The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

Experience has also proved that men o^gr^t artistic genius have no faculty for mathematics j no man was ever very SistinguTsKed for both. Alfieri rektes that he was never able to understand the fourth proposition of Euclid. Goethe was const^tly reproached with his want of matbematical knowledge by.iljie ignprant op^- nents of his theory of colours.

Here certainly, where it wasTxoTa^quStibn^ calculation and measurement upon hypothetical data, but of direct knowledge by the understanding of causes and effects, this reproach was so utterly absurd and inappropriate, that by making it they have exposed their entire want of judgment, just as much as by the rest of their ridiculous arguments.

The fact that up to the present day, nearly half a century after the appearance of Goethe’s theory of colours, even in Germany the Newtonian fallacies still have undisturbed possession of the professorial chair, and men continue to speak quite seriously of the seven homogeneous rays of light and their different reirangibility, will some day be numbered among the great intellectual peculiarities of men generally, and especially of Germans.

From the same cause as we have referred to above, may be explained jthe equally well-known fact that, conversery, admirable mathematicians have very little susceptibility loF^fFs"br fine art.

Tliis is very naively expressed in the well-known anecdote of the French mathematician, who, after having read Racine’s " Tphigenia/’ shrugged his shoulders and asked, “ Quest ce que cela prouve ? ” Further, as quick comprehension of relations in accordance with the laws of causality and motivation is what specially constitutes prudence or sagacity, a prudent man, so far as and while ho is so, will not be a genius, and a man~oi~ genius, so far as and while he k so, wifl not 1^ a prudent man. Lastly, perceptive knowledge generally, 3in the province of which the Idea always lies, is directly opposed to rational or abstract knowledge, which is guided by the principle of the ground of knowing. It is also well known that we seldom find great genius united with pre-emirient r^sonaWeness ; on the contrary, persons of genius are often subject to violent emotions and irrational p^sions.

But the ground of this is not weakhess of re^on, but partly unwonted energy of that whole phenomenon of will — the man of genius — which expresses itself through the violence of all his acts of will, and partly preponderance of the knowledge of perception through the senses and understanding over abstract knowledge, producing a decided tendency to the perceptible, the exceedingly lively impressions of which so far outshine colourless concepts, that they take their place in the guidance of action, which consequently becomes irrational.

Accordingly the impression of the present moment is very strong with such persons, and carries them away into unconsidered action, violent emotions and passions.

Moreover, since, in general, the knowledge of persons of genius has to some extent freed itself from the service of will, they will not in convers^ation think so much of the person they are addressing as o^ the tiling they are speaking about, which is vividly present to them ; and therefore they are likely to judge or~nmTate things too objectively for their own interests ; they will not pass over in silence what would more prudently be concealed, and so forth.

Finally, they are given to soliloquising, and in general may exhibit certein weaknesses which M^actually ^in to madness. It has often been remarked that there is a side at which genius and'~madness touch, and ,§.ven pj^s oyer into each other, and indeed poetical inspiration has been called a kind of rnadhess : insania, Horace calls it (^Od. iii. 4),