To the classical mind, madness could easily be the effect of an external 'milieu', or more exactly the stigmata of a certain solidarity with the world: just as the access to the truth of the world, after the fall, had to pass through the tortuous and often distorting medium of the senses, so the possession of reason depended to some extent on the 'physical state of the machine', and all the mechanical effects that might act upon it.