The sun., 1886-10-14
LONESOME LAKE VISION.
Saying II Was "An ImaGination''
Doesn't Explain It.

Saying II Was "Au Imagination"
Doesn't Explain It.
It would be idle to attempt any ac-
counting for the vision / saw two hours
ago when was sitting on the piazza
of the cabin. The night had settled
down, the darkness rolling in over the
eastern hills and crowding the last of
the twilight up over the ridge of Mount
Kinsman on the west. The innumera-
BILE sounds of forest night-life had COM
menced. The moon. little past the
full had not yet risen. 1t was dark.
but not dark, for the stars were aglow,
but there were spots of intense dark
ness, one especially black close by me.
where the path to the ice-house enters
the pine forest. There is always temp
tation to look into the blackest place in
the night time. Whether it be that dan
ger comes out of the deepest conceal
ment, or the natural curiosity of man
which expects to discover something
where all seems impenetrable, every
man, riding, walking, or sitting in what
we call the dark, directs his eye fire.
quently and curiously into the places
where there is no light.
No sudden vision presented itself,
but that black avenue entering the pine
forest was after little full of forms
and faces, and out of it came swelling
murmur rising to clear enunciation
of voices. How long I looked and saw
and heard have no idea. Perhaps it
was ten seconds. ten minutes. For the
time the mental vision was a kaleido-
scope of all sorts of scenes and people.
Scenes utterly dissimilar in their asso-
Citations, people widely assunder in all
reasonable memory. The dead form of
an Egyptian soldier, lying in the
cold moonlight of Luxor, his face set
to the sky, the gold-crowned head of
girl I have not seen for forty years. a
venerable matron now, people knew
and people never knew but had seen,
voices in many languages, some that 1
could understand and, some that
could not understand, all these were
where? In my brain? In my mind.
"Oh, it was all imagination. is your
simple explanation. If you will pardon
the offensiveness, my friend, will say
your explanation is bosh. admit that
it was what you are pleased to call inn
agination-my imagination two hours
ago, not now. for am trying to describe
an actual occurrence and not an un-
common occurrence in my own and in
your experience, for serious considera-
ton. But to say that the condition
in which the mind shuts away the act
ual present, and the senses cease
to report sounds or odors or feel
ings, and the mind thinks the senses
are reporting to it sights and voices
when those senses are in fact in state
of paralysis-to say that this is imagi-
nation is no explanation, any more
than the theory of evolution, which omits
origin, is an explanation of material
phenomena. There is a great deal too
much of this kind of explanation in
the superficial PHILOSOPHERS of our day;
the substitution of new puzzle for an
old one, which triumphantly says
"that explains ,t'' at the very moment
you are wondering how sane man can
rest satisfied with an inconclusive and
wholly unsatisfactory, because not f.
nal, explanation.
What do you mean by Imagination?
I imagined that saw, did I? l Gre
ated the thoughts, created the sup
posed facts, created the sounds, did I?
No, remembered them. Every ono
Of them was once physical reality.
And now that 1 recall the scene, which
you call the imagination, of two hours
ago am remembering a memory. If,
as the materialist theories are the orig
inal facts. seen with the eyes, heard
with the ears were recorded ply sically
in the particles of section of the brain,
then two hours ago took score or 3
hundred or thousand of these re-
cords and rearranged them in a new
record which can now read, and there
was no physical fact to make the new
record.-New York Journal of Com.
nlerce.