The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-02-16
THE LITERARY OUTLOOK
SOME OF THE NOTABLE PHYSICAL
LY UNFIT" IN LITERATURE.
Subjects for Perennial Discussion
Mark Twain's Freakish story
Plagiarism of the Day.
Corresnondence Of the Indianapolls journal.

Correspondence Of the indianapolis Journal.
NEW YORK, Feb. 13.-Mr. Goodwin
Smith, whose eminently respectable and
dignified criticism always command atten-
ton, has drawn down upon himself the fire
of wrath from some Of his readers who
protest at his recent wholesale condemna-
ton of the physically unfit, sort of lat
ter-day Darwinian philosophy. According
to his plan, the misshapen and uniformed
Socrates would have been eliminated"
says one, land Nero, who started well,
would have been allowed to live" The de-
fender of the incompetents, from a physi-
cal or Darwinian standpoint. is ready to
quote enough examples in support of his
position to fill several pages. but among
the most important the following should
be puzzling to Mr. Smith:
Byron was, according to his mother, ga
club-footed brat" Had this '1ame boy
been eliminated" the world would never
have had "Childe Harold" Manfred" and
the exquisite Hebrew Melodies De
Quincy and Coleridge were nerve-rotten
and turned to opium for consolation. Leo
pardi, next to Dante, Italy's greatest poet,
and her most brilliant essayist, was a bed
ridden invalid all his life. Herbert Spencer
cally. Pascal was a paralytic. Alexander
Pope was physical wreck from his birth.
Poe was a neurotic and at times insane.
Kant was sickly all his life. Mrs Browning
was an invalid for the best part of her
life. Robert Louis Stevenson suffered all
his life from pulmonary and other troubles.
These but few of the brilliant 'physi-
cal incompetents''-s designated by So
exquisite ballads, was a housebreaker,
thief and vagabond. Tolstoi was, according
to his own confession, a "blacl1leg and
murderer" Veraline was a drunkard and
vagabond. Shelley, the cloud-begot,"
abandoned Harriet Westbrook, who COM
mitted suicide. Goethe, Heine and Bee
thoven broke all the moral laws" as did
George Sand and George Eliot.
Here are a few physically perfect"
C'competent" the disciples of Nietzsche
would say beings that fate has unloaded
from time to time on an unsuspecting pub
lie: Napoleon, Torquemada, Catherine,
Queen Mary, Charles TX, Duke of Alva,
Benedict Arnold, Judge Jeffreys, Caligula.
Claverhouse, Bodinus, Judas Iscarot,
Robespierre, the Borgias, and others too
numerous to mention. when we get high
enough X-ray magnifiers we may, by eX-
aiming the brain lobes of a Robespierre
at birth pronounce a verdict on his future
career and expunge him in the kitchen
sink. And so with the cOngenial physical
imperfects. When, with the aid of these
magnifiers and a small dose Of omniscience,
we can tell whether born weakling will
blossom into a Spencer or a mendicant, it
will then be time for the creation of a
board for the disposing of incompetents.
That the same discussion about books
and authors is likely to be gone over year
after year for generations is evidenced
simply enough by comparisons. In a recent
number of periodical devoted to the in
terests OF authors a contributor gives ad-
vice to the budding genius of authorship by
urging the making of notes at the very mo-
ment of inspiration-to write the red-hot
l idea when it is sizzling in the brain, even