"Think not others blind because ye will not see....The concentrated
light of the soul is not visible to the naked eye."
The microscope also led to the discovery of the incipient causes of
madness, by the facility it afforded us for the dissection and
examination of the minutest portions of the numerous divisions of the
brain.
Before my laws came into operation the incipient symptoms of monomania
were rarely noticed, and many were driven into confirmed madness and
crime by neglect or improper treatment, whilst some of the supposed
lunatics were really wiser than their keepers or the doctors who
attended them. It often happened that the aspirations of a superior mind
were mistaken for indications of the malady, and led to the
incarceration of the supposed lunatic. For instance, a poor man, who
lived in the reign 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 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.
This knowledge enables us to discriminate with certainty, to detect the
existence, nature, and locality of the germ, and apply effectual
remedies during the earliest tendency to the malady. Until this
discovery was made, I took effectual means for curing the numbers in
whose brains madness had already been developed. I erected many great
buildings, where each patient was separated from the others, for in
Montalluyah madness is thought to be more or less contagious; but after
I had reigned some years the deserted divisions only served to show for
what purpose they had been formerly used, and, with one single
exception, kept in case of need, these buildings are now appropriated to
other purposes.
Amongst the discoveries that astonished the brain-doctors and
mind-tamers was the following:--It was formerly thought that the disease
existed in the _overworked_, portion of the brain; but this was found to
be an error, inasmuch as the disease exists in those parts of the brain
which have lain dormant or have been little used. From these the
oleaginous fluids essential to their life and activity are drawn to
supply the overworked portion, which remains in full health and power.
The doctors admitted that their original belief would alone suffice to
account for their having failed to cure so many cases of madness.
The heat of the climate, the power of the sun, the then excessive use of
stimulants, and the excitability of the people,--whose pulsation is more
rapid than yours,--all tended formerly to augment the victims of the
scourge.