Sophocles, Humboldt, Fontenelle, Brougham, Xenophon, Cato the Elder,
Michelangelo, Petrarch, Bettinelli, died at 90; Passeroni, Auber,
Manzoni, Xavier de Maistre at 89; Hobbes at 92; Dandolo at 97; Titian at
99; Cassiodorus and Mlle. Scudéry at 94; Viennet and Diogenes at 91;
Voltaire, Franklin, Watt, John of Bologna, Vincent de Paul, Baroccio,
Young, Talleyrand, Raspail, Grimm, Herschel, Metastasio at 84; Victor
Hugo, Donatello, Goethe, Wellington at 83; Zingarelli, Metternich,
Theodore de Beza, Lamarck, Halley at 86; Bentham, Newton, St. Bernard de
Menthon, Bodmer, Luini, Scarpa, Bonpland, Chiabrera, Carafa, Goldoni at
85; Thiers, Kant, Maffei, Amyot, Villemain, Wieland, Littré at 80;
Anacreon, Mercatori, Viviani, Buffon, Palmerston, Casti, J. Bernouilli,
Pinel at 81; Galileo, Euler, Schlegel, Béranger, Louis XIV., Corneille,
Cesarotti at 78; Herodotus, Rossini, Cardan, Michelet, Boileau,
Garibaldi, Archimedes, Paisiello, Saint Augustine at 75; Tacitus and B.
Disraeli at 76; Pericles at 70; Thucydides at 69; Hippocrates at 103;
and Saint Anthony at 105.
According to Beard the average life of 500 men of genius is 54, and that
of 100 modern men of genius is 70. The average duration of life of 35
men of musical genius was 63 years, and 8 months.[147] But this fact
does not exclude degeneration when, as among persons with moral
insanity, it is united with an apathy which renders temperaments
otherwise mobile, insensible to the strongest griefs, and I have shown
in another book[148] that instinctive criminals, living out of prison,
enjoy great longevity. It should be added that longevity is not always
found in genius; many great men of genius, such as Raphael, Pascal,
Burns, Keats, Byron, Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, Bellini, Bichat, Pico de
la Mirandola died before the age of forty.
CHAPTER IV.
GENIUS AND INSANITY.
Resemblance between genius and insanity--Men and women of genius
who have been
insane--Montanus--Harrington--Haller--Schumann--Gérard de
Nerval--Baudelaire--Concato--Mainländer--Comte--Codazzi--Bolyai--Cardan--Tasso--Swift--Newton--Rousseau--Lenau--Széchényi--Hoffmann--Foderà--Schopenhauer--Gogol.
The resemblance between insanity and genius, although it does not show
that these two should be confounded, proves at all events that one does
not exclude the other in the same subject.
In fact, without speaking of the numerous men of genius who at some
period of their lives were subject to hallucinations or insanity, or of
those who, like Vico, terminated a great career in dementia, how many
great thinkers have shown themselves all their lives subject to
monomania or hallucinations!
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