The times., 1901-05-26
MEMORY'S MYSTICAL PLAY
The Shadowy Recollection of
Past Like the Present.
Sir Walter scott,s Sense of Pre-ex-
istence - Recognized by Words
worth as an Intimation of Immor-
talfty-Rousseau's Dream Mt Annecy

worth as an Intimation of lmmor
tality-Rousseau's Dream Mt Annecy
Sir Walter Scott notes in his dairy that
one day, as he was sitting at dinner. after
a hard days work. ne was strangely
haunted by what he was disposed to call
a sense Of pre-existence, by "a confused
idea that nothing that passed was said
for the first time-that the same topics
had been discussed, and the same per-
sons had stated the same opinions on
them" And the sensation was so strong
as to make him feel gloomy and out OF
spirits- Yet tne feeling can hardly have
been altogether new experience, for
fifteen years previously he had made
artistic use of it in Guy ManneriDg,"
when Bertram, returning to what (al-
though he did not then know it) was the
place of his birth. is made to say: Why
is it that some scenes awaken thoughts
which belong, as il were, to dreams OF
early and sbadowy recoliections. such as
my old BraEmin MooHshee would have
aseribed to state OF pre-existenee? How
often do we find ourselves in society
| which we have never before met and yet
feel impressed with a mysterious and i'll
| defined consciousness that neither the
| scene, the speakers, nor the subject are
entirely new; nay, we feel as il we could
anticipate that part of the conversation
which has not yet taken place" From
the time of Plato down. 5tTtis philosophers
have remarked upon this strange, OBJ
scure, evanescent feeling; and doubtless
many persons, with no pretensiOns to
| philosophy, have occasionally been per-
| picked by an occurrence of the somewhat
uncanny experience. Tennyson makes ef-
fectfve use of it as simile 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 chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more
So that say, "All this hath been before;
All this hath been, know not when where
And such writer's as Glanvil, Henry
More, and the Cambridge Platonists have
instanced il. together with certain other
| OBSCURE and mental phenomena, as aa in
| dieation of the souls pre-existenee.
| Wordsworth, too, in his great ode includ-
ed these .-shadowy recoiIections' among
the instincts of early childhood which he
held TO be limitations of immortality. Re
garding this explanation, there is, of
course, room for doubt; but of the exist
| ence, and even prevalence, of the feeling
there is abundant evidence. Rousseau re-
lates, in his Confessions" that at a fete
champetre, in the company of Madame de
Warens, at a place which he had not pre-
viously 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 be-
fore, and of which l have given an ac-
count in its place. The relations were so
striking continues this ultra-sentimen-
tai philosopher. that in thinking of them
l could not refrain from tears
Many recent cases of this peculiar af-
fection-to which modern psychologists
have given the name of paramnesia-have
come under the notice of medical men. NJ.
Laiande quotes patient who described
his unpleasant experience of it as follows:
while reading a novel in the train 1 was
suddenly seized with the idea that 1 had
already read it, and at the same instant
there arose in my mind such whiriwind
of memories and images that 1 thought I
was going mad. This endured for five
minutes during which L suffered horri-
bly," Another French writer gives an IN
stance of a student undergoing his viva
Yoce examination for his bachelors de-
gree, who stated that it suddenly seemed
to him that he had heard the same ques-
tions propounded by the same professor,
speaking in the same room, and IN the
same voice. His own answers also ap-
peared to him to have been previously Ut
tered and, in fact, everything appeared
to have already happened before
similar though much worse case was
recorded by DR.. Pick in 1876 A young
man, thirty-two years of age, developed
this paramnesia in so surprising degree
that If ne was present at a social gath
ering, il he visited any place Whatever,
If he met a stranger, the incident, with all
the attendant circumstances, appeared so
familiar that he was convinced OF having
the same impression before, Of having
been surrounded by the same persons or
the same objects under the same sky and
in the same state of the weather. II he un-
dertook~ any new occupation, ne seemed
to have gone through with il at some
previous time, and under the same cOndl-
tions.'' DIR. Wigan, who wrote an ingenl-
GUS book to prove what ne called the
Duality of the Mind in 1874. supplies an
instance from his own experience He
had obtained permission to be present at
the funeral of the Princess Charlotte as
one of the Lord Chamberlain's 5 STAFF. Sew
eral disturbed nights Immediately prevl-
Gus to the ceremony mad made MIN lrT1-
table and hysIerical. he says, ana the
impOSSihility OF getting any 1000 N W Inu-
sor on the day added TO his nervous ez-
hauStion. He stood for four hours. anG
as the coffin was being lowered into the
grave, he had what he describes as no
mere impression, but an instant convlc-
ton that he had seen the whole scene
before, had heard the music, and even
the very words that were addressed TO
him by Sir George Naylor. He accounts
for the phenomenon according TO MS pet
theory that we have two brains or at
of the brain has its own distinct power
and action, and sometimes acts inde-
pendently Of the other.
I believe the explanation to be this.
he says only one brain has been used
in the Immediately preceding part of the
scene; the other brain has been asleep. or
in an analogous state nearly approaching
il. When the attention of both brains is
reused 10 the topic there is the same
vague consciousness that the ideas have
passed through the mind before which
takes place on reperuSing the page
have read while thinking on some other
subject. The ideas have passed through
the brain before. and as there was not
sufficient consciousness to fix them in the
means of knowing the length of time that
had elapsed between the faint impress
sion received by the single brain and the
distinct impression received by the double
brain. II may seem TO have been many
years Modern psychologists have re
iected DR.. Wigan's theory, but as yet they
have themselves altogether failed 10 sup
ply anything like satisfactory expiana-
ton of the phenomena
From all We know it seems extremely
probable that no impression once made
on the train is ever absolutely lost What
we lose is the power of recOllecJing it
Many a man in danger of drowning. for
instance, has afterward declared that in
the few minutes that elapsed before his
rescue he saw the whole of his forgotten
mast ufe," and doubtless any Impression
might be more or less distinctly revived
by the application of the appropriate
stimulus A story of the provision of a
CITY in q dream, which was related some
time back by a correspondent of Notes
and Queries" appears to be capable Of