Genius.—The parallelism of genius to insanity is, however, still present. We find that many lunatics have parents of genius, and that many men of genius have parents or sons who were epileptic, mad, or, above all, criminal. It is sufficient to study the history of the Cæsars, of Charles V., of Peter the Great. We see a progressive degeneration in crime and insanity in relations or children, rather than any conservation or increase of genius. This fact confirms a posteriori the degenerative character of genius; and at the same time reveals the relationship which it generally has with moral insanity. Commodus, son of the virtuous Marcus Aurelius, was a monster of cruelty. The son of Scipio Africanus was an imbecile, the son of Cicero a drunkard. Luther's son was insubordinate and violent; William Penn’s was a debauched scoundrel. Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles, Thucydides were unhappy in their children.
Cardan had two sons who were criminals; one, of great ability, was condemned to death for poisoning; the other, given up to gaming, drinking, and thieving, was successively imprisoned at Pavia, Milan, Cremona, Bologna, Piacenza, Naples. When arrested he would promise reformation, but as soon as he was free he at once returned to his old habits, and even calumniated his father and attempted to get him imprisoned.[1] Cardan’s father was eccentric and stammered; he did not dress like other people, and pursued various strange studies; he had lost some part of his skull in consequence of a wound received in youth, and he believed that he was guided by a spirit. His mother was irascible; when pregnant with him she attempted to abort.[2]
It appears that Aretino’s mother was a prostitute. Petrarch had a lazy and vicious son, “the most refractory to letters that man of letters ever had;” he died at the age of twenty-four.[3] Rembrandt brought up his son Titus, with great care, to be an artist; but in spite of all efforts he could make nothing of him. Walter Scott's son, a cavalry officer, was ashamed of his father's literary celebrity, and boasted that he had never read one of his novels.
