MOSTLY FOOLS.

(Abridged from the Saturday Review.)

The immediate result of reading "The Man of Genius," by Cesare Lombroso, Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Turin, especially the early chapters of it, is to make one doubtful if one is not oneself insane, and quite certain that all one's friends are. Indeed, the signs of insanity are so numerous, that it is very difficult to avoid possessing one or more of them. Anything, from regular hand-writing to regular features, will suffice ; and just as the nervous person who glances at a medical work immediately endows himself with all the diseases he reads of therein, and hies him to a physician, so, after reading "The Man of Genius," the weaker vessel will immediately resign hope,and set to work to seek one comfortable asylum. We are at least cheered by the knowledge that we shall be in good company. For, in the words of our fashionable argot, " everybody will be there," and in Professor Lombroso's world you can only choose between madness and monotony, between the people who are so dull that they are unfit to talk to, and the people whose brains—or whatever it be that constitutes genius—will not allow them to be safely at large. When, therefore, we are haled to Bedlam, we shall know at least that there will be a distinguished company to receive us—everybody, in fact, from Moses to Musset. Shakspeare, Byron, Shelley will represent poetry ; Schopenhauer and others will reply to the toast of philosophy ; Disraeli, and possibly more modern statesmen than he, will supply the political element; Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, and all the plagues of our schooldays will be paying the penalty of their crimes against us in strait-waistcoats. The English poets will be there en masse, with the exception apparently of Mr. Lewis Morris. All the others our author, with exquisite frankness, expressly includes. Scotland comes especially under his ban, for do we not read that " The hills of Judea and of Scotland have produced prophets and half insane persons gifted with second-sight" ? Happy are they who dwell upon the plains, for madmen inhabit the mountains ! Better to be dull than demented. Professor Lombroso has striven in every way, by careful research, elaborate consultation of authorities, and noting down of personal observations, to make his knowledge and the data for his hypothesis as exact as possible ; and if his theory is a somewhat cynical one—it is annoying at first to find we owe the writings of Pascal to "the grave lesions of his cerebral hemispheres," and those of Byron "to premature ossification of his sutures" —yet it has a very considerable basis of truth. In his own words, "Genius is a degenerative psychosis of the epileptoid group." In fact, genius may practically be expressed in terms of epilepsy ; and he brings forward a mass of examples of prophets, poets, and artists of all kinds who were not only liable to these seizures, but whose genius seems to be the direct result of such a disease. Almost anything unusual apparently suffices for the purposes of the theory, from "pallor" or "rickets" to actual mania or fits; and even if you bear an exemplary imputation during life, like Sesostris, you are not exempt from the danger of having your skull dug up and pronounced to be of the criminal type. So great are the capacities of his net that, in despair of finding any educated sanity in the world, one is inclined to lock up all the sane people that our great men may be permitted to remain at large, the theory being that "the normal," of which we hear so much, is in reality an arbitrary line drawn between two classes of insanity—one class, which is " off the normal" in one direction, being dubbed genius ; the other, which errs in the opposite direction, being considered mad.

The distinction seems to rest purely on expediency. If a man is merely a nuisance and irresponsible, we call him imbecile ; if he is a brilliant writer, actor, speaker, statesman, we call him a genius ; if he is violent or murderous, we call him a maniac. But, as the hatter said to Alice, " They are all mad"—mad or mattoid, it does not matter which—and often the two are sadly mixed, as in the cases quoted where stupid men during a fit of temporary insanity become brilliantly clever or even geniuses. Moreover, we gather that, if only we could perfect our knowledge of abnormal states of the brain, we could produce genius to order as required by tampering with its lobes. At least chance can do so, according to the following statement :—

" It has frequently happened that injuries to the head and acute diseases, those frequent causes of insanity, have changed in very ordinary individual into a man of genius. . . . Gratry, a mediocre singer, became a great master after a beam had fractured his skull. Mabillon, almost an idiot from childhood, fell down a stone staircase at the age of 20, and so badly injured his skull that it had to be trepanned ; from that time he displayed the characteristics of genius. Gale, who narrates this fact, " knew a Dane who had been half idiotic, and who became intelligent at the age of 18 after having rolled head foremost down a staircase."

The preponderance of epilepsy in religious maniacs is treated at great length ; for, indeed, here the professor is on his safest ground, and his sympathies being anti-clerical and anti-religious, he takes a keen pleasure in analysing these forms of mania. His instances are taken from every age and faith, from Mahomet to Luther, from St. Paul to Savonarola. He gives no examples of English religious epileptics, assuredly not from any lack of such, but perhaps because, for modern instances in support of his theories, he turns instinctively rather to Italy. Otherwise he might have found several—Wesley, Whitefield, and many more recent names. In fact, we can present him with an admirable theory of Whitefield's extraordinary influence, culled from a Diocesan Conference, wherein a clergyman, himself an epileptic, arose to defend his fitness to continue his ministry. After quoting many instances of epileptic preachers, he added the following remarkable words on the subject. " Whitefield," he declared, " was not merely epileptic, but had moreover a cast in his eye, and since the power of epileptics rests largely on the commanding power of their eyes, could by transfixing two persons at once, by reason of his squint, use his power of drawing converts with double effect !" The author's standpoint throughout the book is sternly scientific. He will accept nothing supernatural. Prophets and priests are an abomination to him. We quote one or two of his sneers at inspirational folk:—"One tendency (in mattoids) overpowers all others—one which we find predominant in insane genius—namely, personal vanity. Thus out of 215 mattoids, we find forty-four prophets." Again, "Mahomet had visions after an epileptic fit ; 'an angel appears to me in human form, he speaks to me. Often I hear, as it were, the sound of cats, of rabbits, of bells; then I suffer much.' After these apparitions he was overcome with sadness, and howled like a young camel!" The picture of the prophet of Islam "howling like a young camel" is exquisite. As examples of amnesia, the author relates how " One day, when performing an experiment during a lecture he (Rouelle) said to his hearers, 'You see, gentlemen, this cauldron over the flame ? "Well, if I were to leave off stirring it, an explosion would at once occur which would make us all jump.' While saying these words he did not fail to forget to stir, and the prediction was accomplished; the explosion took place with a fearful noise ; the laboratory windows were all smashed, and the audience fled to the garden. Babinet hired a country house, and after making the pavements returned to town ; then he found that he had entirely forgotten both the name of the place and from what station he had started. . . . Of Bishop Münster it is said that, seeing at the door of his own ante-chamber the announcement, 'The master of this house is out,' he remained there awaiting his own return." The story of Klaproth is worth quoting. In examination a professor once said to him, " But you know nothing, sir !" Excuse me, he replied, " I know Chinese !" Puns, by the way, and plays on words are strong evidence of monomania or insanity, at which we are not astonished, and "anagrams," in the words of Hecart, who made them, and therefore ought to know, " are one of the greatest inanities of which the human mind is capable. One must be a fool to amuse oneself with them, and worse than a fool to make them." Sometimes the professor's humour lies in the curious way in which he expresses himself. Thus :— " He [Bolyai] provoked thirteen officials to duels, and fought with them, and between each duel he played the violin, the only piece of furniture (!) in his house."
Brisbane Courier 7 Mar 1892