It is the same in regard to mental departures from the average proportions. Only, people with mental deformities are commonly less able than those misshapen in body to decide for themselves in regard to their capabilities, being generally not at all aware of their defects. Nor are the laity in condition to form a sound judgment of the mental state of such people. It is therefore for the best interests of these subjects, as well as for society, that the question of their accountability and responsibility should be left to experts.

Now, how is it with corporeally overdeveloped men, or giants? According to the investigations of Lange, Bollinger, Ecker, and Ranke, a number of those giants who have been exactly described are disproportioned. “In some cases there is a surprising disproportion between the relatively small development of the central nervous system and their overgrown bodies. Most commonly their excessively developed bones are pathologically brittle, with irregular partial thickenings, curvatures, or absolute deformities.” * Nevertheless, cases do occur, according to Ranke, in which these men are well proportioned and can fulfill the requirements of life. The question whether giants, or overgrown men, are to be regarded as diseased depends entirely upon the proportionate development of their parts. Gigantic growth per se is surely not morbid. But if it is carried out in some parts of the body at the expense of the development of other parts, be it with reference to the structure of the tissues or to the general growth, we have a deformity which consists in an anomaly of development analogous to a congenital crippling or dwarfish growth.

There is no reason for regarding mental giants from a different point of view. In order to judge of them, we have to inquire whether their development is proportional, or whether there is an overdevelopment of one part of the psychical organ at the expense of other parts, so as to disturb their inward equilibrium and give rise to a morbid state. No doubt, if we are to assume that whatever does not conform to the norm is to be considered as diseased,, every man mentally famous must be set down, without further parley, as a pathological subject. This opinion has found many advocates, who maintain that careful research signally confirms their theory, and that most, if not all, famous men exhibit symptoms of mental disease.

The first writer to discuss the subject at length was Moreau de Tours, who considers genius as a positive disease of the mind, consequent upon an overexcitation of the brain. “Genius,” he says, “like every other intellectual condition of dynamism, necessarily has its material substratum. This substratum is a semi-morbid state of the brain, a true nervous erethism (orgasm or excited state), the source of which is from this moment well known. . . .