In answer to the statement that epileptics have but little aptitude for productive or decorative art, we would invite close attention to our system of schools at the Colony in Sloyd and Manual Training, where most proficient work is being done by many epileptic boys and girls.

Fortunately the so-called “eye-strain theory of epilepsy” has by no means worked such insidious harm as other surgical procedures among the epileptics, nor as much as it has among physicians who attempt to cure epilepsy by “tampering with the eye muscles.”

Dr. Hrdlicka’s article has left out some of the most signal indices of epileptic literature, namely, the presence of the so-called explosive sentence, which so frequently mars the rhythm of their productions. Epileptic ideas written or spoken are frequently awkward to a marked degree.

Again epileptic literature, unless produced with great care, presents many hiatuses of memory in consecutive thought, noticed in sentences, syllables of words and letters in single words.

Some clinicians see in the epileptic an anomalous paralytic state, becoming more pronounced year-by-year.

Finally we cannot be too careful in designating abnormal characteristics peculiar to abnormal people.

Epileptics, as many other neurotics, we are liable to treat in a new light, as a peculiar people, and not consider their characteristics as normal ones, modified more or less by disease. Abnormal characteristics become less peculiar the more we know of normal ones.

L. Pierce Clark.

Craig Colony, Sonyea, N. Y., Feb. 17th, 1899.

—from The American Journal of Insanity, 1899

Genius and Insanity
by Dr. William Hirsch

Having come to the conclusion that the designation “genius” does not express any one psychological concept, that nobody has succeeded in giving a pregnant definition of genius, nor is likely to do so, and also that insanity is equally indefinable, that it is impossible to draw a sharp line between mental sanity and mental derangement, it may seem useless to attempt to compare two such indefinite quantities. Still, the comparison—so long as it is a comparison—if we draw our conclusions with circumspection, can hardly do any harm; and it may possibly enrich our knowledge and lead us toward recognition of truth.

It is no new-fangled notion that genius and insanity are somehow connected. Plato is known to have spoken of a divine insanity of poets. Seneca attributes to Aristotle the saying, “Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit.” Aristotle says: “Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.” Cicero says:” Negat enim sine furore Democritus quemquam poetam magnum esse posse, quod idem dicit Plato.” Horace speaks of an amabilis insania, and Wieland of an amiable insanity of the Muses. Dryden || has the lines—

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide.