Divine Madness

Now, however, the human species wishes to add deeper significance to their endeavors. Realizing that true fulfillment escapes them, they have begun once more to search within themselves for a kind of satisfaction they have not found so far in their conquest of the external world. They know that they can find biological happiness by achieving adaptation to their physical and social environment, but they realize that this form of happiness is as limited in scope as the contentment of the cow. The best-adapted populations certainly experienced physical contentment, but their lives were probably deficient in other ways since they have produced chiefly what Toynbee called "arrested civilizations." Modern Humans are not yet resigned enough to be completely satisfied with purely creature contentment. They still hope that they can discover a philosophy of life that will be as creative and emotionally rewarding as that of classical Greece or of Western Europe in the thirteenth century.

Our greatest blessing, says Socrates in Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, comes to us by way of madness—mania. In this arresting statement, Plato does not mean mania as a disease, but rather as a state during which man experiences a kind of self-revelation occurring through the emergence of a powerful spirit from the depth of their beings. Poetical words, tones, and gestures, and even prophecy are the expressions of enthusiasm—the god within. Apparently certain drugs can help in generating this inspired state. But Plato traced inspiration to the primeval forces that Greek mythology symbolized in the form of deities, especially Dionysos.


The Microbiologist René Dubos's from “A God Within".