Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/225

Rh from the superficies of things; such a man, truly wise, creams off nature, leaving the sour and the dregs, for philosophy and reason to lap up. This is the sublime and refined point of felicity, called the possession of being well deceived; the serene peaceful state, of being a fool, among knaves.

But to return to madness. It is certain, that according to the system I have above deduced, every species thereof proceeds from a redundancy of vapours; therefore, as some kinds of phrensy give double strength to the sinews, so there are of other species, which add vigour, and life, and spirit to the brain: now, it usually happens, that these active spirits, getting possession of the brain, resemble those that haunt other waste and empty dwellings, which, for want of business, either vanish, and carry away a piece of the house, or else stay at home, and fling it all out of the windows. By which, are mystically displayed the two principal branches of madness, and which, some philosophers, not considering so well as I, have mistaken to be different in their causes, overhastily assigning the first to deficiency, and the other to redundance.

I think it therefore manifest, from what I have here advanced, that the main point of skill and address is, to furnish employment for this redundancy of vapour, and prudently to adjust the season of it; by which means, it may certainly become of cardinal and catholick emolument, in a commonwealth. Thus one man, choosing a proper juncture, leaps into a gulf, thence proceeds a hero, and is called the saver of his country: another, achieves the sarne enterprize, but, unluckily timing it, has left the brand of madness fixed as a reproach upon his mory: