DER GENIALE MENSCH. By _Cesare Lombroso_. German Translation by Dr. M. O. Fraenkel. Hamburg: Verlagsanstalt und Druckerei-Actien-Gesellschaft (vormals J. F. Richter).
The French edition of Lombroso's "Man of Genius" has already appeared. The work is introduced by a preface written by M. Charles Richet, which reviews the subject with great clearness. All in all, this is an admirable book, well stocked with interesting facts and incidents, and well adapted to obtain a large number of readers outside of scientific circles. There is necessarily a dearth of abundant and well-authenticated facts in this subject,—historians until lately not having occupied themselves with the psychological phases of life; and accordingly there is great danger in universal generalisation from those that we have. This, however, Prof. Lombroso has recognised.
Genius, the author claims, is a variety of psychosis, an instance of degeneration. Degeneration of certain parts is the condition of the acquisition of others; thus the loss of a number of ribs and muscles, of a tail, etc., has in man been compensated by the acquisition and development of the brain; and so in the genius the possession of very great intellectual or emotional faculties has been counterbalanced by the loss of equilibrium in the other parts. Moreover, there are no exceptions in nature; the occurrence of insanity, abnormalities, and eccentricities in a few cases leads us inevitably to the conclusion that there are correspondent defects in all others. And this we find to be true in all historical instances. Popular speech and tradition have identified genius and demency: in Hebrew and Sanskrit the words prophet and insane are synonymous; and so we have the proverbs—'Children and fools speak the truth,' 'Un fol avise bien un sage,' 'Saepe etiam est morio valde opportune locutus.' The line of demarcation between the two is hardly traceable. Genius is the exception, a deviation from the common type of humanity, and nature avenges the aberration by denying it permanency and inflicting upon it abnormality. Whether degeneration or progression, genius is unusual and unstable. But one thing distinguishes genius from mental alienation, and it is this—that genius possesses the power of inhibition, of concentration, of _critique_, and far-sightedness, while demency has no control of the ideas it has formed; both possess the swift and unerring power of origination; the one can command what it has originated, the other cannot.