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

Tall, 41 per cent

Short, 16 per cent

Short, 37 per cent 26

MEN OF GENIUS Medium, 22 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." 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 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.

The steady convergence during the last quarter century of several lines of research has at last produced the conviction in the minds of thinking and well-informed men and women that society must pay attention to the question of human heredity for the sake of the future of the race. The older students had held to the idea that all men were of relatively equal responsibility for their acts, since all possessed free-will. Lombroso in his great work "The Delinquent," published in 1876, challenged this attitude. He and his followers known as the "Positive School of Criminologists" insisted that the criminals, aside from those whose offenses were accidental, were marked off from ordinary men by physical stigmata which indicated degeneration or a reversion to a more primitive type of humanity. Though their extreme claims do not appear warranted, there is a much more general acceptance of them in essence than there was at first and the attitude of the public towards the criminal is being steadily modified.

In America the investigation of the degenerate families of the Jukes in New York in the seventies, the Ishmaelites of Indiana in the nineties, the Kallikaks of New Jersey and the Sixties of Ohio in this decade has revealed the existence of a great army of more or less degenerate individuals reproducing generation after generation and causing an enormous expense by their crimes and their inability to care for themselves.

Meantime Galton and his followers have been studying the superior types of humanity and urging concerted efforts to improve the race stock. With this has come the emphasis which stock-breeding, and the production of desirable new varieties of plants and animals, together with the newer biology and the increased knowledge of heredity, has given to the desire to grapple with

human problems. The result is the movement known as " eugenics."

This movement has two very different sides, negative and positive. Negative eugenics is the attempt to stop the reproduction of the unfit. Naturally there is much division of opinion as to the meaning of this term, but no one doubts the unfitness of the feeble-minded, of the lower grades at least. It is suggested therefore that their reproduction be prevented. This may be done by the prohibition of marriage provided such prohibition be enforced. Inasmuch as they will procreate outside the family relationship, this in itself is not sufficient. It must be supplemented therefore either by a policy of segregation in institutions, particularly of women during the child-bearing years, for all who cannot be adequately protected at home, or by sterilization through a surgical operation. Such an operation is much more difficult in the case of the women than in the men, but the chief danger is from the former. To such a program objection is brought on two grounds. Certain religious institutions seem to feel that it is sacrilegious and that there is a divine right of procreation regardless of the type of children to be expected or the ability of the parents to care for them. The second argument is based on the fear that the power which this policy would lodge in some committee might be abused, that there is no agreement as to where the line should be drawn and that sexual immorality would be encouraged by the knowledge that children could not result. One who knows the feebleminded can only be amused at the last argument, for immorality on their part is solely a question of opportunity. That the upper limits of those to be so treated is hazy is admitted and only as evidence accumulated