CHAPTER V.

THE INFLUENCE OF CIVILIZATION AND OF OPPORTUNITY.

Large Towns--Large Schools--Accidents--Misery--Power--Education.

However clearly such laws as we have examined may seem to be ascertained, the conclusions deduced from them must be accepted with a certain reserve; since there exists a series of factors, almost impossible to seize, which intercept and confound all these influences, not excepting even the orographic.

We have already seen how great agglomerations of individuals, whatever the climate and race, are sufficient to increase the number of artists and of talents. But might not this be a purely factitious effect, as, for instance, when individuals who have left their birthplace for some great capital (as often happens in the case of infants and invalids), are looked upon as natives of the latter? This becomes certain, if we remember the pernicious influence of great towns, and consider with Smiles, that the life of large towns is not favourable to intellectual work, that men who have had a great influence on their age have been brought up in solitude, and that all the great men of England, and even of London, were born in the country, though this fact is often ignored on account of their having fixed their residence in the capital. Carlyle says that a man born in London seems but the fraction of a man. We read, in the _Lives of the Engineers_, that all great English engineers have been country-bred.

The establishment of a school of painting, even when it is the result of an importation, makes an artistic centre of a place which was not so previously, and, if the establishment goes back to a very distant time, the number of artists becomes very large. Let us look, for example, at Piedmont, where, assuredly, a military education reinforced by climate and race, and, to a still greater degree, by clerical influence, retarded for a long time the development of the fine arts, and especially of music. Up to 1460, celebrated painters were not numerous in Piedmont, and the only ones to be found there were of foreign origin, such as Bono and Bondiforte. But Bondiforte, who had been sent for from Milan, was immediately followed by Sodoma, Martini, Giovannone, Vercellese. Ferro di Valduggia was followed by Lanini, and Tansi by Valduggia, in the same way as Viotti’s example attracted thither, within a short time, five celebrated violinists.

Scarcely had a few distinguished painters--such as Macrino and Gaudenzio Ferrari, shown themselves at Novara, at Alba, and at Vercelli, than others were immediately seen to appear; and, in our own day, wherever military influence has been entirely superseded by social, this province has furnished, in proportion to its size, as many artists as the rest, or even more, and those of quite equal standing--_e.g._, Gastaldi, Mosso, Pittara, &c.

Had any one undertaken, 300 years ago, to draw up the statistics of Scotch thought, he would scarcely have found a single name to include in his list. Yet Scotland, delivered from the leaden mantle of religious intolerance, has become, as we have seen, one of the richest centres in Europe for bold and original thinkers.

On the other hand, Greece, placed in ancient times by race and nature in the first rank, as regards intellectual creation, no longer shows any trace of her superiority. Nature and the race have not changed, but slavery, political struggles, and hard living have exhausted all her strength; for a nation does not afford itself the luxury of art and high thinking till its existence is assured and easy.

Thus the influences of agglomeration might often have been disguised by the influence of national well-being.

Not that the action of race and climate disappears, but its manifestations remain latent. The mighty intellect due to the Tuscan race and climate, reveals itself at the present day--after the enervating influence of the Medici, the priests, and the linguistic pedants, has done its work--in the improvisations of Pistoian peasant women, and the subtle epigrams of the Florentine populace. Genius (such as that of Pacini, Carrara, Betti, Giusti, Guerrazzi, Carducci) is no longer endemic, but occurs sporadically.

It appears to me that, in many cases, social influences are more apparent than real--analogous rather to the peck of the chicken which cracks the egg-shell than to the spermatozoid which generates the embryo.

We see that Florence, like Athens, supplied at the epoch of republican agitations the _maximum_ of Italian genius. But similar agitations in South America and in France (1789) did not yield as many great men; but simply a number of men who, being useful in the emergency of the time, passed for great.[278] One might even be inclined to suspect that the numerous great men who appeared at Florence were themselves the cause of her revolutions.[279]

The same assertion holds good of opportunity. Opportunity appears, sometimes, to have assisted the development of genius. Thus Mutius Scaevola, having been reproached by Servius Sulpicius with ignorance of his country’s laws, became a great jurisconsult.

It has often happened that stonecutters in the quarries of Florence, in the old Republican times, have become celebrated sculptors, like Mino da Fiesole, Desiderio da Settignano, and Cronaca. Canova and Vincenzo Vela were also quarrymen, and Hugh Miller, from working as a mason, became a highly-esteemed geologist.

Andrea del Castagno, a shepherd of Mugello, one day, when overtaken by a storm, took refuge in an oratory, where a house-painter was daubing a picture of the Virgin. From thenceforth he felt an irresistible desire to imitate him, and practised drawing figures in charcoal whenever he could; so much so, that his fame soon spread among the peasants, and, afterwards, by the assistance of Bernadino de’ Medici, who enabled him to study, he became a celebrated painter.

Vespasiano de’ Bisticci, a Florentine paper-maker, whose profession involved the handling of many books, and contact with a great number of literary and learned men, took to literature himself.

More frequently, however, opportunity is only the last drop which makes the vessel run over. This is so true that the cases in which genius has manifested itself in spite of adverse circumstances and even violent opposition, are innumerable. It is sufficient to recall Boccaccio, Goldoni, Muratori, Leopardi, Ascoli, Cellini, Cavour, Petrarch, Metastasio, and, finally, Socrates, who was obliged to cut and carve stones. All our recent great musicians--Wagner, Rossini, Verdi--were misunderstood in their youth.

Long ago, it was said, “He to whom Nature would not tell it, would not be told by a thousand Athens and a thousand Romes.”[280]

Circumstances, then, and a certain degree of civilization gain acceptance and toleration for genius and its discoveries which, under other conditions, would have either passed unnoticed, or met with ridicule, and even persecution.

History shows that great discoveries are rarely absolute novelties, and that they have long existed as toys or curiosities. “Steam,” says Fournier, “was a plaything for children in the time of Hero of Alexandria, and Anthemius of Tralles. The human mind and the needs of our race have to work by experience, a million times over, before deducing all the consequences of a fact.[281]

In 1765, Spedding offered _portable gas_, prepared and ready for use, to the corporation of Whitehaven, and was refused. At a later date came Chaussier, Minkelers, Lebon, and Windsor, who had no other merit than that of appropriating his discovery.

Coal had been known ever since the fifteenth century; in 1543 Blasco de Garay appears to have propelled a vessel by steam and paddles in the port of Barcelona; the screw-steamer was invented before 1790. When Papin experimented with steam navigation, he met with nothing but derision, and was treated as a charlatan. When the screw was at last applied, Sauvage, who had invented it, never saw it in action, except from the prison where he was confined for debt.

Daguerreotypy was guessed at in Russia during the sixteenth century, and again, in Italy, by Fabricius, in 1566. It was afterwards discovered anew by Thiphaigne de la Roche. Galvanism was also discovered by Cotugno and by Duverney.

The theory of Natural Selection itself does not belong exclusively to Darwin. Existing species, it was already said by Lucretius, have only been able to maintain themselves by their cunning, strength, or swiftness; others have succumbed. And Plutarch, remarking that horses which have been pursued by wolves are swifter than others, gives this reason--that, the slower ones of the band having been overtaken and devoured, only the more agile survived.

Newton’s law of attraction was already foreshadowed in works of the sixteenth century--more particularly in those of Copernicus and Kepler--and was nearly completed by Hooke.

It has been the same with magnetism, chemistry, and even criminal anthropology. Civilization, therefore, does not _produce_ men of genius, and discoveries; but it assists their development, or, more correctly speaking, determines their acceptance.

It may therefore be admitted that genius can exist in any age and any country; but, as in the struggle for existence the greater number of beings are only born to become the prey of others, so many men of genius, if they do not meet with the favourable moment, either remain unknown or are misunderstood.

While there are some civilizations which assist the development of genius, others are injurious to it. In those parts of Italy, for instance, where civilization is most ancient, and where it has been frequently renewed, becoming stronger at each renewal, though the temper of the people is more open, the formation of genius is of rare occurrence. In general, when the average culture of a nation is of earlier date, novelties are less eagerly received. On the contrary, in countries where civilization is recent, as in Russia, new ideas are accepted with the greatest favour.

When the repetition of the same observation renders a new truth less difficult to accept, then genius is not only recognized as useful and even necessary, but received with acclamations. The public, perceiving the coincidence between a given civilization and the manifestation of genius, thinks that the two are connected, confusing the slight influence which determines the hatching of the chicks with the act of fecundation--which, on the contrary, depends on race, atmospheric influences, nutrition, &c.

This, too, is what takes place in our own day. Hypnotism exists to prove how many times, even under our very eyes, a scientific notion may be renewed, and each time taken for a new discovery. Every age is not equally ripe for inventions without precedents, or with too few; and those which are not ripe, are incapable of perceiving their inaptitude for adopting them. In Italy, for twenty years, the man who had discovered pellagrozeine was looked upon by the authorities as a madman. At the present day the academic world, always composed of intelligent mediocrities, laughs at criminal anthropology, is mildly sarcastic towards hypnotism, and looks on homœopathy as a joke. Perhaps even my friends and myself, in laughing at spiritualism, are misled by the misoneism latent in us all, and, like hypnotised persons, are utterly unable even to perceive that such is the case.

Misery is often the stimulus of genius. It was necessity rather than natural inclination which drove Dryden to become an author. Goldsmith, when he had knocked at every door in vain, took to writing. And so again and again.

It is true also that extreme misery frequently ruins genius. It placed immense difficulties in the way of Columbus. George Stephenson’s steam engine would have been an abortion, if he had not been enabled at great sacrifice to educate his son. Meyerbeer, who produced so laboriously, and whose genius cannot be explained apart from his Italian journeys and life, would have been in a deplorable condition without wealth.

Many men of genius, on the other hand, have been spoilt by wealth and power. Jacoby has shown that unlimited power hastens degeneration, and tends to produce megalomania and dementia in those who possess it.

The influence of education has been investigated less than it deserves. Without the school, many believe there would be no genius. What, it is said, would have become of Metastasio, if he had not been picked up and educated? Giotto would merely have amazed the shepherds of his native valleys by daubing the walls of some chapel. Paganini would have been unheard of. Pitré, in his admirable book, _Usi e costumi della Sicilia_, writes at length of certain wonderful poetasters, who narrate fantastic lays of knighthood to the people of Palermo, yet they can neither read nor write. Who knows what they would do if they were educated?

Those who have been among the mountains know the works produced by certain shepherds. They are made with coarse instruments, yet they reveal marvellous taste and delicacy. Such men give us the impression of so many aborted Michelangelos; they are men of genius who have lacked the opportunity of manifesting themselves.

But these facts do not neutralize others which show the pernicious influence of the school on genius. Hazlitt well said that whoever has passed through all the grades of classical instruction without having become a fool, may consider himself to have escaped by miracle. Darwin feared to send his sons to school. Who can describe the martyrdom of the child of genius compelled to spend his brains over a quagmire of things in which he will succeed the less the more he is attracted in other directions? He rebels, and then begins a fierce struggle between the pupil of genius and the professor of mediocrity, who cannot understand his fury and his instincts, and who represses and punishes them. Balzac, who proved this, and was driven away from school after school, has minutely analyzed this bitterness of the college in his wonderful study, _Louis Lambert_. One shudders on thinking of the youth of such lofty and serene intelligence, treated with contempt as stupid and idle, and his discourse on will which had cost him so much labour destroyed unread by an ignorant master. And so, also, it was with Vallès. Verdi was unanimously rejected at the Conservatorio of Milan in 1832, even as a paying pupil. Rossini was regarded as an idiot by his fellow-pupils, and by his teacher, as also was Wagner. Coleridge has written with bitterness of his schooldays, when, he says, his nature was always repressed. Howard was considered so stupid at school that he was sent to a druggist’s. Pestalozzi was looked upon as a silly and incapable boy, whose spelling and writing were incorrigibly bad. Crébillon as a youth was regarded as roguish and lazy, and when he left the university he was labelled: _Puer ingeniosus, sed insignis nebulo_. Cabanis as a boy showed very early signs of uncommon intelligence, but the severe discipline of school only served to make him a dissembler, and he was finally expelled. Diderot was regarded as the shame of his house. Verdi, Rossini, Howard, Cabanis, would not allow themselves to be defeated, but how many, discouraged, have lost faith in themselves! It is useless to say that this struggle for existence results in the survival of the fittest; for even the weakest men of genius are worth more than mediocrities, and it is a sin to lose a single one. We are not here dealing with a phenomenon like that presented by the struggle of lower organisms. The case is even opposed, since their great sensibility renders men of genius more fragile. The persecutions of the school, tormenting these beings when they are in their first youth and most sensitive, cause us to lose those who, being more fragile, are better. Here, therefore, the struggle for existence suppresses the strongest, or at all events the greatest. The worst of this is that there is no remedy. Teachers are not men of genius, and in any case they cannot, and should not, look to anything but the manufacture of mediocrity. At all events, let no obstacles be put in the way of genius.