coherence of bodies.  People laughed at what they supposed to be illusions, and there the matter might have stopped; but the poor man persisted in his assertions that the sun contained electricity, which could be attracted, concentrated, and applied to various purposes.  He appealed to the well-known fact, that the sun ripens the fruits of the earth, changes the colours of substances, affects the brain, and produces many wondrous phenomena without visible contact.  His lucubrations, instead of suggesting experiment, were received with derision, and the man himself was cruelly treated, his very persistency in the truth convincing the world that he was a confirmed madman.  In vain he appealed to the officers charged to visit the monomaniacs, and, in spite of all his efforts, he died in a lunatic asylum.

So dangerous, indeed, was it formerly to announce new ideas opposed to those already received, that we had a proverb to the effect, that he was not mad who had “droll” thoughts, but he was so who told them to the world.  The proverb is now somewhat reversed, and he is thought wicked who, being favoured with gleams of light, allows them to perish with him.

Accompanying all laws, I gave to the people my reasons at length for their promulgation, together with answers to anticipated objections; and in the exposition of the laws relating to madness I bid them recollect that had I endeavoured to put my thoughts into action some years earlier, I should undoubtedly have suffered similar persecution to those under which many others had succumbed.

Monomania is not now assumed, as formerly, from the seeming extravagance or supposed absurdity of people’s words; for it is well known in Montalluyah that thoughts which a few years before were scoffed at as the height of absurdity are now acknowledged facts, and they who could doubt the existence of the now familiar phenomena would alone be thought mad!  It is known, too, that people often say strange things from confused or indistinct recollections of what has befallen them in a prior state of existence, or from prenotion or intuition of things as yet unknown to others; and although in the sciences we accept nothing as conclusive that is not confirmed by experiment, the vastness or strangeness of the thought, far from attracting ridicule, generally leads to inquiry, experiments, and results.  Many of our great discoveries have been suggested by hints which formerly would have seemed the ravings of a disordered mind.

With our microscopes we have been enabled to examine and dissect all the minutest divisions of the brain, each of which responds to certain trains of thought, and to ascertain the physical cause of madness.