Goethe in the turbulent times of the Sturm und Drang, and Hoffmann, the novelist, suffered the same moral shipwreck.
2. We may now pass to another class of cases in which the pathological character is still more plainly discernible. Outbursts of fierce passionateness may perhaps be thought by some to be, after all, only marks of a certain kind of robust vitality. But no one will say this of the gloomy depression, the melancholy brooding on personal ills, ending sometimes in distinctly hypochondriac despondency, which have not unfrequently been the accompaniment of great intellectual power. It was remarked by Aristotle, who was a long way the shrewdest and most scientific observer of antiquity, that all men of genius have been melancholic or atrabilious.[1] He instances Empedocles, Socrates, and Plato, and the larger number of the poets. And the page of modern biographic literature would supply many a striking illustration of the same temperament. The pessimism of Johnson, Swift, Byron, and Carlyle, of Schopenhauer and Lenau, of Leopardi and of Lamartine, may perhaps be taken as a signal manifestation of the gloom which is apt to encompass great and elevated spirits, like the mists which drift toward and encircle the highest mountain-peaks.
In some cases this melancholy assumes a more acute form, giving rise to the thought and even the act of suicide. Among those who have confessed to have experienced the impulse may be mentioned Goethe in the Werther days, Beethoven during the depression brought on by his deafness, Chateaubriand in his youth, and George Sand also in her early days. The last, writing of her experience, says, "Cette sensation" (at the sight of water, a precipice, etc.) "fut quelquefois si vive, si subite, si bizarre, que je pus bien constater que c'était une espèce de folie dont j'étais atteinte." Johnson's weariness of life was, it seems certain, only prevented from developing into the idea of suicide by his strong religious feeling and his extraordinary dread of death, which was itself, perhaps, a morbid symptom.
In some cases this idea prompted to actual attempts to take away life. The story of Cowper's trying to hang himself, and afterward experiencing intense religious remorse, is well known. Another instance is that of Saint-Simon, whose enormous vanity itself looks like a form of monomania, and who, in a fit of despondency, fired a pistol at his head, happily with no graver result than the loss of an eye. Alfieri, who was the victim of the "most horrid melancholy," tried on one occasion, after being bled by a surgeon, to tear off the bandage in order to bleed to death. Among those who succeeded in taking away their life are Chatterton, whose mind had been haunted by the idea from early life, Kleist the poet, and Beneke the philosopher.
- ↑ "Cur homines qui ingenio claruerunt vel in studiis philosophiæ, vel in republicâ administrandâ, vel in carmine pangendo, vel in artibus exercendis, melancolicos omnes fuisse vidcamus?" Prob. xxx. Aristotle's authority on the point is quoted by Cicero, Tuscul. disp., i, 33; de divin., i, 88.
