Yet so far as I know, none of those who have
brought forward the objection have supported it by any evidence of the
kind whatever. Thirty years ago Dr. Maudsley dogmatically wrote: "There
is hardly ever a man of genius who has not insanity or nervous disorder
of some form in his family." But he never brought forward any evidence
in support of that pronouncement. Nor has anyone else, if we put aside
the efforts of more or less competent writers--like Lombroso in his
_Man of Genius_ and Nisbet in his _Insanity of Genius_--to rake in
statements from all quarters regarding the morbidities of genius, often
without any attempt to authenticate, criticise, or sift them, and never
with any effort to place them in due perspective.[1]
It so happens that, some years ago, with no relation to eugenic
considerations, I devoted a considerable amount of attention to the
biological characters of British men of genius, considered, so far as
possible, on an objective and impartial basis.[2] The selection, that
is to say, was made, so far as possible, without regard to personal
predilections, in accordance with certain rules, from the _Dictionary
of National Biography_. In this way one thousand and thirty names were
obtained of men and women who represent the flower of British genius
during historical times, only excluding those persons who were alive at
the end of the last century. What proportion of these were the
offspring of parents who were insane or mentally defective to a serious
extent?
If the view of Maudsley--that there is "hardly ever" a man of genius
who is not the product of an insane or nervously-disordered stock--had
a basis of truth, we should expect that in one or other parents of the
man of genius actual insanity had occurred in a very large proportion
of cases; 25 per cent.
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