genious writer has tried to show that the maladies of genius have their main source in dyspepsia.[1] No Englishman, in thinking of this question, can fail to recollect that the three of his countrywomen who have given most distinct proof of creative power—Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Browning, and George Eliot—were hampered with a physical frame pitiably unequal to support the cerebral superstructure.[2]
Coming now to the moral defense, the thought at once suggests itself that, according to the testimony of more than one writer, genius consists in preternatural force of will more than in anything else. It is, we are told, only the man with an infinite capacity to take pains who is truly great. The prolonged, intense concentration of mind which precedes the final achievement is a severe exertion and striking manifestation of will.
At the same time, a moment's thought will show us that this patient mental incubation is no proof of the higher qualities of will and moral character.[3] The appropriateness of the old way of speaking of creative inspiration as a possession is seen in the fact that the will has little to do with bringing on the condition. "The author," said Lord Beaconsfield, on one occasion, "is a being with a predisposition which with him is irresistible, a bent which he can not in any way avoid, whether it drags him to the abstruse researches of erudition, or induces him to mount into the feverish and turbulent atmosphere of imagination." This sense of a quasi-exterior pressure and compulsion is attested by more than one child of genius. In some cases, more particularly, perhaps, among "tone-poets," we find this mastery of the individual mind by the creative impulse assuming the striking form of a sudden abstraction of the thoughts from the surroundings of the moment. And, throughout the whole of the creative process, the will, though, as we have seen, exercised in a peculiarly severe effort, is not exercised fully and in its highest form. There is no deliberate choice of activity here. The man does not feel free to stop or to go on. On the contrary, the will is in this case pressed into the service of the particular emotion that strives for utterance, the particular artistic impulse that is irresistibly bent on self-realization. There is nothing here of the higher moral effort of will, in choosing what we are not at the
- ↑ R. R. Madden, "On the Infirmities of Genius."
- ↑ Schopenhauer, in the passages of his work already referred to, discusses in a curious and characteristic way the physical basis of genius. Moreau quotes approvingly the remark of Leeanus, that men of the finest genius were "of a feeble constitution and often infirm." On the other hand, Mr. Galton, in his "Hereditary Genius," contends that the heroes of history are at least up to the average of men in physical strength. It is to be remarked, however, that the reference to university statistics is apt to mislead here. Senior wranglers can hardly be taken as representative of creative power.
- ↑ It is evident that only speculative, as distinguished from practical genius, is here referred to. The man of great constructive powers in affairs—the statesman, general, and so forth requires will in the higher and fuller sense. And it has been remarked that these organizing intellects rarely exhibit pathological symptoms.
