In Pursuit of Genius: Tracing the History of a Concept in English Writing, from the Late Enlightenment to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
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In Pursuit of Genius: Tracing the History of a Concept in English Writing, from the late Enlightenment to the dawn of the Twentieth Century Caroline J Essex University College London Doctor of Philosophy ProQuest Number: U643280 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U643280 Published by ProQuest LLC(2015). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I should like to thank Dr Michael Neve, whose excellent academic supervision, and exceptional pastoral care, have made the time spent on this thesis both highly illuminating and extremely enjoyable. Three years well spent. My thanks also to Professor Janet Browne for her expert guidance concerning Darwin, and her meticulous scrutinising of drafted chapters. The advice, encouragement and practical assistance given so generously by Dr Sharon Messenger were also invaluable throughout the course of this project. This thesis has benefited hugely from a wealth of scholarly discussion. It gives me pleasure to thank the Academic Staff, Research Fellows and PhD Students at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL for the period between 1999 and 2002, as well as participants at the British Academy ‘Locating the Victorians’ conference, at Imperial College, London, 12-15 July 2001. In particular. Dr David Aickin, Prof Hal Cook, Dr Ivan Crozier, Dr Martin Edwards, Dr Alex Goldbloom, Dr Stephen Jacyna, Prof Chris Lawrence, Phil Mills, Nafsika Thalassis and Dr John Waller, were generous in their advice and enthusiasm for this project. 1 should also like to thank the administrative and IT staff of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, and the staff of the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, for their assistance; the staff of UCL Library and Manuscripts Department; and the staffs of Cambridge University Library and the British Library. My thanks also to the Arts and Humanities Research Board, without whose sponsorship this thesis might never have been written. This thesis was finally completed thanks to the support and encouragement of Sally Burnham, Tamsin Chambers, Anna Crozier, Andrea and John Essex, Tim Essex, Nicola Perrin, Reta and Murray Sweeny, Sarah Turner, Sarah Woolley, and the members and clergy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, and Toton Methodist Church. in gloriam et laudem Dei THESIS ABSTRACT This thesis examines the origins and development of the ‘mad genius controversy’, a very specific debate that emerged in Europe, specifically in the writings of the Italian criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, in the late 1880s and 1890s. Up to now, historians have accepted that during the whole of the period under discussion, from the Enlightenment to the fin-de-siècle, the idea of ‘genius’ within certain types of élite British discourse was intimately connected with that of madness. This project illustrates the problems with this interpretation by establishing the ways in which the term ‘genius’ transmuted within élite scientific discussions over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and demonstrating in the process the degree to which ‘genius’ is a socially constructed idea. In order to provide a new foundation for assessing the British biomedical response to the notion of a pathology of genius in the later nineteenth century, the project employs a long-view historical approach to trace the genealogy of ‘genius’ through a broad range of élite British writings from the late eighteenth century onwards. Beginning with an assessment of the ways in which ‘genius’ was described by later Enlightenment clergymen writers, the project reveals the powerful spiritual dimension that figured in discussions of the term. This thesis also tracks the ways in which the term acquired radical political connotations during the Romantic period, focusing particularly on the ways in which notions of ‘genius’ developed through the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt. The significance of these connotations is then traced through the influential scientific philosophy developed from the 1830s by William Whewell, and the ways in which the meanings of the term were altered by later Victorian gentleman naturalists, specifically Francis Galton. Tracing such a genealogy of ‘genius’ enables the historian to fully appreciate the significance of the later nineteenth-century British psychiatric ambivalence to continental ideas proposing the category of ‘mad genius’. CONTENTS Title page 1 Acknowledgements 2 Abstract 3 Contents 4 Introduction 7 Chapter 1: The Enlightenment and the Solitary Scientific Genius 23 Introduction 23 Defining Genius 26 Genius and Melancholy 34 National Scientific Genius 38 Scientific Transcendence and Humphry Davy 43 Collapsing Hierarchies 43 DavyConsolations, or Genius within the Spiritual Hierarchy 46 The Supremacy of Chemistry: Utility and Immortality 50 Solitude and Genius 55 Conclusion 57 Chapter 2: Politicisation of Genius 59 Introduction 59 Radicalism and Politicisation 59 1815 and Political Apostasy 63 Imagination, Disembodiment and Unity 66 Health and Sanity 75 Hazlitt’s Despair 79 Communities of Genius 87 Conclusion 92 Chapter 3: Genius and the Scientist 95 Introduction 95 Whewell and Élite Science 96 Defining the Scientific Method 97 The Discoverer and the Emergence of Objective Science 102 Solitude vs. Collectivity 109 Intellect vs. Imagination in Scientific Method 114 Sanity and the Sagacious Discoverer 128 Hard Work and Self Help 133 Whewell’s Impact 136 Man’s Place in Nature 137 Hereditary Genius 146 The Reception of Hereditary Genius 153 Natural Genius 157 Imagination and the Scientist 162 Conclusion 167 Chapter 4: Genius and the Psychiatrists 169 Introduction 169 Pathologising Genius: the Continental Legacy 171 Reassessing the British Contribution 181 Reassessing the British Psychiatric Reception of Mad Genius 193 Regeneration vs. Degeneration and Secular Determinism 194 Materialism and Stigmata 198 Epilepsy 204 Conflicting Methodologies 205 Genius and Ability 211 Overwork and Education 215 Ellis’s Reaction 224 Shakespeare and Healthy Genius 229 Lombroso’s Legacy 232 Conclusion 237 Appendix 244 Bibliography 248 INTRODUCTION In 1978 an American sociologist, George Becker, published a book, now out of print. Entitled The Mad Genius Controversy: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance, it argues for the existence in late nineteenth-century thought of a widespread debate, across Europe and in America, concerning the category of ‘mad genius’.^ Claiming that the Romantics tainted the previous Enlightenment view of genius as rational and sane with connotations of lunacy, Becker asserted that the Romantics intended their reconstruction of the label of genius to attribute a sense of ‘otherness’ to themselves. By doing this, Becker contended, the Romantics were able to distinguish themselves from the common herd. Becker then proposed that this project backfired from the second half of the nineteenth century when such Romantic genius was pathologised in medico-psychiatric literature. By the 1880s, in England, on the Continent and the United States, ‘the topic of genius and madness had become a major theme of controversy’. In Becker’s account therefore, the madness image cultivated by Romantics to indicate their ‘otherness’ became a self-fulfilling prophecy, enabling scientists and physicians later in the nineteenth century to promote the view that these men of originality were also liable to the charge of lunacy.^ Up to now, historians, finding precedent for such beliefs in English maxims such as John Dryden’s ‘Great Wits are sure to Madness near ally’d; / And thin Partitions do their Bounds divide’,^ have accepted Becker’s analysis positing the existence of a mad genius controversy. Involving a relatively small number of élite intellectuals, prime among them the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, the nature of the relationship between genius and insanity attracted comment from individuals in a number of nations, including France, Germany and America. Yet it is questionable how far intellectuals in Britain were aware of, or interested in, such a debate. Becker himself styles the interest in the possible relationship between genius and insanity as the ‘Mad Genius Controversy’; it is not a phrase that was current in the late nineteenth century. * * George Becker, The Mad Genius Controversy: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (Beverly Hills, 1978). ^ Becker, Mad Genius Controversy, pp. 10-11, 13, 29. ^ John Dryden,Absalom and Achitophel. A Poem (London, 1681), lines 163-164, p. 6. Although the alleged relationship between genius and insanity has continued to generate interest throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, the focus of the analysis has tended to be either sociological or psychological. Becker’s interpretation serves his sociological aim: to comprehend the interactions between labelled individuals and their labellers. Concerned to restore a balanced sociological approach, Becker focused