eign of my predecessor, thought, and truly thought, that
electricity might be used as a motive power for the heaviest bodies, and
supply the place of wood used as fuel in manufactures. He also thought
that electricity, then impalpable to the senses, was the material
ingredient affecting the weight and 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