Divine Fury (65 page)

14
. On Schiller’s skull, see the account in Hagner,
Geniale Gehirne
, 69–75. The skull was reunited with the body after a year, in the Duke of Weimar’s family tomb.

15
. G. W. F. Hegel,
Phenomenology of Spirit
, trans. A. V. Miller, foreword J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 197. Hegel’s lengthy discussion of phrenology and physiognomy is found in section C.V.c, “Observations of self-consciousness in relation to its immediate actuality. Physiognomy and Phrenology.”

16
. Brain weights are taken from the figures reported, and critically analyzed, in Gould,
Mismeasure of Man
, 120–128. For a recent, critical take on some of Gould’s findings, see Jason E. Lewis et al., “The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould Versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias,”
PLoS Biol
9, no. 6 (2011). On the Society of Mutual Autopsy, see Jennifer Michael Hecht,
The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 6–7, 41. On Spitzka, see Ann Fabian,
The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010). On brain museums and brain collecting more generally, see Brian Burrell,
Postcards from the Brain Museum: The Improbable Search for Meaning in the Matter of Famous Minds
(New York: Broadway Books, 2004).

17
. Broca is cited in Gould,
Mismeasure of Man
, 115. For E. A. Spitzka, see “A Study of the Brain of the Late Major J. W. Powell,”
American Anthropology
5 (1903): 585–643 (citation on 604).

18
. The French scientist is cited in Hecht,
End of the Soul
, 226.

19
. Among Lélut’s many works attacking phrenology, see his
Qu’est-ce que la phrénologie? ou Essai sur la signification et la valuer des systèmes de la psychologie en général, et celui de Gall en particulier
(Paris: Trinquart, 1836), and
Rejet de l’organologie phrénologique de Gall et de ses successeurs
(Paris: Fortin-Masson, 1843).

20
. L. F. Lélut,
Du démon de Socrates, specimin d’une application de la science psychologique à celle de l’histoire
(Paris: Trinquart, 1836).

21
. Lélut,
Démon de Socrates
, 17.

22
. See Baudelaire’s “Assommons les pauvres!” in
Le spleen de Paris
. The poem, written in the mid-1860s, reflects the prominent position that Lélut had by that point acquired. L. F. Lélut,
L’amulette de Pascal pour servir à l’histoire des hallucinations
(Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1846); L. F. Lélut,
Du démon de Socrate, spécimen d’une application de la science psychologique à celle de l’histoire. Nouvelle édition revue, corrigée et augementée d’une préface
(Paris: Chez J. B. Baillière, 1856); Jacques-Joseph Moreau,
La psychologie morbide dans ses rapports avec la philosophie de l’histoire, ou De l’influence des névropathies sur le dynamisme intellectuel
(Paris: Victor Masson, 1859), xi–xii.

23
. Moreau pays homage to Lélut and his work in several places in
Psychologie morbide
, notably on xi–xii, 7, 25–26, and 474; see also 20–24.

24
. Moreau,
Du Hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale: Études psychologiques
(Paris: Librairie de Fortin, Masson, 1845).

25
. Moreau,
Psychologie morbide
, 18, 463.

26
. On Napoleon, see Moreau,
Psychologie morbide
, 559. Moreau relies here on the work of the doctor and psychologist Alexandre Brière de Boismont, whose
Des hallucinations, ou Histoire raisonnée des apparitions, des visions, des songes, de l’extase, du magnétisme et du somnambulisme
(Paris: G. Baillière, 1845) discusses the case of Napoleon’s belief in his star. The story was widely repeated by those alleging a close relation between madness and genius. The physiological account of inspiration is provided in
Psychologie morbide
, 494–495. The passage is actually taken from that of the French doctor Joseph-Henri Réveillé-Parise’s
Physiologie et hygiène des hommes livrés aux travaux de l’esprit
(Paris, 1834), although that is not immediately clear from the way Moreau cites the work.

27
. Moreau provides a long passage from Diderot’s article “On Theosophy,” from the
Encyclopédie
in
Psychologie morbide
, 567; see also 496–497.

28
. On the scientific appropriation of the Romantic construction of mad genius, see George Becker,
The Mad Genius Controversy: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance
(Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1978); Ernst Kretschmer,
The Psychology of Men of Genius
, trans. and intro. R. B. Cattell (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1931). The original German
Geniale Menschen
appeared in 1929.

29
. Émile Zola,
Dr. Pascal
, trans. Mary J. Serrano (New York: Macmillan, 1898), 121–122. The German psychologist William Hirsch went so far as to call Zola a “Max Nordau in the form of a novelist.” See his
Genius and Degeneration, a Psychological Study
, trans. from the 2nd ed. of the German work (London: W. Heinemann, 1897), 322. On the analysis of Zola, see the nice account in Daniel Pick’s astute
Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848–1918
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 74–97.

30
. Cesare Lombroso,
The Man of Genius
, rev. ed. (London: Walter Scott, 1917), 137, 5–9.

31
. Ibid., 8, 151, 6–7. The diagram is provided on p. 125.

32
. Ibid., 122–130, 112. On Lombroso’s high regard for quantification, see David G. Horn,
The Criminal Body: Lombroso and the Anatomy of Deviance
(London: Routledge, 2003), 8.

33
. See, for example, William James’s unsigned reviews of a German translation of Lombroso’s
Genius and Degeneration
and Max Nordau’s
Degeneration
in
Psychological Review
2, no. 3 (1895): 288–290. Caroline J. Essex emphasizes that Great Britain was, on the whole, an exception to the thesis put forth by George Becker in his
Mad Genius Controversy
, which argues for a widespread link between genius and madness in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century psychological literature. See her “In Pursuit of Genius: Tracing the History of a Concept in English Writing, from the Late Enlightenment to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century” (PhD diss., University College London, 2002), chap. 4.

34
. Pick,
Faces of Degeneration
, 2; Irina Sirotkina,
Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880–1930
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

35
. On the discourse of monstrosity, see Miranda Gill,
Eccentricity and the Cultural Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Paris
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 207–239.

36
. J. Sully, “Genius and Insanity,”
Nineteenth Century
17 (1885): 948–969 (citation on 952); Lombroso,
Man of Genius
, 145, 334, 361; Henry T. F. Rhodes,
Genius and Criminal: A Study in Rebellion
(London: John Murray, 1932), 59–61. Rhodes was an admirer of Lombroso.

37
. Francis Galton,
Memories of My Life
(London: Metheun, 1908), 249–250. Galton initially organized the anthropometric laboratory for the International Exhibition of 1884 and then moved it to a room in the Science Galleries of the South Kensington Museum for six years. On Galton’s use of composite portraits in isolating the faces of criminals, see Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison,
Objectivity
(New York: Zone Books, 2007), 168–171; Francis Galton,
Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences
(New York: Prometheus Books, 2006).

38
. Galton,
Hereditary Genius
, 9, 307, 13.

39
. Ibid., 34.

40
. Ibid., 28–29, 12. Galton arrived at the ratio of one to a million by comparison with other classes of exceptional human beings. So-called “men of the times” appeared at the rate of roughly 425 to 1 million, while “men of eminence” were 250 to 1 million. But he wasn’t always so exact, speaking variously of genius as “one in a million,” “one in many millions” or “one in ten millions” (ibid., 18, 41).

41
. Galton,
Hereditary Genius
, 11, 39–40.

42
. On historimetrics, see Dean Keith Simonton,
Genius, Creativity, and Leadership: Historimetric Inquiries
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

43
. Raymond E. Fancher, “Alphonse de Candolle, Francis Galton and the Early History of the Nature-Nurture Debate,”
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
19, no. 4 (1983): 341–352; Emel Aileen Gökyight, “The Reception of Francis Galton’s
Hereditary Genius
in the Victorian Periodical Press,”
Journal of the History of Biology
27, no. 2 (1994): 215–240; Charles Darwin,
The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication
, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1875), 1:451. Darwin expresses similar sentiments in his
Autobiography
and
The Descent of Man
.

44
. Samuel Smiles,
Life and Labour or Characteristics of Men of Industry, Culture, and Genius
(London: John Murray, 1907), 75. Smiles’s discussion of genius as “intense energy,” “inspired instinct,” an “inspiration, a gift, an afflatus,” which “brings dead things to life” and “begins where rules end” provides a nice summary of reigning assumptions (75–77).

45
. Galton,
Hereditary Genius
, 61. See Galton’s discussion of the many bizarre tests administered in his anthropometric laboratory in
Memories of My Life
, chap. 17.

46
. In addition to the excellent scholarly accounts provided in Gould,
Mismeasure of Man
, and Carson,
Measure of Merit
, see Raymond E. Fancher,
The Intelligence Men: Makers of the IQ Controversy
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), and Steven Murdoch,
IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007).

47
. Binet is cited in Carson,
Measure of Merit
, 137. Carson provides a general account of Binet’s methods and interest in great calculators like Inaudi (
Measure of Merit
, 131–137).

48
. Alfred Binet, “Historique des recherches sur les rapports de l’intelligence avec la grandeur et la forme de la tête,”
L’année psychologique
5 (1895): 245–298. Vaschide is cited in Carson,
Measure of Merit
, 133.

49
. Lewis M. Terman, ed.,
Genetic Studies of Genius
, 5 vols. (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1925–1959), 1:1–2; Lewis M. Terman,
The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 12. The
Measurement of Intelligence
was dedicated to the memory of Binet.