To love according to an established order, to entertain one’s best self in a preconceived manner, to worship the gods becomingly, to intrigue the devils artfully—and then to forget all as though memory were dead.
To fancy with a motive, to contemplate with consideration, to be happy sweetly, to suffer nobly—and then to empty the cup so that tomorrow may fill it again.
All these things, O God, are conceived with forethought, born with determination, nursed with exactness, governed by rules, directed by reason, and then slain and buried after a prescribed method. And even their silent graves that lie within the human soul are marked and numbered.
It is a perfect world, a world of consummate excellence, a world of supreme wonders, the ripest fruit in God’s garden, the master-thought of the universe.
But why should I be here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilled passion, a mad tempest that seeketh neither east nor west, a bewildered fragment from a burnt planet?
Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods?
Colophon
The Madman
was published in 1918 by
Khalil Gibran.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Sami Siddiqui,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2004 by
William Fishburne
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
The Prophet Zechariah,
a painting completed in 1888 by
James Tissot.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
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The first edition of this ebook was released on
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Uncopyright
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