The Man of Genius
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His délire des grandeurs, his melancholy accompanied by morbid rage, born of the idea of persecution, had really shown themselves in him from childhood. At six years of age he believed that his parents wished to abandon him. As a student he was always morose. One of the things which caused him most trouble was noise, especially when produced by the whips of drivers. “To be sensitive to noise,” he wrote, “is one of the numerous misfortunes which discount the privilege of genius.” “Qui non habet indignationem,” he wrote, “non habet ingenium.” But his indignation was excessive, a morbid rage. One day when his landlady was chattering in the anteroom he came out and shook her so violently that he broke her arm, and was fined for damages. He was genuinely hypochondriacal. He was driven from Naples by the fear of small-pox, from Verona by the idea that he had been poisoned by snuff, from Berlin by the dread of cholera, and previously by the conscription. In 1831, he had a fresh attack of restlessness; at the least sound in the street he put his hand to his sword; his fear became real suffering; he could not open a letter without suspecting some great misfortune; he would not shave his beard, but burnt it; he hated women and Jews and philosophers, especially philosophers, and loved dogs, remembering them in his will. He reasoned about everything, however unimportant; about his great appetite, about the moonlight, which suggested quite illogical ideas to him, &c. He believed in table-turning, and that magnetism could heal his dog’s paws and restore his own hearing. One night the servant dreamt that she had to wipe some ink stains; in the morning he spilt some, and the great philosopher deduced that “everything happens necessarily.”
He was contradiction personified. He placed annihilation, nirvana, as the final aim of life, and predicted (which means that he desired), one hundred years of life. He preached sexual abstinence as a duty, but did not himself practise it. He who had suffered so much from the intolerance of others, insulted Moleschott and Büchner, and rejoiced when the Government deprived them of their professorial chairs.
He lived on the first storey, in case of fire; would not trust himself to his hairdresser; hid gold in the ink-pot, and letters of change beneath the bed-clothes. “When I have no troubles,” he said (like Rousseau), “it is then that I am most afraid.” He feared to touch a razor; a glass that was not his own might communicate some disease; he wrote business documents in Greek or Latin or Sanskrit, and disseminated them in books to prevent unforeseen and impossible curiosity, which would have been much easier avoided by a simple lock and key. Though he regarded himself as the victim of a vast conspiracy of professors of philosophy, concerted at Gotha, to preserve silence concerning his books, he yet dreaded lest they should speak of them; “I would rather that worms should gnaw my body than that professors should gnaw my philosophy.” Lacking all affection, he even insulted his mother, and drew from her example conclusions against the whole female sex, “long of hair and short of sense.” Yet, while despising monogamy, he recommended tetragamy, to which he saw but one objection – the four mothers-in-law. The same lack of affection made him despise patriotism, “the passion of fools, and the most foolish of passions;” he took part with the soldiers against the people, and to the former and to his dog he left his property. He was always preoccupied with himself, not only with the self that was the creator of a new system, but in hundreds of his letters he speaks with strange complaisance of his photograph, of his portrait in oils and of a person who had bought it “in order to place it in a kind of chapel, like the image of a saint.”
No one has, for the rest, maintained more openly than Schopenhauer, the relationship of genius to insanity. “People of genius,” he wrote, “are not only unpleasant in practical life, but weak in moral sense and wicked.” And elsewhere: “Such men can have but few friends; solitude reigns on the summits… Genius is closer to madness than to ordinary intelligence… The lives of men of genius show how often, like lunatics, they are in a state of continual agitation.”
Nicolaï Vasilyevitch Gogol (born 1809), after suffering from an unhappy love affair, gave himself up for many years to unrestrained onanism, and became eventually a great novelist. Having known Poushkin he was attracted to the short story, then he fell under the influence of the Moscow school, and became a humourist of the highest order. In his Dead Souls he satirises the Russian bureaucracy with so much vis comica as to show the need of putting an end to a form of government which is a martyrdom both for the victims and the executioners.
On the publication of his historical Cossack romance, Taras Bulba, he reached the summit of his fame. His admirers compared him to Homer; even the Government patronized him. Then a new idea began to dominate him; he thought that he painted his country with so much crudity and realism that the picture might incite to a revolution which would not be kept within reasonable limits, and might overturn society, religion, and the family, leaving him the remorse of having provoked it. This idea took possession of his mind and dominated it, as it had formerly been dominated by love, by the drama, and by the novel. He then sought by his writings to combat western liberalism, but the antidote attracted fewer readers than the poison. Then he abandoned work, shut himself up in his house, giving himself up to prayer to the saints, and supplicating them to obtain God’s pardon for his revolutionary sins. He accomplished a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, from which he returned somewhat consoled, when the revolution of 1848 broke out, and his remorse was again aroused. He was constantly pursued by visions of the triumph of Nihilism, and in his alarm he called on Holy Russia to overthrow the pagan West, and to found on its ruins the orthodox Panslavist empire. In 1852, the great novelist was found dead at Moscow of exhaustion, or rather of tabes dorsalis, in front of the shrine before which he was accustomed to lie for days in silent prayer.
PART II.
THE CAUSES OF GENIUS
CHAPTER I.
Meteorological Influences on Genius
The influence of weather on the insane – Sensitiveness of men of genius to barometrical conditions – Sensitiveness to thermometrical conditions.
The Influence of Weather on the Insane.– A series of clinical researches, which I carried on for six consecutive years, has shown me with certainty that the mental condition of the insane is modified in a constant manner by barometrical and thermometrical influences.185 When the temperature rose above 25°, 30°, and 32 °C., especially if the rise was sudden, the number of maniacal attacks increased from 29 to 50. On the days on which the barometer showed sudden variations, especially of elevation – and more particularly two or three days before and after the variation – the number of maniacal attacks rapidly increased from 34 to 46. This meteoric sensibility, as I term it, increased in an inverse ratio to the integrity of the nervous tissues, being very great in idiots and slightest in monomaniacs. The study of 23,602 lunatics has shown me that the development of insanity generally coincides with the increase of monthly temperature and with the great barometrical perturbations in September and March; the onset of heat, acts more efficaciously, however, than the intense heat which follows; and the heat which has become habitual in August acts much less harmfully. The minimum number of outbreaks of insanity is found in the coldest months. (See Plate.)
This coincidence is seen best in the French lunatics studied by Esquirol.186 The French figures present with most clearness the effect of thermometrical influences, because in France the entry of lunatics into asylums, being little impeded by red-tapeism, follows closely on the outbreak.
Now, a similar influence may be noted in those to whom nature, benevolently or malevolently, has conceded the power of intellect more generously than to others. There are few among these who do not confess that their inspiration is strangely subject to the influence of weather. Those who associate with them, or who read their correspondence, know that they suffer so greatly from this cause that they often complain to every one, and struggle, with the help of various artifices, against the malignant influences which impede the free flight of their thought.
Sensitiveness to Barometrical Conditions.– Montaigne wrote: “Si la santé me sied et la clarté d’un beau jour, me voilà honnête homme.” Diderot wrote, “Il me semble que j’ai l’esprit fou dans les grands vents.” Giordani foretold storms two days beforehand.187 Maine de Biran, a very spiritualistic philosopher, wrote, in his Journal de ma Vie Intime, “I do not know how it is that in bad weather I feel my intelligence and will so unlike what they are in fine weather;” and again, “There are days in which my thought seems to break through the veils which surround it. In some conditions of the weather I feel delight in good, and adore virtue; at other times I am indifferent to everything, even to my duties. Are our sentiments, our affections, our principles, related to the physical condition of our organs?”188 The study of his Journal shows us the justice of his doubts. Let us take 1818. In April we find two periods of good inspiration and four of bad, although the weather was fine; in May he was constantly sad, and in November only cheerful during ten days.
“1815, May.– I am suffering from the nervous disposition which I experience in spring; and though wishing to do too much, I do nothing…
“23 May.– I am happy because of the air that I breathe and the birds that are singing; but inspiration passes away through the senses. Each season has not merely special forms of sensation, but a certain way of understanding life which is peculiar to it…
“17 May.– Irresistible pleasure of thought: inspiration…
“4, 16, 17 October.– Empty of ideas; sad…
“1816, 25 January.– Sad and idle. My life is useless…
“24 April.– I am another man. Every day seems a feast day. At this time of the year something seems to lift the soul to another region, and to give it strength to surmount all impediments…
“1817, 13 April.– Excited…
“7 May.– Working on Condillac…
“10, 18 July.– Marvellous activity…
“12 October.– Am transformed; thought turns to commonplace triviality…
“22, 23, 28 November.– Sterile agitation. Alteration of all my mental faculties…
“1818, 1 April.– Northerly wind. Am weary, sad, suffering, stolid…
“1820, 31 March.– At this time of the year it always happens to me that body and mind are alike heavy; I have the consciousness of my degradation…
“1821, May.– All this month I am sad, and yield to external causes like a marionette…
“21 October.– I feel myself newborn. I was returning to work, but the weather has changed; the wind has turned to the south; it is strong, and I am another man. I feel inert, with a distaste for work, and inclined to those sad and melancholy fantasies which are always so fatal to me…”
Alfieri wrote, “I compare myself to a barometer. I have always experienced more or less facility in writing, according to the weight of the air; absolute stupidity in the great solstitial and equinoxial winds, infinitely less perspicacity in the evening than in the morning, and a much greater aptness for creation in the middle of the winter or of summer than in the intermediate seasons. This has made me humble, as I am convinced that at these times I have had no power to do otherwise.” Monod says that the phases of Michelet’s intellectual life followed the course of the seasons.189 Poushkin’s poetic inspiration was greatest during dark and stormy nights.
We catch a glimpse in these facts of an appreciable influence of barometrical conditions upon men of genius as upon the insane.
Heat.– Thermometrical influence is much clearer and more evident. Napoleon, who defined man as “a product of the physical atmosphere and the moral atmosphere,” and who suffered from the faintest wind, loved heat so much that he would have fires even in July. Voltaire and Buffon had their studies warmed throughout the year. Rousseau said that the action of the sun in the dog-days aided him to compose, and he allowed the rays of the mid-day sun to fall on his head. Byron said that he feared cold as much as a gazelle. Heine wrote in one of his letters, “It snows; I have little fire in the room, and my letter is cold.” Spallanzani, in the Ionian Islands, found himself able to study for three times as many hours as in misty Pavia.190 Leopardi confesses in his letters, “My temperament is inimical to cold. I wait and invoke the reign of Ormuzd.” Giusti wrote in the spring, “Inspiration is becoming favourable… If spring aids me as in all other things…”191 Paisiello could only compose beneath six quilts in the summer and nine in the winter. Similar facts are told of Varillas, Méry, and Arnaud. Sylvester tells how, when on board the Invicta, beneath the vivifying rays of a powerful sun, the method of resolving a multiple equation occurred to him, and he succeeded, without pen or pencil.192 Lesage, in his old age, became animated as the sun advanced in the meridian, gradually gaining his imaginative power, together with his cheerfulness; as the day declined, his mental activity gradually diminished, until he fell into a lethargy, which lasted to the following day.193
Giordani could only compose in the sun, or in the presence of abundant light and great heat.194 Foscolo wrote in November: “I keep near the fire; my friends laugh at me, but I am seeking to give my members heat which my heart will concentrate and sublime within.”195 And in December he writes: “My natural infirmity, the fear of cold, has constrained me to live near the fire, and the fire has inflamed my eyelids.” Milton confessed in his Latin elegies that in winter his muse was sterile; he could only write from the spring equinox to that of autumn. In a letter he complains of the cold of 1678, and fears that, if it lasts, it will hinder the free development of his imagination. Dr. Johnson, who tells us this in his Life of Milton, may be believed on this point, for imagination never smiled upon him, only the cold and tranquil intelligence of criticism, and he adds the commentary that all this must be the result of eccentricity of character, he, Johnson, never having experienced any effects from the variations of the weather. Poushkin often said that he found himself most disposed to composition in autumn; the brilliant spring sunshine produced on him an impression of melancholy. Salvator Rosa laughed in youth, as Lady Morgan tells us in her Life, at the pretended influence of the weather on works of genius; but in old age he became incapable of painting or thinking, almost of living, except in the heat of spring. In reading Schiller’s correspondence with Goethe one is struck by the singular influence which the gentle and imaginative poet attributed to the weather. In November, 1817, he wrote: “In these sad days, beneath this leaden sky, I have need of all my elasticity to feel alive, and do not yet feel capable of serious work.” And in December: “I am going back to work, but the weather is so dull that it is impossible to preserve the lucidity of the soul.” In July, 1818: “Thanks to the fine weather I am better; the lyric inspiration, which obeys the will less than any other, does not delay.” In December he complains that the necessity of completing Wallenstein unfortunately coincides with an unfavourable period of the year, “so that,” he writes, “I am obliged to use all my strength to preserve mental clearness.” And in May, 1799: “I hope to make progress in my work if the weather continues fine.”
All these examples allow us to suspect, with some probability, that heat, with rare exceptions, aids in the productions of genius, as it aids in vegetation, and also aids, unfortunately, in the stimulation of mania.
If historians, who have squandered so much time and so many volumes in detailing minutely to us the most shameless exploits of kings, had sought with as much care the memorable epoch in which a great discovery or a masterpiece of art was conceived, they would no doubt have found that the hottest months and days have always been most fruitful for genius, as for nature generally.
Let us endeavour to find more precise proofs of this little-suspected influence.
Dante wrote his first sonnet on the 15th of June, 1282; in the spring of 1300 he wrote the Vita Nuova; on the 3rd of April he began his great poem.196 Darwin had the earliest ideas of his great work first in March, then in June.197 Petrarch conceived the Africa in March, 1338. Michelangelo’s great cartoon, the work which so competent a judge as Cellini considered his most wonderful masterpiece, was imagined and executed between April and July, 1506. Manzoni wrote his 5 Maggio in summer. Milton’s great poem was conceived in the spring. Galileo discovered Saturn’s ring in April, 1611. Balzac wrote La Cousine Bette in August and September, Père Goriot in September, La Recherche de l’Absolu in June to September. Sterne began Tristram Shandy in January, the first of his sermons in April, the famous one on errors of conscience in May.198 Giordano Bruno composed his Candelajo in July; and in his witty dedication he attributed it to the heat of the dog-days. Voltaire wrote Tancred in August. Byron wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold in September, his Prophecy of Dante in June, his Prisoner of Chillon during the summer in Switzerland. Giusti wrote of Gingillino and Pero: “Here are the only leaves that April has drawn out of my head after fourteen months of idleness.” Schiller, it appears from his letters to Goethe, conceived Don Carlos and Wallenstein in the autumn, as well as Fiesco and Wilhelm Tell; Wallensteins Lager and Letters on Æsthetics in September; Kabale und Liebe in winter; the Magician, the Glove, the Ring of Polycrates, the Cranes of Ibycus, and Nadowessir’s Song in June; the Jungfrau von Orleans in July. Goethe wrote Werther in autumn; Mignon and other lyric poems in May; Cellini, Alexis, Euphrosyne, Metamorphosis of Plants, and Parnass in June and July; the Xenien, Hermann und Dorothea, Westöstlichen Divan, and Natürliche Tochter in winter. In the first days of March, 1788, which, he wrote, were worth more to him than a whole month, he dictated, besides other poems, the beginning of Faust.199 Salorno’s hymn to Liberty was written in May. Rossini composed the Semiramide almost entirely in February, and in November the last part of the Stabat Mater.200 Mozart composed the Mitridate in October; Beethoven his ninth symphony in February.201 Donizetti composed Lucia di Lammermoor, perhaps entirely, in September; in any case, the famous Tu che a Dio spiegasti l’ale belongs to that date; the Figlia del Reggimento was also composed in autumn; Linda de Chamounix in spring; Rita in summer; Don Pasquale and the Miserere in winter.202 Wagner composed Der Fliegende Holländer in the spring of 1841. Canova modelled his first work, Orpheus and Eurydice, in October.203 Michelangelo conceived his Pietà between September and October, 1498,204 the design of the Libreria in December, the model in wood of the tomb of Pope Julius in August.205 Leonardo da Vinci conceived the equestrian statue of the Sforza and began his book Della luce e delle Ombre in April; for we find in his autograph manuscript these words: “On April the 23rd, 1492, I commenced this book and recommenced the horse.” On the 2nd of July, 1491, he designed the pavilion of the Duchess’s Bath; on the 3rd of March, 1509, St. Christopher’s Canal.206 The first idea of the discovery of America came to Columbus between May and June, in 1474, in the form of a search for the western passage to India.207 Galileo discovered the sun’s spots contemporaneously with, or before, Scheiner in April, 1611;208 in December, 1610, and even in September (since he speaks of his observation having been made three months previously), he discovered the analogy between the phases of Venus and those of the moon; in May, 1609, he invented the telescope;209 in July, 1610, he discovered two stars, afterwards found to be the most luminous points of Saturn’s ring, a discovery which, according to his custom, he expressed in verse: —
“Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi.”In January he found Jupiter’s satellites; in November, 1602, the isochronism of the oscillations of the pendulum.210
Kepler discovered the law which bears his name in May, 1618; the discovery of Zucchi regarding Jupiter took place in May; that of Tycho Brahe in November. Fabricius discovered the first changing star in August, 1546. Cassini discovered the spots which indicate the rotation of Venus in October and April (1666-67), and in October, December, and March (1671, 1672, 1684) four satellites of Saturn. Herschel discovered two in March, 1789. In June, 1631, Hevelius conceived the first ideas of selenography.211 A satellite of Saturn was discovered by Huygens on the 25th of March, 1665; another by Dawes and Bond on the night of the 19th of September, 1848. Two satellites of Uranus were discovered by Herschel in 1787; one of them, considered as doubtful by Herschel, was again discovered by Struve and Lassel in October, 1847; the last, Ariel, was discovered by Lassel on the 14th of September, 1847; on the 8th of July in the same year he had also seen Neptune’s satellite for the first time.212 Uranus was discovered by Herschel in March, 1781. The same astronomer observed the moon’s volcanoes in April. Bradley discovered in September (1728) the aberration of light, Enke’s and Vico’s fine observations on Saturn took place in March and April (1735-38). Of the comets discovered by Gambart, three were in July, two in March and in May, one in January, April, June, August, October, December.213 The last three comets discovered in 1877 were perceived in October, February, and September; in August Hall observed the satellites of Mars. Schiaparelli’s discovery on falling stars dates from August, 1866.
We read in Malpighi’s journal that in July he made his great discoveries in the suprarenal glands. It is curious to observe how some one month predominates in certain years: for example, January in 1788 and 1790, and June in 1771, during which he made thirteen discoveries.214
The first idea of the barometer came to Torricelli in May, 1645, as may be seen by his letters to Ricci; in March, 1644, he had made the discovery, of great moment at that time, of the best way of making glasses for spectacles. The first experiments of Pascal on the equilibrium of fluids were made in September, 1645.215 In March, 1752, Franklin began his experiments with lightning conductors, and concluded them in September.
Goethe declared that it was in May that his original ideas on the theory of colours arose, and in June that he made his fine observations on the metamorphoses of plants.216 Hamilton discovered the calculus of Quaternions on the 16th of October, 1843.
Volta invented the electric pile in the beginning of winter, 1799-1800. In the spring of 1775 he invented the electrophore. In the first days of November, 1784, he discovered the production of hydrogen in organic fermentations. His invention of the eudiometer took place in the spring, about May. In April of the same year (1777) Volta wrote to Barletta the famous letter in which he divined the electric telegraph. In the spring of 1788 he constructed his great conductor.
Luigi Brugnatelli found out galvanoplasty in November, 1806, as is shown by a letter which the advocate Zanino Volta found in the correspondence of his grandfather. Nicholson discovered the oxydation of metals by means of the Voltaic pile, in the summer of 1800.