For I think it one
of the greatest and best of human actions to remove prejudices and
place things in their truest and fairest light, which I therefore
boldly undertake, without any regards of my own beside the
conscience, the honour, and the thanks.
SECTION IX.--A DIGRESSION CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL, THE USE, AND
IMPROVEMENT OF MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH.
Nor shall it any ways detract from the just reputation of this
famous sect that its rise and institution are owing to such an
author as I have described Jack to be, a person whose intellectuals
were overturned and his brain shaken out of its natural position,
which we commonly suppose to be a distemper, and call by the name of
madness or frenzy. For if we take a survey of the greatest actions
that have been performed in the world under the influence of single
men, which are the establishment of new empires by conquest, the
advance and progress of new schemes in philosophy, and the
contriving as well as the propagating of new religions, we shall
find the authors of them all to have been persons whose natural
reason hath admitted great revolutions from their diet, their
education, the prevalency of some certain temper, together with the
particular influence of air and climate.
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