At our best and
stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but
only candles; and any bummer can blow us out.
And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often
forget--or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one
way or another all men are mad. Many are mad for money. When this
madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane; but
when it develops powerfully and takes possession of the man, it can make
him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it
again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. Love is a
madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of despair
and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like Rudolph, throw
away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life. All the whole
list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions, passions, cares,
griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and ready to grow,
spread, and consume, when the occasion comes. There are no healthy
minds, and nothing saves any man but accident--the accident of not having
his malady put to the supreme test.
One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the
pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common,
but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal.
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