“It is natural that every important moral change, or, as Nietzsche would say, _transmutation of values_, should be due to some physiological disturbance. With physical well-being, mental activity is in abeyance, and as long as conditions continue to be satisfactory, no change can possibly be contemplated. By conditions I mean spiritual circumstance, for where the external and material are implicated, the reformer’s motive is utterly different: the one readjustment involved is chemical, the other mechanical. There lies at the root of every reform a distemper. The reformer is a sick man by reason of some ill-adjustment in his spiritual balance. Densities, ratios, and moral values present themselves to him in different perspectives, so he exerts himself to establish a fresh accord. He aims at a new co-ordination. His work is nothing but an attempt to reorganize, in the light of his logic and reasoning, the elements of confusion he senses within himself, for the unsystematic he cannot tolerate. Of course I do not suggest that lack of balance is the necessary condition for the making of a reformer, but I do contend that every reformer starts out with a lack of balance.”[123] So far as I know, it would be impossible to find, amongst the reformers who have held up to humanity a new measure of values, one single instance where we could fail to discern what Dr. Binet-Sanglé is pleased to qualify a _hereditary taint_.[124] Mahomet was an epileptic. Epileptics, too, the Prophets of Israel, and Luther, and Dostoevsky. Socrates had his demon, Saint Paul his mysterious “thorn in the flesh,” Pascal his abyss, Nietzsche and Rousseau their mania. I can hear you say, “But what is there new in this theory? It belongs properly to Lombroso and Max Nordau. Genius is a neurosis.” No, not so fast! I must insist on this point, for it is extraordinarily important. There do exist geniuses, Victor Hugo for example, sane and whole. Their perfect spiritual poise precludes the possibility of any fresh problem. Rousseau, without his leaven of madness, would, I am sure, be no better than an undigested Cicero. It is pointless to lament the infirmity but for which he would never have sought to analyse the problem raised by his own anomaly or find a harmony which would not reject his discord. Sound and healthy reformers do undoubtedly exist, but such are lawgivers. The man whose inner balance is perfect can well contribute reforms--reforms which touch the outer man: he draws up new constitutions. But the individual who is abnormal refuses to submit to laws already established.