ABSTRACT
Madness, when recognised as a disease, excites distress and pity, or when merely gaped at, as odd and silly, it may excite laughter; or, in its inward misery, it may seem a divine visitation. We are all mad in our dreams, when outer impressions do not check our galloping ideas; and marginal madness plays about us in our waking thoughts; as a dog will scurry before and behind his pedestrian master and is whistled for sometimes in vain. Great passions and excitements touch madness at their summit: so that madness is not really an inhuman or demonic thing. It is only too domestic, too individually human, too headstrong to keep in step with things; so that if it becomes central and directive, it dashes us against the rocks. Not always, however, so soon or so fatally as a summary view might suggest. A boat may lean over very far in the wind without capsizing, when there is ballast and momentum enough; and a mind can yield to a vast deal of extravagance without coming to grief.
