The statement is sometimes made that all
families contain an insane element. That statement cannot be accepted.
There are many people, including people of a high degree of ability,
who can trace no gross mental or nervous disease in their families,
unless remote branches are taken into account. Not many statistics
bearing on this point are yet available. But Jenny Roller, in a very
thorough investigation, found at Zurich in 1895 that "healthy" people
had in 28 per cent. cases directly, and in 59 per cent. cases
indirectly and altogether, a neuropathic heredity, while Otto Diem in
1905 found that the corresponding percentages were still higher--33 and
69. It should not, therefore, be matter for surprise if careful
investigation revealed a traceable neuropathic element at least as
frequent as this in the families which produce a man of genius.
It may further, I believe, be argued that the presence of a neuropathic
element of this kind in the ancestry of genius is frequently not
without a real significance. Aristotle said in his _Poetics_ that
poetry demanded a man with "a touch of madness," though the ancients,
who frequently made a similar statement to this, had not our modern
ideas of neuropathic heredity in their minds, but merely meant that
inspiration simulated insanity. Yet "a touch of madness," a slight
morbid strain, usually neurotic or gouty, in a preponderantly robust
and energetic stock, seems to be often of some significance in the
evolution of genius; it appears to act, one is inclined to think, as a
kind of ferment, leading to a process out of all relation to its own
magnitude.
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