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