Orthodoxy | Page 8

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