-solved problem of the psychological nature of genius. As we have
already noted, there enter into its composition factors other than the
creative imagination, although the latter is not the least among them.
Besides, great men being exceptions, anomalies, or as the current
expression has it, "spontaneous variations," we may ask _in limine_
whether their psychology is explicable by means of simple formulae, as
with the average man, or whether even monographs teach us no more
concerning their nature than general theories that are never applicable
to all cases. Taking genius, then, as synonymous with great inventor,
accepting it _de facto_ historically and psychologically, our task is
limited to the attempt to separate characters that seem, from
observation and experiment, to belong to it as peculiarly its own.

Putting aside vague dissertations and dithyrambics in favor of theories
with a scientific tendency as to the nature of genius, we meet first the
one attributing to it a pathological origin. Hinted at in antiquity
(Aristotle, Seneca, etc.), suggested in the oft-expressed comparison
between inspiration and insanity, it has reached, as we know--through
timid, reserved, and partial statements (Lelut)--its complete expression
in the famous formula of Moreau de Tours, "Genius is a neurosis."

Neuropathy was for him the exaggeration of vital properties and
consequently the most favorable condition for the hatching of works of
genius. Later, Lombroso, in a book teeming with doubtful or manifestly
false evidence, finding his predecessor's theory too vague, attempts to
give it more precision by substituting for neurosis in general a
specific neurosis--larvated epilepsy. Alienists, far from eagerly
accepting this view, have set themselves to combat it and to maintain
that Lombroso has compromised everything in wanting to make the term too
precise. There are several possible hypotheses, they say: either the
neuropathic state is the direct, immediate cause of which the higher
faculties of genius are effects; or, the intellectual superiority,
through the excessive labor and excitation it involves, causes
neuropathic disturbances; or, there is no relation of cause and effect
between genius and neurosis, but mere coexistence, since there are found
very mediocre neuropaths, and men above the average without a neurotic
blemish; or, the two states--the one psychic, the other
physiological--are both effects, resulting from organic con