A DEFENCE OF SANITY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 323, 7 April 1928, Page 19

A DEFENCE OF SANITY

(Written for THE SUN) A week or so ago, Mr. A. F. D. Fairburn wrote for the Book Page an amusing article on “The Necessity For Insanity.” The following contribution is by way of reply. Sanity is the bubble in the spirit level of existence; it gives fair ■warning of dangerous dips and asinine ascensions. It comes into its own when the “passions,” that howling, maudlin painted crew have done tlieir w'orst and quit their dancing. Sanity estimates accurately, sums up a situatiou, considers all arguments, and brings down an incontrovertible conclusion.

Briefly, it is the astounding sanity of the greatest of men which causes us to say, with the surprise of a discovery of their works: “Why but this is true,” or “This was the simple key to the situation,” or “This is imagination raised to the plane of truth.” So. for fear that the dangerous doctrine (expressed by Mr. Fairburn) may lure innocents from the path of c Qnitv. I hasten to a condemnation of

his arguments. First of all, Mr. Fairburn lays down the untruth that “all geniuses are insane,” but, actually, all through his article, he strives to prove the much greater lie that “all madmen are geniuses.” This fallacy might be fairly easily confuted by application to medical superintendents of our asylums. “Point out your superman,” says Mr. Fairburn, and of course the average man in the street will, with perfect justification, say “Tom Heeney and Maurice Brownlee.” In so far as Mr. Heeney has done what no British heavy-weight has done for years and years and inasmuch that Mr. Brownlee lias discovered fame in three or four continents, they are entitled to the adjective “great”; they are sanely great in the jobs they have tackled, and having heard nothing to the contrary, one may conclude that their drawing room behaviour is perfectly reasonable. But that small point of Mr. Fairburn’s, like his conclusion that all Derby winners suffer from hallucinations, may be allowed to pass.

We not only tolerate mechanical gadgets, patent foods (like pork and beans: delightful dish!) and new dances, but we welcome them with both hands as we do the arch-enemy of things American, Mencken. We are same enough to appreciate these tilings for the virtue, slight or profound, which they undoubtedly possess, and Mr. Fairburn would have us damning and banning them, merely because of tlieir U.S.A. trademark or our own streak of insanity. As for * the non-appreciation of human originality; look liow the newspapers will jump at the first hint of a solution of the insoluble problem of perpetual motion, or at the man who keeps a rabbit alive in a- closed tank, or the New Zealander who gets his first novel published, or his face into the movies. If there is one being New Zealanders are particularly insane about, it is the New Zealander who has done something for himself in art, •science, literature, football . . . anything. Let the New Zealander get liis name in big type in other parts of the world and the country will acclaim him.

To enter into his speculation about the potentialities of a Byron, born in Remuera. Undoubtedly Byron would have been a hard rider to the Pakuranga hounds and a good oarsman of St. George’s. The hero of his “Don Juan” would quite reasonably have been Hone Heke, and no doubt George Gordon would at this moment be down at Apia rallying the Mau. Spirits like Byron’s were not the sort which bowed to environment and public opinion; these had just the opposite effect, they stirred the man to red-blooded revolt. Milton, still the son of the saintly, cultured scrivener would have found some great work “to justify God’s ways to man”; even if “Paradise Lost” had already been written; Neitsche, born in a country with a healthy disregard for the super-intellectual, might have decried the “All Blacks and white savages” and- ended his days at Avondale.

The late Dr. Macßaurin, whom we are advised to read, is capable of gathering amazing facts and coming to amazing conclusions about any litterateur. Let’s hear what he says: ‘lt is a sort of pleasing paradox—and mankind dearly loves a paradox—to say that supremely great men suffer from epilepsy. It was said of Julius

Caesar, of St. Paul, and of Mohammed. . . . It is ridiculous to suppose that Julius Caesar and Napoleon—by common consent the two greatest of the sons of men—should have been subject to a disease which deteriorates the intellect.” So much for Dr. MacLaurin.

It is a trite saying that there is no such thing as a normal man. Anyone’s private life held up to the public gaze in the pages of some perfectly truthful biographer, would seem very strange in patches, and with the service of a sensation-monger, and say even one of the less efficient psychoanalysts to handle the corpse, goodness knows what could be proved against him. After all, there is a pride in mediocrity. It is the despised average middle-people who must decide things. The lighter spirits dash on ahead or go careering back into the dark ways behind, but the body of sanity goes slowly on its way, tempted a few feet this way and a few inches that, but nearly always in the middle of the road, where is the safe going. “Very decent, quiet, respectable, fairly-intelligent nobodies.” Mr. Fairburn evidently thinks that is a shattering condemnation. As a matter of fact it is absurdly extravagant praise. What greater hope can the most sanguine of eugenists hold? What higher ideals can Christianity put forward? What more happy state of existence can anyone wish for? The only

trouble is that many of us are not decent, nor quiet, nor respectable, and some of us are absurdly intelligent. Finally, I see no argument wh: we should not go forward in the endeavour to produce our geniuses by the way of model citizenship. There seems no valid reason why geniuses of tlie sort of, say, Homer and William Shakespeare, should not make fairly decent neighbours, and after all, who wants a Napoleon over the way? lAN D. COSTER. Auckland.