Note Hermit (paraphrase) says "Trash me. Gain a Madman." This is similar to Feast, which is why it can be TR/KC'd. If it said "Trash me. IF YOU DO, gain a Madman," then the Scheme trick wouldn't work.
Thanks all for the answers on this. This is exactly the issue, how you parse 'trash this and gain a Madman". What you and others are saying when you equate it to 'Trash me. Gain a Madman.', and confirmed by Him Who Knows All, is that we read this as two totally separate instructions, resolved independently and sequentially. And I understand that this literal, flow-chart mode is the one we use for Dominion cards, and that by convention the phrase 'if you do' is required to indicate causality or consequentially. And that's totally fine, and actually quite clear.
What I was merely suggesting, or really just musing, is that there can also be other ways of parsing a phrase. So in this case I would submit that in a
sematic sense, meaning in the way we tend to understand English in everyday use, one could argue that 'trash this and gain a Madman' does imply at least
some level of consequentially; more to my ear than something like Jack of All Trades's "Gain a silver. Draw till you have five cards. Go make a sandwich. etc." Again compare my example "stop by the store on the way home and pick up some milk": the connectedness of the two commands is obviously implied, and if I came home saying the (theoretically one and only) store was closed, I don't think you would then ask me why I didn't still perform the second command and bring home milk.
Further one could maybe argue that in a
thematic mode, 'trash this and gain a Madman' really
means the Hermit becomes a Madman, in the manner Donald X. himself so eloquently decribes, even though yes I know it doesn't say that explicitly. In fact, at the risk of going all Clintonian, it seems to me that in the flow-chart mode vs. the semantic/thematic mode of interpretation the meaning of the word 'and' is actually slightly different! In short, mathematically it of course implies no relationship between two events, but in colloquial usage maybe it sometimes does.
Again though this is just reflection, and not at all to dispute the primacy of the flow-chart mode for this and other Dominion cards, and its likely necessity to avoid total craziness and paradox in certain situations.