Definition of madness by GKChesterton

What is mad? When we talk about madness we talk about a person, a madman or a madwoman that tends to do what is not expected by society rules, by rational rules or by what is «normal». Many great scientists, philosophers, comics, intelligent people tend to fall in this category, because they do not do what is expected or they follow other rules. Chesterton says that a madman is no one that defies the world, but the one that denies it. They pretend to fall outside the categories that holds up together.

«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.»

Life has many aspects, most of them depend on the perspective we have with reality, we may see different things, but we are sure we are seeing something that may encourage us, enlighten us, inspire, fear, make us happy, melancholic, sad, or confused. But there is a difference with a maniac, as Chesterton describes it:

«The difference between us and the maniac is not about how things look or how things ought to look, but about what they self-evidently are. The lunatic does not say that he ought to be King; Perkin Warbeck might say that. He says he is King. The lunatic does not say he is as wise as Shakespeare; Bernard Shaw might say that. The lunatic says he is Shakespeare. The lunatic does not say he is divine in the same sense as Christ; Mr. R.J. Campbell would say that. The lunatic says he is Christ. In all cases the difference is a difference about what is there; not a difference touching what should be done about it.»

Maniac people never question if what they are doing is right or wrong, they think they are above all and no one can interfere with their plans. «For this reason, and for this alone, the lunatic is outside public law. This is the abysmal difference between him and the criminal. The criminal admits the facts, and therefore permits us to appeal to the facts. We can so arrange the facts around him that he may really understand that agreement is in his own interests. We can say to him, «Do not steal apples from this tree, or we will hang you on that tree.» But if the man really thinks one tree is a lamp-post and the other tree a Trafalgar Square fountain, we simply cannot treat with him at all… He cannot have a vote, because he is the citizen of another country. He is a foreigner. Nay, he is an invader and an enemy; for the city he lives in has been superimposed on ours.»

Good and bad aren’t thing we convey and that is what tradition has taught us all along, but the facts, we realize good and bad are things we do, that doesn’t depend on us, but they are things that affects others since we think about them: to kill, rob, lie, are things that go against human nature, because we end up using people, and people aren’t meant to be used, but to be loved (Saint Augustine).

«A man is punished specially as a burglar, and not generally as a bad man, because a man may be a burglar and in many other respects not be a bad man. The act of burglary is punishable because it is intelligible. But when acts are unintelligible, we can only refer them to a general untrustworthiness, and guard against them by a general restraint. If a man breaks into a house to get a piece of bread, we can appeal to his reason in various ways. We can hang him for housebreaking; or again (as has occurred to some daring thinkers) we can give him a piece of bread. But if he breaks in, let us say, to steal the parings of other people’s finger nails, then we are in a difficulty: we cannot imagine what he is going to do with them, and therefore cannot easily imagine what we are going to do with him. If a villain comes in, in cloak and mask, and puts a little arsenic in the soup, we can collar him and say to him distinctly, «You are guilty of Murder; and I will now consult the code of tribal law, under which we live, to see if this practice is not forbidden.» But if a man in the same cloak and mask is found at midnight putting a little soda-water in the soup, what can we say? The principle of the indeterminate sentence is the creation of the indeterminate mind. It does apply to the incomprehensible creature, the lunatic. And it applies to nobody else.»

Nowadays people tend to use people for their advantage, instead of loving them. Most relationships are met because we need something, or we want to avoid something so we use the others to get what we want. The laws may permit things that can legalize we use others, but what happens when we are being used for the advantage of others?

«That which can condemn the abnormally foolish is the normally foolish. It is when he begins to say and do things that even stupid people do not say or do, that we have a right to treat him as the exception and not the rule. It is only because we none of us profess to be anything more than man that we have authority to treat him as something less.»

We must learn to be aware of doing to others what we want to be done for us, and no one likes to be used if there is no advantage for us, not a monetary one, but the same level of advantage others see in us, «the literal maniac is different from all other persons in dispute in this vital respect: that he is the only person whom we can, with a final lucidity, declare that we do not want. He is almost always miserable himself, and he always makes others miserable.»

Our worth is higher than anything that is out there, we must realize that we cannot be exchanged, bought or dealt with for other goods that are inferior to us: pleasure, money, goods, other people.

Chesterton, G. K.. Eugenics and Other Evils