The man of genius / by Cesare Lombroso.

  • Lombroso, Cesare, 1835-1909.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The man of genius / by Cesare Lombroso. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    philanthropists love their neighbours, but only at a dis- tance, and nearly always at the expense of the more physiological, more general, affections—love for their family, their country, &c. We must remember Dosto- i'effsky's remark (in The Brothers Karamanzov.^ i. p. 325) that What one can love in one's fellow is a hidden and invisible man ; as soon as he shows his face, love dis- appears. One can love one's fellow-men in spirit, but only at a distance ; never close at hand. One also recalls Sterne, who was overcome with emotion at the sight of a dead ass, and deserted his wife and his mother. The greatest philanthropists—such men as Beccaria and Howard—have been harsh fathers and masters ; even the Divine Philanthropist was, as we have seen, hard towards his own family. St. Paul, before his conversion, distinguished himself by his vehement and cruel persecution of the Christians. It is Avell known how, only too often, the man of real and fervent religion has to forget his family and make a duty of celibacy and hatred to the other sex. Thus St. Liberata was angry with her husband for weeping at parting from their children ; and, according to the legend, the mother of Baruch replied to her son when, during his martyrdom, he implored her for water in his anguish, Thou shouldst desire no water now save that of heaven.^ These cases, moreover, show that, very often, exag- gerated altruism is itself only a pathological phenome- non, a hypertrophy of sentiment accompanied—as always happens in cases of hypertrophy—by loss and atrophy in other directions.3 We have seen in Juan de Dios, in Lazzaretti, Loyola, and St. Francis, of Assisi, saintliness showing itself, in true psychic polarization, as a perfect contrast to their former life in which the tendency to evil was strongly pro- nounced. ' Vinson, Les religions acluelles, 1884; Luke ii. 49 ; Matt. xii. 48; Mark iii. 33. ^ Anfosso, La Legende rdigicHsc ait moycn-Agc, 1887. 3 On altruism in moral insanity and epilepsy, steV Uomo Dclinjuentc, PP- 556, 557- We have seen St. Francis love even tlie stars, the water, toe fire, &c., and—.abandon his family I