The Man of Genius

CHAPTER III.

The Epileptoid Nature of Genius

Etiology – Symptoms – Confessions of men of genius – The life of a great epileptic – Napoleon – Saint Paul – The saints – Philanthropic hysteria.

WE may, however, enter more deeply into the study of the phenomena of genius by the light of modern theories on epilepsy. According to the entirely harmonious researches of clinical and experimental observers, this malady resolves itself into localised irritation of the cerebral cortex, manifesting itself in attacks which are sometimes instantaneous, sometimes of longer duration, but always intermittent and always resting on a degenerative basis – either hereditary or predisposed to irritation by alcoholic influence, by lesions of the skull, &c.459 In this way we catch a glimpse of another conclusion, viz., that the creative power of genius may be a form of degenerative psychosis belonging to the family of epileptic affections.

The fact that genius is frequently derived from parents either addicted to drink, of advanced age, or insane, certainly points to this conclusion, as also does the appearance of genius subsequently to lesions of the head. It is also indicated by frequent anomalies, especially of cranial asymmetry; the capacity of the skull being sometimes excessive, sometimes abnormally small; by the frequency of moral insanity, and of hallucinations; by sexual and intellectual precocity, and not rarely by somnambulism. To these we may add the prevalence of suicide, which is, on the other hand, very common among epileptic patients; the intermittence of bodily and mental functions, more particularly the occurrence of amnesia and analgesia; the frequent tendency to vagabondage; religious feeling, manifesting itself even in the case of atheists, as with Comte; the strange terrors by which they are often seized (W. Scott, Byron, Haller); the double personality, the multiplicity of simultaneous delusions, so common in epileptic cases;460 the frequent recurrence of delusions produced by the most trifling causes; the same misoneism; and the same relation to criminality, which finds its point of union in moral insanity. Add to this the origin and ancestry of criminals and imbeciles, which constantly show traces both of genius and epilepsy, as may be seen in the genealogical charts given of the families of the Cæsars and Charles V.;461 and the strange passion for wandering, and for animals, which I have also often found in degenerated, and especially in epileptic, subjects.462

The distractions of mind for which great men are so famous, are often, writes Tonnini, nothing else but epileptic absences.463

The greatest proof of all, however, is that affective insensibility, that loss of moral sense, common to all men of genius, whether sane or insane, which makes of great conquerors, even in the most recent times, nothing else than brigands on a large scale.

Such conclusions may seem strange to persons unacquainted with the way in which the region of epilepsy has been extended in modern times, so that many cases of headache (hemicrania) or simple loss of memory, are now recognized as forms of epilepsy, though in disguise; their manifestation – as Savage has observed – causing the disappearance of every trace of the pre-existing epilepsy. It is sufficient, however, to recall to the reader the numerous men of genius of the first order who have been seized by motory epilepsy, or by that kind of morbid irritability which is well known to supply its place. Among these we find such names as Napoleon, Molière, Julius Cæsar, Petrarch, Peter the Great, Mahomet, Handel, Swift, Richelieu, Charles V., Flaubert, Dostoïeffsky, and St. Paul.464

To those acquainted with the so-called binomial or serial law, according to which no phenomenon occurs singly – each one being, on the contrary, the expression of a series of less well-defined but analogous facts – such frequent occurrence of epilepsy among the most distinguished of distinguished men can but indicate a greater prevalence of this disease among men of genius than was previously thought possible, and suggests the hypothesis of the epileptoid nature of genius itself.

In this connection, it is important to note how, in these men, the convulsion made its appearance but rarely in the course of their lives. Now it is well known that, in such cases, the psychic equivalent (here the exercise of creative power) is more frequent and intense.465

But, above all, the identity is proved to us by the analogy of the epileptic seizure with the moment of inspiration. This active and violent unconsciousness in the one case manifests itself by creation, and in the other by motory agitation.

The demonstration is completed when we come to analyse this creative inspiration or œstrus which has often suggested epilepsy, even to those ignorant of the recent discoveries with regard to its nature. And this, not only on account of its frequent association with insensibility to pain, with irregularity of the pulse, and with an unconsciousness which is often that of a somnambulist, of its instantaneous occurrence and intermittent character; but also because it is not seldom accompanied by convulsive movements of the limbs, followed by amnesia, and provoked by substances or conditions which cause or increase the excessive flow of blood to the brain; or by powerful sensations; and also because it may succeed or pass into hallucinations.

This resemblance between inspiration and the epileptic seizure, moreover, is demonstrated by an even directer and more cogent proof – the confessions of eminent men of genius, which show how completely the one may be confounded with the other. Such confessions are those of Goncourt466 and Buffon, and especially of Mahomet and Dostoïeffsky.

“There are moments,” writes the latter (in Besi) – “and it is only a matter of five or six seconds – when you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony. This phenomenon is neither terrestrial nor celestial, but it is an indescribable something, which man, in his mortal body, can scarcely endure – he must either undergo a physical transformation or die. It is a clear and indisputable feeling: all at once, you feel as though you were placed in contact with the whole of nature, and you say, ‘Yes! this is true.’ When God created the world, He said, at the end of every day of creation, ‘Yes! this is true! this is good!’ … And it is not tenderness, nor yet joy. You do not forgive anything, because there is nothing to forgive. Neither do you love – oh! this feeling is higher than love! The terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself, and the rapture with which it fills you. If this state were to last more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it, and would have to disappear. During those five seconds, I live a whole human existence, and for that I would give my whole life and not think I was paying it too dearly.’

“ ‘You are not epileptic?’

“ ‘No.’

“ ‘You will become so. I have heard that it begins just in that way. A man subject to this malady467 has minutely described to me the sensation which precedes the attack; and in listening to you, I thought I heard him speaking. He, too, spoke of a period of five seconds, and said it was impossible to endure this condition longer. Remember Mahomet’s water-jar; for the space of time it took to empty it, the prophet was rapt into Paradise. Your five seconds are the jar – Paradise is your harmony – and Mahomet was epileptic! Take care you do not become so also, Kiriloff!’ ”468

And in the Idiot (vol. i. p. 296): —

“ … I remember, among other things, a phenomenon which used to precede his epileptic attacks, when they came on in a waking state. In the midst of the dejection, the mental marasmus, the anxiety, which the madman experienced, there were moments in which, all of a sudden, his brain became inflamed, and all his vital forces suddenly rose to a prodigious degree of intensity. The sensation of life, of conscious existence, was multiplied almost tenfold in these swiftly-passing moments.

“A strange light illuminated his heart and mind. All agitation was calmed, all doubt and perplexity resolved itself into a superior harmony, a serene and tranquil gaiety, which yet was completely rational. But these radiant moments were only a prelude to the last instant – that immediately succeeded by the attack. That instant was, in truth, ineffable. When, at a later time, after his recovery, the prince reflected on this subject, he said to himself, ‘Those fleeting moments, in which our highest consciousness of ourselves – and therefore our highest life – is manifested, are due only to disease, to the suspension of normal conditions; and, if so, it is not a higher life, but, on the contrary, one of a lower order.’ This, however, did not prevent his reaching a most paradoxical conclusion. ‘What matter, after all, though it be a disease – an abnormal tension – if the result, as I with recovered health remember and analyze it, includes the very highest degree of harmony and beauty; if at this moment I have an unspeakable, hitherto unsuspected feeling of harmony, of peace, of my whole nature being fused in the impetus of a prayer, with the highest synthesis of life?’

“This farrago of nonsense seemed to the prince perfectly comprehensible; and the only fault it had in his eyes was that of being too feeble a rendering of his thoughts. He could not doubt, or even admit the possibility of a doubt, of the real existence of this condition of ‘beauty and prayer,’ or of its constituting ‘the highest synthesis of life.’

“But did he not in these moments experience visions analogous to the fantastic and debasing dreams produced by the intoxication of opium, haschisch, or wine? He was able to form a sane judgment on this point when the morbid condition had ceased. These moments were only distinguished – to define them in a word – by the extraordinary heightening of the inward sense. If in that instant – that is to say, in the last moment of consciousness which precedes the attack – the patient was able to say clearly, and with full consciousness of the import of his words, ‘Yes, for this moment one would give a whole lifetime,’ there is no doubt that, as far as he alone was concerned, that moment was worth a lifetime.

“No doubt, too, it is to this same instant that the epileptic Mahomet alluded, when he said that he used to visit all the abodes of Allah in less time than it would take to empty his water-jar.”

I will add here some lines from the Correspondance of Flaubert: —

“If sensitive nerves are enough to make a poet, I should be worth more than Shakespeare and Homer… I who have heard through closed doors people talking in low tones thirty paces away, across whose abdomen one may see all the viscera throbbing, and who have sometimes felt in the space of a minute a million thoughts, images, and combinations of all kinds throwing themselves into my brain at once, as it were the lighted squibs of fireworks.”

Let us now compare these descriptions of an attack, which might be called one of psychic epilepsy (and which corresponds exactly to the physiological idea of epilepsy —i. e., cortical irritation), with all the descriptions given us by authors themselves of the inspiration of genius. We shall then see how perfect is the correspondence between the two sets of phenomena.

In order the better to illustrate these strange displacements of function in epileptic subjects, I should call attention to an example, cited by Dr. Frigerio, of an epileptic patient who, at the moment of seizure, felt the venereal desire awaken, not in the generative organs, but in the epigastrium, accompanied by ejaculation.469

Let me add that, in certain cases, it is not only isolated paroxysms which recall the psychic phenomenology of the epileptic, but the whole life. Bourget remarks that, “for the Goncourts, life reduces itself to a series of epileptic attacks, preceded and followed by a blank.” And what the Goncourts wrote has always been autobiography. Zola in his Romanciers Naturalistes gives us this confession by Balzac: “He works under the influence of circumstances, of which the union is a mystery; he does not belong to himself; he is the plaything of a force which is eminently capricious; on some days he would not touch his brush, he would not write a line for an empire. In the evening when dreaming, in the morning when rising, in the midst of some joyous feast, it happens that a burning coal suddenly touches this brain, these hands, this tongue: a word awakens ideas that are born, grow, ferment. Such is the artist, the humble instrument of a despotic will; he obeys a master.”

Let us glance at the pictures which Taine has given us of the greatest of modern conquerors, and Renan of the greatest of the apostles: —

“The principal characteristics of Napoleon’s genius,” says Taine, “are its originality and comprehensiveness. No detail escapes him. The quantity of facts which his mind stores up and retains, the number of ideas which he elaborates and utters, seem to surpass human capacity.

“In the art of ruling men his genius was supreme. His method of procedure – which is that of the experimental sciences – consisted in controlling every theory by a precise application observed under definite conditions. All his sayings are fire-flashes. ‘Adultery,’ said he to the Conseil d’Etat, when the question of divorce was under discussion, ‘is not exceptional; it is very common —c’est une affaire de canapé.’ ‘Liberty,’ he exclaimed, on another occasion (and he remained faithful all his life to the spirit of this exclamation), ‘is the necessity of a small and privileged class, endowed by nature with faculties higher than those of the mass of mankind; it may therefore be abridged with impunity. Equality, on the contrary, pleases the multitude.”

“He possesses a faculty which carries us back to the Middle Ages – an astounding constructive imagination. What he accomplished is surprising; but he undertook far more, and dreamed much more even than that. However vigorous his practical faculties may have been, his poetic faculty was still stronger; it was even greater than it ought to have been in a statesman. We see greatness in him exaggerated into immensity, and immensity degenerating into madness. What aspiring, monstrous conceptions revolved, accumulated, superseded each other in that marvellous brain! ‘Europe,’ he said, ‘is a mole-hill; there have never been great empires or great revolutions save in the East, where there are six hundred millions of men.’ ”

In Egypt, he was thinking of conquering Syria, re-establishing the Eastern Empire at Constantinople, and returning to Paris by way of Adrianople and Vienna. The East allured him with the mirage of omnipotence; in the East he caught a glimpse of the possibility that, a new Mahomet, he might found a new religion. Confined to Europe, his dream was to re-create the empire of Charlemagne; to make Paris the physical, intellectual, and religious capital of Europe, and assemble within its precincts the princes, kings, and popes, who should have become his vassals. By way of Russia, he would then advance towards the Ganges, and the supremacy of India. “The artist enclosed within the politician has issued from his sheath; he creates in the region of the ideal and the impossible. We know him for what he is – a posthumous brother of Dante and Michelangelo; only these two worked on paper and in marble; it was living man, sensitive and suffering flesh, that formed his material.”

“Napoleon differs from modern men in character as much as do the contemporaries of Dante and Michelangelo. The sentiments, habits, and morality professed by him are the sentiments, habits, and morality of the fifteenth century. ‘I am not a man like other men,’ he exclaimed; ‘the laws of morality and decorum were not made for me.’

“Mme. de Staël and Stendhal compare Napoleon psychologically to the lesser tyrants of the fourteenth century – Sforza and Castruccio Castracani. Such, in fact, he was.

“On the evening of the 12th Vendemiaire, being present at the preparations made by the Sections, he said to Junot, ‘Ah! if the Sections would only place me at their head, I would answer for it that they should be in the Tuileries within two hours, and all these wretched Conventionnels out of it!’ Five hours later, being called to the assistance of Barras and the Convention, he opened fire on the Parisians, like a good condottiere, who does not give but lends himself to the first who offers, to the highest bidder, reserving for himself full liberty of action, and the power of seizing everything, should the occasion present itself…

“Never, even among the Borgias and Malatestas, was there a more sensitive and impulsive brain, capable of such electric accumulations and discharges… In him, no idea remained purely speculative; each one, as it occurred, had a tendency to embody itself in action, and would have done so, if not prevented by force… Sometimes the outburst was so sudden that restraint did not come in time. One day, in Egypt, he upset a decanter of water over a lady’s dress, and, taking her into his own room, under the pretext of remedying the accident, remained there with her for some time – too long – while the other guests, seated around the table, waited, gazing at each other. On another occasion he threw Prince Louis violently out of the room; on yet another, he kicked Senator Volney in the stomach.

“At Campo-Formio, he threw down and broke a china ornament, to put an end to the resistance of the Austrian plenipotentiary. At Dresden, in 1813, when Prince Metternich was most necessary to him, he asked him, brutally, how much he received from England for defending her interests.

“Never was there a more impatient sensibility. He throws garments that do not fit him into the fire. His writing – when he tries to write – is a collection of disconnected and indecipherable characters. He dictates so quickly that his secretaries can scarcely follow him – if the pen is behindhand, so much the worse for it; if a volley of oaths and exclamations give it time to catch up, so much the better. His heart and intellect are full to overflowing; under pressure like this, the extempore orator and the excited controversialist take the place of the statesman.”

“My nerves are irritable,” he said of himself; and, in fact, the tension of accumulated impressions sometimes produced a physical convulsion; he was not seldom seen to shed tears under strong emotion. Napoleon wept, not on account of true and deep feeling, but because “a word – an idea by itself is a stimulus which reaches the inmost depth of his nature.” Hence, certain distractions, consequent upon vomitings or fainting fits, which caused, it is said, the loss of General Vandamme’s corps, after the battle of Dresden. Though the regulator is so powerful, the balance of the works is, from time to time, in danger of being deranged.

“An enormous degree of strength was necessary, to co-ordinate, to guide and to dominate passions of such vitality. In Napoleon, this strength is an instinct of extraordinary force and harshness – an egoism, not inert, but active and aggressive, and so far developed as to set up in the midst of human society a colossal I, which can tolerate no life that is not an appendix, or instrument of its own. Even as a child, he showed the germs of this personality; he was impatient of all restraint, and had no trace of conscience; he could brook no rivals, beat those who refused to render homage to him, and then accused his victims of having beaten him.

“He looks upon the world as a great banquet, open to every comer, but where, to be well served, it is necessary for a man to have long arms, help himself first, and let others take what he leaves.

“ ‘One has a hold over man through his selfish passions – fear, greed, sensuality, self-esteem, emulation. If there are some hard particles in the heap, all one has to do is to crush them.’ Such was the final conception arrived at by Napoleon; and nothing could induce him to change it, because this conception is conditioned by his character; he saw man as he needed to see him. His egoism is reflected in his ambition – ‘so much a part of his inmost nature that he cannot distinguish it from himself; it makes his head swim. France is a mistress who is his to enjoy.’ In the exercise of his power he acknowledges neither intermediaries, nor rivals, nor limits, nor hindrances.

“To fill his office with zeal and success is not enough for him; above and beyond the functionary, he vindicates the rights of the man. All who serve him must extinguish the critical sense in themselves; their scarcely audible whispers are a conspiracy, or an attack on his majesty. He requires of them anything and everything – from the manufacture of false Austrian and Russian bank-notes in 1809 and 1812, to the preparation of an infernal machine, to blow up the Bourbons in 1814. He knows nothing of gratitude; when a man is of no further use to him as a tool, he throws him away…

“During a dance, he would walk about among the ladies, in order to shock them with unpleasant witticisms; he was always prying into their private life, and related to the empress herself the favours which, more or less spontaneously, they granted him.

“What is still stranger, he carried the same methods of proceeding into his relations with sovereigns and ambassadors of foreign states. In his correspondence, in his proclamations, in his audiences, he provoked, threatened, challenged, offended; he divulged their real or supposed amorous intrigues (the bulletins 9, 17, 18, 19, after the battle of Jena, evidently accuse the Queen of Prussia of having had an intrigue with the Emperor Alexander), and reproaches them with a personal insult to himself, in the employment of such or such a man. He requires of them, in short, to modify their fundamental laws: he has but a poor opinion of a government without the power of prohibiting things which may displease foreign governments.”470

This is the completest view of Napoleon ever given by any historian. To any one acquainted with the psychological constitution of the epileptic, it becomes clear that Taine has here given us the subtlest and precisest pathological diagnosis of a case of psychic epilepsy, with its gigantic megalomaniacal illusions, its impulses, and complete absence of moral sense.

It is not, therefore, only in moments of inspiration that genius approaches epilepsy; and the same thing may be said of St. Paul.

St. Paul471 was of low stature, but stoutly made. His health was always poor, on account of a strange infirmity which he calls “a thorn in the flesh,” and which was probably a serious neurosis.