In the sphere of literary genius, Milton, Flaubert, and
William Morris may help to illustrate this precious fermentative
influence of a minor morbid element in vitally powerful stocks. Without
some such ferment as this the energy of the stock, one may well
suppose, might have been confined within normal limits; the rare and
exquisite flower of genius, we know, required an abnormal stimulation;
only in this sense is there any truth at all in Lombroso's statement
that the pearl of genius develops around a germ of disease. But this is
the utmost length to which the facts allow us to go in assuming the
presence of a morbid element as a frequent constituent of genius. Even
then we only have one of the factors of genius, to which, moreover,
undue importance cannot be attached when we remember how often this
ferment is present without any resultant process of genius. And we are
in any case far removed from any of those gross nervous lesions which
all careful guardianship of the race must tend to eliminate.
Thus we are brought back to the point from which we started. Would
eugenics stamp out genius? There is no need to minimise the fact that a
certain small proportion of men of genius have displayed highly morbid
characters, nor to deny that in a large proportion of cases a slightly
morbid strain may with care be detected in the ancestry of genius. But
the influence of eugenic considerations can properly be brought to bear
only in the case of grossly degenerate stocks.
Pages:
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169