Now, as I explain in the introduction, I have determined in these early chapters to give not so much a diagram of a doctrine as some pictures of a point of view.

And I have described at length my vision of the maniac for this reason: that just as I am affected by the maniac, so I am affected by most modern thinkers.

That unmistakable mood or note that I hear from Hanwell, I hear also from half the chairs of science and seats of learning to-day; and most of the mad doctors are mad doctors in more senses than one.

They all have exactly that combination we have noted: the combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense.

They are universal only in the sense that they take one thin explanation and carry it very far.