In these
and in other cases there has doubtless been some hereditary neurotic
strain.
It is clearly, however, not due to any intensity of this strain that we
find the incidence of insanity in men of genius, as illustrated, for
example, by senile dementia, so much more marked than its incidence on
their parents. There is another factor to be invoked here: convergent
morbid heredity. If a man and a woman, each with a slight tendency to
nervous abnormality, marry each other, there is a much greater chance
of the offspring manifesting a severe degree of nervous abnormality
than if they had married entirely sound partners. Now both among normal
and abnormal people there is a tendency for like to mate with like.
The attraction of the unlike for each other, which was once supposed
to prevail, is not predominant, except within the sphere of the secondary
sexual characters, where it clearly prevails, so that the ultra-masculine
man is attracted to the ultra-feminine woman, and the feminine man to the
boyish or mannish woman. Apart from this, people tend to marry those who
are both psychically and physically of the same type as themselves. It
thus happens that nervously abnormal people become mated to the nervously
abnormal. This is well illustrated by the British men of genius
themselves. Although insanity is more prevalent among them than among
their parents, the same can scarcely be said of them in regard to their
wives. It is notable that the insane wives of these men of genius are
almost as numerous as the insane men of genius, though it rarely happens
(as in the case of Southey) that both husband and wife go out of their
minds.
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