What breeds insanity?

[humble soul]

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do... Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine... He was damned by John Calvin... Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion... The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits... The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason... Materialists and madmen never have doubts... Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.

 

[humble soul]

A famous person wrote that.
Not the famous person, Humble Soul. Another one. Can you guess without googling?

 

[Edward]

Anton Leveigh?

I was with him up until the last paragraph. lol. Then he went wide.

 

[Edward]

So was I right?!

 

[humble soul]

So was I right?!

No. And I've never heard of that guy.
Hint. This guy was born in the 19th Century.

 

[humble soul]

And he is not alive now.

 

[Who Me]

only one great English poet went mad, Cowper.

Even wiki got it right, Cowper was nearly locked away for insanity but was saved from insanity by Evangelical Christianity. He was a great friend of John Newton, together they wrote many great hymns and campaign against slavery.

 

[JLB]

Exactly what does breed insanity is reason.

Unclean spirits; demons.

Demonic spirits influencing people to behave in an ungodly way.

Mad; ie insane


Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, not even with chains, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones. Mark 5:1-5




JLB

 

[humble soul]

Ok I give you the answer
G K Chesterton
Famous book was Orthodoxy

 

[humble soul]

The original quote I don't fully agree with of course. Only last week I was singing the praises of "reason" . We need to keep our reason faculty sharp these days, so we aren't brainwashed.
But Chesterton really encouraged the use of imagination in faith. To see the look on people's faces when Jesus performed miracles. The symbolism of the cross. The stories in the Old testament help us "imagine" what God is like. God remains a mystery and that is a good thing because if we think we can analyse and "pin down" God we are surely deluded.