Orthodoxy | Page 7

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.
It is a small matter, but not irrelevant, that this