Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely
altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember
walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often
heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I
had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing
in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he
believes in himself." And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen,
my eye caught an omnibus on which was written "Hanwell." I said to him,
"Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For
I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally
than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty
and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men
who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said
mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in
themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I
retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from
whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That
elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room,
he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience
instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that
believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors
who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would
be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail because he believes
in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete
self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a
hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote:
the man who has it has 'Hanwell' written on his face as plain as it is
written on that omnibus." And to all this my friend the publisher made
this very deep and effective reply, "Well, if a man is not to believe in
himself, in what is he to believe?" After a long pause I replied, "I
will go home and write a book in answer to that question." This is the
book that I have written in answer to it.
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.
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!"
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 men more or less from thinking about sex. The new scientific
society definitely discourages men from thinking about death; it is a
fact, but it is considered a morbid fact. And in dealing with those
whose morbidity has a touch of mania, modern science cares far less for
pure logic than a dancing Dervish. In these cases it is not enough that
the unhappy man should desire truth; he must desire health. Nothing can
save him but a blind hunger for normality, like that of a beast. A man
cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of
thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were,
independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere
reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and
round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the
Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he performs
the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out at Gower
Street. Decision is the whole business here; a door must be shut for
ever. Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous
cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting
out a devil. And however quietly doctors and psychologists may go to
work in the matter, their attitude is profoundly intolerant--as
intolerant as Bloody Mary. Their attitude is really this: that the man
must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one of
intellectual amputation. If thy _head_ offend thee, cut it off; for it
is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to
enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be
cast into hell--or into Hanwell.
Such is the madman of experience; he is commonly a reasoner, frequently
a successful reasoner. Doubtless he could be vanquished in mere reason,
and the case against him put logically. But it can be put much more
precisely in more general and even æsthetic terms. He is in the clean
and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point.
He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity. Now, as I
explain in the introduction, I have determined in these early chapters
to give not so much a diagram of a doctrine as some pictures of a point
of view. And I have described at length my vision of the maniac for this
reason: that just as I am affected by the maniac, so I am affected by
most modern thinkers. That unmistakable mood or note that I hear from
Hanwell, I hear also from half the chairs of science and seats of
learning to-day; and most of the mad doctors are mad doctors in more
senses than one. They all have exactly that combination we have noted:
the combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted
common sense. They are universal only in the sense that they take one
thin explanation and carry it very far. But a pattern can stretch for
ever and still be a small pattern. They see a chess-board white on
black, and if the universe is paved with it, it is still white on black.
Like the lunatic, they cannot alter their standpoint; they cannot make a
mental effort and suddenly see it black on white.
Take first the more obvious case of materialism. As an explanation of
the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the
quality of the madman's argument; we have at once the sense of it
covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.
Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance, Mr.
McCabe, and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands
everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos
may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is
smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the
madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large
indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the
earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon
the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small.
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
It must be understood that I am not now discussing the relation of
these creeds to truth; but, for the present, solely their relation to
health. Later in the argument I hope to attack the question of objective
verity; here I speak only of a phenomenon of psychology. I do not for
the present attempt to prove to Haeckel that materialism is untrue, any
more than I attempted to prove to the man who thought he was Christ that
he was labouring under an error. I merely remark here on the fact that
both cases have the same kind of completeness and the same kind of
incompleteness. You can explain a man's detention at Hanwell by an
indifferent public by saying that it is the crucifixion of a god of whom
the world is not worthy. The explanation does explain. Similarly you may
explain the order in the universe by saying that all things, even the
souls of men, are leaves inevitably unfolding on an utterly unconscious
tree--the blind destiny of matter. The explanation does explain, though
not, of course, so completely as the madman's. But the point here is
that the normal human mind not only objects to both, but feels to both
the same objection. Its approximate statement is that if the man in
Hanwell is the real God, he is not much of a god. And, similarly, if the
cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos, it is not much of a
cosmos. The thing has shrunk. The deity is less divine than many men;
and (according to Haeckel) the whole of life is something much more
grey, narrow, and trivial than many separate aspects of it. The parts
seem greater than the whole.
For we must remember that the materialist philosophy (whether true or
not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. In one sense, of
course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. They cannot be broader than
themselves. A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an
atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and continue
to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and
continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, there is a very special
sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr.
McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in
determinism. I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to
believe in fairies. But if we examine the two vetoes we shall see that
his is really much more of a pure veto than mine. The Christian is quite
free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and
inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not
allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of
spiritualism or miracle. Poor Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even
the tiniest imp, though it might be hiding in a pimpernel. The Christian
admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a
sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a
touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch
of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of
the madman. But the materialist's world is quite simple and solid, just
as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that
history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the
interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and
solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.
Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic
denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But
if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first
case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the
road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with
madness is yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive
and logical theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually
destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions
of the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his
humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry,
initiative, all that is human. For instance, when materialism leads men
to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle to pretend
that it is in any sense a liberating force. It is absurd to say that you
are especially advancing freedom when you only use free thought to
destroy free will. The determinists come to bind, not to loose. They may
well call their law the "chain" of causation. It is the worst chain that
ever fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty, if you
like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just
as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a
man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, if you like, that the man is
free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and
important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free to eat, drink,
sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like,
that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the
reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact
that he is not free to praise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge,
to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year
resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say "thank
you" for the mustard.
In passing from this subject I may note that there is a queer fallacy to
the effect that materialistic fatalism is in some way favourable to
mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments or punishments of any kind.
This is startlingly the reverse of the truth. It is quite tenable that
the doctrine of necessity makes no difference at all; that it leaves the
flogger flogging and the kind friend exhorting as before. But obviously
if it stops either of them it stops the kind exhortation. That the sins
are inevitable does not prevent punishment; if it prevents anything it
prevents persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty
as it is certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent
with the cruel treatment of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent
with is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to their
better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle. The
determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does
believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner, "Go
and sin no more," because the sinner cannot help it. But he can put him
in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment. Considered as a
figure, therefore, the materialist has the fantastic outline of the
figure of the madman. Both take up a position at once unanswerable and
intolerable.
Of course it is not only of the materialist that all this is true. The
same would apply to the other extreme of speculative logic. There is a
sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that everything began in
matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything
began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but
the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a mythology
made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother. This
horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat
mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought that men would
get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after the Superman
who are always looking for him in the looking-glass, those writers who
talk about impressing their personalities instead of creating life for
the world, all these people have really only an inch between them and
this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all round the man has
been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts, and the
foundations of the world fail; then when the man, believing in nothing
and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great
individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The
stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother's
face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of
his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, "He
believes in himself."
All that concerns us here, however, is to note that this panegoistic
extreme of thought exhibits the same paradox as the other extreme of
materialism. It is equally complete in theory and equally crippling in
practice. For the sake of simplicity, it is easier to state the notion
by saying that a man can believe that he is always in a dream. Now,
obviously there can be no positive proof given to him that he is not in
a dream, for the simple reason that no proof can be offered that might
not be offered in a dream. But if the man began to burn down London and
say that his housekeeper would soon call him to breakfast, we should
take him and put him with other logicians in a place which has often
been alluded to in the course of this chapter. The man who cannot
believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are
both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their
argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have
both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and
stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and
happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the
earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is
infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular.
But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and slavish
eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether
sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol,
which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to
represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his
mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very
unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the
eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious
theosophists and higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well
presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys
even himself.
This chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what actually is
the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say in summary that it is
reason used without root, reason in the void. The man who begins to
think without the proper first principles goes mad, the man who begins
to think at the wrong end. And for the rest of these pages we have to
try and discover what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, if
this be what drives men mad, what is it that keeps them sane? By the end
of this book I hope to give a definite, some will think a far too
definite, answer. But for the moment it is possible in the same solely
practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human
history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have
mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.
The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has
always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had
one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself
free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also
to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for
consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other,
he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His
spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two
different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he
has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a
thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the
kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom
of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was
not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been
the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is
this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not
understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and
succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to
be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes
the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say
"if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to
remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the
housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed
of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions
with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol
of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at
once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity
is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in
its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger
or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a
contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its
shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without
changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens
its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.
Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value in speaking of this deep
matter; and another symbol from physical nature will express
sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind. The one
created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of
which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism
explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious
invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a
popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is
secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right
when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he
was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary
dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that
transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position
of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid
confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze
and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as
recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For
the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics
and has given to them all her name.