Page:The Prophetic Spirit in its Relation to Wisdom and Madness.djvu/26

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The Prophetic Mania — Plato.

I. THE PROPHETIC MANIA.

Our first consideration is the Platonic view of this subject.

Among the Gentile nations the Prophetic Spirit has ever been identified with madness, and madness with the Prophetic Spirit.

The Hebrew prophets when they sometimes ventured beyond the boundaries of their own land, were universally received with honor and with awe; for, in fact, most* of the Eastern nations, we are told, treat with reverence all pretensions to divine afflatus; so as to respect even madness or idiotcy as possibly partaking of that mysterious influence. Even among the Greeks madness was generally accounted a sacred disease, sacer morbus, and epilepsy more especially; and hence, one of the reasons for which the same word Mania was made use of to signify both madness and the Prophetic Spirit. In the Ph&aelig;rus of Plato love itself is regarded as a madness, and the lover as one that is mad; because love was regarded as an inspiration from the gods, and an inspiration from the gods as a form of madness.&dagger;

&ast; Dean Milman's History of the Jews, vol. i., p. 343. Sec. Ed.

&dagger; In illustration of this remark may be quoted a passage from Calmeil in his treatise, De La Folie, vol. ii., p. 226 : "Erotomania delights itself in the adoration of the object loved, to which it renders a kind of romantic worship. Sacrificing all to love, it loses sleep, passes rapidly from despair to joy, and forgets even the requirements of hunger. Aristotle, Orpheus, Solomon, Tasso, were inflamed, as we are assured, with this insensate delirium. Aristotle offered up to his spouse the incense of perfume; Solomon carried his love to the extreme of idolatry; Orpheus, as the poets tell us, went to seek Eurydice in the gulphs of Tartarus; Lucretius cut the thread of his own life in a fit of love. Tasso passed fourteen years