classes, those in class one representing the lowest, those in class ten the highest. Elsewhere Dr. Woods has shown that eminent persons have a large number of eminent relatives by comparing the 47 elected to the Hall of Fame in New York City with a list of 3,500 formed by adding together the names in two standard biographies. "Now the chances that an ordinary mortal-any man taken at random-will be as closely related (as close as a grandparent or grandson) to any person in this second group (the 3,500 group) is about one in five hundred to perhaps one in a thousand. In contrast to this, fully one-half of those in the Hall of Fame are closely related to some one in the second group, and, if all their distinguished relatives are added up, they average more than one apiece. In other words, the amount of distinguished relationship which the Hall of Wedgwood Darwin Galton INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 24 Shaded squares represent men of exceptional ability; figures in diamonds represent other children, sex not stated. 24 WHETHAM, W. C. D. The Family and the Nation, p. 89. Fame gives is about a thousand times the random expectation." 25 Admitting, for argument's sake, that all Dr. Wood's claims for royalty is true, and recognizing further the superiority of the Bach family, the ability of the Wedgwood-Galton-Darwin family of England, the Beechers, Adams and Edwards families of America, there is a singular and striking isolation in most of the cases the world calls great. However, we may explain their superiority, it is not hard to see why the world has developed so few families which display and maintain marked characteristics which put them above the rank and file of their contemporaries. This explanation lies in the fact that about the last thing considered by those contemplating marriage is the endowment of the next generation. There is every reason to believe that any given trait might be maintained provided mates were sought among those having similar characters. Every one knows that religious, racial, social, financial considerations and the chance association under favorable surroundings, have outweighed physical factors in the determination of marriage contracts. General health as indicated by beauty and virility has indeed been taken into account, but its influence has not been decisive. Save in sporadic and short-lived experiments, there has been no acceptance of an ideal of good breeding among humans save as regards habits and manners. Recognizing then the existence of the superman, what is his nature? Does he possess ordinary capacity in most respects plus his extra equipment in one or two directions, or does he secure his gifts by the sacrifice of other qualities? From the days of Ribot and Lombroso on, there 25 WOODS, F. A. In Problems in Eugenics, p. 250. has been a tendency to regard the genius as an abnormal type approaching the degenerate and therefore to be regarded with suspicion. Even as regards an apparently minor point, stature, Lombroso thought that the geniuses were usually either tall or short men, rather than of average stature. MEN OF MEDIUM MENTAL ATTAINMENTS Medium, 68 per cent Tall, 16 per cent Short, 16 per cent MEN OF GENIUS Short, 37 per cent 26 Tall, 41 per cent Lebon, on examining the skulls of twenty-six Frenchmen of genius, found that they yielded an average capacity of 1,732 cubic centimeters - a little more than 300 in excess of the average. On the other hand, of the brains of twelve famous Germans studied by Wagner and Buchoff, eight had either a decidedly low or a very high capacity. Doellinger, for instance, had a capacity of only 1,207 cubic centimeters, and Leibig 1,352 cubic centimeters.' 99 27 Some one has said: "When genius comes in at the door, health flies out of the window." Without attempting to list the physical stigmata by which genius is alleged to be characterized, we may note the claims of the adherents of this degeneracy or insanity conception by quoting from Lydston: Æsop, Virgil, Demosthenes, Cicero and Cato were undoubtedly neuropaths. The stammering of Demosthenes is familiar to every schoolboy. Socrates had a familiar genius or demon that dominated the hallucinations of which he was the victim. Pausanius, the Greek 26 DORLAND, W. A. N. Age of Mental Virility, p. 201. 27 Ibid., p. 204. traveler and geographer, murdered a slave and was ever after pursued and tormented by the spirit of the murdered youth. The immortal Lucretius suffered from intermittent mania, and suicided at forty-four. Peter the Great had epilepsy; one of his sons had convulsions, and the other hallucinations. Linnè was a precocious genius who had a hydrocephalic cranium. Raphael was often tempted to suicide. . . . Paschal suffered from nervous troubles and paralysis all his life, and died in convulsions. Molière was a sufferer from convulsions. The slightest excitement or opposition would suffice to precipitate an attack. Mozart was a musical prodigy. He composed at four years of age. He was affected by fainting fits, and was warned of impending death by a vision. He died of brain disease at thirty-six. Cuvier, Victor Hugo, Chopin, Bruno, Comte, Madame de Staël, Swift, Johnson, Cowper, Southey, Shelley, Byron, Carlyle, Goldsmith, Lamb, Poe, Keats, Coleridge, De Quincey, Chatterton, George Eliot, George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Newton, Chateaubriand, De Balzac, Chatham, Burns, Dickens all of these beacon-lights of the history of genius showed indubitable evidences of degeneracy. In some of them the evidences of mental alienation were very striking. Hugo was dominated by the egotistic idea of becoming the greatest man of all time. Giordano Bruno thought he contained the essence of God. De Staël was an opiumeater; she feared the sensation of cold after death, and stipulated in her will that she be buried in furs. Swift was of insane stock; he was naturally cruel and given to violent and aggressive outbursts of temper. He suffered from serious impairment of vision and audition, with muscular twitching and facial paralysis. Shelley was called "mad," he had hallucinations and was the victim of the opium habit. Charles Lamb was confined in an asylum. A sister of his suffered a similar fate, and is said to have murdered her mother during one of her maniacal attacks. Johnson had convulsions and cramps, hallucinations and at one time aphasia. Southey had a neurotic ancestry, and died an imbecile. Cowper was afflicted by melancholia. He attempted suicide on numerous occasions. His melancholia finally assumed the religious type, and he was confined in an asylum for a year and a half. Byron's ancestry was bad, and his brain was as clubbed as his foot. Thomas Chatterton was a weakling, called back to the bosom of nature before his time, through the agency of self-murder. Poe, the man who stands out in boldest relief in American literature, was a dipsomaniac and not unlikely a lunatic. . . . "The list of geniuses who have been shown to be indubitably insane is a long one. Vico died demented; Haller was religiously insane; Ampere believed himself possessed by the devil; Nathaniel Lee, the dramatist, did his best work while insane; Thomas Lloyd, Schumann, Gérard de Nerval, Baudelaire, Comte, Torquate Tasso, Dean Swift, Rousseau and Schopenhauer are among the great men whose histories would adorn the pages of an alienist's records quite as well as they have the history of genius." 28 One may admit that this account is exaggerated, not to mention the vastly greater claims made by Max Nordau, and yet be forced to recognize that where there is so much smoke there must be some fire. While the contributions of genius may be worth all they cost, it is probably fortunate that society at large is made up of ordinary men and women. 28 LYDSTON, G. F. Diseases of Society and Degeneracy, p. 460 ff. |