The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
A clear and complete insight into the nature of madness, a correct and distinct conception of what constitutes the difference between the sane and the insane, has, as far as I know, not as yet been found. Neither reason nor understanding can be denied to madmen, for they talk and understand, and often draw very accurate conclusions ; they also, as a rule, perceive what is present quite correctly, and apprehend the connection between cause and effect. Visions, like the phantasies of delirium, are no ordinary symptom of madness : delirium falsifies perception, madness the thoughts. For the most part, madmen do not err in the knowledge of what is immediately ‘present; their raving always relates to what is absent and past, and only through these to their connection with what is present. Therefore it seems to me that
^ Cf. Chap. xxxi. of the Bupplement*
p. 249
their malady specially concerns the memory; not indeed that memory fails them entirely, for many of them know a great deal by heart, and sometimes recognise persons whom they have not seen for a long time ; but rather that the thread of memory is broken, the continuity of its connection destroyed, and no uniformly connected recollection of the past is possible.
Particular scenes of the past are known correctly, just like the particular present ; but there are gaps in their recollection which they fill up with fictions, and these are either always the same, in which case they become fixed ideas, and the madness that results is called monomania or melancholy ; or they are always different, momentary fancies, and then it is called folly, fatuitas.
This is why it is so difficult to find out their former life from lunatics when they enter an asylum. The true and the false are always mixed up in their memory.
Although the immediate ^esenl; is correctly known, it becomes falsified through its fictitious connection with an imaginary past; they therefore regard themselves and others as identical with persons who exist only in their imaginary past ; they do not recognise some of their acquaintances at all, and thus while they perceive correctly what is actually present, they have only false conceptions of its relations to what is absent.
If the madness reaches a high degree, there is complete absence of memory, so that the madman is quite incapable of any reference to what is absent or past, and is only determined by the caprice of the moment in connection with the fictions which, in his mind, fill the past. In such a case, we are never for a moment safe frorn violence or murder, unless we constantly make the madman aware of the presence of superior force.
The knowledge of the madman has this in common with that of the brute, both are confined to the present What distinguishes them is that the brute has really no idea of the past as such, though the past acts upon it through the medium of custom, so that, for example, the dog recognises its former master even after years, that is to say, it receives the wonted impression at the sight of him ; but of the time that has passed since it saw him it has no recollection. The madman, on the other hand, always carries about in his reason an abstract past, but it is a false past, which exists only for him, and that either constantly, or only for the moment.
The influence of this false past prevents the use of the true knowledge of the present which the brute is able to make. The fact that violent mental suffering or unexpected and terrible calamities should often produce madness, I explain in the following manner. AH such suffering is as an actual event confined to the present.
It is thus merely transitory, and is consequently never excessively heavy ; it ohTy Becomes unendurably great when it is lasting pain ; but as such it exists only in thought, and therefore lies in the^imo^.
If now such a sorrow, such painful knowledge or reflection, is so bitter that it becomes altogether unbearable, and the individual is prostrated under it, then, terrified Nature seizes upon madness as the last riioiirce of life ; ^e mind so fearfully tortured at once destroys ^e thread of its memory, fills up the gaps with fictions, and thus seeks refuge in madness from the mental suffering that exceeds "its strength, just'as we cut off fTmortified limb and replace it with a wooden one.
The distracted Ajax, King Lear, and Ophelia may be taken as examples ; for the creations of true genius, to which alone we can refer here, as universally known, are equal in truth to real persons ; besides, in this case, frequent actual ex^rience shows the same thing.
A faint analogy of this kind of transition from pain to madness is to be found in the way in which all of us often seek, as it were mechanically, to drive away a painful thought that suddenly occurs to us by some loud exclamation or quick movement — to turn ourselves from it, to distract our minds by force.
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