ple. If he could once see the first principle, he would see
that it is not there.

This slow and awful self-hypnotism of error is a process that can occur
not only with individuals, but also with whole societies. It is hard
to pick out and prove; that is why it is hard to cure. But this mental
degeneration may be brought to one test, which I truly believe to be a
real test. A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things,
so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. Crusaders not cutting
their beards till they found Jerusalem, Jacobins calling each other
Harmodius and Epaminondas when their names were Jacques and Jules, these
are wild things, but they were done in wild spirits at a wild moment.

But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State
is growing insane. For instance, I have a gun license. For all I know,
this would logically allow me to fire off fifty-nine enormous field-guns
day and night in my back garden. I should not be surprised at a man
doing it; for it would be great fun. But I should be surprised at the
neighbours putting up with it, and regarding it as an ordinary thing
merely because it might happen to fulfill the letter of my license.

Or, again, I have a dog license; and I may have the right (for all I
know) to turn ten thousand wild dogs loose in Buckinghamshire. I should
not be surprised if the law were like that; because in modern England
there is practically no law to be surprised at. I should not be
surprised even at the man who did it; for a certain kind of man, if he
lived long under the English landlord system, might do anything. But I
should be surprised at the people who consented to stand it. I should,
in other words, think the world a little mad if the incident, were
received in silence.

Now things every bit as wild as this are being received in silence every
day. All strokes slip on the smoothness of a polished wall. All blows
fall soundless on the softness of a padded cell. For madness is a
passive as well as an active state: it is a paralysis, a refusal of
the nerves to respond to the normal stimuli, as well as an unnatural
stimulation. There are commonwealths, plainly to be distinguished here
and there in history, which pass from prosperity to squalor, or from
glory to insignificance, or from freedom to slavery, not only in
silence, but with serenity. The face still smiles while the limbs,
literally and loathsomely, are dropping from the bod