51. Franz Brentano - The Genius

Lecture given in the hall of the Association of Engineers and Architects in Vienna. Leipzig 1892

Much has been written about genius in recent times. In particular, Lombroso's book "Genius and Madness" has caused quite a stir in wider circles. With comprehensive expertise, the Italian scholar examines all the cases in which ingenious expressions of the human mind border on the uncanny realm of mental disorders. A number of the greatest minds either showed signs of insanity in the prime of their endeavors or fell into madness at the end of their lives. This would lead to the assumption that genius is not a stage in the development of the healthy human mind, but an abnormal manifestation of it. This opinion seems to be gaining more and more adherents. Eduard von Hartmann's view differs from this. According to this view, genius, in contrast to fully conscious, intellectual mental activity, lies in the unfolding of elements that rest in the unconscious womb of the soul. Only he in whom these elements work their way up from these mysterious depths into the sphere of the spirit produces genius. If Hartmann characterizes genius in this way as something quite normal, he nevertheless sees it as something qualitatively different from the talent of the normal human being. Brentano is opposed to both of these views. It sees in the work of genius only a quantitative increase of that activity of the mind which every average person continually accomplishes. The mental functions of the ordinary person: perception, apperception, reproduction and combination are only carried out more easily, more quickly and in a way that corresponds more closely to the content of things than is the case with the majority of individuals. The genius is more receptive to secret relationships between things than the average person. What the latter only discovers through painstaking research, the latter penetrates at first sight. Brentano seeks to prove that the creations of Newton, Kant, Goethe and Mozart arose only from this heightening of the intellectual faculties. These explanations are suitable for raising the consciousness of the average person. They aim to bridge the gap that is assumed to exist between first and second-rate minds. It seems to us, however, that the question is not quite the right one. Genius appears to us to be the content-creating faculty of the mind and to form the antithesis of merely formal intellectual activity. Both faculties are present in every human spirit; in the one the first predominates, in the other the second. We call genius a person in whom the content-creating faculty is developed to an outstanding degree. Genius does not appear to us as an enhancement of formal abilities, but as a prominent development of a particular side of the mind that is only slightly developed in the majority of people.