CHAPTER IV.

SANE MEN OF GENIUS.

Their unperceived defects--Richelieu--Sesostris--Foscolo--Michelangelo--Darwin.

But a graver objection is that afforded by those few men of genius who have completed their intellectual orbit without aberration, neither depressed by misfortune nor thrown out of their course by madness.

Such have been Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Voltaire, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Darwin. Each one of these showed, by the ample volume and at the same time the symmetrical proportion of the skull, force of intellect restrained by the calm of the desires. Not one of them allowed his great passion for truth and beauty to stifle the love of family and country. They never changed their faith or character, never swerved from their aim, never left their work half completed. What assurance, what faith, what ability they showed in their undertakings; and, above all, what moderation and unity of character they preserved in their lives! Though they, too, had to experience--after undergoing the sublime paroxysm of inspiration--the torture inflicted by ignorant hatred, and the discomfort of uncertainty and exhaustion, they never, on that account, deviated from the straight road. They carried out to the end the one cherished idea which formed the aim and purpose of their lives, calm and serene, never complaining of obstacles, and falling into but a few mistakes--mistakes which, in lesser men, might even have passed for discoveries.

But I have already answered, in the opening pages of this book, the objection furnished by these rare exceptions, pointing out that epilepsy and moral insanity (which is its first variety) often pass unobserved, not only in distinguished men, the prestige of whose name and work dazzles our judgment, and prevents our discerning them, but in those criminals to whom such researches might at least restore self-respect, by depriving them of all responsibility.

Who, but for the revelations of some of his intimate friends, would have suspected that Cavour was repeatedly subject to attacks of suicidal mania, or thought that Richelieu was epileptic? No one would have paid any attention to the morbid impulsiveness of Foscolo, or recorded it as a symptom, if Davis had not examined his skull after death. Who could make any assertion with regard to the moral sense of Sesostris? Yet, as Arved Barine justly remarks,[479] his skull completely corresponds to the criminal type. The low and narrow forehead, prominent superciliary arch, thick eyebrows, eyes set close together, long, narrow, aquiline nose, hollow temples, projecting cheek-bones, strong jaws; the expression not intelligent, but animal, fierce, proud, and majestic; the head small in proportion to the body, are all so many indications of the most complete absence of moral sense.

In all the biographies of Michelangelo we do not discover one spot on that gentle and yet robust soul, who trembled for the sorrows of his country as at the expression of beauty. But the publication of his letters,[480] and the keen researches of Parlagreco,[481] have revealed physical anomalies never before suspected.

One of the most important is his complete indifference to women. This may be observed in his works, and his masterpieces were all masculine--Moses, Lorenzo, Giuliano de’ Medici, &c. He never used, it appears, the living female model, though he made use of corpses; his Bacchante is a virago with masculine muscles, unformed breasts and no feminine touch. In his many love sonnets, written rather to follow the prevailing fashion than from any true inspiration of passion, none bear the mark of being addressed to real women; only fourteen times, it is said, does the word “donna” occur. On the other hand, in the Barbera Collection, Sonnets xviii. and xii. show a very marked admiration for the male, and Varchi considers that these are addressed to Cavalieri who was of great physical beauty. There are in existence two of his letters addressed to Cavalieri (July 28, 1523, and July 28, 1532), which seem to be written to a mistress, and in which, humiliating himself, he swears that, if banished from the other’s heart, he will die. There is a similar letter written to Angelini.

This moral anomaly, which he would share with many artists, Cellini, Sodoma, &c., is not the only one met with. “In his letters,” writes Parlagreco, “may be seen constant contradictions between ideas that are great and generous, and others that are puerile; between will and speech; between thought and action; extreme irritability, inconstant affection, great activity in doing good, sudden sympathies, great outbursts of enthusiasm, great fears, sometimes unconsciousness of his own actions, marvellous modesty in the field of art, unreasonable vanity in the appearances of life--these are the various psychical manifestations in the life of Buonarroti which lead me to believe that the great artist was affected by a neuropathic condition bordering on hysteria.”

Every day in his old age he discovered some sin in his past life, and he sent money to Florence for masses to be said and for alms to the poor, and to enable poor girls to be married, and, which is stranger, to be made nuns. All this was to gain Paradise (Lett. 187, 214, 240, 330), to save his soul--he who had said: “It is not strange that the monks should spoil a chapel [at the Vatican], since they have known how to spoil the whole world.”

At some moments he feels that his conscience is clean and then he desires to die, so that he may not fall back into evil; but then his discouragement returns, and he believes (strange blasphemy), that it was a sin to have been born an artist.

“_Conosco di quant’ era d’error carca_ _L’affettuosa fantasia_ _Che_ l’arte _mi fece idolo e monarca_ ... _Le parole del mondo mi hanno tolto_ _Il tempo dato a contemplar Iddio._”

And he believes himself destined by God to a long life simply that he may complete the fabric of St. Peter’s.

In old age he who had shown so little vanity where his work was concerned, and so much modesty in speaking of it, went about studying how he could best exhibit the nobility of his descent, claiming to trace it in a direct line from the Counts of Canossa, a claim which, even if valid, would not be worth a finger of his Moses.

Michelangelo tenderly loved his father and brother and nephews, and enabled them to live in easy circumstances; yet in his letters to them he frequently shows himself suspicious and treats them unjustly. In 1544, he fell seriously ill at Rome. His nephew naturally hastened to his bedside. Michelangelo became very angry and wrote: “You are come to kill me and to see what I leave behind.... Know that I have made my will and that there is nothing here for you to think about. Therefore, go in peace and do not write to me more.” Three months after, he changed his tone. “I will not fail in what I have often thought about, that is, in helping you.” He has himself left a confession of his almost morbid melancholy in a letter (97), to Sebastiano del Piombo: “Yesterday evening I was happy because I escaped from my mad and melancholy humour.”

Without the recent biographical and autobiographical notes published by his son,[482] no one could have imagined that Darwin, a model father and citizen, so self-controlled and even so free from vanity, was a neuropath. His son tells us that for forty years he never enjoyed twenty-four hours of health like other men. Of the eight years devoted to the study of the cirripedes, two, as he himself writes, were lost through illness. Like all neuropaths he could bear neither heat nor cold; half an hour of conversation beyond his habitual time was sufficient to cause insomnia and hinder his work on the following day. He suffered also from dyspepsia, from spinal anæmia and giddiness (which last is known to be frequently the equivalent of epilepsy); and he could not work more than three hours a day. He had curious crotchets. Finding that eating sweets made him ill, he resolved not to touch them again, but was unable to keep his resolution, unless he had repeated it aloud. He had a strange passion for paper--writing the rough drafts of his correspondence on the back of proof-sheets, and of the most important MSS. which were thus rendered difficult to decipher. He often instituted what he himself called “fool’s experiments”--_e.g._, having a bassoon played close to the cotyledons of a plant.[483] When about to make an experiment, he seemed to be urged on by some inward force. From a morbid dislike to novelty, he used the millimetric tables of an old book which he knew to be inaccurate, but to which he was accustomed. He would not change his old chemical balance though aware that it was untrustworthy; he refused to believe in hypnotism, and also, at first, in the discovery of prehistoric stone weapons.[484] He frequently, says his daughter, inverted his sentences, both in speaking and writing, and had a difficulty in pronouncing some letters, especially _w_. Like Skoda, Rockitanski, and Socrates, he had a short snub nose, and his ears were large and long. Nor were degenerative characteristics wanting among his ancestors. It is true that he reckoned among them several men of intellect and almost of genius, such as Robert (1682), a botanist and intelligent observer; and Edward, author of a _Gamekeeper’s Manual_, full of acute observations on animals. His father had great powers of observation; but his paternal grandfather, Erasmus--poet and naturalist at the same time--had a passionate temper and an impediment in his speech. One of his sons, Charles, a poet and collector, resembled him in this respect. Finally, another uncle, Erasmus, a man of some intellect, a numismatist and statistician, ended by madness and suicide.

It might be objected that the fact of such different forms of psychosis--melancholy, moral insanity, monomania--being found either complete or undeveloped in men of genius, excludes the special psychosis of genius, and still more that of epilepsy. But it may be answered that recent research, which has enlarged the domain of epilepsy, has also demonstrated that, apart from impulsive and hallucinatory delusions, epilepsy may be superadded to any form of mental alienation, especially megalomania and moral insanity. And, as is the case in nearly all degenerative psychoses, undeveloped forms of mental disease, and recurring multiform delusions brought on by the most trivial causes, especially predominate in epilepsy.