are mankind. And mankind (as its name would seem to imply) is a
_kind_, not a degree. In so far as the lunatic differs, he differs
from all minorities and majorities in kind. The madman who thinks he
is a knife cannot go into partnership with the other who thinks he is
a fork. There is no trysting place outside reason; there is no inn on
those wild roads that are beyond the world.

The madman is not he that defies the world. The saint, the criminal,
the martyr, the cynic, the nihilist may all defy the world quite
sanely. And even if such fanatics would destroy the world, the world
owes them a strictly fair trial according to proof and public law. But
the madman is not the man who defies the world; he is the man who
_denies_ it. Suppose we are all standing round a field and looking at
a tree in the middle of it. It is perfectly true that we all see it
(as the decadents say) in infinitely different aspects: that is not
the point; the point is that we all say it is a tree. Suppose, if you
will, that we are all poets, which seems improbable; so that each of
us could turn his aspect into a vivid image distinct from a tree.
Suppose one says it looks like a green cloud and another like a green
fountain, and a third like a green dragon and the fourth like a green
cheese. The fact remains: that they all say it _looks_ like these
things. It is a tree. Nor are any of the poets in the least mad
because of any opinions they may form, however frenzied, about the
functions or future of the tree. A conservative poet may wish to clip
the tree; a revolutionary poet may wish to burn it. An optimist poet
may want to make it a Christmas tree and hang candles on it. A
pessimist poet may want to hang himself on it. None of these are mad,
because they are all talking about the same thing. But there is
another man who is talking horribly about something else. There is a
monstrous exception to mankind. Why he is so we know not; a new theory
says it is heredity; an older theory says it is devils. But in any
case, the spirit of it is the spirit that denies, the spirit that
really denies realities. This is the man who looks at the tree and
does not say it looks like a lion, but says that it _is_ a lamp-post.

I do not mean that all mad delusions are as concrete as this, though
some are more concrete. Believing your own body is glass is a more
daring denial of reality than believing a tree is a glass lamp at the
top of a pole. But all true delusio