Not knowing that the world are just as bad. 
What constitutes a madman? if ’tis shown
The marks are found in you and you alone,
Trust me, I’ll add no word to thwart your plan,
But leave you free to perish like a man. 
The wight who drives through life with bandaged eyes,
Ignorant of truth and credulous of lies,
He in the judgment of Chrysippus’ school
And the whole porch is tabled as a fool. 
Monarchs and people, every rank and age,
That sweeping clause includes,—­except the sage.

“Now listen while I show you, how the rest
Who call you madman, are themselves possessed. 
Just as in woods, when travellers step aside
From the true path for want of some good guide,
This to the right, that to the left hand strays,
And all are wrong, but wrong in different ways,
So, though you’re mad, yet he who banters you
Is not more wise, but wears his pigtail too. 
One class of fools sees reason for alarm
In trivial matters, innocent of harm: 
Stroll in the open plain, you’ll hear them talk
Of fires, rocks, torrents, that obstruct their walk: 
Another, unlike these, but not more sane,
Takes fires and torrents for the open plain: 
Let mother, sister, father, wife combined
Cry ‘There’s a pitfall! there’s a rock! pray mind!’
They’ll hear no more than drunken Fufius, he
Who slept the part of queen Ilione,
While Catienus, shouting in his ear,
Roared like a Stentor, ‘Hearken, mother dear!’

“Well, now, I’ll prove the mass of humankind
Have judgments just as jaundiced, just as blind. 
That Damasippus shows himself insane
By buying ancient statues, all think plain: 
But he that lends him money, is he free
From the same charge?  ‘O, surely.’  Let us see. 
I bid you take a sum you won’t return: 
You take it:  is this madness, I would learn? 
Were it not greater madness to renounce
The prey that Mercury puts within your pounce? 
Secure him with ten bonds; a hundred; nay,
Clap on a thousand; still he’ll slip away,
This Protean scoundrel:  drag him into court,
You’ll only find yourself the more his sport: 
He’ll laugh till scarce you’d think his jaws his own,
And turn to boar or bird, to tree or stone. 
If prudence in affairs denotes men sane
And bungling argues a disordered brain,
The man who lends the cash is far more fond
Than you, who at his bidding sign the bond.

“Now give attention and your gowns refold,
Who thirst for fame, grow yellow after gold,
Victims to luxury, superstition blind,
Or other ailment natural to the mind: 
Come close to me and listen, while I teach
That you’re a pack of madmen, all and each.