[MA-WS-230]
TYRANTS OF THE INTELLECT
In our times, any one who expressed a single moral trait so thoroughly as the characters of Theophrastus and Molière do, would be considered ill, and be spoken of as possessing “a fixed idea.” The Athens of the third century, if we could visit it, would appear to us populated by fools. Nowadays the democracy of ideas rules in every brain—there the multitude collectively is lord. A single idea that tried to be lord is now called, as above stated, “a fixed idea.” This is our method of murdering tyrants—we hint at the madhouse.