The Best of Fritz Leiber by Fritz Leiber

its cure. For a long time I refused to face the facts, but finally my researches—especially those in the literature of the twentieth century—left me no alternative. The mentality of mankind had become—aberrant. Only certain technological advances, which had resulted in making the business of living infinitely easier and simpler, and the fact that war had been ended with the creation of the present world state, were staving off the inevitable breakdown of civilization. But only staving it off—delaying it. The great masses of mankind had become what would once have been called hopelessly neurotic. Their leaders had become… you said it first, Phy… insane. Incidentally, this latter phenomenon—the drift of psychological aberrants toward leadership—has been noted in all ages.”
    He paused. Was he mistaken, or was Phy following his words with indications of a greater mental clarity than he had ever noted before, even in the relatively non-violent World secretary? Perhaps—he had often dreamed wistfully of the possibility—there was still a chance of saving Phy. Perhaps, if he just explained to him clearly and calmly—
    “In my historical studies,” he continued, “I soon came to the conclusion that the crucial period was that of the Final Amnesty, concurrent with the founding of the present world state. We are taught that at that time there were released from confinement millions of political prisoners—and millions of others. Just who were those others? To this question, our present histories gave only vague and platitudinous answers. The semantic difficulties I encountered were exceedingly obstinate. But I kept hammering away. Why, I asked myself, have such words as insanity, lunacy, madness, psychosis, disappeared from our vocabulary—and the concepts behind them from our thought? Why has the subject ‘abnormal psychology’ disappeared from the curricula of our schools? Of greater significance, why is our modern psychology strikingly similar to the field of abnormal psychology as taught in the twentieth century, and to that field alone? Why are there no longer, as there were in the twentieth century, any institutions for the confinement and care of the psychologically aberrant?”
    Phy’s head jerked up. He smiled twistedly. “Because,” he whispered slyly, “everyone’s insane now.”
    The cunning of the insane
. Again that phrase loomed warningly in Carrsbury’s mind. But only for a moment. He nodded.
    “At first I refused to make that deduction. But gradually I reasoned out the why and wherefore of what had happened. It wasn’t only that a highly technological civilization had subjected mankind to a wider and more swiftly-tempered range of stimulations, conflicting suggestions, mental strains, emotional wrenchings. In the literature of twentieth century psychiatry there are observations on a land of psychosis that results from success. An unbalanced individual keeps going so long as he is fighting something, struggling toward a goal. He reaches his goal—and goes to pieces. His repressed confusions come to the surface, he realizes that he doesn’t know what he wants at all, his energies hitherto engaged in combatting something outside himself are turned against himself, he is destroyed. Well, when war was finally outlawed, when the whole world became one unified state, when social inequality was abolished… you see what I’m driving at?”
    Phy nodded slowly. “That,” he said in a curious, distant voice, “is a very interesting deduction.”
    “Having reluctantly accepted my mam premise,” Carrsbury went on, “everything became clear. The cyclic six-months’ fluctuations in world credit—I realized at once that Morganstern of Finance must be a manic-depressive with a six-months’ phase, or else a dual personality with one aspect a spendthrift, the other a miser. It turned out to be the former. Why was the Department of Cultural Advancement stagnating? Because Manager Hobart was