. . . If you are not equal to
me and able to comprehend me so much the worse for you."[18] In other
words, in his own eyes, Marat is in advance of everybody else and,
through his superior genius and character, he is the veritable savior.
Such are the symptoms by which medical men recognize immediately one
of those partial lunatics who may not be put in confinement, but who
are all the more dangerous;[19] the malady, as they would express it
in technical terms, may be called the ambitious delirium, well known
in lunatic asylums. -- Two predispositions, one an habitually
perverted judgment, and the other a colossal excess of self-
esteem,[20] constitute its sources, and nowhere are both more prolific
than in Marat. Never did a man with such diversified culture, possess
such an incurably perverted intellect. Never did a man, after so many
abortive speculations and such repeated malpractices, conceive and
maintain so high an opinion of himself. Each of these two sources in
him augments the other: through his faculty of not seeing things as
they are, he attributes to himself virtue and genius; satisfied that
he possesses genius and virtue, he regards his misdeeds as merits and
his whims as truths.
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