solemnly pledge himself before all his clerks and friends to count the
leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, to hop up to the City on one
leg every Thursday, to repeat the whole of Mill's 'Liberty' seventy-six
times, to collect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the
name of Brown, to remain for thirty-one hours holding his left ear in
his right hand, to sing the names of all his aunts in order of age on
the top of an omnibus, or make any such unusual undertaking, we should
immediately conclude that the man was mad, or, as it is sometimes
expressed, was 'an artist in life.' Yet these vows are not more
extraordinary than the vows which in the Middle Ages and in similar
periods were made, not by fanatics merely, but by the greatest figures
in civic and national civilization--by kings, judges, poets, and
priests. One man swore to chain two mountains together, and the great
chain hung there, it was said, for ages as a monument of that mystical
folly. Another swore that he would find his way to Jerusalem with a
patch over his eyes, and died looking for it. It is not easy to see that
these two exploits, judged from a strictly rational standpoint, are any
saner than the acts above suggested. A mountain is commonly a stationary
and reliable object which it is not necessary to chain up at night like
a dog. And it is not easy at first sight to see that a man pays a very
high compliment to the Holy City by setting out for it under conditions
which render it to the last degree improbable that he will ever get
there.

But about this there is one striking thing to be noticed. If men behaved
in that way in our time, we should, as we have said, regard them as
symbols of the 'decadence.' But the men who did these things were not
decadent; they belonged generally to the most robust classes of what is
generally regarded as a robust age. Again, it will be urged that if men
essentially sane performed such insanities, it was under the capricious