If a prosperous modern man, with a high hat and a frock-coat, were to solemnly pledgehimself before all his clerks and friends to count the leaves on every third tree in HollandWalk, to hop up to the City on one leg every Thursday, to repeat the whole of Mill's 'Liberty'seventy-six times, to collect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the name ofBrown, to remain for thirty-one hours holding his left ear in his right hand, to sing thenames of all his aunts in order of age on the top of an omnibus, or make any such unusualundertaking, we should immediately conclude that the man was mad, or, as it is sometimesexpressed, was 'an artist in life.' Yet these vows are not more extraordinary than the vowswhich in the Middle Ages and in similar periods were made, not by fanatics merely, but bythe greatest figures in civic and national civilization-by kings, judges, poets, and priests.One man swore to chain two mountains together, and the great chain hung there, it wassaid, for ages as a monument of that mystical folly. Another swore that he would find hisway to Jerusalem with a patch over his eyes, and died looking for it. It is not easy to see thatthese two exploits, judged from a strictly rational standpoint, are any saner than the actsabove suggested. A mountain is commonly a stationary and reliable object which it is notnecessary to chain up at night like a dog. And it is not easy at first sight to see that a manpays a very high compliment to the Holy City by setting out for it under conditions whichrender it to the last degree improbable that he will ever get there.But about this there is one striking thing to be noticed. If men behaved in that way in ourtime, we should, as we have said, regard them as symbols of the 'decadence.' But the menwho did these things were not decadent; they belonged generally to the most robust classesof what is generally regarded as a robust age. Again, it will be urged that if men essentiallysane performed such insanities, it was under the capricious direction of a superstitiousreligious system. This, again, will not hold water; for in the purely terrestrial and evensensual departments of life, such as love and lust, the medieval princes show the same madpromises and performances, the same misshapen imagination and the same monstrousself-sacrifice. Here we have a contradiction, to explain which it is necessary to think of thewhole nature of vows from the beginning. And if we consider seriously and correctly thenature of vows, we shall, unless I am much mistaken, come to the conclusion that it isperfectly sane, and even sensible, to swear to chain mountains together, and that, if insanityis involved at all, it is a little insane not to do so.