The Man of Genius

PART II.

THE CAUSES OF GENIUS

CHAPTER I.

Meteorological Influences on Genius

The influence of weather on the insane – Sensitiveness of men of genius to barometrical conditions – Sensitiveness to thermometrical conditions.

The Influence of Weather on the Insane.– A series of clinical researches, which I carried on for six consecutive years, has shown me with certainty that the mental condition of the insane is modified in a constant manner by barometrical and thermometrical influences.[185 - Pensiero e Meteore in Biblioteca Scientifica Internazionale, Milan, 1878; Azione degli Astri e delle Meteore sulla mente Umana, Milan, 1871.] When the temperature rose above 25°, 30°, and 32 °C., especially if the rise was sudden, the number of maniacal attacks increased from 29 to 50. On the days on which the barometer showed sudden variations, especially of elevation – and more particularly two or three days before and after the variation – the number of maniacal attacks rapidly increased from 34 to 46. This meteoric sensibility, as I term it, increased in an inverse ratio to the integrity of the nervous tissues, being very great in idiots and slightest in monomaniacs. The study of 23,602 lunatics has shown me that the development of insanity generally coincides with the increase of monthly temperature and with the great barometrical perturbations in September and March; the onset of heat, acts more efficaciously, however, than the intense heat which follows; and the heat which has become habitual in August acts much less harmfully. The minimum number of outbreaks of insanity is found in the coldest months. (See Plate.)

This coincidence is seen best in the French lunatics studied by Esquirol.[186 - Quetelet, Physique Sociale, Book iv. ch. i.] The French figures present with most clearness the effect of thermometrical influences, because in France the entry of lunatics into asylums, being little impeded by red-tapeism, follows closely on the outbreak.

Now, a similar influence may be noted in those to whom nature, benevolently or malevolently, has conceded the power of intellect more generously than to others. There are few among these who do not confess that their inspiration is strangely subject to the influence of weather. Those who associate with them, or who read their correspondence, know that they suffer so greatly from this cause that they often complain to every one, and struggle, with the help of various artifices, against the malignant influences which impede the free flight of their thought.

Sensitiveness to Barometrical Conditions.– Montaigne wrote: “Si la santé me sied et la clarté d’un beau jour, me voilà honnête homme.” Diderot wrote, “Il me semble que j’ai l’esprit fou dans les grands vents.” Giordani foretold storms two days beforehand.[187 - Mantegazza, op. cit.] Maine de Biran, a very spiritualistic philosopher, wrote, in his Journal de ma Vie Intime, “I do not know how it is that in bad weather I feel my intelligence and will so unlike what they are in fine weather;” and again, “There are days in which my thought seems to break through the veils which surround it. In some conditions of the weather I feel delight in good, and adore virtue; at other times I am indifferent to everything, even to my duties. Are our sentiments, our affections, our principles, related to the physical condition of our organs?”[188 - E. Neville, Maine de Biran, Sa Vie, &c., p. 129, 1854.] The study of his Journal shows us the justice of his doubts. Let us take 1818. In April we find two periods of good inspiration and four of bad, although the weather was fine; in May he was constantly sad, and in November only cheerful during ten days.

“1815, May.– I am suffering from the nervous disposition which I experience in spring; and though wishing to do too much, I do nothing…

“23 May.– I am happy because of the air that I breathe and the birds that are singing; but inspiration passes away through the senses. Each season has not merely special forms of sensation, but a certain way of understanding life which is peculiar to it…

“17 May.– Irresistible pleasure of thought: inspiration…

“4, 16, 17 October.– Empty of ideas; sad…

“1816, 25 January.– Sad and idle. My life is useless…

“24 April.– I am another man. Every day seems a feast day. At this time of the year something seems to lift the soul to another region, and to give it strength to surmount all impediments…

“1817, 13 April.– Excited…

“7 May.– Working on Condillac…

“10, 18 July.– Marvellous activity…

“12 October.– Am transformed; thought turns to commonplace triviality…

“22, 23, 28 November.– Sterile agitation. Alteration of all my mental faculties…

“1818, 1 April.– Northerly wind. Am weary, sad, suffering, stolid…

“1820, 31 March.– At this time of the year it always happens to me that body and mind are alike heavy; I have the consciousness of my degradation…

“1821, May.– All this month I am sad, and yield to external causes like a marionette…

“21 October.– I feel myself newborn. I was returning to work, but the weather has changed; the wind has turned to the south; it is strong, and I am another man. I feel inert, with a distaste for work, and inclined to those sad and melancholy fantasies which are always so fatal to me…”

Alfieri wrote, “I compare myself to a barometer. I have always experienced more or less facility in writing, according to the weight of the air; absolute stupidity in the great solstitial and equinoxial winds, infinitely less perspicacity in the evening than in the morning, and a much greater aptness for creation in the middle of the winter or of summer than in the intermediate seasons. This has made me humble, as I am convinced that at these times I have had no power to do otherwise.” Monod says that the phases of Michelet’s intellectual life followed the course of the seasons.[189 - Revue Bleue, 1888, No. 9.] Poushkin’s poetic inspiration was greatest during dark and stormy nights.

We catch a glimpse in these facts of an appreciable influence of barometrical conditions upon men of genius as upon the insane.

Heat.– Thermometrical influence is much clearer and more evident. Napoleon, who defined man as “a product of the physical atmosphere and the moral atmosphere,” and who suffered from the faintest wind, loved heat so much that he would have fires even in July. Voltaire and Buffon had their studies warmed throughout the year. Rousseau said that the action of the sun in the dog-days aided him to compose, and he allowed the rays of the mid-day sun to fall on his head. Byron said that he feared cold as much as a gazelle. Heine wrote in one of his letters, “It snows; I have little fire in the room, and my letter is cold.” Spallanzani, in the Ionian Islands, found himself able to study for three times as many hours as in misty Pavia.[190 - Viaggio in Sicilia, vol. vii.] Leopardi confesses in his letters, “My temperament is inimical to cold. I wait and invoke the reign of Ormuzd.” Giusti wrote in the spring, “Inspiration is becoming favourable… If spring aids me as in all other things…”[191 - Epistolario, 1878.] Paisiello could only compose beneath six quilts in the summer and nine in the winter. Similar facts are told of Varillas, Méry, and Arnaud. Sylvester tells how, when on board the Invicta, beneath the vivifying rays of a powerful sun, the method of resolving a multiple equation occurred to him, and he succeeded, without pen or pencil.[192 - Nature, Nov. 1883.] Lesage, in his old age, became animated as the sun advanced in the meridian, gradually gaining his imaginative power, together with his cheerfulness; as the day declined, his mental activity gradually diminished, until he fell into a lethargy, which lasted to the following day.[193 - Réveillé-Parise, Physiologie des hommes livrés aux travaux de l’esprit, pp. 352-355.]

Giordani could only compose in the sun, or in the presence of abundant light and great heat.[194 - Giussani, Vita, &c., p. 188.] Foscolo wrote in November: “I keep near the fire; my friends laugh at me, but I am seeking to give my members heat which my heart will concentrate and sublime within.”[195 - Epistolario, p. 395.] And in December he writes: “My natural infirmity, the fear of cold, has constrained me to live near the fire, and the fire has inflamed my eyelids.” Milton confessed in his Latin elegies that in winter his muse was sterile; he could only write from the spring equinox to that of autumn. In a letter he complains of the cold of 1678, and fears that, if it lasts, it will hinder the free development of his imagination. Dr. Johnson, who tells us this in his Life of Milton, may be believed on this point, for imagination never smiled upon him, only the cold and tranquil intelligence of criticism, and he adds the commentary that all this must be the result of eccentricity of character, he, Johnson, never having experienced any effects from the variations of the weather. Poushkin often said that he found himself most disposed to composition in autumn; the brilliant spring sunshine produced on him an impression of melancholy. Salvator Rosa laughed in youth, as Lady Morgan tells us in her Life, at the pretended influence of the weather on works of genius; but in old age he became incapable of painting or thinking, almost of living, except in the heat of spring. In reading Schiller’s correspondence with Goethe one is struck by the singular influence which the gentle and imaginative poet attributed to the weather. In November, 1817, he wrote: “In these sad days, beneath this leaden sky, I have need of all my elasticity to feel alive, and do not yet feel capable of serious work.” And in December: “I am going back to work, but the weather is so dull that it is impossible to preserve the lucidity of the soul.” In July, 1818: “Thanks to the fine weather I am better; the lyric inspiration, which obeys the will less than any other, does not delay.” In December he complains that the necessity of completing Wallenstein unfortunately coincides with an unfavourable period of the year, “so that,” he writes, “I am obliged to use all my strength to preserve mental clearness.” And in May, 1799: “I hope to make progress in my work if the weather continues fine.”

All these examples allow us to suspect, with some probability, that heat, with rare exceptions, aids in the productions of genius, as it aids in vegetation, and also aids, unfortunately, in the stimulation of mania.

If historians, who have squandered so much time and so many volumes in detailing minutely to us the most shameless exploits of kings, had sought with as much care the memorable epoch in which a great discovery or a masterpiece of art was conceived, they would no doubt have found that the hottest months and days have always been most fruitful for genius, as for nature generally.

Let us endeavour to find more precise proofs of this little-suspected influence.

Dante wrote his first sonnet on the 15th of June, 1282; in the spring of 1300 he wrote the Vita Nuova; on the 3rd of April he began his great poem.[196 - Lebin, Sur l’époque de la composition de la Vita Nuova, p. 28.] Darwin had the earliest ideas of his great work first in March, then in June.[197 - Life and Letters, vol. i. p. 51.] Petrarch conceived the Africa in March, 1338. Michelangelo’s great cartoon, the work which so competent a judge as Cellini considered his most wonderful masterpiece, was imagined and executed between April and July, 1506. Manzoni wrote his 5 Maggio in summer. Milton’s great poem was conceived in the spring. Galileo discovered Saturn’s ring in April, 1611. Balzac wrote La Cousine Bette in August and September, Père Goriot in September, La Recherche de l’Absolu in June to September. Sterne began Tristram Shandy in January, the first of his sermons in April, the famous one on errors of conscience in May.[198 - Stopfer, Vie de Sterne, Paris, 1870.] Giordano Bruno composed his Candelajo in July; and in his witty dedication he attributed it to the heat of the dog-days. Voltaire wrote Tancred in August. Byron wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold in September, his Prophecy of Dante in June, his Prisoner of Chillon during the summer in Switzerland. Giusti wrote of Gingillino and Pero: “Here are the only leaves that April has drawn out of my head after fourteen months of idleness.” Schiller, it appears from his letters to Goethe, conceived Don Carlos and Wallenstein in the autumn, as well as Fiesco and Wilhelm Tell; Wallensteins Lager and Letters on Æsthetics in September; Kabale und Liebe in winter; the Magician, the Glove, the Ring of Polycrates, the Cranes of Ibycus, and Nadowessir’s Song in June; the Jungfrau von Orleans in July. Goethe wrote Werther in autumn; Mignon and other lyric poems in May; Cellini, Alexis, Euphrosyne, Metamorphosis of Plants, and Parnass in June and July; the Xenien, Hermann und Dorothea, Westöstlichen Divan, and Natürliche Tochter in winter. In the first days of March, 1788, which, he wrote, were worth more to him than a whole month, he dictated, besides other poems, the beginning of Faust.[199 - Goethe, Aus Meinem Leben.] Salorno’s hymn to Liberty was written in May. Rossini composed the Semiramide almost entirely in February, and in November the last part of the Stabat Mater.[200 - Zanolini, Rossini, 1876.] Mozart composed the Mitridate in October; Beethoven his ninth symphony in February.[201 - Clément, Les Musiciens Célèbres, Paris, 1878.] Donizetti composed Lucia di Lammermoor, perhaps entirely, in September; in any case, the famous Tu che a Dio spiegasti l’ale belongs to that date; the Figlia del Reggimento was also composed in autumn; Linda de Chamounix in spring; Rita in summer; Don Pasquale and the Miserere in winter.[202 - Alborghetti, Vita di Donizetti, 1876.] Wagner composed Der Fliegende Holländer in the spring of 1841. Canova modelled his first work, Orpheus and Eurydice, in October.[203 - D’Este, Memorie su Canova, 1864.] Michelangelo conceived his Pietà between September and October, 1498,[204 - Gotti, Vita di Michelangelo, Florence, 1873.] the design of the Libreria in December, the model in wood of the tomb of Pope Julius in August.[205 - Milanesi, Lettere di Michelangelo, Florence, 1875.] Leonardo da Vinci conceived the equestrian statue of the Sforza and began his book Della luce e delle Ombre in April; for we find in his autograph manuscript these words: “On April the 23rd, 1492, I commenced this book and recommenced the horse.” On the 2nd of July, 1491, he designed the pavilion of the Duchess’s Bath; on the 3rd of March, 1509, St. Christopher’s Canal.[206 - Amoretti, Memorie storiche sulla vita e gli studi di Leonardo da Vinci, Milan, 1874.] The first idea of the discovery of America came to Columbus between May and June, in 1474, in the form of a search for the western passage to India.[207 - W. Irving, Columbus, vol. i. p. 819; Roselly de Lorque, Vie de Colomb., 1857.] Galileo discovered the sun’s spots contemporaneously with, or before, Scheiner in April, 1611;[208 - According to Secchi (Soleil, 1875) Scheiner preceded Galileo, and was himself preceded by Fabricio, though the discovery of this last was not known until a later date.] in December, 1610, and even in September (since he speaks of his observation having been made three months previously), he discovered the analogy between the phases of Venus and those of the moon; in May, 1609, he invented the telescope;[209 - Galilei, Opere, vol. i. p. 69.] in July, 1610, he discovered two stars, afterwards found to be the most luminous points of Saturn’s ring, a discovery which, according to his custom, he expressed in verse: —

“Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi.”

In January he found Jupiter’s satellites; in November, 1602, the isochronism of the oscillations of the pendulum.[210 - Arago, Œuvres, 1851.]

Kepler discovered the law which bears his name in May, 1618; the discovery of Zucchi regarding Jupiter took place in May; that of Tycho Brahe in November. Fabricius discovered the first changing star in August, 1546. Cassini discovered the spots which indicate the rotation of Venus in October and April (1666-67), and in October, December, and March (1671, 1672, 1684) four satellites of Saturn. Herschel discovered two in March, 1789. In June, 1631, Hevelius conceived the first ideas of selenography.[211 - Hœfer, op. cit.] A satellite of Saturn was discovered by Huygens on the 25th of March, 1665; another by Dawes and Bond on the night of the 19th of September, 1848. Two satellites of Uranus were discovered by Herschel in 1787; one of them, considered as doubtful by Herschel, was again discovered by Struve and Lassel in October, 1847; the last, Ariel, was discovered by Lassel on the 14th of September, 1847; on the 8th of July in the same year he had also seen Neptune’s satellite for the first time.[212 - Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy, 1874.] Uranus was discovered by Herschel in March, 1781. The same astronomer observed the moon’s volcanoes in April. Bradley discovered in September (1728) the aberration of light, Enke’s and Vico’s fine observations on Saturn took place in March and April (1735-38). Of the comets discovered by Gambart, three were in July, two in March and in May, one in January, April, June, August, October, December.[213 - Arago, Notices Biographiques, 1855.] The last three comets discovered in 1877 were perceived in October, February, and September; in August Hall observed the satellites of Mars. Schiaparelli’s discovery on falling stars dates from August, 1866.

We read in Malpighi’s journal that in July he made his great discoveries in the suprarenal glands. It is curious to observe how some one month predominates in certain years: for example, January in 1788 and 1790, and June in 1771, during which he made thirteen discoveries.[214 - Atti, Della Vita di Malpighi, 1774.]

The first idea of the barometer came to Torricelli in May, 1645, as may be seen by his letters to Ricci; in March, 1644, he had made the discovery, of great moment at that time, of the best way of making glasses for spectacles. The first experiments of Pascal on the equilibrium of fluids were made in September, 1645.[215 - Hœfer, Histoire de la Chimie, 1869.] In March, 1752, Franklin began his experiments with lightning conductors, and concluded them in September.

Goethe declared that it was in May that his original ideas on the theory of colours arose, and in June that he made his fine observations on the metamorphoses of plants.[216 - Briefe an Schiller.] Hamilton discovered the calculus of Quaternions on the 16th of October, 1843.

Volta invented the electric pile in the beginning of winter, 1799-1800. In the spring of 1775 he invented the electrophore. In the first days of November, 1784, he discovered the production of hydrogen in organic fermentations. His invention of the eudiometer took place in the spring, about May. In April of the same year (1777) Volta wrote to Barletta the famous letter in which he divined the electric telegraph. In the spring of 1788 he constructed his great conductor.

Luigi Brugnatelli found out galvanoplasty in November, 1806, as is shown by a letter which the advocate Zanino Volta found in the correspondence of his grandfather. Nicholson discovered the oxydation of metals by means of the Voltaic pile, in the summer of 1800.

From the examination of Galvani’s manuscripts it appears that his studies on intestinal gases began in December, 1713. His first studies on the action of atmospheric electricity on the nerves of cold-blooded animals were undertaken, as he himself writes, “at the 20th hour of the 26th of April, 1776.” In September, 1786, he began his experiments on the contractions of frogs, whence the origin of galvanism. In November, 1780, he stated his experiments on the contractions of frogs by artificial electricity.[217 - Gherardi, Rapporti sui Manoscritti di Galvani, 1839.]

We see by Lagrange’s manuscripts, published by Boncompagni, that he had the first idea of the Calculus of Variations on the 12th of June, 1755; on the 19th of May (1756) he conceived the idea of the Mécanique Analitique; in November, 1759, he found a solution of the problem of vibrating cords.[218 - Schiaparelli, Intorno Alcune Lettere inedite di Lagrange, 1877.]

From the manuscripts of Spallanzani, which I have been able to examine in the Communal Library at Reggio, it appears that his observations on moulds began on the 26th of September, 1770. On the 8th of May, 1780, Spallanzani started, to use his own words, “the study of animals which are torpid through the action of cold;” in April and May, 1776, he discovered the parthenogenesis of certain animals. The 2nd of April, 1780, was the richest day in experiments, or rather deductions, on the subject of ovulation. “It becomes clear,” he wrote on this same day, after having made forty-three observations, “that the ova are not fecundated in the womb; that the sperm cells after emission remain apt for fecundation for a certain time, that the vesicular fluid fecundates as well as the seminal, that wine and vinegar are opposed to fecundation.” “Impatience,” adds this curious manuscript, which enables us to assist at the incubation of these wonderful experiments, “will not allow me to draw any more corollaries.” On the 7th of May, 1780, he discovered that an infinitely small amount of semen sufficed for fecundation. A letter to Bonnet shows that Spallanzani had, during the spring of 1771, the idea of studying the action of the heart on the circulation. In March, 1773, he undertook his studies on rotifera, and in his manuscripts for May, 1781, may be found a plan of 161 new experiments on the artificial fecundation of frogs.

Géoffroy Saint-Hilaire had his first ideas on the homologies of organisms in February. Davy discovered iodine in December. Humboldt made his first observations on the magnetic needle in November, 1796; in March, 1793, he observed the irritability of organic fibres.[219 - Humboldt, Correspondance, Paris, 1868.] The prolegomena of the Cosmos was dictated in October.[220 - Letters from Humboldt to Varnhagen.] In July, 1801, Gay-Lussac discovered fluoric acid in fish-bones; he completed the analysis of alum in July.[221 - Arago, Notices Biographiques, 1855.] In September, 1846, Morton used sulphuric ether as an anæsthetic in surgery. In October, 1840, Armstrong invented the first hydro-electric machine.[222 - Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, 1857.]

Matteucci made his experiments with the galvanoscope in July, 1830; on torpedoes in the spring of 1836; on electro-motor muscles in July, 1837; on the decomposition of acids in May, 1835, he determined in May, 1837, the influence of electricity on the weather; in June, 1833, he concluded his experiments on heat and magnetism.[223 - N. Bianchi, Vita di Matteucci, Florence, 1874.]

The reader who has had the patience to follow this wearisome catalogue to the end, may convince himself that many men of genius have, as it were, a specific chronology; that is to say, a tendency to make their most numerous observations, to accomplish their finest discoveries, or their best æsthetic productions, at a special season or in one month rather than another: Spallanzani in the spring, Giusti and Arcangeli in March, Lamartine in August, Carcano, Byron, and Alfieri in September, Malpighi and Schiller in June and July, Hugo in May, Béranger in January, Belli in November, Melli in April, Volta in November and December, Galvani in April, Gambart in July, Peters in August, Luther in March and April, Watson in September.

A more general kind of specific chronology, a sort of intellectual calendar, is presented when we sum up various intellectual creations – poetry, music, sculpture, natural discoveries – of which the date of conception can be precisely fixed. This may be seen from the following table: —

Примечание 1[224 - The catalogue of small planets has been drawn from the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes (Paris, 1877-8). The list of comets has been taken from Carl’s Repertorium der Cometen Astronomie (Munich, 1864). It begins with the comet discovered by Hevelius in 1672, and ends with that found by Donati on the 23rd of July, 1864; Gambart’s comets, already separately enumerated, have been excluded. To keep the conditions analogous to those of the small planets, all the comets to which Carl does not assign a discoverer, have been omitted; this includes such as were expected from previous calculations or perceived with the naked eye by the general population. All those that were discovered simultaneously by several observers, unknown to one another, have, however, been included, for it is not a question of priority, but of the psychological moment of the discovery. Three comets discovered in the months of February, May, and December, were found in the southern hemisphere; they must, therefore, with reference to season be registered as for August, November, and June, and have so been counted.]

One observes at once that the most favourable month for æsthetic creations is May; then come September and April; the minimum is presented by the months of February, October, and December. The same may be observed partially with astronomical discoveries; but here April and July predominate, while for physical discoveries as well as for æsthetic creations, the months of May, April, and September stand first. Thus the advantage belongs to the months of early heat more than to the months of great heat, as with insanity also; in the same way the months of greatest barometric variation have an advantage over very hot and very cold months.

Relation to average monthly temperature to admission of lunatics to asylum, and to production of works of genius.