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