Part 7 (2/2)

There is a form of mental obliquity which the French term _folie du doute_. It is characterized by an incert.i.tude in thought coordination, and often leads its victims into the perpetration of nonsensical and useless acts. Men of genius are very frequently afflicted with this form of mental disorder. Dr. Johnson, who was a sufferer from _folie du doute_, had to touch every post he pa.s.sed. If he missed one he had to retrace his steps and touch it. Again, if he started out of a door on the wrong foot he would return and make another attempt, starting out on the foot which he considered the correct one to use. Napoleon counted and added up the rows of windows in every street through which he pa.s.sed. A celebrated statesman, who is a personal friend of the writer, can never bear to place his feet on a crack in the pavement or floor.

When walking he will carefully step over and beyond all cracks or crevices. This idiosyncracy annoys him greatly, but the impulse is imperative, and he can not resist it.

Those who have been intimately a.s.sociated with men of genius have noticed that they are very frequently amnesic or ”absent-minded.” Newton once tried to stuff his niece's finger into the bowl of his lighted pipe, and Rovelle would lecture on some subject for hours at a time and then conclude by saying: ”But this is one of my arcana, which I tell to no one.” One of his students would then whisper what he had just said into his ear, and Rovelle would believe that his pupil ”had discovered the arcanum by his own sagacity, and would beg him not to divulge what he himself had just told to two hundred persons.”

Lombroso has combed history, as it were, with a fine-tooth comb, and very few geniuses have escaped his notice. This paper, so far, is hardly more than a review of his extraordinarily comprehensive work; therefore, I will conclude this portion of it with a list of men of genius, their professions, and their evidences of degeneration, as gathered from his book:

Carlo Dolce, painter, _religious monomania_.

Bacon, philosopher, _megalomania_, _moral anaesthesia_.

Balzac, writer, _masked epilepsy_, _megalomania_.

Caesar, soldier, writer, _epilepsy_.

Beethoven, musician, _amnesia_, _melancholia_.

Cowper, writer, _melancholia_.

Chateaubriand, writer, _ch.o.r.ea_.

Alexander the Great, soldier, _alcoholism_.

Moliere, dramatist, _epilepsy_, _phthisis pulmonalis_.

Lamb, writer, _alcoholism_, _melancholia_, _acute mania_.

Mozart, musician, _epilepsy_, _hallucinations_.

Heine, writer, _melancholia_, _spinal disease_.

Dr. Johnson, writer, _ch.o.r.ea_, _folie du doute_.

Malibran, _epilepsy_.

Newton, philosopher, _amnesia_.

Cavour, statesman, philosopher, _suicidal impulse_.

Ampere, mathematician, _amnesia_.

Thomas Campbell, writer, _ch.o.r.ea_.

Blake, painter, _hallucinations_.

Chopin, musician, _melancholia_.

Coleridge, writer, _alcoholism_, _morphinism_.

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