Every form of insanity, one may say, has a physiological prototype. Melancholia takes for its model the little depressive attacks of everyday life; mania has its prototype in the unrestrained enthusiasm of the baseball “fan”; and even the various forms of paranoia, the true insanity, have their typical representatives among normal persons. To bring out this kinship we need no better example than that offered by the delusion of greatness. This delusion is so bound up with the requirements of the human psyche, so organically knit together with the ego, that it constitutes an indispensable element of our ethical consciousness. Every one of us thinks himself the wisest, best, most conscientious, and so forth. Each one thinks himself indispensable. It is this delusional greatness of the normal person which makes life tolerable under even the hardest conditions. It gives us the strength to bear all our humiliations, disappointments, failures, and the “whips and scorns of time.” Of course we are very careful to conceal this delusional greatness from the rest of the world. We all have our secret chapels in which we offer daily prayers and into which no one, not even our nearest, is permitted even to glance. In this chapel our idol sits enthroned, the prototype of majesty, “our ego,” before whom we bend our knees in humble supplication. But out there--in the world without--it is different. There we play the role of the humble, respectful, subservient fellow. We swear allegiance to alien gods and mock our ego and its powers. But sometimes the delusional greatness breaks out with pathological elementary force. We ought to keep our light under a bushel, trudge along with the multitude, day in, day out. Then all would be well. But destiny must not lift us to heights where our behaviour cannot escape observation and every one of our thoughts will be deduced from our actions. Success must not narcotise us to the extent of depriving us of that vestige of self-criticism which we so imperatively need in whatever situation life may place us. Success does not pacify the roaring of our megalomania. Success goads it with a thousand lashes of the whip so that it becomes restive and escapes from the security of the preserves of the soul. Is this still a healthy manifestation? Or are we already in the realm of the pathological? Is it the first delusion or the ultimate wisdom?