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In contrast to so many scientific books, the volume under review can be appreciated equally by the specialist and by the lay reader. It falls neither into the Scylla of popular distortion and over-simplification nor into the Charybdis of scientific jargon. The book is divided into three parts, preceded by an introduction in which the author defines genius. The first part is an analysis of the conditions which produce genius; in the second part, the lives of some men of genius are examined and used to illustrate the laws governing genius formulated in the earlier chapters; the third part is devoted to an interesting collection of portraits of outstanding philosophers, scientists, and poets to show the tendency of these to fall into two physical types, the pyknic and the leptosome.
Kretschmer gives the title of genius to 'the producer of personally stamped special values'. He finds that the incidence of psychosis and psycho-neurosis among men of genius and their families is very high, but that their case is exceptional, for instead of resulting in ineffectiveness, the psychopathic tendencies lead to the development of genius, and in fact are an intrinsic and essential part of it.
The second chapter more particularly, and to some extent the whole book, deals with the relation of genius to sublimation, showing how the instinctive factor, being modified, becomes the driving force in the production of art, etc.: 'He who becomes a genius does so only because he is forced, because inner tensions are driving him constantly to new output'. With