The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1901-05-27
MYSTICAL PLAY OF MEMORY.
THE SHADOWY RECOLLEOTIONS OF
Il PAST LIKE THE PRESENT

Sir Walter scott.s Sense of Pre- Exist
eDce-Tennyson's Use of the Phenom-
enon-Recognized by Wordsworth as
an Intimation of I'm mortality -Rous-
seau's Dream at Annccy- "Paramne-
STA" I'm Modern Psychological Fasci-
mating Problem.
Sir Walter Scott notes in his diary
that one day, as he was sitting at din
ner, after hard days work, he was
strangely haunted by what he was dis
posed to call sense Of pre-existence,
by "a confused idea that nothing that
passed was said for the first time
that the same topics had been dis
cussed, and the same persons had
stated the same opinions on them
And the sensation was SO strong as to
make him feel gloomy and out of spir-
its. Yet the feeling can hardly have
been altogether new experience, for
fifteen years previously he had made
artistic use of it in Guy Mannerlng,"
when Bertram, returning to what (al-
though he did not then know iD was
the place of his birth, is made to say:
''Why is it that some scenes awaken
thoughts which belong, as it were, to
dreams of early and shadowy recollec-
lions, such as my old Brahmin Moon
shee would have ascribed to a state of
pre-existence How often do we find
ourselves in society which we have
never before met, and yet feel i'm
pressed with a mysterious and Hide
fined consciousness that neither the
scene, the speakers, nor the subject are
etirely new; nay, feel as if we could
anticipate that part of the converse
ton which has not yet taken place.
From the time of Plato downwards
philosophers have remarked upon this
strange, obscure, evanescent feeling;
and doubtless many persons, with no
pretensions to philosophy, have occa-
sionally been perplexed by an occur
renee of the somewhat uncanny expe
rience. Tennyson makes effective use
of it as a smile in one of his poems:
"As when with downcast eyes we muse
and brood.
And ebb into former life, or seem
To lapse far back in confused
dream
To states of mystical similitude;
If one but speaks, or hens, or stirs his
Ever the wonder waxeth more and
more,
4 So that we say, All this hath been
before:
All this hath been, I know not when
or where"
NJ oc
More and the Cambridge Platonists
have instanced it, together with GER
tain other obscure mental phenomena,
as an indication of the souls pre-ex-
istence Wordsworth too, in his great
ode included these "shadowy recollec-
TONS among the instincts of early
childhood which he held to be intima-
lions of Immortality. Regarding this
explanation, there is, of course, room
for doubt: but of the existence, and
even prevalence, of the feeling there is
abundant evidence. Rousseau relates
in his Confessions that at fete
champetre, in the company of Mad
anne de Warens, at place which he
had not previously seen, "all that we
said and did that day, all the objects
which struck me, recalled to me kind
of dream which had at Annecy seven
or eight years before, and of which l
have given an account in it's place.
The relations were so striking" con-
tinues this ultra-s sentimental philoso-
pher, "that in thinking of them I
could not refrain from tears"
Many recent cases of this peculiar
affection-to which modern psycholo-
gists have given the name Of param-
nesia-have come under the notice of
medical men. M Lalande quotes
patient who described his unpleasant
experience of it as follows: while
reading a novel in the train, was
suddenly seized with the idea that
had already read 1t, and at the same
Instant there arose in my mind such a
vhirlwind of memories and images
hat I thought I was going mad
This endured for five minutes, during
which l suffered horribly" Another
french writer gives an instance of
student undergoing his viva-voce ex .
animation for his bachelors degree,
Who stated that it suddenly seemed to
lin that he had heard the same ques- !.
ions propounded by the same profess
or, speaking in the same room, and in !
he same voice. His own answers also
ppeared to him to have been previ-
usly uttered, and, in fact, everything
ppeared to have already happened be-
ore. I
A similar though much worse case q
yas recorded by DIR. Pick in 1876 A I
Dung man, thirtytwo years of age,
eveloped this paramnesia in so sur
rising degree that eff he was present >
social gathering, if he visited any
lace whatever, If he met stranger, q
he incident, with all the attendant cir u
umstances, appeared so familiar that ',
e was convinced of having the same ~
IMPRESSION before, of having been sur
anne objects, under the same sky, and >,
the same state Of the weather. If he :
any new occupation, he
,emed to have gone through with it at
me previous time, and under the same W
)nditions." DR.. Wigan, who wrote an r
genious book to prove what he called W
lie Quality of the Mind" in 1914, sup 8,
les an instance from his own expert al
ice. He had obtained permission to D.
, present at the funeral of the Prin- ii
,ss Charlotte as one of the Lord Cham 81
rlain's staff Several disturbed nights re
previous to the ceremony I,
I'd made him irritable and hystercal, IL
says, and the imposslbility of get az
ne any food in Windsor on the day
lded to his nervous exhaustion. He ID
God for four hours, and as the coffin
Not mi q