvester, Kronecker, and Jacobi.

It must be observed that a very large proportion of these men of genius have been radically creative; revolutionary in politics, and in religion, and in science. Jews, indeed, initiated Nihilism and Socialism on the one hand, Mosaism and Christianity on the other. Commerce owes to them the bill of exchange, philosophy owes to them Positivism, literature the Neo-humourism.

Jacobs shows that this abundance of Jewish men of genius of the first order is allied with a deficiency in men of the second order of intellect. He explains the superiority by the higher level of education among the Jews, their devotion to family life, the almost complete absence of priests and dogmas, the facilities which the study of Hebrew offers for investigations in philosophy and for that kind of music which forms part of their religious ceremonies. It is difficult, however, to find a relationship between this rhythmical caterwauling and the sublime notes of Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn; and Jews possess more than enough of priests and dogmas. I would add that if the Jews have not yet produced men like Newton, Darwin, and Michelangelo, it is because they have not yet accomplished their ethnic evolution, as they show by the obstinacy with which they cling to their ancient beliefs.

It is strange that among the factors of Jewish superiority in genius Jacobs does not mention the neurotic tendency, the existence of which, as we shall see, he has himself shown. This would also well explain the deficiency of Jews in intellect of medium quality in which the morbid element is always less marked.

Insanity.– It is curious to note that the Jewish elements in the population furnish four and even six times as many lunatics as the rest of the population. Jacobs, who, as we have seen, does not suspect the correlation between genius and insanity, gives a remarkable proof of it by pointing out that while Englishmen have 3,050 per million afflicted with mental disease, Scotchmen have 3,400, and Jews 3,900, the proportion of insanity in the three races being related to the proportion of genius. And while, according to Galton, there are 256,000 of the mediocre class among a million Englishmen, Jacobs reckons that there are only 239,000 among Scotchmen, and 222,000 among Jews.

Servi found 1 lunatic to 391 Jews in Italy, nearly four times as many as among Catholics.248 This fact has been made still clearer by Verga249 who in 1870 found the proportions of lunatics among Catholics to be 1 in 1775, as against 1 in 384 among Jews. Mayr250 (in 1871) gives the proportion of lunatics in Germany as follows: —

This is a singular proportion or disproportion in a population among which the aged who supply so large a number of cases of senile dementia are numerous, but where alcoholism is rare. This fatal privilege has not attracted the attention of the leaders of that anti-Semitic movement which is one of the shames of contemporary Germany.251 They would be less irritated at the success of this race if they had thought of all the sorrows that are the price of it, even at our epoch; for if the tragedies of the past were more bloody, the victims are not now less unhappy, struck at the source of their glory, and because of it, deprived even of the consolation of being able, as formerly, to contribute to the most noble among the selections of species.

This is not true of the Jews alone. Beard, in his American Nervousness, remarks that the neurotic tendency which dominates North America makes of that country a land of great orators.

The influence of race is as visible in genius as in insanity. Education counts for little, heredity for much. “By education,” said Helvetius, “you can make bears dance, but never create a man of genius.”252

Influence of Sex.– In the history of genius women have but a small place. Women of genius are rare exceptions in the world. It is an old observation that while thousands of women apply themselves to music for every hundred men, there has not been a single great woman composer. Yet the sexual difference here offers no obstacle. Out of six hundred women doctors in North America not one has made any discovery of importance; and with few exceptions the same may be said of the Russians. In physical science, it is true, Mary Somerville emerges; and in literature we have George Eliot, George Sand, Daniel Sterne, and Madame de Staël; in the fine arts, Rosa Bonheur, Lebrun, Maraini; Sappho and Mrs. Browning opened new paths for poetry; Eleonora d’Arborea, it is said (but the assertion is contested), initiated at the beginning of the fifteenth century legal reforms of almost modern character; Catherine of Siena influenced the politics and religion of her time; Sarah Martin, a poor dressmaker, influenced prison reform; Mrs. Beecher Stowe played a large part in the abolition of slavery in the United States. But of all these, none touch the summits reached by Michelangelo, or Newton, or Balzac. Even J. S. Mill, who was very partial to the cause of women, confessed that they lacked originality. They are, above all, conservators. Even the few who emerge have, on near examination, something virile about them. As Goncourt said, there are no women of genius; the women of genius are men.

Pulcheria, Marie dei Medici, Louise, mother of Francis I., Maria Christina, Maria Théresa, Catherine II., Elizabeth, displayed eminent political ability as rulers; as in the field of democracy Madame Roland, Fonseca, G. Sand, Madame Adam; Mill affirms that when an Indian state is ruled with vigour and vigilance, three times out of four the ruler is a woman. At the same time it is noted that when women rule, men command, just as when men rule, women command. In any case their number is too limited to compare them with masculine rulers. As in politics, so admirable examples of valour were given by Caterina Sforza and Joan of Arc, Annita Garibaldi, Enrichetta Castiglioni, and many others.

These facts become more notable because unexpected and exceptional. It may be said that the disparity would be much less if the predominance of men, depriving women of the vote in politics and of action in war, had not taken away from women the opportunity of manifesting their capacities. But if there had been in women a really great ability in politics, science, &c., it would have shown itself in overcoming the difficulties opposed to it; nor would arms have been lacking, nor allies in the enemy’s camp. In revolutions (except in religion) women have always been in a small minority, not being found, for example, in the English Revolution, or in that of the Low Countries, or of the United States. They never created a new religion, nor were they ever at the head of great political, artistic, or scientific movements.

On the contrary, women have often stood in the way of progressive movements. Like children, they are notoriously misoneistic; they preserve ancient habits and customs and religions. In America there are tribes in which women keep alive ancient languages which the men have lost; in Sardinia, Sicily, and some remote valleys of Umbria, many ancient prejudices and pagan rites, perhaps of a prehistoric character – superstitious cures, for instance – are preserved by women. As Goncourt remarks, they only see persons in everything; they are, as Spencer observes, more merciful than just.

The Heredity of Genius.– According to Galton253 and Ribot,254 genius is often hereditary, especially in the musical art which furnishes so large a contingent to insanity. Thus Palestrina, Benda, Dussek, Hiller, Eichhorn, had sons who were very distinguished in music. Andrea Amati was the most illustrious of a family of violinists at Cremona; Beethoven’s father was a tenor at the Elector of Cologne’s chapel, and his grandfather had been a singer and then maestro at the same chapel; Bellini was the son and nephew of musicians; Haydn had a brother who was an excellent organist and composer of religious music; in Mendelssohn’s family there were several musical amateurs; Mozart was the son of a maestro of the chapel of the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg; Palestrina had sons who died young but who left praiseworthy compositions preserved among their father’s works.

The Bach family perhaps presents the finest example of mental heredity. It began in 1550, and passed through eight generations, the last known member being Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst, Kapellmeister to the Queen of Prussia, who died in 1845. During two centuries this family produced a crowd of musicians of high rank. The founder of the family was Veit Bach, a Presburg baker, who amused himself with singing and playing. He had two sons who were followed by an uninterrupted succession of musicians who inundated Thuringia, Saxony, and Franconia during two centuries. They were all organists or church singers. When they became too numerous to live together and had to disperse, they agreed to reunite on a fixed day once a year. This custom was preserved up to the middle of the eighteenth century, and sometimes one hundred and twenty persons of the name of Bach met at the same spot. Fétis counts among them twenty-nine musicians of eminence.255