The Insanity Of Genius And The General Inequality Of Human Faculty Physiologically Considered

Excerpt from The Insanity of Genius and the General Inequality of Human Faculty: Physiologically Considered On the other hand, there has always been a strong body of opinion, philosophical and scientific, against the supposed connection of genius with insanity. Locke, Helvetius, and Other early authorities, ascribed all intellectual superiority to education; and, in the last century, in England, it was generally believed that men were not naturally adapted by mental constitution to one pursuit more than another, but that, when a particular aptitude was evinced, it was due to the direction given to the mind by casual events or circum stances. In accordance with this view Dr. Johnson main tained that genius resulted from a mind of large general powers being turned in a particular direction. Charles Lamb, forgetting the fact that he himself had been confined in a lunatic asylum, expressed a similar opinion. So far from the position holding true, ' observes Lamb, 'that great wit (or genius in our modern way of speaking) has a neces sary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the con trary, will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakespeare. The greatness of wit by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be understood manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them.' Goethe, also, was opposed to the mad view, holding that the man of genius summed up in his own person the best qualities of the family or the race to which he belonged. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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