Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 174, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1913 — Mental Originality. [ARTICLE]

Mental Originality.

' Anatole France has coined a phrase which may have the breath of life in it. “What is madness, after all,” he says, "but a sort of mental originality.” He writes that Charles Dickens always liked madmen, and cities among the madmen good Mr. Dick, in "David Copperfield,’’ whose innocence is described with such tender grape. "I believe," writes the great Frenchman of letters, “that Dickens had more feeling than any other writer. I believe that his novels are as beautiful as the love and pity that inspired them. I regard ‘David Copperfield* as a new gospel. I believe, lastly, that Mr. Dick is a ‘sensible’ madman, because the only reason left to him is the reasoning of the heart, an<f that is hardly ever received. What matter if he does fly kites on which he has written some reflections concertring the death of King Charles LT He is benevolent, he wishes ill to no one; and that is a piece of wisdom to which many sane men do not so easily attain as be.”