(1856). Moreau (de Tours), who delighted in the least verisimilar aspects of truth, in his solid monograph, Psychologie Morbide (1859), and J. A. Schilling, in his Psychiatrische Briefe (1863), endcavoured to show, by re- searches that were very copious although not very strict in method, that genius is always a neurosis, and often a true insanity. Hagen has more recently sought to prove a thesis which is partly the same in his Verwandtschaft des Genies mit dem Irrsiun (Berlin, 1877), and, indirectly, Jürgen-Meyer, in his admirable monograph, Genie und Talcut (from the Zeitschrift für Völker-psychologie, 1879). These two writers have tried to explain the physiology of genius, and, singularly, they have reached conclusions which were reached, more by intuition than through close observation, by an Italian Jesuit, now quite forgotten— Bettinelli—in his book, Dell' entusiasmo nelle belle Arti (Milan, 1769).
Radestock, in his Genie und Wahnsinn (Breslau, 1884), added little to the solution of the problem, as he merely copied, for the most part, from his predecessors, without profiting greatly by their work.
Among recent writers, I note Tarnowski and Tchuki- nova, who to the Russian translation of my book (St. Petersburg, 1885) have added many new documents from the history of Russian literature; Maxime du Camp, who in his curious Souvenirs Littéraires (1887), has shown how many modern French writers have concealed within them the sorrowful seed of insanity; Ramos Mejia, who, in his Neurosis de los Hombres Celebres de la Historia Argentina (Buenos Ayres, 1885), shows how nearly all the great men of the South American Republics were inebriate, neurotic, or insane; A. Tebaldi, who, in his book Ragione e Pazzia (Milan, 1884), brings fresh docu- ments to the literature of insanity; and, finally, that acute thinker and brilliant writer, Pisani-Dossi, who has given us a curious study,[1] which is a monograph on mad- ness in art; as in my Tre Tribuni (1889) 1 have attempted to do with the insane and semi-insane in their relation to politics.
- ↑ I Mattoidi e il Monumente a Vittorio Emanuele, 1885.
