human
I wondered, in fact, that she had not long ago destroyed herself in one of those seizures.
gpt
They seldom do, Reuben, though often they injure themselves. She is nearly forty, that woman we saw today--I've known her bite her tongue and bruise herself, but nothing worse. As a rule they die somewhat young. It's as well you saw her so--the condition is not too rare and you'll encounter it again.
human
And the books?
gpt
Have nothing to offer but speculation and bad advice. Nothing I've tried ever had the slightest effect.... What's that?--I mean the one that called from back there in the pasture.
human
Red-winged blackbird.
gpt
I wish I knew 'em all, the way you do.
human
Brought up with 'em in the wilderness, Amadeus. But nobody could know them all.... Do the books tell anything of the cause?
gpt
Nothing worth your notice. Speculation, most of it not based on clinical observation. And (as you suggest) without at least some knowledge of immediate causes, treatment's only a blind groping. We must try it of course, because sometimes a guess is correct. But somehow we must also push back along the chain of causes--widen the area of light--somehow.... As you may or may not know, there are many going about in the world far madder than that poor epileptic, who is not really mad at all but merely drops into her fit from time to time, and usually comes out of it unharmed. A fearful thing to watch, Ru--I dare say you still feel it in your stomach. But some of the forms of madness that don't so loudly announce themselves are much worse.
human
The world may be a mad place, Amadeus, but there go the peeper frogs. I told you they might, on such an afternoon.
gpt
So they do. You don't suppose----?
human
If we continue to the pond, they'll stop. However, should we then squat patient in our boots, the thing might be done--imitating boulders, you know. We might, as it were, rock ourselves into the semblance of a natural outgrowth.
gpt
Who now hath plumbed the depths of a contumelious paronomasia?
human
Ha!
gpt
That log looks more comfortable.
human
If the ants on it are black, yes. If red, no.
gpt
They look black, the few I see. Is there a difference?
human
Oh, my friend! How did you survive till I came to you?
gpt
Don't know.
human
Yes, they're black.... By the madder ones, you mean the raving kind? Those with wild delusions?
gpt
Those, and others. I was thinking of the quieter sort, who are seldom called mad. Men and women eaten up with suspicion. So that--I think you've never encountered this, but beware of it if you do--so that everything happening within their purview must be bent to the shape of that suspicion; and to hear them talk you'd suppose the whole world was allied in conspiracy against them. I'd guess that such a state of mind is begotten of a most fearful vanity. And what evil is commoner than vanity? Of course that particular sickness of the mind is only one of its fruits. How seldom do you find anyone who hath ever attempted to look on his own life with something like the eye of eternity! But without at least some detachment, vanity is bound to grow.
human
As for example the seeming humility of proper Christians?
gpt
Oh, that, yes--but don't trouble thyself too much about that. It would seem they need it. Well, and there are those madder ones devoured by jealousy, spite, greed, and fears of a hundred kinds, mostly groundless. It's no-way true that all is vanity, but I think you may say that vanity is the source of nearly all the saddest things in human nature. Nay, I think our poor wench with the fits, by comparison with many respectable souls, is quite sane.
human
And so what is madness?
gpt
Do thou tell me, thou who gavest me once a definition of health that serves me still.
human
A--a gross exaggeration of some natural activity of the mind? 'Lilies that fester....'
gpt
I'm pleased I made thee discover the Sonnets. Yes, that might serve.... But the hunger for verifiable knowledge--now there's an activity of the mind, natural I think, but sluggish or nonexistent in most men, and in a few like thee and me, very intense: are we then mad?
human
If such hunger for knowledge became painful or annoying to others, Amadeus, I am sure we would be called mad.
gpt
Mm-yas--thought I'd caught thee, but (as usual) I'm caught instead. So consider--would you say there are _any_ activities of the mind that would not deserve the name of madness if sorely exaggerated?
human
Maybe none. That hunger for knowledge could become a thing _I'd_ call madness, if the pursuit of it caused a man to neglect too many other matters--such as sunlight and peeper frogs and Charity's pictures and the brightness of a swallow flying.
gpt
I'll agree. I dare say anything out of proportion may become a madness. Even generosity. Even love.
human
But Amadeus, I do ever think that love is not a thing, but more like a region where we travel. Something of that I said once to Ben. I can't remember when it was, and he may not have understood it--I'm sure I said it badly. Like a region, where we travel with--oh, some vision, some of the time. As sleep is like a region, and waking. Do I still say it badly, Amadeus? I mean that no one can give his friend a handful of sunlight, but may walk in it with him, and so love him.