Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds

by Earl John Russell Russell

I was informed that somebody had invented a method by which these hearts might restore the lost affection; and as the wife whom I accompanied had found the heart of her husband, I explained to her the invention, which she has since practised with complete success. According to the direction given her, she dissolved the heart in a certain liquid, and, keeping it in a bottle, secretly mixed a small quantity with whatever her husband drank. The effect was, that after the first draught he intimated some return of kindness, which still increased as he proceeded through the bottle; and when he had drank the whole heart he had resumed all his former affection.

When I had left this building, I soon arrived at another which contains groundless fears. I entered it, and found, as in many others, a spacious room filled with bottles, containing the apprehensions that have troubled mankind without necessity. On studying the labels of these bottles, I thought the fears of men little less wild and visionary than their hopes; and it appeared to me that the worst calamities of life are those which are never to happen. Moralists have often praised the concealment of the future from man as a most ingenious invention against approaching evils; but since we are so much tormented by evils that are not coming, I think this ignorance is but an imperfect security.

I diverted myself in reading the terrors with which these bottles are stored. Every gale of wind supplies them with apprehensions from those who are at sea; and I was surprised to observe how many people there are who, in a thunder-storm on shore, are fully convinced that the lightning will choose their persons in preference to every other spot where it could light. Great numbers in a trifling sickness had suffered all the horrors of approaching death. I knew not before how many there are who use the precaution of being always uneasy, and have so much foresight as to lose all the comfort of life.

One part of this room is assigned to public fears, which are contained in large urns. These are the apprehensions which have seized a great part of our nation from time to time. There is great variety in the nature of them. At one time a small party of men are suddenly convinced that all the rest of the nation are soon to be mad by agreement at the same instant, leaving only themselves in possession of reason: every thing they see tends to a general insanity; and by the expectation of this event they are much harassed, as is reasonable. Sometimes those who are earnest in religion apprehend that the people, at a stated time, are going to disbelieve Christianity and abolish it. And sometimes the farmers of England are seized with a belief that parliament, instigated by a bad ministry, intends to pass a law forbidding the practices of ploughing and sowing, to the manifest injury of agriculture.

These epidemic fears are so frequent in England that every body must remember a great number of them. Sometimes they seem to invade the country of their own accord, and at other times are contrived by the invention and industry of certain statesmen,—for one of these terrors has often power to ruin or secure a ministry; so that the great wisdom of state in England is a skill in prompting and regulating fears. I know not whether there is more art or fortune in the beginning and progress of a fear: very able men often undertake to be the authors of one without any success; and in spite of the reasoning with which they tell the world to be afraid, not a man will consent to feel any alarm. Sometimes a most plausible apprehension is invented, and sent into the world with the countenance of eminent men, and every other advantage for its promotion, and yet it can obtain no credit, but is almost immediately lost, while, at another time, a terror is obscurely raised, and, although without probability, favour, or any arts of advancement, it is instantly spread and established.

It is vain to oppose a successful fear: a wise minister attacked by one will enrol himself under it, and be as much terrified as any body. These apprehensions differ much in duration, the life of some being only a few weeks, and others lasting for many months, or even for some years.

I have said that the public fears are kept in large urns, with this difference from the private fears, that a bottle contains the apprehensions of only one person, while an urn holds the terror of a whole party, each public fear having an urn to itself. Every urn is inscribed with the name of the fear that it preserves, and is larger or smaller according to the numbers who have been possessed by its contents. On one urn I read "Popery," on another, "Revolution."

But while I was reading the names of these past disturbances, a fearful clamour rushed into the room, sounding like the sudden shout of a vast crowd, but incessantly repeated. I found it was a public terror newly arrived from the earth, and the guardian of the room made haste to secure it. He brought an urn, the size of which he had determined by his ear, and enticed the uproar into it by a proceeding very similar to the art which inveigles a swarm of bees into a hive. This clamour was the repetition of a single word by thousands of voices. What the word was I shall not disclose; for since it has very lately been a prevalent fear, some excellent persons not yet dispossessed, on learning its departure to the moon, would be distressed by the fatal security that has befallen us.

It is possible that a skilful statesman might employ these urns in his service by letting out some terror judiciously chosen at a time favourable to its progress. I am not able to say whether it would prosper a second time, or return instantly to the moon, as having been discharged, but I think the experiment worthy of being tried by any administration that wants aid. Great care and judgment would be required in the selection of a fear for release, lest it should turn against its deliverers.