onnets, to be an absolutely normal individual? To
identify genius with insanity is a pernicious paradox. To recognise
that it cannot exist without some inequalities of nervous energy, some
perturbations of nervous function, is reasonable. In other words, it
is an axiom of physiology that the abnormal development of any organ
or any faculty is balanced by some deficiency or abnormality elsewhere
in the individual. This is only another way of saying that the man of
genius is not a mediocre and ordinary personality: in other words, it
is a truism, the statement of which appears superfluous. Rather ought
we, in Michelangelo's case, to dwell upon the remarkable sobriety of
his life, his sustained industry under very trying circumstances, his
prolonged intellectual activity into extreme old age, the toughness of
his constitution, and the elasticity of that nerve-fibre which
continued to be sound and sane under the enormous and varied pressure
put upon it over a period of seventy-five laborious years.

If we dared attempt a synthesis or reconstitution of this unique man's
personality, upon the data furnished by his poems, letters, and
occasional utterances, all of which have been set forth in their
proper places in this work, I think we must construct him as a being
gifted, above all his other qualities and talents, with a burning
sense of abstract beauty and an eager desire to express this through
several forms of art--design, sculpture, fresco-painting,
architecture, poetry. The second point forced in upon our mind is that
the same man vibrated acutely to the political agitation of his
troubled age, to mental influences of various kinds, and finally to a
persistent nervous susceptibility, which made him exquisitely
sensitive to human charm. This quality rendered him irritable in his
dealings with his fellow-men, like an instrument of music, finely
strung, and jangled on a slight occasion. In the third place we
discover that, while accepting the mental influences and submitting to
the personal attractions I have indicated, he strove, by indulging
solitary tastes, to maintain his central energies intact for
art--joining in no rebellious conspiracies against the powers that be,
bending his neck in silence to the storm, avoiding pastimes and social
diversions which might have called into activity the latent
sensuousness of his nature. For the same reason, partly by
predilection, and partly by a deliberate wish to curb his irrita