periods of high intellectual achievement, just as gout may alternate with various neurotic conditions, but the two states are not concomitant, and genius cannot be accurately defined as a disease.
It must also be pointed out, in estimating the significance of the relationship between genius and insanity, that the insane group is on the whole not one of commanding intellectual preeminence. It cannot compare in this respect with the gouty group, which is about the same size, and the individuals of greatest eminence are contained in the 'probable and doubtful' sections of the insane group. Among poets and men of letters, of an order below the highest, insanity has been somewhat apt to occur; it has been especially prevalent among antiquarians, but the intellectual eminence of antiquarians is often so dubious that the question of their inclusion in my list has been a frequent source of embarrassment.
If we turn from insanity to other grave nervous diseases, we are struck by their rarity. It is true that many serious nervous diseases have only been accurately distinguished during the past century, and that we could not expect to find much trace of them in the dictionary. But that cannot be said of epilepsy, which has always been recognized, and in a well-developed form cannot easily be ignored. Yet epilepsy or an epileptoid affection is only mentioned twice by the national biographers—once as occurring in early life (Lord Herbert of Cherbury), once in old age (Sir W. E. Hamilton), never during the working life. Although some of the most famous men in the world's history have been epileptics, it cannot be said that the lives of British men of genius favor the belief in any connection between genius and epilepsy, nor, so far as can be seen, do they furnish a single shred of evidence in support of the theory that genius is an epileptoid neurosis.
While, however, grave nervous diseases of definite type seem to be rare rather than common among the eminent persons with whom we are dealing, there is ample evidence to show that nervous symptoms of vaguer and more atypical character are extremely common. The prevalence of eccentricity I have already mentioned. That irritable condition of the nervous system which, in its Protean forms, is now commonly called neurasthenia, is evidently very widespread among them, and probably a large majority have been subject to it. Various definite forms of minor nervous derangement are also common, especially stammering or stuttering; this is noted as occurring in nine cases.[1] In seventeen other cases we are told that the voice was shrill,
- ↑ Even this means a higher proportion than is found among the general population, and it must be remembered that the real occurrence must be reckoned as at least double that which may be ascertained from the 'Dictionary.' The normal occurrence of stuttering and stammering among adults is much below one per cent., and even among children it is under one per cent.
