being well-deceived, the serene peaceful state of being a fool among
knaves.
But to return to madness. It is certain that, according to the system I
have above deduced, every species thereof proceeds from a redundancy of
vapour; therefore, as some kinds of frenzy give double strength to the
sinews, so there are of other species which add vigour, and life, and
spirit to the brain. Now it usually happens that these active spirits,
getting possession of the brain, resemble those that haunt other waste
and empty dwellings, which for want of business either vanish and carry
away a piece of the house, or else stay at home and fling it all out of
the windows. By which are mystically displayed the two principal
branches of madness, and which some philosophers, not considering so well
as I, have mistook to be different in their causes, over-hastily
assigning the first to deficiency and the other to redundance.
I think it therefore manifest, from what I have here advanced, that the
main point of skill and address is to furnish employment for this
redundancy of vapour, and prudently to adjust the seasons of it, by which
means it may certainly become of cardinal and catholic emolument in a
commonwealth. Thus one man, choosing a proper juncture, leaps into a
gulf, from thence proceeds a hero, and is called the saviour of his
country. Another achieves the same enterprise, but unluckily timing it,
has left the brand of madness fixed as a reproach upon his memory. Upon
so nice a distinction are we taught to repeat the name of Curtius with
reverence and love, that of Empedocles with hatred and contempt. Thus
also it is usually conceived that the elder Brutus only personated the
fool and madman for the good of the public; but this was nothing else
than a redundancy of the same vapour long misapplied, called by the
Latins _ingenium par negotiis_, or (to translate it as nearly as I can),
a sort of frenzy never in its right element till you take it up in
business of the state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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