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.