James Sully

“ The transition to the modern period introduces us to a new conception both of genius and of insanity. The impulse of inquisitiveness, the delight in new ideas, aided by the historical spirit with its deep sense of indebtedness to the past, have led the later world to extol intellectual greatness. We have learned to see in it the highest product of Nature's organic energy, the last and greatest miracle of evolution. ”

“ To judge of the degree of blameworthiness of faults of temper is a nice operation, which may even transcend the ability of a clever and practiced critic. Perhaps the temper most appropriate to the contemplation of genius, and most conducive to fairness of moral judgment, is one in which reverence is softened by personal gratitude, and this last made more completely human by a touch of regretful pity.—Nineteenth Century. ”

“ If the rich biographical literature of modern times teaches us anything, it is that original production is the severest strain of human faculty, the most violent and exhausting form of cerebral action. The pleasing fiction that the perfectly-shaped artistic product occurs to the creative mind as a kind of happy thought is at once dispelled by a little study of great men's recorded experience. ”

“ The eye is instinctively disposed to connect all parts of a design with some central element, and the recognition of such a common connection with a center gives to a design the artistic charm of unity. The most natural central element is, of course, a point, and there are many pleasing forms both in nature and in art which owe a part of their aesthetic value to the presence of such a connecting point. ”

“ Such an attitude of mind must entail suffering in other ways, As the biography of the man of genius often tells us, he is apt to become aware, at a painfully early date, that his exceptional endowments and the ardent consuming impulses which belong to them collide with the utilities and purposes of ordinary life. The soul intent on dreaming its secret dream of beauty is unfit for the business which makes up the common working life of plain, prosaic men. ”

“ In some arts, as painting, the element of form is no doubt a good deal subordinated to the exigencies of imitation, and of a wide picturesque variety of detail. Even in sculpture, perfect regularity of form is in the higher stages of art development sacrificed in favor of variety of treatment and natural ease. In truth, the progress of art is largely a progress in freedom of treatment, as we may see by comparing the rigid symmetry of Cimabue with the graceful ease of Raphael, or the stiff regularity of early Greek sculpture with the freedom of the later and better work. ”

“ Neglect or ridicule is the form of greeting which the world has often given to the propounder of a new truth; and where, as frequently happens, the want of instant recognition means the pressure of poverty, which chafes with unusual severity the delicate fibers of sensitive men, we have a new and considerable force added to the agencies which threaten to undermine the not too stable edifice of the great man's mental and moral constitution. Johnson, Lessing, Burns, Leopardi, and many another name, will here occur to those familiar with the lives of modern men of letters. ”

“ And it is this preponderance of rude shock over smooth, agreeable stimulation—of a sense of dissonance in things over the joyous consciousness of harmony—which seems to supply one of the most powerful incitants to the life of imagination. Hence the dark streak of melancholy which one so often detects in the early years of the great man. ”

“ This fineness of the sentient fiber stands in the closest relation to the intellectual side of genius. It is not so much an accompaniment of the creative imagination as its vitalizing principle. The wide and penetrating vision of the poet is the correlative of his quick, delicate, and many-sided sensibility. And the stimulus which ever urges him toward the ideal region, which makes him devote his days to the pursuit of some ravishing idea, has its origin in his rare, almost superhuman, capacity of feeling. ”

“ Thus genius, like philanthropy or conscious self-sacrifice for others, is a mode of variation of human nature which, though unfavorable to the conservation of the individual, aids in the evolution of the species.
If this be a sound view of the nature and social function of the man of genius, it may teach more than one practical lesson. Does it not, for example, suggest that there is room just now for more consideration in dealing with the infirmities of great men? There is no need of exonerating intellectual giants from the graver human responsibilities. ”

“ How much the better are we able to comprehend Carlyle's wondrous gift of spiritual clairvoyance for knowing that he came of a thoroughly sound stock, having more than the average, it may be, of Northern shrewdness? To trace the family characteristics in a great man is one thing, to explain the genius which ennobles and immortalizes these is another. ”

“ Of these associations the suggestions of human form constitute the most valuable æsthetic element. The supreme interest of the human presence makes us ever ready to see analogies to the human attitude and mode of movement in inanimate nature, and so we fall into the habit of attributing a quasi-human interest to the drooping plant, the stalwart tree rejoicing in its battles with the wind, and the venerable mountain looking down on our lower earth with an expression of Jovian calm. Art, when not distinctly imitative, owes something to these vague suggestions. ”

“ We do well to remember that genius has its own special responsibilities, that noblesse oblige here too. At the same time we shall do well also to keep in mind that the life of intellectual creation has its own peculiar besetments, and that in the very task of fulfilling his high and eminently humane mission, and giving the world of his mind's best, the great man may become unequal to the smaller fortitudes of every-day life. ”

“ I here assume, what is agreed on by most writers, that beauty of form—so far as it is independent of sensuous pleasure on the one hand, and pleasures of association and suggestion on the other, is resolvable into the presence of a certain order among manifold details, which order is commonly spoken of as unity in variety. With respect, first of all, to the way in which the element of variety and contrast presents itself in visible form, a word or two will suffice. ”

“ It must be remembered, however, that in the eyes of the ancients genius was hardly degraded by this companionship with madness. Men had not yet begun to look on insanity as one of the most pitiable of maladies. So far from this, it was a common idea that the insane were themselves inspired by the action of deity. We have a striking illustration of the absence even among the educated Greeks of the modern feeling toward madness in the fact that Plato was able to argue, with no discoverable trace of his playful irony, that certain sorts of madness are to be esteemed a good rather than an evil. ”

“ In the present state of our knowledge, then, genius must be looked upon as the most signal and impressive manifestation of that tendency of Nature to variation and individuation in her organic formations which modern science is compelled to retain among its unexplained facts. Why we have a Shakespeare, a Michael Angelo, a Goethe here and now, is a question that can not be answered. ”

“ There is good reason to think that actual movement enters into our customary perception even of smaller forms much more than is generally supposed. It may be added that what we call a simultaneous perception of form is often, as I shall have occasion to show presently, a sequence of simultaneous perceptions. But more than this, one may now contend, with a fair degree of confidence, that, even in the perception of form by the resting eye, motor elements are essential ingredients, however much they may be disguised. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it seems not improbable that by a closer investigation of the conditions and the results of this large constructive activity of mind we may find a clew to the apparent anomaly that grand intellectual powers are so frequently beset with mental and moral infirmity. These lurking-places of abnormal tendencies will, we may expect, betray themselves more readily in the case of artistic and especially poetic genius, which has, indeed, always been viewed as the most pronounced form, and as the typical representative of creative power. ”

“ Much more frequently does the central element of a design need to be supplied by the mind of the spectator. The beauty of an undulating and of a spiral curve rests' in part on a vague representation of the central axis, about which its seemingly free movements arrange themselves in so simple an order. In many symmetrical arrangements, too, as those of the human figure, the central element to which all relations are more or less consciously referred has to be put into the figure by the mind. ”

“ We may inquire into those peculiarities of sensibility and emotion, as well as of intellect, which are discoverable in the typical psychical organization of the great man, and may trace out some of the more important reflex influences of the life of intellectual production on his mind and character. What we all recognize as genius displays itself in some large original conception, whether artistic, scientific, or practical. ”

“ In contradistinction to this disparaging view, the admiring contemplation of the great man as towering above minds of ordinary stature seems directly opposed to any approximation of the ideas of genius and mental disorder. And this has undoubtedly been in the main the tendency of the more intelligent kind of reverence. At the same time, by a strange, eddy-like movement in the current of human thought, the very feeling for the marvelousness of genius has given birth to a theory of its nature which in another way has associated it with mental aberration. ”

“ The value of such subjectively restored elements of unity is seen in a striking way in the fact that the feeling for order and unity may be satisfied when there is only an approximation to a regular arrangement. The eye, like the ear, can easily bear departures from rigid regularity, if only it is able in a rough and general way to group the details under relations of equality and symmetry. This it does in those freer forms of sculpture and painting which mark a high development of art. ”