turn,
were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank,
and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion
of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was
another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake because she was "possessed of a
false and lying devil." She has been recently proposed for canonization
by the same church that burned her, and thus, in a measure, had justice
done her. I do not think, however, that this is any recompense for the
terrible agony inflicted on this unfortunate victim of hystero-epilepsy.

Says Maudsley in "Responsibility in Mental Disease": "Some of the
prophets of the Old Testament presented symptoms which can hardly be
interpreted as other than the effects of madness; certainly if they were
not mad, they imitated very closely some of its most striking features."
Jeremiah takes a long journey to the river Euphrates and hides a linen
girdle in a hole of a rock. He then returns home and in a few days
makes the same journey, and finds the girdle rotten and good for
nothing. Ezekiel digs a hole in the wall of his house, and through it
removes his household goods, instead of through the door. Hosea marries
a prostitute because he said he had been commanded by God so to do.
Isaiah stripped himself naked and paraded up and down in sight of all
the people.

Some of the greatest changes in the world's history have been effected
by dwellers in the borderlands. Mahomet was an epileptic, and his first
vision was the result on an epileptic convulsion or seizure. The
character of his visions was exactly like that of those visions which an
epileptic sees and describes at the present time. Mahomet believed in
his visions, and, what is more, got more than half the world to believe
in them also. Gautama was a dweller in the borderlands, yet his
followers now number five hundred millions.

The novel mode in which an insane man regards things may be an
inspiration which reflection could never attain, and it sometimes
happens that opinions which seem to the world to be the ravings of a
madman, have turned out to be true. The insane man has the world against
him, and though he may pose for a short time as a reformer, sooner or
later lands in the asylum.

It sometimes happens that the crank will succeed in getting converts. A
notable instance is Schweinfurth, or "the Christ," as he calls himsel