Orthodoxy | Page 9

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!"
And it must be remembered that the most purely practical science does
take this view of mental evil; it does not seek to argue with it like a
heresy but simply to snap it like a spell. Neither modern science nor
ancient religion believes in complete free thought. Theology rebukes
certain thoughts by calling them blasphemous. Science rebukes certain
thoughts by calling them morbid. For example, some religious societies
discouraged