us than yours; and is it really in
your small and painful pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much
happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer
of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like
spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as
well as down!"

And it must be remembered that the most purely practical science does
take this view of mental evil; it does not seek to argue with it like a
heresy, but simply to snap it like a spell. Neither modern science nor
ancient religion believes in complete free thought. Theology rebukes
certain thoughts by calling them blasphemous. Science rebukes certain
thoughts by calling them morbid. For example, some religious societies
discouraged men more or less from thinking about sex. The new scientific
society definitely discourages men from thinking about death; it is a
fact, but it is considered a morbid fact. And in dealing with those
whose morbidity has a touch of mania, modern science cares far less for
pure logic than a dancing Dervish. In these cases it is not enough that
the unhappy man should desire truth; he must desire health. Nothing can
save him but a blind hunger for normality, like that of a beast. A man
cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of
thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were,
independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere
reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and
round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the
Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he performs
the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out at Gower
Street. Decision is the whole business here; a door must be shut for
ever. Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous
cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting
out a devil. And however quietly doctors and psychologists may go to
work in the matter, their attitude is profoundly intolerant--as
intolerant as Bloody Mary. Their attitude is really this: that the man
must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one of
intellectual amputation. If thy _head_ offend thee, cut it off; for it
is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to
enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be
cast into hell--