The Pontiffs of Human Lucidity

Few works elicit such hearty laughter as those of these “men of science” like Max Nordau and Cesare Lombroso, who arrogate to themselves the role of pontiffs of human lucidity and supreme judges of mental sanity. Finally, one should admire them for their audacity in packing the greatest geniuses of human history, from Mozart to Shakespeare, and calling them all degenerate lunatics. They are the real fathers of modern psychiatry, which has in the jester the perfect model of mental sanity. An ordinary man can easily identify the original as sick, but it takes a visionary to see in creativity itself a mental disorder. Like talented clowns, these men deserve from us nothing but effusive applause and enormous gratitude.