ADVENTUROUS PIONEERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

ADVENTUROUS PIONEERS

CONQUERING A WILDERNESS,

(By DR. DON D. TULLIS.)

The dividing line between sanity and insanity is exceedingly dim. Visitors to mental sanitariums are sometimes able to distinguish between attendants and patients only by means of the uniforms.

The superintendent of one institution tells of a visitor who desired to be shown through the wards. A well-dressed orderly was asked to be his guide.

He led liis guest from room to room, describing the different types of mental ailments and discussing the modern treatment of such disorders.

Finally the guide pointed to a certain patient and remarked, "There is a peculiar case. That fellow is pixilated. He thinks he is Napoleon." The visitor laughed and said, "Poor, deluded fellow." "He sure is," replied the guide, "because, you see. I am Napoleon." While it is difficult to differentiate between Ihe sane and insane, there is one type of individual whom everybody knows to be pixilated —the man who is different from the crowd, who dares the unusual, who pioneers in thoughts and deeds, who cuts the ties that bind to the past and present, and goes out not knowing where, but seeking ever for bigger and better things. Every pioneer is accounted "queer" by his contemporaries. Men tapped their foreheads with a knowing look when Christopher Columbus called upon the Royalty of Spain to share his theory of a rounded world.

The prophets of progress are always charged with madness by the priests of propriety. Paul was pixilated, else he would not have exchanged a life of luxury for shipwrecks and imprisonments. Savonarola was mad. He might have lived to a ripe old age within the secluded walls of San Marco had he not chosen to challenge Florence to accept the kingship of his Lord. Livingstone was not quite sane or he would not have left a happy home to die in darkest Africa.

Our.own forefathers were unbalanced —pixilated, if you please. They surrendered th" Perquisites of civilisation that they jr.i;' : 't conquer an unknown ■wilderness.

Jesus of Nazareth was mad. He spurned -a life of self-seeking, and went about doing good, and they said he had a devil. 'Twas even starker madness drove Him to a cross. If satisfaction with the things that are is a sicrn of sanity. God give us men whose madness will ensure the progress of the world.—N.A.N.A. Service.