The Bottineau pioneer. (Bottineau, N.D.) 1885-1895, 1888-10-18

pears even at this day, when FL think
III over that / have that feeling COM
ing on, so powerful was the impress
sion made on me at that time"
---0e1-
The Sense of Pre-Existing.
American Notes and Queries.
Perhaps, after all, if history is
ever to be verified, that v~eri1cation
may be found in our own minds. tt
has always been a favorite specula-
ton Of poets and NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
that man is q microcosm, contain
ing within himself the history Of the
race and of the universe-if only we
had wit to read it. De Quincy com
pared the human brain to palimp-
sest. Now, a palimpsest (the word
means "tWice rubbed'') is a roll of
parchment cleansed Of it's MANI
script in order to make room for new
manuscript. The rude chemistry of
the ancients could efface the old suffi-
GENTLY to leave O field for the new,
yet not sufficiently to make the
traces OF the elder manuscript ire
coverable for us. Palimpsests have
been found thatyielded many success
sive layers of manuscript. The
traces Of each handwriting, regularly
effaced, have the inverse order regu-
larry called back by the magic OF
modern chemistry, and as the
chorus Of the Athenian stage unwove
through the anti-strophe every step
that had been mystically. woven
through the strophe, SO, by our mod
ern COMPUTATIONS of science, secrets of
ages remote from each other have
been exercised from the accumulated
shadows of centuries. "What else
than a natural and mighty palimp-
sest," continues De Quincy, Sis the
human brdin2 Such a palimpsest is
my brain; such a palimpsest, ohread-
Ser, is yours. Everlasting layers of
ideas, images, feelings, havefallenup-
on your brain softly as light. Each
succession has seemed to bury all
that went before. And yet, in reality,
not one has been extinguished." Tho
comparison is apt and fine. Edkgy
one has experienced the strange tricks
that memory occasionally plays.
You r engaged in reading, in writ
ing, in serious occupation which en-
crosses your mental powers. Sud-
denly there bursts into yourthoughts
some recollection of childhood, some
trivial circumstance that happened
years ago and was forgotten immedi-
ately afterward. Not the minutest
analogy need exist between your pres
emit thoughts and the unbidden recol-
lection that starts, goblin-like, from
the sealed-up vaults ofthepast. Does
this not indicate that experience in
life, no matter how frivolous, leaves
an indelible print on the mental
organism, and that, though this
print may seem to fade, it is still
there, like writing in invisible ink,
or the effaced manuscript on the
palimpsest-only waiting for some
exciting cause to bring it out clearly
and legibly? The truth is enforced by
the experience of death. Those who
have recovered from drowning or
hanging say that previous to the adj
vent OF Inconsistencies they have
seen asortofpanorama oftheir whole
PASs EOAACONlISCy& MUAOI DOOSA ullG
smallest incident, thought, or feeling
omitted and it is thence inferred
that all human beings atthe moment
of dissolution experience this awful
resurrection of the dead past. Again
it is wellknown thatvery agedpeople
are used to throw back and concen-
trate the light of their memory upon
scenes OF early childhood, recalling
many which had faded, even to them
selves, in middle life, while they often
forgot although the whole inter-
mediate stages of their existence.
''This shows, says De Quincy. chat
naturally and without violent agen-
cies the human brain is by tendency
a palimpsest." But our brains are
inherited from our ancestors. Why,
then, may it not be that the human
brain is apalimpsest, containing more
or less faded, yetrecoverable, records,
not only of our entire past lite, but
OF the lives of our ancestors to the
remotest periods?