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retail them after the same rate and method, and to customers much
alike.

Now whether the system here delivered was wholly compiled by Jack,
or, as some writers believe, rather copied from the original at
Delphos, with certain additions and emendations suited to times and
circumstances, I shall not absolutely determine. This I may affirm,
that Jack gave it at least a new turn, and formed it into the same
dress and model as it lies deduced by me.

I have long sought after this opportunity of doing justice to a
society of men for whom I have a peculiar honour, and whose opinions
as well as practices have been extremely misrepresented and traduced
by the malice or ignorance of their adversaries. 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. Besides, there is
something individual in human minds that easily kindles at the
accidental approach and collision of certain circumstances, which,
though of paltry and mean appearance, do often flame out into the
greatest emergencies of life. For great turns are not always given
by strong hands, but by lucky adaptation and at proper seasons, and
it is of no import where the fire was kindled if the vapour has once
got up into the brain. For the upper region of man is furnished
like the middle region of the air, the materials are formed from
causes of the widest difference, yet produce at last the same
substance and effect. Mists arise from the earth, steams from
dunghills, exhalations from the sea, and smoke from fire; yet all
clouds are the same in composition as well as consequences, and the

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