I think it fair to add that these short-term maniacs, these inspired idiots, appear to be extraordinarily difficult to produce. It is painfully easy to manufacture lifelong loonies, but even the most artful God seems to have trouble fashioning beings whose manic spells are limited to those periods during which the lunatic is holding a means to write and is confronted with blank paper. In any event, God seldom creates such specimens. Consequently, they have to be manufactured without divine assistance, and all down the ages, scholars have been obliged to devote as much time and effort to
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