would be a moderate estimate. But what do we
find? In not 1 per cent. can definite insanity be traced among the
parents of British men and women of genius. No doubt this result is
below the truth; the insanity of the parents must sometimes have
escaped the biographer's notice. But even if we double the percentage
to escape this source of error, the proportion still remains
insignificant.
There is more to be said. If the insanity of the parent occurred early
in life, we should expect it to attract attention more easily than if
it occurred late in life. Those parents of men of genius falling into
insanity late in life, the critic may argue, escape notice. But it is
precisely to this group to which all the ascertainably insane parents
of British men of genius belong. There is not a single recorded
instance, so far as I have been able to ascertain, in which the parent
had been definitely and recognisably insane before the birth of the
distinguished child; so that any prohibition of the marriage of persons
who had previously been insane would have left British genius
untouched. In all cases the insanity came on late in life, and it was
usually, without doubt, of the kind known as senile dementia. This was
so in the case of the mother of Bacon, the most distinguished person in
the list of those with an insane parent. Charles Lamb's father, we are
told, eventually became "imbecile." Turner's mother became insane. The
same is recorded of Archbishop Tillotson's mother and of Archbishop
Leighton's father.
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