4. A degree of madness found in most men.
I shall be pardoned for calling it by so harsh a name as madness,
when it is considered that opposition to reason deserves that name, and is really madness; and there is scarce a
man so free from it, but that if he should always, on all occasions, argue or do as in some cases he constantly
does, would not be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil conversation. I do not here mean when he is under the
power of an unruly passion, but in the steady calm course of his life. That which will yet more apologize for this
harsh name, and ungrateful imputation on the greatest part of mankind, is, that, inquiring a little by the bye into
the nature of madness (Bk. ii. ch. xi. SS 13), I found it to spring from the very same root, and to depend on the
very same cause we are here speaking of. This consideration of the thing itself, at a time when I thought not the
least on the subject which I am now treating of, suggested it to me. And if this be a weakness to which all men are
so liable, if this be a taint which so universally infects mankind, the greater care should be taken to lay it open
under its due name, thereby to excite the greater care in its prevention and cure.
