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Page 7
It is a small matter, but not irrelevant, that this striking
mistake is commonly supported by a striking misquotation. We have
all heard people cite the celebrated line of Dryden as "Great genius
is to madness near allied." But Dryden did not say that great genius
was to madness near allied. Dryden was a great genius himself,
and knew better. It would have been hard to find a man more romantic
than he, or more sensible. What Dryden said was this, "Great wits
are oft to madness near allied"; and that is true. It is the pure
promptitude of the intellect that is in peril of a breakdown.
Also people might remember of what sort of man Dryden was talking.
He was not talking of any unworldly visionary like Vaughan or
George Herbert. He was talking of a cynical man of the world,
a sceptic, a diplomatist, a great practical politician. Such men
are indeed to madness near allied. Their incessant calculation
of their own brains and other people's brains is a dangerous trade.
It is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the mind. A flippant
person has asked why we say, "As mad as a hatter." A more flippant
person might answer that a hatter is mad because he has to measure
the human head.
And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true
that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged
in a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will,
that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy,
because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic
would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse
in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's,
can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of
causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man.
But my purpose is to point out something more practical.
It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist should not
know anything about free will. But it was certainly remarkable that
a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about lunatics.
Mr. Suthers evidently did not know anything about lunatics.
The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions
are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless,
they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks;
slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing
his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things;
the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such
careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand;
for the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause
in everything. The madman would read a conspiratorial significance
into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping
of the grass was an attack on private property. He would think
that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice.
If the madman could for an instant become careless, he would
become sane. Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people
in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their
most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting
of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze.
If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will
get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker
for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.
He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb
certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain
sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this
respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost
his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except
his reason.
The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often
in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly,
the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable;
this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds
of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy
against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men
deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators
would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours.
Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no
complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad;
for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the
existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ,
it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity;
for the world denied Christ's.
Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error
in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed.
Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this:
that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle
is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite
as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation
is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large.
A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world.
There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such
a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many
modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically,
we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness
is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual
contraction. The lunatic's theory explains a large number of things,
but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you
or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be
chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air,
to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside
the suffocation of a single argument. Suppose, for instance,
it were the first case that I took as typical; suppose it were
the case of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against him.
If we could express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal
against this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this:
"Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart,
and that many things do fit into other things as you say. I admit
that your explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it
leaves out! Are there no other stories in the world except yours;
and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details;
perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was
only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it
was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would
be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you!
How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller
in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity
and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their
sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin
to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you.
You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your
own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself
under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers."
Or suppose it were the second case of madness, that of a man who
claims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, "All right!
Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you care?
Make one magnificent effort and you will be a human being and look
down on all the kings of the earth." Or it might be the third case,
of the madman who called himself Christ. If we said what we felt,
we should say, "So you are the Creator and Redeemer of the world:
but what a small world it must be! What a little heaven you must inhabit,
with angels no bigger than butterflies! How sad it must be to be God;
and an inadequate God! Is there really no life fuller and no love
more marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and painful
pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much happier you would be,
how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God
could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles,
and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well
as down!"
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