rently be
irrefragably defended by reason itself, and there is hardly an error into
which men may not easily be led if they base their conduct upon reason
only.

Reason might very possibly abolish the double currency; it might even
attack the personality of Hope and Justice. Besides, people have such a
strong natural bias towards it that they will seek it for themselves and
act upon it quite as much as or more than is good for them: there is no
need of encouraging reason. With unreason the case is different. She is
the natural complement of reason, without whose existence reason itself
were non-existent.

If, then, reason would be non-existent were there no such thing as
unreason, surely it follows that the more unreason there is, the more
reason there must be also? Hence the necessity for the development of
unreason, even in the interests of reason herself. The Professors of
Unreason deny that they undervalue reason: none can be more convinced
than they are, that if the double currency cannot be rigorously deduced
as a necessary consequence of human reason, the double currency should
cease forthwith; but they say that it must be deduced from no narrow and
exclusive view of reason which should deprive that admirable faculty of
the one-half of its own existence. Unreason is a part of reason; it must
therefore be allowed its full share in stating the initial conditions.

CHAPTER XXII: THE COLLEGES OF UNREASON--Continued

Of genius they make no account, for they say that every one is a genius,
more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be
even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of
him will be healthy--so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that
he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked
but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is
no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

When I talked about originality and genius to some gentlemen whom I met
at a supper party given by Mr. Thims in my honour, and said that original
thought ought to be encouraged, I had to eat my words at once. Their
view evidently was that genius was like offences--needs must that it
come, but woe unto that man through whom it comes. A man's business,
they hold, is to think as his neighbours do, for Heaven help him if he
thinks good what they count bad. And really it is hard to see how