He has, indeed, been compared to the
"Idiot" immortalised by Dostoievsky, in some aspects an imbecile, in
some aspects a saint. Yet epilepsy no more explains the genius of van
Gogh than it explains the genius of Dostoievsky.
Thus the impression we gain when, laying aside prejudice, we take a
fairly wide and impartial survey of the facts, or even when we
investigate in detail the isolated facts to which significance is most
often attached, by no means supports the notion that genius springs
entirely, or even mainly, from insane and degenerate stocks. In some
cases, undoubtedly, it is found in such stocks, but the ability
displayed in these cases is rarely, perhaps never, of any degree near
the highest. It is quite easy to point to persons of a certain
significance, especially in literature and art, who, though themselves
sane, possess many near relatives who are highly neurotic and sometimes
insane. Such cases, however, are far from justifying any confident
generalisations concerning the intimate dependence of genius on
insanity.
We see, moreover, that to conclude that men of genius are rarely or
never the offspring of a radically insane parentage is not to assume
that the parents of men of genius are usually of average normal
constitution. That would in any case be improbable. Apart from the
tendency to convergent heredity already emphasised, there is a wider
tendency to slight abnormality, a minor degree of inaptness for
ordinary life in the parentage of genius.
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