The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1905-06-30
GENIUS KIN TO INSANITY
Great Thinkers We're Subject to
Hallucinati0nS. Says
LOmbrOSO.
tChicago Chronirls.l


show that these two should be con-
founded, proves at all events, that
one does not exclude the other in the
same subject.
In fact, without speaking of the
numerous men of genius who at
some periods of their lives were sub
ject to Authorizations or insanity of
those who like Vico. terminated a
greater carer in dementa. how
many great thinkers have shown
themselves all their lives subject to
monomania or Authorizations,
In recent times insanity has shown
itself in Farini, Brougham, Southey,
Govone, Gounod, Gutzkow, Monge,
Faurcroy, Cowper, Rocchia. Ricci,
Feniccia, Engel, Pergolese, Batjusc-
koff, Murgin, William Collins, Tech
nor, Holderlen Won Der West,
Gallo Spedolieri. Bellingeri, Salieri,
Johannes, Muller. LEM. Barbara,
Fuseli, Petermann. the caricaturist
Cham, Hamilton. Poe. Ulrich.
Montanus, victim to solitude and
a disordered imagination, was con-
WINGED that he had become a grain
af wheat. He refused to move for
fear of being swallowed by birds.
Harrington is said to have imagin-
ed that disease took the form of
bees and flies and for this reason re-
tired to a cabin armed with broom
to dispense them.
Nathanial Lee. the dramatist, com
posed thirteen tragedies during the
course of his disease.
Charlie Lamb, in early life, had an
attack of insanity, which was heredi-
tary in his family. Writing of this
to Coleridge he said: AT some fu-
ture time | will amuse you with
an account, as full as my memory
will permit, of the strange turns my
fenzy took. look back upon it at
times with a gloomy king of envy
for while it lasted | had many, many
hours of pure happiness. Dream
not, Coleridge, of having tasted all
the grandeur and wildness of fancy
until you have gone mad. All now
seems to me vapid or comparatively
so"
The great August Compile, the ini-
tiator of the positivist philosophy,
was for ten years under the care of
Esquirol, the famous alienist. He
recovered, but only to repudiate
without any cause, the wife who had
saved him. Later he who had
wished to abolished all priestcraft -
believed himself the priest and apos-
tie of materialistic religion. In
his works. amid stupendous elucu-
brations genuine maniacal ideas may
be found.
When we reflect that the genuine
lunatic may give proof of temporary |
genius, a phenomenon calculated to
inspire tbs populace with an aston
ishment, which soon produces vener- |
alton, we find a solid agreement |
ag. linst those jurists and judges who !
firm the soundness and activity of |
tn. intellect infer complete moral
responsibility to the total exclusion
of the possibility of insanity.
We also see our way to an inter-
probation of the mystery of genius,
its contradictions and those of its
mistakes, which an ordinary man
would have avoided.
And we can explain to ourselves
how it is that madmen, or mattoids
even with little or no genius Pas
sanante, Lizzarretti, Drabicius,
Fourier, Fox have been able to ex-
cite the populace, and sometimes
even to bring about serious political
revolution.
Better still shall we understand
how those who were at once men of
genius and insane (Mohammed, Lu-
Their, Savonarola, Schopenamer)
could-despising and overcoming OBJ
stacles which would have dismayed
many cool and deliberate minds
hasten by whole centuries and I'M
folding of truth, and how such men
have originated nearly all Of the re-
ligious, and certainly all the sects
which have agitated the world