exity may be induced, a
disintegration of the composite personality into the various separate
personalities, that bespeaks a lower, not a higher organism. {21}

Now all this may seem quite impertinent to our subject, but I have
discussed the point at length because complexity is certainly one of the
marks of the Vagabond, and it is important to make quite clear what is
connoted by that term.

Recognizing, then, the two types of complexity, the type of complexity
with which I am concerned especially in these papers is the higher type.
I have not selected these writers merely on account of their
eccentricities or deviations from the normal. Mere eccentricity has a
legitimate interest for the scientist, but for the psychologist it is of
no particular moment. Hazlitt is not interesting _because_ he was
afflicted with a morbid egotism; or Borrow _because_ he suffered from
fits of melancholia; or De Quincey _because_ he imagined he was in debt
when he had plenty of money. It was because these neurotic signs were
associated with powerful intellects and exceptional imaginations, and
therefore gave a peculiar and distinctive character to their writings--in
short, because they happened to be men of genius, men of higher complex
organisms than the average individual--that they interest so strongly.

It seems to me a kind of inverted admiration that is attracted to what is
bizarre and out of the way, and confounds peculiarity with cleverness and
eccentricity with genius.

The real claim that individuals have upon our appreciation and sympathy
is mental and moral greatness; and the sentimental weakness with the
"oddity" is no more rational, no more to be respected, than a sympathy
which extends to physical monstrosities and sees nothing to admire in a
normal, healthy body.

It may be urged, of course, by some that I have admitted to a neurotic
strain affecting more or less all the Vagabonds treated of in this
volume, and this being so, it is clear that the morbid tendencies in
their temperament must have conditioned the distinctive character of
their genius.

Now it is quite true that the soil whence the flower of their genius
sprung was in several cases not without a taint; but it does not follow
that the flower itself is tainted. And here we come upon the fallacy
that seems to me to lie at the basis of the doctrine which makes genius
itself a kind of disease. The soil of the rose garden may be manured
with refuse that