It should be remembered here, that the Klephts were brigands, and that the moral character of many great conquerors has been so far subject to alteration as to make of them true brigands on a large scale. Arved Barine, in noticing the beauty of countenance of certain brigands figured in my work in _L’uomo Delinquente_, has very justly observed[455] that “such a profession requires high intellectual endowments, and precisely the same as those needed by conquerors, who certainly have had no superabundance of moral sense. History proves that the moral sense is in no degree a function of the intellect. Great men have been so often devoid of it, that the world has been forced to invent for them a special morality which may be summed up in five words, frequently uttered by such--from Napoleon down to Benvenuto Cellini: _Everything is permitted to genius_.” Men of genius are among the principal factors in true revolutions.[456] History records the saying of Tarquin that for the preservation of despotism it was necessary to cut down the tallest heads. Carlyle believed that the whole of history is that of great men. Emerson wrote that every new institution might be regarded as the prolonged shadow of some man of genius, Islamism of Mahomet, Protestantism of Calvin, Quakerism of Fox, Methodism of Wesley, Abolitionism of Clarkson, &c. Men of genius, wrote Flaubert,[457] summarise in a single type many separate personalities, and bring new persons to consciousness in the human race. This is one of the causes of their immense influence. And not only are they not misoneistic; they are haters of old things and ardent lovers of the new and the unknown. Garibaldi, when he pushed on into almost unknown regions of America, said, “I love the unknown.”[458] And Christ carried his idea of the new world, that was about to appear, as far as complete communism. Many men of genius rule beyond the tomb: Cæsar was never so powerful (wrote Michelet) as when he was a corpse; and so William the Silent. Max Nordau even claims that all human progress is owing to despots of genius. “Every revolution is the work of a minority whose individuality cannot conform to conditions which were neither calculated nor created for them.” The only real innovators known to history are tyrants endowed with ability and knowledge. “No revolution succeeds without a leader,” wrote Machiavelli; and elsewhere, “A multitude without a head is useless.” This is natural, because the man of genius, being essentially original and a lover of originality, is the natural enemy of traditions and conservatism: he is the born revolutionary, the precursor and the most active pioneer of revolutions. CHAPTER III. THE EPILEPTOID NATURE OF GENIUS. Etiology--Symptoms--Confessions of men of genius--The life of a great epileptic--Napoleon--Saint Paul--The saints--Philanthropic hysteria.