The Man of Genius

In Germany it has been observed that regions enjoying a mild and healthy climate, by reason of protecting mountains, have produced the greatest poets and in greatest number. The regions of the Main and the Neckar are renowned for their mild climate, luxuriant vegetation, and fertility, and the greatest German poets come from these regions. The Main gave us the greatest of German poets, Goethe, and many other dii minorum gentium, genial and noteworthy poets, although beneath that giant, men such as Klinger, Börne, Rückert, Bettina von Arnim (née Brentano), &c. In the favoured region of the Neckar were born Schiller and Victor von Scheffel, and throughout the Swabian land, we meet with many other great poets and thinkers, such as Wieland, Uhland, Justinus Kerner, Hauff, Schubart, Mörike, G. Schwab,

DIAGRAM OF THE RELATION OF GENIUS TO STATURE IN FRANCE.

Schelling, Müller, Hölderlin, and others. That hilly regions are richer than others in poets is shown in Germany by Hanover (Klopstock, Stolberg, Iffland, Bürger, Leisewitz, Bodenstedt, Hoffmann von Fallersleben, the two Schlegels, &c.); by the Rhine province (Heine, Jacobi, J. Müller, Brentano); Saxony, one of the districts possessing a mild climate, which has yielded the largest number of poets (Körner, Gellert, Kästner, Rabener, and, above all, Lessing); and Thuringia (Kotzebue, Rückert, G. Freytag, Heinse, Musäus, Gotter). On the other hand, the flat regions of Germany or those with a severe climate, have produced few poets.238 As exceptions must be mentioned, Herder (Mohrungen in East Prussia), M. von Schenkendorf (Tilsit), E. M. Arndt (Rügen), Luther (Eisleben), Paul Gerhardt (Gräfenhainichen), the two Humboldts, Paul Heyse, Tieck, Gutzkow (Berlin), Immermann (Magdeburg), Wilhelm Müller, Max Müller, Moses Mendelssohn (Dessau). Westphalia, again, is mountainous, but poor in poets.

The Influence of Healthy Race and High Stature.– The regions which have furnished few artists, or none, are those which suffer from malaria or goître: Calabria, Sassari, Grosseto, Aosta, Sondrio, Avellino, Caltanisetta, Chieti, Syracuse, Lecce. If we compare the distribution of great artists in Italy with the distribution of high stature, we find a singular coincidence of maximum and minimum points. The stature is very low in the regions I have just mentioned, and very tall at Florence, Lucca, Rome, Venice, Naples, Siena, and Arezzo, not because there is any direct correspondence of intelligence to stature, but because, as I have elsewhere shown,239 although stature reveals ethnic influences, it is also the surest index of public health, while mortality statistics have no exact relation to health, because they do not sufficiently show the results of morbid influences, such as goître and cretinism, which, although they arrest the physical and mental growth, do not increase the mortality.

If we examine the results furnished by the conscription in Italy, we find that those regions which, from the excellence of their climate, and apart from ethnic influences, yield the greatest number of individuals of high stature, and the smallest number of rejected individuals, are the most fruitful in men of genius; such are Tuscany, Liguria, and Romagna. On the other hand, the regions which are poorest in men of high stature and men fit for military service – Sardinia, Basilicata, and the valley of Aosta – yield a smaller number of men of genius. It is necessary to except Calabria and Valtellina where many are found, notwithstanding shortness of stature, but they appear in parts of the country which, from their exposed or elevated position, escape miasmatic influences and are proofs of the rule rather than exceptions to it.

This influence can be very well shown in France if we compare the list of men of genius produced in the eighteenth century (as brought together by Jacoby) with the statistics of stature given by Broca and Topinard,240 and with the mortality of each province as furnished by Bertillon.241

We observe at once an evident parallelism between genius and height, with only 11 exceptions out of 85, and some of these 11 may be explained by the agglomerated population of great capitals (Seine, Rhône, Bouches-du-Rhône) which favour the development, or rather the manifestation, of genius, as we have already seen to be the case in Italy; thus the exceptions in Var, Hérault, Bouches-du-Rhône may be explained by relatively great density of population, and by the southern climate, which favours genius in spite of miasmatic influences. At the same time, if we may agree with Jacoby concerning the favourable influence of great urban agglomerations, such as Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, it must be added that it does not appear so clearly in other centres; thus Nord, Haut-Rhin, Pas-de-Calais, Loire, although possessing a dense population, do not yield a corresponding number of men of genius, standing only in the third rank, the Loire, indeed, only in the fourth.242

If we compare the geographical distribution of men of genius with that of mortality, we note more numerous failures of correspondence (27) with the height; this is because the statistics of mortality do not indicate the influence of cretinism which exists in Ariège, the Basses and Hautes-Alpes, Puy-de-Dôme, the Pyrénées, and the Ardennes, clearly showing itself in short stature and military exemption for goître, and, as in Valtellina in Italy, accompanied by a scarcity of intellect. At the same time, all the regions showing high mortality, especially such as are malarious – the Landes, Sologne, Morbihan, Corrèze – offer a feebler proportion of men of genius, with the exception of the great centres; the contrary is found in more healthy districts.

Orographic conditions appear to have great influence. The sunny and fertile land of Languedoc, all mountainous regions not too much affected by goître– Doubs, Côte-d’Or, Ardennes – or those in which it has not succeeded in depressing the stature, that is to say, has been unable to produce endemic cretinism (Jura) give us, when we have put aside all influence of density, race, and temperature, a most notable proportion of men of genius. This may be clearly seen in the table on the following page in which the high figures of goître, stammering, and deaf-mutism, correspond with low stature in Corrèze, Puy-de-Dôme, Ardèche, Ariège, the Basses-Alpes, and the Pyrénées.

We have seen in Var, Vaucluse, and Hérault that a southern climate, perhaps on account of its greater fertility, produces a great number of men of genius; but countries that are cold, but at the same time healthy and mountainous – Jura, Doubs, Meurthe – give still

higher figures, and the same isothermal line passes through the Seine-Inférieure and the Seine-et-Oise, both rich in men of genius; and the Vosges, in which they are almost entirely absent, the same line, again, passes through Calvados and Ain, which are very rich in genius, and Saône-et-Loire and Cher, which are deficient in genius.

The nature of the soil has no influence whatever in the production of genius, for we find the highest figures in the Côte-d’Or, the Meuse, and the Moselle, where the soil is calcareous, and the lowest figures in the Nord and Deux-Sèvres, where the soil is of the same character; other high figures are the Doubs, the Jura, and the Meurthe, where the soil is jurassic, while the same soil offers very low figures in the Hautes-Alpes, the Charente, and the Saône-et-Loire.

The influence of race is also very slight; the descendants of the Burgundians produced numerous men of genius in the Jura and the Doubs, very few in the Saône-et-Loire. The Haute-Garonne, with the same race, produces ten times as many men of genius as Ariège, twice as many as Gers, five times as many as the Landes. In Guienne, the Gironde gives twice as many as Lot, and in Languedoc, Hérault gives seven times more than Lozère.

Explanation.– The relation that we have found between genius and climate has been caught sight of long since by the people and the learned, who agree in admitting a frequency of genius in regions which, being hilly, offer mild temperature. The Tuscan proverb says, “Mountaineers, great boots, and keen heads.” Vegetius wrote that climate influences not only the strength of the body, but also that of the mind. “Plaga cœli non solum ad robur corporum sed etiam animorum facit” (lib. i. cap. 2). Athens, the same author remarks, was chosen by Minerva for its subtle air which produces men of sagacity. Cicero said repeatedly that the keen air of Athens gave birth to wise men; the thick air of Thebes only to torpid natures; and Petrarch, in his Epistolarium, which is a kind of summary of his life, remarks with great emphasis that all his chief works were composed, or at all events meditated, among the mild hills of Vaucluse. Michelangelo said to Vasari: “Giorgio, if anything good has come out of my brain, I owe it to the subtle air of your Arezzo.” Zingarelli, when asked how he had composed the melody of Giulietta e Romeo, replied: “Look at that sky, and tell me if you do not feel capable of doing as much.” Muratori, in a letter to an inhabitant of Siena, wrote: “Your air is admirable, really producing fruitful minds.” Macaulay remarks that Scotland, though one of the poorest countries in Europe, stands in the first rank for richness in men of genius; it is sufficient to name Michael Scot, Napier, the inventor of logarithms, Buchanan, Ben Jonson, and, one may perhaps add, Newton. On plains, on the other hand, men of genius are rare. Of ancient Egypt, a country of plains, Renan writes: “No revolutionary, no reformer, no great poet, no artist, no man of science, no philosopher, not even a great minister, can be met in the history of Egypt… In this sad valley of eternal slavery, for thousands of years they cultivated the fields, carried stones on their backs, and were good officials, living well without glory. There was the same level of moral and intellectual mediocrity everywhere.”243 And the same may be said in our days.

At first it seems surprising to see a condition of degeneration, such as genius may be called, developing at spots of maximum salubrity. But if there are anærobic microbes, some are ærobic; many forms of degeneration, such as goître, malaria, and leprosy, have a special habitat. It is evident that we have to reckon with the dynamogenic influence of light, with the stimulating action of the ozonized air of the hills, and of a warm temperature. We may understand this the better since we have already seen that heat augments the creative power of men of genius, and the need of the brain for oxydated blood in order to work is well known. This is confirmed by the fact that in mountains above an elevation of three thousand metres, no man of genius has ever been produced. The great Mexican and Peruvian civilizations flourished on the high tablelands, but, as Nibbi has well shown, they were not born there;244 in fact, the Mexican civilization is owing to the Toltecas, who came from the east, and the pretended great men of Mexico, including its sixty presidents, were not born on the tableland. The same may be said of many men who were not quite justly termed illustrious, such as Echeveria in painting, Moizzos and Cervantes in botany, and Ixtlihcochitl.245 Some men of true genius, as Garcilasso dela Vega and Alvares de Vera, were born something below three thousand metres at Quito and Bogota.246

There is here again a parallelism between genius and insanity. Those who live in mountainous regions are more liable to insanity than the inhabitants of the plains, a fact which has long been embodied in proverbs concerning the air of Monte Baldo, and the madmen of Collio and Tellio. We may recall also the epidemics of Monte Amiata (Lazzaretti), of Busca and Montenero, of Verzegnis; and we may remember, too, that the hills of Judea and of Scotland have produced prophets and half-insane persons gifted with second sight.

CHAPTER III.

The Influence of Race and Heredity on Genius and Insanity

Race – Insanity – The influence of sex – The heredity of genius – Criminal and insane parentage and descent of genius – Age of parents – Conception.

Race.– We have seen that in Italy the Greek and the Etruscan racial elements combine with the temperate and mountainous climate to produce men of genius; the influence of race calling forth genius even where the climate is not happy. We cannot otherwise explain the genius produced at Modena, Mantua, and Lucca, which possess the Etruscan origin, although not the delicious climate, of Florence. The Jews, again, offer us an eloquent example.

I have elsewhere shown (Uomo Bianco e l’Uomo di Colore and Pensiero e Meteore) how, owing to the bloody selection of mediæval persecutions, and owing also to the influence of temperate climate, the Jews of Europe have risen above those of Africa and the East, and have often surpassed the Aryans. It is not only a difference in general culture, but we find more precocious and extended mental work applied to different sciences. It is certainly thus in music, the drama, satirical and humorous literature, journalism, and in various branches of science. This has been statistically proved by various writers, as by Jacobs in a very careful study on the ability of the Jews in Western Europe and of Jews in general.247

In 100,000 celebrities —

“The two lists are approximately equal in antiquaries, architects, artists, lawyers, natural science, political economy, science, sculptors. Jews seem to have superiority as actors, chess-players, doctors, merchants (chiefly financiers), in metaphysics, music, poetry, and philology… Of course, Jews have no Darwin. It took England 180 years after Newton before she could produce a Darwin, and as Britishers are five times the number of Jews, even including those of Russia, it would take, on the same showing, 900 years before they produce another Spinoza, or, even supposing the double superiority to be true, 450 years would be needed.”

Jews have given to the world musicians like Meyerbeer, Halèvy, Gutzkow, Mendelssohn, Offenbach, Rubinstein, Joachim, Benedict, Moscheles, Cowen, Sullivan, Goldmark, Strauss; poets, novelists, humourists, &c., like Heine, Saphir, Camerini, Revere, Jung, Weill, Fortis, Gozlan, Moritz Hartmann, Auerbach, Börne, Ratisbonne, Kompert, Grace Aguilar, Franzos, Massarani, Lindau, Catulle Mendes; linguists like Ascoli, Benfey, Munk, Fiorentino, Luzzato, Oppert, Bernhardi, Friedland, Weil, Lazarus, Steinthal; physicians like Valentin, Hermann, Haidenhain, Schiff, Casper, Stilling, Gluge, Traube, Fraenkel, Kuhn, Cohnheim, Hirsch, Liebreich, Bernstein, Remak, Weigert, Meynert, Hitzig, Westphal, Mendel, Leidesdorf, Benedikt; philosophers like Spinoza, Maimon, Sommerhausen, Moses Mendelssohn; naturalists like Cohn; economists like Ricardo, Lassalle, Karl Marx; jurists and statesmen like Stahl, Gans, Beaconsfield, Crémieux. Even in sciences in which the Semite formerly showed no ability, such as mathematics and astronomy, we find such men as Goldschmidt, Beer, Sylvester, Kronecker, and Jacobi.

It must be observed that a very large proportion of these men of genius have been radically creative; revolutionary in politics, and in religion, and in science. Jews, indeed, initiated Nihilism and Socialism on the one hand, Mosaism and Christianity on the other. Commerce owes to them the bill of exchange, philosophy owes to them Positivism, literature the Neo-humourism.

Jacobs shows that this abundance of Jewish men of genius of the first order is allied with a deficiency in men of the second order of intellect. He explains the superiority by the higher level of education among the Jews, their devotion to family life, the almost complete absence of priests and dogmas, the facilities which the study of Hebrew offers for investigations in philosophy and for that kind of music which forms part of their religious ceremonies. It is difficult, however, to find a relationship between this rhythmical caterwauling and the sublime notes of Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn; and Jews possess more than enough of priests and dogmas. I would add that if the Jews have not yet produced men like Newton, Darwin, and Michelangelo, it is because they have not yet accomplished their ethnic evolution, as they show by the obstinacy with which they cling to their ancient beliefs.

It is strange that among the factors of Jewish superiority in genius Jacobs does not mention the neurotic tendency, the existence of which, as we shall see, he has himself shown. This would also well explain the deficiency of Jews in intellect of medium quality in which the morbid element is always less marked.

Insanity.– It is curious to note that the Jewish elements in the population furnish four and even six times as many lunatics as the rest of the population. Jacobs, who, as we have seen, does not suspect the correlation between genius and insanity, gives a remarkable proof of it by pointing out that while Englishmen have 3,050 per million afflicted with mental disease, Scotchmen have 3,400, and Jews 3,900, the proportion of insanity in the three races being related to the proportion of genius. And while, according to Galton, there are 256,000 of the mediocre class among a million Englishmen, Jacobs reckons that there are only 239,000 among Scotchmen, and 222,000 among Jews.

Servi found 1 lunatic to 391 Jews in Italy, nearly four times as many as among Catholics.248 This fact has been made still clearer by Verga249 who in 1870 found the proportions of lunatics among Catholics to be 1 in 1775, as against 1 in 384 among Jews. Mayr250 (in 1871) gives the proportion of lunatics in Germany as follows: —

This is a singular proportion or disproportion in a population among which the aged who supply so large a number of cases of senile dementia are numerous, but where alcoholism is rare. This fatal privilege has not attracted the attention of the leaders of that anti-Semitic movement which is one of the shames of contemporary Germany.251 They would be less irritated at the success of this race if they had thought of all the sorrows that are the price of it, even at our epoch; for if the tragedies of the past were more bloody, the victims are not now less unhappy, struck at the source of their glory, and because of it, deprived even of the consolation of being able, as formerly, to contribute to the most noble among the selections of species.

This is not true of the Jews alone. Beard, in his American Nervousness, remarks that the neurotic tendency which dominates North America makes of that country a land of great orators.

The influence of race is as visible in genius as in insanity. Education counts for little, heredity for much. “By education,” said Helvetius, “you can make bears dance, but never create a man of genius.”252

Influence of Sex.– In the history of genius women have but a small place. Women of genius are rare exceptions in the world. It is an old observation that while thousands of women apply themselves to music for every hundred men, there has not been a single great woman composer. Yet the sexual difference here offers no obstacle. Out of six hundred women doctors in North America not one has made any discovery of importance; and with few exceptions the same may be said of the Russians. In physical science, it is true, Mary Somerville emerges; and in literature we have George Eliot, George Sand, Daniel Sterne, and Madame de Staël; in the fine arts, Rosa Bonheur, Lebrun, Maraini; Sappho and Mrs. Browning opened new paths for poetry; Eleonora d’Arborea, it is said (but the assertion is contested), initiated at the beginning of the fifteenth century legal reforms of almost modern character; Catherine of Siena influenced the politics and religion of her time; Sarah Martin, a poor dressmaker, influenced prison reform; Mrs. Beecher Stowe played a large part in the abolition of slavery in the United States. But of all these, none touch the summits reached by Michelangelo, or Newton, or Balzac. Even J. S. Mill, who was very partial to the cause of women, confessed that they lacked originality. They are, above all, conservators. Even the few who emerge have, on near examination, something virile about them. As Goncourt said, there are no women of genius; the women of genius are men.

Pulcheria, Marie dei Medici, Louise, mother of Francis I., Maria Christina, Maria Théresa, Catherine II., Elizabeth, displayed eminent political ability as rulers; as in the field of democracy Madame Roland, Fonseca, G. Sand, Madame Adam; Mill affirms that when an Indian state is ruled with vigour and vigilance, three times out of four the ruler is a woman. At the same time it is noted that when women rule, men command, just as when men rule, women command. In any case their number is too limited to compare them with masculine rulers. As in politics, so admirable examples of valour were given by Caterina Sforza and Joan of Arc, Annita Garibaldi, Enrichetta Castiglioni, and many others.

These facts become more notable because unexpected and exceptional. It may be said that the disparity would be much less if the predominance of men, depriving women of the vote in politics and of action in war, had not taken away from women the opportunity of manifesting their capacities. But if there had been in women a really great ability in politics, science, &c., it would have shown itself in overcoming the difficulties opposed to it; nor would arms have been lacking, nor allies in the enemy’s camp. In revolutions (except in religion) women have always been in a small minority, not being found, for example, in the English Revolution, or in that of the Low Countries, or of the United States. They never created a new religion, nor were they ever at the head of great political, artistic, or scientific movements.

On the contrary, women have often stood in the way of progressive movements. Like children, they are notoriously misoneistic; they preserve ancient habits and customs and religions. In America there are tribes in which women keep alive ancient languages which the men have lost; in Sardinia, Sicily, and some remote valleys of Umbria, many ancient prejudices and pagan rites, perhaps of a prehistoric character – superstitious cures, for instance – are preserved by women. As Goncourt remarks, they only see persons in everything; they are, as Spencer observes, more merciful than just.

The Heredity of Genius.– According to Galton253 and Ribot,254 genius is often hereditary, especially in the musical art which furnishes so large a contingent to insanity. Thus Palestrina, Benda, Dussek, Hiller, Eichhorn, had sons who were very distinguished in music. Andrea Amati was the most illustrious of a family of violinists at Cremona; Beethoven’s father was a tenor at the Elector of Cologne’s chapel, and his grandfather had been a singer and then maestro at the same chapel; Bellini was the son and nephew of musicians; Haydn had a brother who was an excellent organist and composer of religious music; in Mendelssohn’s family there were several musical amateurs; Mozart was the son of a maestro of the chapel of the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg; Palestrina had sons who died young but who left praiseworthy compositions preserved among their father’s works.

The Bach family perhaps presents the finest example of mental heredity. It began in 1550, and passed through eight generations, the last known member being Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst, Kapellmeister to the Queen of Prussia, who died in 1845. During two centuries this family produced a crowd of musicians of high rank. The founder of the family was Veit Bach, a Presburg baker, who amused himself with singing and playing. He had two sons who were followed by an uninterrupted succession of musicians who inundated Thuringia, Saxony, and Franconia during two centuries. They were all organists or church singers. When they became too numerous to live together and had to disperse, they agreed to reunite on a fixed day once a year. This custom was preserved up to the middle of the eighteenth century, and sometimes one hundred and twenty persons of the name of Bach met at the same spot. Fétis counts among them twenty-nine musicians of eminence.255