The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-11-21
THE MISFORTUNES OF GENIUS-By Dr. w. E.
EUQnS

ind this statement: Passive imagina- tion l. in it's highest degree becomes haiiucination. The essential character of active and passive imagination is vivid representation, intense vision. Hence it is that great artists have ever come so near to Authorization and madness, and hence many of them have overstepped the limits of sanity" When speaking of a certain class of geniuses Ribot says '1rhey are of this class only by a mix ture of qualities which are. so to speak, extranatural,' that is unnatural
 To me 1t Is all very strange I have thought that without much effort I could call to mind many geniuses who were free from the eccentricities of abnormal ity. I began to think of some whose names have not given in this paper. 1 thought of Tennyson. but along with his name came the memory of his ab- straction and his solitariness while a stu dent at Cambridge, which increased as the years came on. Then I thought of Browning, but I recalled his hallucina- ton about spirits. and was halted.
 We are to remember that the outside world knows great geniuses only superb cially, and much that would bear upon this subject is withheld from public knowledge. Could we know more than we do, then the theory advanced might be more surely confirmed.
 A writer has said: "The artist is a character produced by only a happy in cident." The happiness of the accident belongs not to the genius himself, but to the world. We read his lines and are borne away into lands of fairest fancy in the gossamar chariot of his wizard words, but think not of the burning brain out of whose consuming fires rose the gorgeous scenes upon which we look with wonder We read the magic meas ures of Schiller, but seldom do we think of the tortured body of the poet and of his throbbing brow bound with wet towels, as he pens his lines.
 We are excited into thrills of pleasure as we hear the nocturnes and sonatas of the great composers; we are enraptured as we behold the painter. with the magic touch of his pencil transform the coarse canvas into veritable cloth of gold, the purchase of which would exhaust the treasury of kings and yet we do not see deep enough Behind the music, behind the art. are pale faces of strange men whose eyes glow as with 8 light not of the world of Sanity; men who dream dreams and see visions and. for the time, live in another world, towards which the intensity of their imagination Is hasten ing them.
 A legend has come down to us from the days of old In the loneliness of his cell an artist-monk painted the face and form of a woman whom he loved, but from whom his sacred vows separated him forever. Day by day the portrait grew. Mingled with the colors there was a mysterious glow which none of the brother-monks could understand and which the artist-monk would not explain. The portrait grew more and more like life, until the canvas seemed to pulsate with animated young womanhood. But all the while the artists face grew whiter. One day other monks went into his cell and found the portrait finished. It was a dream of radiant beauty. with here and there the rich crimson glow that had always baffled them. They turned to the cot of the monk. He was dead Just above his heart they found a wound, and brown hooded monk sol- emnly said: "He got the strange color