would think that the lopping of the grass was an attack on private
property. He would think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to
an accomplice. If the madman could for an instant become careless, he
would become sane. Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with
people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their
most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of
one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue
with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of
it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being
delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by
a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of
experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections.
Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading
one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is
the man who has lost everything except his reason.

The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a
purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the
insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this
may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of
madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against
him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that
they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His
explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he
is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that
the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England
that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if
a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the
world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.