many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy
which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these
lectures end.

It is, however, a discordancy that can never be resolved by any
merely medical test. A good example of the impossibility of
holding strictly to the medical tests is seen in the theory of
the pathological causation of genius promulgated by recent
authors. "Genius," said Dr. Moreau, "is but one of the many
branches of the neuropathic tree." "Genius," says Dr. Lombroso,
"is a symptom of hereditary degeneration of the epileptoid
variety, and is allied to moral insanity." "Whenever a man's
life," writes Mr. Nisbet, "is at once sufficiently illustrious
and recorded with sufficient fullness to be a subject of
profitable study, he inevitably falls into the morbid category. .
. . And it is worthy of remark that, as a rule, the greater the
genius, the greater the unsoundness."[3]

[3] J. F. Nisbet: The Insanity of Genius, 3d ed., London, 1893,
pp. xvi., xxiv.



Now do these authors, after having succeeded in establishing to
their own satisfaction that the works of genius are fruits of
disease, consistently proceed thereupon to impugn the VALUE of
the fruits? Do they deduce a new spiritual judgment from their
new doctrine of existential conditions? Do they frankly forbid us
to admire the productions of genius from now onwards? and say
outright that no neuropath can ever be a revealer of new truth?