e held in peculiar respect by the vulgar, and are
thought to be in every way superior to those whose understandings are
entire. The laws by which two objects, so far apart, operate on each
other, have been, as yet, but imperfectly developed, and the wilder
their freaks, the more they are the objects of wonder and admiration."

"Now and then, though very rarely, the man of the earth regains the
intellect he has lost; in which case, his lunar counterpart returns to
his former state of imbecility. Both parties are entirely unconscious
of the change--one, of what he has lost, and the other, of what he has
gained."[7]

The belief of the influence of the moon on the human intellect, the
Brahmin remarks, may be perceived in the opinions of the vulgar, and
in many of the ordinary forms of expression; and he takes occasion to
remark, that these very opinions, as well as some obscure hints in the
Sanscrit, give countenance to the idea, that they were not the only
voyagers to the moon; but that, on the contrary, the voyage had been
performed in remote antiquity; and the Lunarians, we are told, have a
similar tradition. Many ordinary forms of expression are adduced in
support of these ideas.

"Thus," says the Brahmin, "it is generally believed, throughout all
Asia, that the moon has an influence on the brain: and when a man is
of insane mind, we call him a lunatic. One of the curses of the common
people is, 'May the moon eat up your brains!' and in China, they say
of a man who has done any act of egregious folly, 'He was gathering
wool in the moon.'" I was struck with these remarks; and told the
hermit that the language of Europe afforded the same indirect evidence
of the fact he mentioned,--that my own language, especially, abounded
with expressions which could be explained on no other hypothesis: for,
besides the terms "lunacy," "lunatic," and the supposed influence of
the moon on the brain, when we see symptoms of a disordered intellect,
we say the mind _wanders_, which evidently alludes to a part of
it rambling to a distant region, as is the moon. We say too, a man is
"_out of his head_," that is, his mind being in another man's
head, must of course be out of his own. To "know no more than the man
in the moon," is a proverbial expression for ignorance, and is without
meaning, unless it be considered to refer to the Glonglims.[8]

"We say that an insane man is 'distracted,' by which we mean that his
mind is drawn two