Is it madness or vision

"No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness." - Aristotle

The above quote is the topic of tonight's blog.  I get some quotes from 2 or 3 other newsletters.  This one was sent to me by the folks at Penzu online journal.  It's a great site.  They offer online  journaling for free and with a fee you can upgrade to more features.  The fee is quite reasonable $19 a year for unlimited journaling and  setting up several journals. For example one might be for health, one for notes to save, one for regular journal entries , one might be stories about your kids or pets, or stories you like to write. They have good security measures so your privacy is protected.  You can even email an entry if you like. It's all up to you.  I'm not promoting this for any fee, but because I belong and I like it. You can try it for free for as long as you like and eventually try the upgrade or not.  I have one journal for letters I write to my mother.  She died almost 2 years ago, but as things happen that I wish she were here to see and hear about I write her a letter just as if she were alive.  I don't know if one can read letters from the afterlife, but after I write the letter I feel so much better.  I ever write when I have a problem.  It's almost as though she's listening quietly. But that's how I use Penzu journal; you can use it anyway you like. 

But the quote above is what I'm writing about tonight. (I'll repeat it so you don't have to look back.)

"No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness." - Aristotle 
Aristotle may have been a brilliant man, but I'm not sure about this quote - although he did say a touch of madness.  But there may be a touch of madness in more than half the people in the world (just a guess).  Depends on what exactly is a "touch" and what is one's definition of madness.  Is it diagnosed mental illness?  Or is it just the way people describe anyone who is different, brilliant, distracted by the sights and sounds around them, intense and what all. Of course in the time of Aristotle I'm not sure people really knew what madness was except for the extrememly disoriented individuals.  But some madness can be more subtle.  I think the idea of madness comes into play when someone is close to a discovery that people believe to be either impossible, or extremely unlikely, or amazing and the mere fact that this someone is working on something that others believe impossible means he has a touch of madness unless he's right and it all works out.  Then they sing his praises.  But thinking about some of the amazing discoveries like electricity, air travel, submarines, travel to space and the discovery of America and a round world, I can sort of understand why they might have been thought of as slightly off center when working on these discoveries.  So maybe he was right not that they were a little crazy, but that they were thought of that way.  Thus Mr. Aristotle was partly right.  It takes a little madness to imagine some of these things even if they are eventually proven to be possible.  After cell phones and the internet, I can't imagine what is next to be discovered  that isn't an upgrade of an earlier invention etc.  But I hope I live long enough to see it.