wholly normal and sane?" For there is surely a suggestion of temporary mental unsoundness in the idea of that lonely wanderer through the crowded streets of London suddenly seeing in the figures he met so many specters, and feeling himself to be but another "ghastly phantom haunted by demons." And, if all anger is a sort of madness, it is but natural that one should see something of a momentary mania in those terrible outbursts of a spirit of revolt against all things which now and again made desolate the Chelsea home, and wrung from the sage's wife the humiliating confession that she felt as if she were "keeper in a madhouse."
The idea that there is an affinity between genius and mental disease seems at first foreign to our modern habits of thought. In the one, we have human intellect rejoicing in Titanic strength; in the other, that same intellect disordered and pitiably enfeebled. Yet, as has been hinted, the belief in the connection of the two is an old and persistent one. In truth, the common opinion has always gravitated toward this belief. A word or two may make this clear.
To the multitude of men genius wears a double aspect. Superlative intellectual endowment is plainly something very unlike the ordinary type of intelligence. The relation of lofty superiority includes that of distance, and mediocrity in viewing the advent of some new spiritual star may adopt either the one or the other manière de voir. Which aspect it will select for special contemplation depends on circumstances. In general it may be said that, since the recognition of greatness presupposes a power of comprehension not always granted to mediocrity, the fact of distance is more likely to impress than the fact of altitude. It is only when supreme wisdom has justified itself, as in the predictions of the true prophet, that its essential Tightness is seen by the crowd. Otherwise the great man has had to look for recognition mainly from his peers and the slightly more numerous company of those whose heads rise above the mists of contemporary prejudice.
It is easy to see that this vulgar way of envisaging genius as marked divergence from common-sense views of things may lead on to a condemnation of it as a thing unnatural and misshapen. For, evidently, such divergence bears a superficial likeness to eccentricity. Indeed, ' as has been well said, the original teacher has this much in common with the man mentally deranged, that he "is in a minority of one"; and, when pains are not taken to note the direction of the divergence, originality may readily be confounded with the most stupid singularity; and, further, a cursory glance at the constitution of genius will suffice to show that the originator of new and startling ideas is very apt to shock the sense of common men by eccentricities in his manner of life. A man whose soul is being consumed by the desire to discover some new truth, or to give shape to some new artistic idea, is exceedingly liable to fall below the exactions of conventional society
