and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among
dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses
what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of
to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn
let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance
at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to
blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere
that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's
mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically
unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing
laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history
utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not
only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really
held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them.
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is
reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go
mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will
be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does
lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as
physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet
really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of
rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not
because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even
chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of
knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs
of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a
diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great
English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by