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Page 6
But I think this book may well start where our argument started--
in the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of science are
much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact.
The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with
that necessity. They began with the fact of sin--a fact as practical
as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous
waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.
But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists,
have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water,
but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute
original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can
really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in
their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness,
which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially
deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest
saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the
starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is)
that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat,
then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions.
He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he
must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do.
The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution
to deny the cat.
In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now possible
(with any hope of a universal appeal) to start, as our fathers did,
with the fact of sin. This very fact which was to them (and is to me)
as plain as a pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially
diluted or denied. But though moderns deny the existence of sin,
I do not think that they have yet denied the existence of a
lunatic asylum. We all agree still that there is a collapse of
the intellect as unmistakable as a falling house. Men deny hell,
but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the purpose of our primary argument
the one may very well stand where the other stood. I mean that as
all thoughts and theories were once judged by whether they tended
to make a man lose his soul, so for our present purpose all modern
thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tend to make
a man lose his wits.
It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity
as in itself attractive. But a moment's thought will show that if
disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease.
A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see
the picture. And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can
only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane man his insanity is
quite prosaic, because it is quite true. A man who thinks himself
a chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks
he is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass.
It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which
makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony of his idea
that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see
the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short,
oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike
odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time;
while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life.
This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old
fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero
a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling;
they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern
psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central.
Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately,
and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero
among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy
tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober
realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will
do in a dull world.
Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic
inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are
to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the
matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion
adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination,
is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as
psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association
between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it.
Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very
great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like;
and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much
the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity.
Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad;
but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers;
but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen,
in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does
lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as
wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark
that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had
some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance,
really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he
was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him;
he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles,
like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts,
because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram.
Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English
poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic,
by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not
the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health.
He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his
hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and
the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin;
he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men
do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets.
Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him
into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only
some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else.
And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in
his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.
The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats
easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea,
and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion,
like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything
is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only
desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in.
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician
who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head
that splits.
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