Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1873-06-26
The Memory-Its Relation to Future
Life.

la some instances dseag brings
back to mind what has long been for
gotten. Thus, persons in extreme
sickness, or at the point of death, not
unfrequently have all the acts of their
past lives recur to them, and converse
in languages which they have known
only in youth. The case cited by
Coleridge of the German servant girl
who in sickness was heard repeating
passages of Greek, Latin and He
brow, which sho had formerly heard
her master repeat, as he walked in
HE study, but Of whose meaning she
had no idea, is in point in this con-
nection. A Lutheran clergyman of
Philadelphia told Dir. Rush that it
was not uncommon for the Germans
and Swedes Of his congregation, when
near death, to speak and pray in
their native languages, which some
Of them had probably not spoken for
fifty years. These facts are sufficient
~ numerous to constitute class by
themselves they seem to fall under
under some law of the physical sys.
tenn not yet clearly understood, and
are, therefore, in the present state of
our knowledge, incapable of explain
alton.
Certain writers have inferred,
from the recurrence of things long
forgotten, as in the cases now cited,
that all knowledge is indestructible
and that all which is nescessary to
the entire reproduction of the past
life is the quickened activity of the
mental powers, an effect which is'pro-
duced in the delirium of disease.
From this they have derived an ar
gument for future retribution. Golfer
idge has made such use of IL, and has
been followed by Upbam, and in
part, at least, though with more eau.
ton, by Wayland.
1t may be doubted, perhaps,
whether the absolute indcstructibiiity
Of all human knowledge is legiti-
mate inference from these facts. The
most that can with certainty be con-
cIuded from them, is not that oil our
past thoughts and consciousness must
or lCM return, but that much of it
mag-perhaps all of it and this is all
we need to know in order to per-
ceivo the possibility Of a future retri-
button. 1t is enough to know, that
in the constitution of the mind means
eriSt for recalling, in some way TO US
mysterious, and under certain con-
dtions not by US fully understood,
the objects of our former conscious
ness, in all tie freshness, and vivid
ness of their past cognizance, long
after they seem to have passed final
ly from the memory.
This simple fact, together with
the well-known tendency of the
mind in advancing age to revert to
the scenes aud incidents of early
life, certainly presents in the cIearest
light the Importance OF well-spent
life, OF a mind stored with such rec
elections as shall cast cheerful ra.
| dance over the past, and brighten
| the uncertain future-in those hours
of gloom and dependency when the
shadows iengthen upon the path of
early pilgrimage, and lite is drawing
to close. If the thoughts and i'm
pressions of the passing moment are
liable, by some casual association,
by some mysterious law of our being
under conditions which may at any
moment be fulfilled, to recur at any
time to subsequent consciousness,
with all the minuteness and power
of present reality, it becomes us, as
we regard our own highest interests,
10 guard well the avenues of thought
and feeling against the first approach
of that which we shall not be pleas
ed to meet again, when it will not
be in our power to escape its pres
ence, or avoid its recognition.