Not only Hitler but before him Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte all reportedly suffered from mysterious seizures which overtook them at seemingly random times-often inconveniently. In addition to the artificially induced LSD state, there are other, naturally occurring temporary states in which there is a collapse of the normal routines by which the mind ordinarily processes the information it receives of the outside world. It is impossible, however, to make such correlations on any kind of statistical basis, since for every "mad artist" on the model of Van Gogh, one can point to two equally creative, original, and productive artists on the sane and sober models of J. These disputations most frequently arise in connection with accomplishment in the creative arts, where the biographies of many greatly talented people are replete with histories of bizarre behavior of one kind or another. This one terrible example should quench all disputations concerning the correlations between mental aberration and accomplishment. That madmen may often be capable of incredible accomplishment should be obvious to everyone living in this century, whose history has been so monstrously deformed by the activities of an undeniable madman, Adolf Hitler. The class of drugs of which LSD-25 is the most potent member may prove for our time to be a very useful tool in exploring, via the scientific method, the roots of this age-old dilemma concerning the nature of perceived reality. In the Western tradition, the doctrine that truth may be obtained through a state of mind in which reason is dislocated, a state of ecstatic revelation, is generally supposed to have originated with the Thracian worship of Dionysius, later becoming synthesized by Pythagorus, and to have received its most complete elaboration in the dialogues of Plato. The belief that in madness there may exist a core of numinous knowledge is a commonplace in all human societies.
The current popularity of such writers as William Burroughs, Genet, and others, who specialize in the baroque recesses of human behavior, makes it seem as if, in this age of reason, we feel ourselves constrained within the confines of sanity and yearn for vicarious release.
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