range apathy for everything
which does not concern them; as though, plunged in the hypnotic
condition, they did not perceive the troubles of others, or even the
most pressing needs of those who were dearest to them; if they observed
them, they grew tender, at once hastening to attend them; but it was a
fire of straw, soon extinguished, and it gave place to indifference and
weariness."

This emotional anaesthesia is indicative of psychical atavism, and is an
unmistakable evidence of degeneration. Lombroso gives a long list of the
men of genius who were celibates. I will mention a few of those with
whom the English-speaking world is most familiar: Kant, Newton, Pitt,
Fox, Beethoven, Galileo, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Gray,
Dalton, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Lamb, Bentham, Leonardo da Vinci,
Copernicus, Reynolds, Handel, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Schopenhauer,
Camoens, and Voltaire. La Bruyere says of men of genius: "These men have
neither ancestors nor descendants; they themselves form their entire
posterity."

There is a form of mental obliquity which the French term _folie du
doute_. It is characterized by an incertitude in thought cooerdination,
and often leads its victims into the perpetration of nonsensical and
useless acts. Men of genius are very frequently afflicted with this form
of mental disorder. Dr. Johnson, who was a sufferer from _folie du
doute_, had to touch every post he passed. If he missed one he had to
retrace his steps and touch it. Again, if he started out of a door on
the wrong foot he would return and make another attempt, starting out on
the foot which he considered the correct one to use. Napoleon counted
and added up the rows of windows in every street through which he
passed. A celebrated statesman, who is a personal friend of the writer,
can never bear to place his feet on a crack in the pavement or floor.
When walking he will carefully step over and beyond all cracks or
crevices. This idiosyncracy annoys him greatly, but the impulse is
imperative, and he can not resist it.

Those who have been intimately associated with men of genius have
noticed that they are very frequently amnesic or "absent-minded." Newton
once tried to stuff his niece's finger into the bowl of his lighted
pipe, and Rovelle would lecture on some subject for hours at a time and
then conclude by saying: "But this is one of my arcana, which I tell to
no one." One of his students would then whisper what he had just s