Oh well.) Among the people he cites as holding the same opinion: Moreau (de Tours), Psychologie Morbide (1859) J. Lombroso isolates revealing quotes and surprising anecdotes on the crazy brains of artists and scientists. Creative genius is usually something you're born with, not something you learn or can teach when it strikes later in life, it usually provokes an entirely new artistic skill, not a minor improvement in an existing skill. They are no ordinary "fools" they have a special kind of "neurosis," maybe hereditary, leading to a "degeneration" more severe than in most other madmen. Lombroso isolates revealing quotes and surprisin Lombroso believes geniuses are mad.
How, in fact, can one suppress a feeling of horror at the thought of associating with idiots and criminals those individuals who represent the highest manifestations of the human spirit?. I had been enabled to discover in genius various characters of degeneration which are the foundation and the sign of nearly all forms of congenital mental abnormality, but the exaggerated extension which was at that time given to theories of degeneration, and still more the vague and inexact character of that conception, had repelled me so that I accepted the facts, but not their ultimate consequences. Like still-born children, they appear but for a moment, to disappear at once. I had been enabled to discover in genius various characters of degeneration which are the foundation and th The idea that genius was a special morbid condition had indeed often occurred to me, but I had always repelled it and besides, without a sure experimental basis, ideas to-day do not count. The idea that genius was a special morbid condition had indeed often occurred to me, but I had always repelled it and besides, without a sure experimental basis, ideas to-day do not count.