num_pages: 400
description: The idea that genius was a special morbid condition had indeed often occurred to me but I had always repelled it; and besides without a sure experimental basis ideas to-day do not count. Like still-born children they appear but for a moment to disappear at once. I had been enabled to discover in genius various characters of degeneration which are the foundation and the sign of nearly all forms of congenital mental abnormality but the exaggerated extension which was at that time given to theories of degeneration and still more the vague and inexact character of that conception had repelled me; so that I accepted the facts but not their ultimate consequences. How in fact can one suppress a feeling of horror at the thought of associating with idiots and criminals those individuals who represent the highest manifestations of the human spirit?
language: English
title: The Man of Genius
publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC