The Man of Genius

Among great men of tall stature I only know Volta, Goethe, Petrarch, Schiller, D’Azeglio, Helmholtz, Foscolo, Charlemagne, Bismarck, Moltke, Monti, Mirabeau, Dumas père, Schopenhauer, Lamartine, Voltaire, Peter the Great, Washington, Dr. Johnson, Sterne, Arago, Flaubert, Carlyle, Tourgueneff, Tennyson, Whitman.

Rickets.– Agesilaus, Tyrtæus, Æsop, Giotto, Aristomenes, Crates, Galba, Brunelleschi, Magliabecchi, Parini, Scarron, Pope, Leopardi, Talleyrand, Scott, Owen, Gibbon, Byron, Dati, Baldini, Moses Mendelssohn, Flaxman, Hooke, were all either rachitic, lame, hunch-backed, or club-footed.

Pallor.– This has been called the colour of great men; “Pulchrum sublimium virorum florem” (S. Gregory, Orationes XIV.). It was ascertained by Marro12 that this is one of the most frequent signs of degeneration in the morally insane.

Emaciation.– The law of the conservation of energy which rules the whole organic world, explains to us other frequent abnormalities, such as precocious greyness and baldness, leanness of the body, and weakness of sexual and muscular activity, which characterize the insane, and are also frequently found among great thinkers. Lecamus13 has said that the greatest geniuses have the slenderest bodies. Cæsar feared the lean face of Cassius. Demosthenes, Aristotle, Cicero, Giotto, St. Bernard, Erasmus, Salmasius, Kepler, Sterne, Walter Scott, John Howard, D’Alembert, Fénelon, Boileau, Milton, Pascal, Napoleon, were all extremely thin in the flower of their age.

Others were weak and sickly in childhood; such were Demosthenes, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Adam Smith, Boyle, Pope, Flaxman, Nelson, Haller, Körner, Pascal, Wren, Alfieri, Renan.

Ségur wrote of Voltaire that his leanness recalled his labours, and that his slight bent body was only a thin, transparent veil, through which one seemed to see his soul and genius. Lamennais was “a small, almost imperceptible man, or rather a flame chased from one point of the room to the other by the breath of his own restlessness.”14

Physiognomy.– Mind, a celebrated painter of cats, had a cretin-like physiognomy. So also had Socrates, Skoda, Rembrandt, Dostoieffsky, Magliabecchi, Pope, Carlyle, Darwin, and, among modern Italians, Schiaparelli, who holds so high a rank in mathematics.

Cranium and Brain.– Lesions of the head and brain are very frequent among men of genius. The celebrated Australian novelist, Marcus Clarke, when a child, received a blow from a horse’s hoof which crushed his skull.15 The same is told of Vico, Gratry, Clement VI., Malebranche, and Cornelius, hence called a Lapide. The last three are said to have acquired their genius as a result of the accident, having been unintelligent before. Mention should also be made of the parietal fracture in Fusinieri’s skull;16 of the cranial asymmetry of Pericles, who was on this account surnamed Squill-head (σκινοκἑφαλος) by the Greek comic writers17; of Romagnosi, of Bichat, of Kant,18 of Chenevix,19 of Dante, who presented an abnormal development of the left parietal bone, and two osteomata on the frontal bone; the plagiocephaly of Brunacci and of Machiavelli; the extreme prognathism of Foscolo (68°) and his low cephalic-spinal and cephalic-orbital index;20 the ultra-dolichocephaly of Fusinieri (index 74), contrasting with the ultra-brachycephaly which is characteristic of the Venetians (82 to 84); the Neanderthaloid skull of Robert Bruce;21 of Kay Lye,22 of San Marsay (index 69), and the ultra-dolichocephaly of O’Connell (index 73), which contrasts with the mesocephaly of the Irish; the median occipital fossa of Scarpa;23 the transverse occipital suture of Kant, his ultra-brachycephaly (88·5), platycephaly (index of height 71·1), the disproportion between the superior portion of his occipital bone, more developed by half, and the inferior or cerebellar portion. It is the same with the smallness of the frontal arch compared to the parietal.

Figs. 1-3. Kant’s Skull.

“ 4. Volta’s Skull.

Figs. 5-6. Fusinieri’s Skull.

“ 7-8. Foscolo’s Skull.

In Volta’s skull24 I have noted several characters which anthropologists consider to belong to the lower races, such as prominence of the styloid apophyses, simplicity of the coronal suture, traces of the median frontal suture, obtuse facial angle (73°), but especially the remarkable cranial sclerosis, which at places attains a thickness of 16 millemetres; hence the great weight of the skull (753 grammes).

The researches of other investigators have shown that Manzoni, Petrarch, and Fusinieri had receding foreheads; in Byron, Massacra (at the age of 32), Humboldt, Meckel,25 Foscolo, Ximenes, and Donizetti there was solidification of the sutures; submicrocephaly in Rasori, Descartes, Foscolo, Tissot, Guido Reni, Hoffmann, and Schumann; sclerosis in Donizetti and Tiedemann who, moreover, presented a bony crest between the sphenoid and the basilar apophysis; hydrocephalus in Milton, Linnæus, Cuvier, Gibbon, &c.

The capacity of the skull in men of genius, as is natural, is above the average, by which it approaches what is found in insanity. (De Quatrefages noted that the greatest degree of macrocephaly was found in a lunatic, the next in a man of genius.) There are numerous exceptions in which it descends below the ordinary average.

It is certain that in Italy, Volta (1,860 c.cm.), Petrarch (1,602 c.cm.), Bordoni (1,681 c.cm.), Brunacci (1,701 c.cm.), St. Ambrose (1,792 c.cm.), and Fusinieri (1,604 c.cm.), all presented great cranial capacity. The same character is found to a still greater degree in Kant (1,740 c.cm.), Thackeray (1,660 c.cm.), Cuvier (1,830 c.cm.), and Tourgueneff (2,012 c.cm.).

Le Bon studied twenty-six skulls of French men of genius, among whom were Boileau, Descartes, and Jourdan.26 He found that the most celebrated had an average capacity of 1,732 cubic centimetres; while the ancient Parisians offered only 1,559 c.cm. Among the Parisians of to-day scarcely 12 per cent. exceed 1,700 c.cm., a figure surpassed by 73 per cent. of the celebrated men.

But sub-microcephalic skulls may also be found in men of genius. Wagner and Bischoff,27 examining twelve brains of celebrated Germans, found the capacity very great in eight, very small in four. The latter was the case with Liebig, Döllinger, Hausmann, in whose favour advanced age may be advanced as an excuse; but this reason does not exist for Guido Reni, Gambetta, Harless, Foscolo (1426), Dante (1493), Hermann (1358), Lasker (1300). Shelley’s head was remarkably small.

In the face of all these facts I shall not be taxed with temerity if I conclude that, as genius is often expiated by inferiority in some psychic functions, it is often associated with anomalies in that organ which is the source of its glory.

Reference should here be made to the ventricular dropsy in Rousseau’s brain,28 to the meningitis of Grossi, of Donizetti, and of Schumann, to the cerebral œdema of Liebig and of Tiedemann. In the last-named, besides remarkable thickness of the skull, especially at the forehead, Bischoff noted adherence of the dura mater to the bone, thickening of the arachnoid and atrophy of the brain. In the physician Fuchs, Wagner found the fissure of Rolando interrupted by a superficial convolution, an anomaly which Giacomini found only once in 356 cases, and Heschl once in 632.29 Pascal’s brain showed grave lesions of the cerebral hemispheres. It has recently been discovered that Cuvier’s voluminous brain was affected by dropsy; in Lasker’s there was softening of the corpora striata, pachymeningitis, hæmorrhage, and endarteritis deformans of the artery of the fissure of Sylvius.30

In eighteen brains of German men of science Bischoff and Rüdinger found congenital anomalies of the cerebral convolutions, especially of the parietal.31 In the brains of Wülfert and Huber, the third left frontal convolution was greatly developed with numerous meanderings. In Gambetta this exaggeration became a real doubling; and the right quadrilateral lobule is divided into two parts by a furrow which starts from the occipital fissure; of these two parts the inferior is subdivided by an incision with numerous branches, arranged in the form of stars, and the occipital lobe is small, especially on the right.32

“The comparative study of these brains,” writes Hervé,33 “shows that individual variations of the cerebral convolutions are more numerous and more marked in men of genius than in others. This is especially the case in regard to the third frontal convolution which is not only more variable in men of genius, but also more complex, especially on one side, while in ordinary persons it is very simple both on the left and on the right. Without doubt the individual arrangements which may be presented by the brains of men of remarkable intelligence may also be found in ordinary brains, but only in rare exceptions.”

I refer those who wish to form an idea of the development reached by Broca’s centre in some of the brains of the Munich collection to Rüdinger’s monograph, and to the beautiful plates which accompany it. One remarks especially the enormous size and the numerous superficial folds at the foot of the left convolution in the jurist Wülfert, who was remarkable among other qualities for his great oratorical talent. On the other hand, the convolution is much reduced and very simple on the left, much developed in all its parts on the right, in the brain of the pathologist Buhl, a professor whose speech was clear and facile, but who was left-handed, or at all events ambidextrous. To these facts others may be added, showing the morphological complexity of Broca’s convolution in distinguished men; in the brains, for instance, of various men of science, described and figured by R. Wagner.34 Among these was the illustrious geometrician, Gauss: compared with Gauss’s brain that of an artisan called

Fig. 1. Gauss’s Brain.

“ 2. Frontal Lobe of same.

“ 3. Brain of a German Workman.

Fig. 4. Frontal Lobe of same.

“ 5. Dirichlet’s Brain.

“ 6. Hermann’s Brain.

Krebs was much less complicated, and notably narrower in the frontal region. The frontal convolutions were also inferior in development to those of Gauss; and the anterior lobes were voluminous in another celebrated mathematician, Professor De Morgan, whose brain is in Bastian’s possession.35

Stammering.– Men of genius frequently stammer. I will mention: Aristotle, Æsop, Demosthenes, Alcibiades, Cato of Utica, Virgil, Manzoni, Erasmus, Malherbe, C. Lamb, Turenne, Erasmus and Charles Darwin, Moses Mendelssohn, Charles V., Romiti, Cardan, Tartaglia.

Lefthandedness.– Many have been left-handed. Such were: Tiberius, Sebastian del Piombo, Michelangelo, Fléchier, Nigra, Buhl, Raphael of Montelupo, Bertillon. Leonardo da Vinci sketched rapidly with his left hand any figures which struck him, and only employed the right hand for those which were the mature result of his contemplation; for this reason his friends were persuaded that he only wrote with the left hand.36 Mancinism or leftsidedness is to-day regarded as a character of atavism and degeneration.37

Sterility.– Many great men have remained bachelors; others, although married, have had no children. “The noblest works and foundations,” said Bacon,38 “have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them that have no posterity.” And La Bruyère said, “These men have neither ancestors nor descendants; they themselves form their entire posterity.”

Croker, in his edition of Boswell, remarks that all the great English poets had no posterity. He names Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton, Otway, Dryden, Rowe, Addison, Pope, Swift, Gay, Johnson, Goldsmith, Cowper. Hobbes, Camden, and many others, avoided marriage in order to have more time to devote to study. Michelangelo said, “I have more than enough of a wife in my art.” Among celibates may be mentioned also: Kant, Newton, Pitt, Fox, Fontenelle, Beethoven, Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Bayle, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Gray, Dalton, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Lamb, Bentham, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Reynolds, Handel, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Schopenhauer, Camoëns, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Flaubert, Foscolo, Alfieri, Cavour, Pellico, Mazzini, Aleardi, Guerrazzi. And among women: Florence Nightingale, Catherine Stanley, Gaetana Agnesi (the mathematician), and Luigia Laura Bassi. A very large number of married men of genius have not been happy in marriage: Shakespeare, Dante, Marzolo, Byron, Coleridge, Addison, Landor, Carlyle, Ary Scheffer, Rovani, A. Comte, Haydn, Milton, Sterne, Dickens, &c. St. Paul boasted of his absolute continence; Cavendish altogether lacked the sexual instinct, and had a morbid antipathy to women. Flaubert wrote to George Sand: “The muse, however intractable, gives fewer sorrows than woman. I cannot reconcile one with the other. One must choose.”39 Adam Smith said he reserved his gallantry for his books. Chamfort, the misanthrope, wrote: “If men followed the guidance of reason no one would marry; for my own part, I will have nothing to do with it, lest I should have a son like myself.” A French poet has said:

Unlikeness to Parents.– Nearly all men of genius have differed as much from their fathers as from their mothers (Foscolo, Michelangelo, Giotto, Haydn, &c.). That is one of the marks of degeneration. For this reason one notes physical resemblances between men of genius belonging to very different races and epochs; for example, Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, and Giovanni of the Black Bands; or Casti, Sterne, and Voltaire. They often differ from their national type. They differ by the possession of noble and almost superhuman characters (elevation of the forehead, notable development of the nose and of the head, great vivacity of the eyes); while the cretin, the criminal, and often the lunatic, differ by the possession of ignoble features: Humboldt, Virchow, Bismarck, Helmholtz, and Holtzendorf, do not show a German physiognomy. Byron was English neither in his face nor in his character; Manin did not show the Venetian type; Alfieri and d’Azeglio had neither the Piedmontese character nor face. Carducci’s face is not Italian. Nevertheless, one finds very notable and frequent exceptions. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Cellini, presented the Italian type.

Precocity.– Another character common to genius and to insanity, especially moral insanity, is precocity. Dante, when nine years of age, wrote a sonnet to Beatrice; Tasso wrote verses at ten. Pascal and Comte were great thinkers at the age of thirteen, Fornier at fifteen, Niebuhr at seven, Jonathan Edwards at twelve, Michelangelo at nineteen, Gassendi, the Little Doctor, at four, Bossuet at twelve, and Voltaire at thirteen. Pico de la Mirandola knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic, in his childhood; Goethe wrote a story in seven languages when he was scarcely ten; Wieland knew Latin at seven, meditated an epic poem at thirteen, and at sixteen published his poem, Die Vollkommenste Welt. Lopez de la Vega composed his first verses at twelve, Calderon at thirteen. Kotzebue was trying to write comedies at seven, and at eighteen his first tragedy was acted. Schiller was only nineteen when his epoch-making Räuber appeared. Victor Hugo composed Irtamène at fifteen, and at twenty had already published Han d’Islande, Bug-Jargal, and the first volume of Odes et Ballades; Lamennais at sixteen dictated the Paroles d’un Croyant. Pope wrote his ode to Solitude at twelve and his Pastorals at sixteen. Byron wrote verses at twelve, and at eighteen published his Hours of Idleness. Moore translated Anacreon at thirteen. Meyerbeer at five played excellently on the piano. Claude Joseph Vernet drew very well at four, and at twenty was already a celebrated painter. At thirteen Wren invented an astronomical instrument and offered it to his father with a Latin dedication. Ascoli at fifteen published a book on the relation of the dialects of Wallachia and Friuli. Metastasio improvised at ten; Ennius Quirinus Visconti excited the admiration of all at sixteen months, and preached when six years old. At fifteen Fénelon preached at Paris before a select audience; Wetton at five could read and translate Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and at ten knew Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic. Mirabeau preached at three and published books at ten. Handel composed a mass at thirteen, at seventeen Corinda and Nero, and at nineteen was director of the opera at Hamburg. Raphael was famous at fourteen. Restif de la Bretonne had already read much at four; at eleven he had seduced young girls, and at fourteen had composed a poem on his first twelve mistresses. Eichorn, Mozart, and Eybler gave concerts at six. At thirteen Beethoven composed three sonatas. Weber was only fourteen when his first opera, Das Waldmädchen, was represented. Cherubini at thirteen wrote a mass which filled his fellow-citizens with enthusiasm. Bacon conceived the Novum Organum at fifteen. Charles XII. manifested his great designs at the age of eighteen.41

This precocity is morbid and atavistic; it may be observed among all savages. The proverb, “A man who has genius at five is mad at fifteen” is often verified in asylums.42 The children of the insane are often precocious. Savage knew an insane woman whose children could play classical music before the age of six, and other children who at a tender age displayed the passions of grown men. Among the children of the insane are often revealed aptitudes and tastes – chiefly for music, the arts, and mathematics – which are not usually found in other children.

Delayed Development.– Delay in the development of genius may be explained, as Beard remarks, by the absence of circumstances favourable to its blossoming, and by the ignorance of teachers and parents who see mental obtusity, or even idiocy, where there is only the distraction or amnesia of genius. Many children who become great men have been regarded at school as bad, wild, or silly; but their intelligence appeared as soon as the occasion offered, or when they found the true path of their genius. It was thus with Thiers, Pestalozzi, Wellington, Du Guesclin, Goldsmith, Burns, Balzac, Fresnel, Dumas père, Humboldt, Sheridan, Boccaccio, Pierre Thomas, Linnæus, Volta, Alfieri. Thus Newton, meditating on the problems of Kepler, often forgot the orders and commissions given him by his mother; and while he was the last in his class he was very clever in making mechanical playthings. Walter Scott, who also showed badly at school, was a wonderful story-teller. Klaproth, the celebrated Orientalist, when following the courses at Berlin University, was considered a backward student. In examination once a professor said to him: “But you know nothing, sir!” “Excuse me,” he replied, “I know Chinese.” It was found that he had learnt this difficult language alone, almost in secret. Gustave Flaubert “was the very opposite of a phenomenal child. It was only with extreme difficulty that he succeeded in learning to read. His mind, however, was already working, for he composed little plays which he could not write, but which he represented alone, playing the different personages, and improvising long dialogues.”43 Domenichino, whom his comrades called the great bullock, when accused of being slow and not learning so fast as the other pupils, replied: “It is because I work in myself.”

Sometimes children have only made progress when abandoned to their own impulses. Thus Cabanis, although intelligent, was regarded at school as obstinate and idle, and was sent home. His father then decided to risk an experiment. He allowed his son, at fourteen years of age, to study according to his own taste. The experiment succeeded completely.

Misoneism.– The men who create new worlds are as much enemies of novelty as ordinary persons and children. They display extraordinary energy in rejecting the discoveries of others; whether it is that the saturation, so to say, of their brains prevents any new absorption, or that they have acquired a special sensibility, alert only to their own ideas, and refractory to the ideas of others. Thus Schopenhauer, who was a great rebel in philosophy, has nothing but words of pity and contempt for political revolutionaries; and he bequeathed his fortune to men who had contributed to repress by arms the noble political aspirations of 1848. Frederick II., who inaugurated German politics, and wished to foster a national art and literature, did not suspect the worth of Herder, of Klopstock, of Lessing, of Goethe;44 he disliked changing his coats so much that he had only two or three during his life. The same may be said of Napoleon and his hats. Rossini could never travel by rail; when a friend attempted to accustom him to the train he fell down fainting, remarking afterwards: “If I was not like that I should never have written the Barbiere.” Napoleon rejected steam, and Richelieu sent Salomon de Caus, its first inventor, to the Bicêtre. Bacon laughed at Gilbert and Copernicus; he did not believe in the application of instruments, or even of mathematics, to the exact sciences. Baudelaire and Nodier detested freethinkers.45 Laplace denied the fall of meteorites, for, he said, with an argument much approved by the Academicians, how can stones fall from the sky when there are none there? Biot denied the undulatory theory. Voltaire denied fossils. Darwin did not believe in the stone age nor in hypnotism.46 Robin laughed at the Darwinian theory.

Vagabondage.– Love of wandering is frequent among men of genius. I will mention only Heine, Alfieri, Byron, Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Tasso, Goldsmith, Sterne, Gautier, Musset, Lenau. “My father left me his wandering genius as a heritage,” wrote Foscolo. Hölderlin, after his much loved wife had entered a convent, wandered for forty years without settling down anywhere. Every one knows of the constant journeys of Petrarch, of Paisiello, of Lavoisier, of Cellini, of Cervantes, at a time when travelling was beset by difficulties and dangers. Meyerbeer travelled for thirty years, composing his operas in the train. Wagner travelled on foot from Riga to Paris. One knows that sometimes, at the Universities, professors are seized by the desire of change, and to satisfy it forget all their personal interests.

Unconsciousness and Instinctiveness.– The coincidence of genius and insanity enables us to understand the astonishing unconsciousness, instantaneousness and intermittence of the creations of genius, whence its great resemblance to epilepsy, the importance of which we shall see later, and whence also a distinction between genius and talent. “Talent,” says Jürgen-Meyer,47 “knows itself; it knows how and why it has reached a given theory; it is not so with genius, which is ignorant of the how and the why. Nothing is so involuntary as the conception of genius.” “One of the characters of genius,” writes Hagen, “is irresistible impulsion. As instinct compels the animal to accomplish certain acts, even at the risk of life, so genius, when it is dominated by an idea is incapable of abandoning itself to any other thought. Napoleon and Alexander conquered, not from love of glory, but in obedience to an all-powerful instinct; so scientific genius has no rest; its activity may appear to be the result of a voluntary effort, but it is not so. Genius creates, not because it wishes to, but because it must create.” And Paul Richter writes: “The man of genius is in many respects a real somnambulist. In his lucid dream he sees farther than when awake, and reaches the heights of truth; when the world of imagination is taken away from him he is suddenly precipitated into reality.”48

Haydn attributed the conception of the Creation to a mysterious grace from on high: “When my work does not advance,” he said, “I retire into the oratory with my rosary and say an Ave; immediately ideas come to me.” When our Milli produces, almost without knowing it, one of her marvellous poems, she is agitated, cries, sings, takes long walks, and almost becomes the victim of an epileptic attack.