New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1876-05-28

-~~-se~~~
months. Observe, Mr.. Editor, that this
communication was in language common
to the two amanuenses-for they were
nothing else-of the optimist spirit. They
could have been given in Syriac or Coptic.
They might have been couched in Egyptian
hieroglyphic, or bewildered into Pcayune.
They were given in plain English. But
when "the spirit said write," why we're
not these publications synchronous Mr..
Editor, the writer of the Times is what we
call an unconscious medium. When all these
ideas were perforating his pericranium
he felt them not, or smistook them for ia
miliar titillations of which he took no &C.
count. Yet they passed into his brain by
lnsensible absorption, and though they
must have produced some perturbation
among such crude ideas as occupy the cas-.
ual mind, he may have felt but an excep-
tional exaltatioD, attributable possibly to
an inspiring bowl dedicated by the nearest
saloon to elevating the intellectual standard
of the journal which he represented.
These ideas lay dormant. They were i'm
iressed upon the sensorium; they remained
as the words on the palimpsest, written over
with new thought, may be revived and
brought out; as the tender &c cret commu-
nicated in sym pathetic ink may be made
legible under light or heat; as the forgotten
chants or lege nds Of childhood may be re-
vived by the sight of tree or q carol of q
bird; as the train Of dream thought may be
awakened by the concurrence of daily in
cidenf; as the microscope brings out effects
otherwise invisible. The thought. uncon-
sciously intensified and absorbed, was
there-innocently there. There are uncon-
scious media. l was one myself. The
Times writer may have been an unconscious
orator, an undeveloped logician, or an un-
suspected wit. The fact that these quail
ties had never been demonstrated or even
suspected does not demonstrate their non
existence. The writer in question: am
of course ignorant who he is-may ordi-
narily display no qualities of intellect in q
marked degree. The immediate suspicion
which rested on the inspired production
shows an abnormal, an almost unnatural,
exercise of brain power. Again-I speak
impersonally-the writer may be regarded
as a wooden head. He may be wooden
head. Is it not, 1 ask, from the rugged
block that the most beautiful ergravings
are cut? Isnot the breathing statue en-
shrined in dormant splendor within the
block of marble!
The reported absence in the unconscious
and innocent Times medium of all those
qualities which appear in the inspired
article of the CornhiH Magazine proves
rather the acc uracy Gf my chronological
diagnosis than the gross and ordinary Of
Tense of plagiarism.
Mr.. Editor, this identity furnishes to my
mind the most complete example Of what
DR.. Carpenter has called unconscious cere-
bration that has evsr occurred within my
observation.
/ submit, then, Mr.. Editor. the following
propositions deduced from the reasons pre-
cedent:
l. That the Times writer OF the article
headed "Coaching Revived" is an uncon.
scious medium who intercepted and alb
sorbed ray-thoughts pas sing between far
higher orders of intelligence. That he
emitted, on being struck by some congenial
idea, the ray thoughts without refraction or
reflection precisely as they had been COM
municated by the Cptimist spirit to the
CornhiA medium. 1t might, perhaps, be in
timated that it was something like rob-
bing an intellec tual postofice. There W as
no robbery; it was honestly inrocently and
unconsciously absorbed.
conscious literary innocent, in no wise more
responsible for conception or utterance of
the logic or beauty Of his article than was
the ordinary woman called the Pythoness
for the voice of Apollo. or the unlettered
medium girl of to-day for the polyglot po-
etry which she transmits for the wise words
of Webster, Clay and Lincoln, or the oaths
of General jackson, which she reports
literally.
Mr.. Editor. there is one phrase employed
by the Times writer which is perhaps an
original concep ton. 1t is the word ''cosch-
ing" This, am inclined to believe, has
arisen from the academic slang of modern
schools. 1t expressed the service of the
private tutor at Oxford or Cambridge. 1t
is not probable that the term CT practice
prevailed in the groves or porticoes of
Greece in which Plato, Socrates or Longinus
led their literary disciples. Not improoably
the adoption of this term may have been an
unconscious admission by the writer that
he was indebted to the ''coaching" of the
spirits for the article.
Respectfully yours, E. H.
Marine Items.
During the thunder storm of Thursday