The Philosophy of Mystery

by Walter Cooper Dendy

Without me as within me; not imagined, felt.”

Cymbeline.

Ev. I believe, then, that waking and slumbering association is memory; and I have interposed the glimpse of metaphysics to break the monotony of my illustrations, for they are not yet exhausted.

A gentleman, as we read in Dr. Pritchard’s work, was confined, after a severe accident, for several weeks, and the accident was not once during this period remembered by him; but, on his convalescence, he rode again over the same ground, and all the circumstances instantly flashed across his mind.

In their youth, Dr. Rush escorted a lady, on a holiday, to see an eagle’s nest. Many years afterwards, he was called to attend her in the acute stage of typhus; and, on his entrance into her chamber, she instantly screamed out, “Eagle’s nest!” and it is said, from this moment, the fever began to decline.

We ourselves have witnessed these flashes of memory more than once, during the acuteness of brain fever, where journeys, and stories, and studies, have been renewed after they had been long forgotten.

There are many romantic incidents in illustration which have been beautifully wrought into a poem, or drama, as that play of Kotzebue, written to illustrate the happy success of the Abbé de l’Epée in France, in imparting knowledge and receiving sentiments from the deaf and dumb. In this, the young Count Solar, by gestures, unfolds, step by step, his birth-place, and at length screams with joy, as he stands before the palace of his ancestors.

Then there is the story of little Montague, who was decoyed by the chimney sweep. Some time after this, the child was engaged to clean the chimney of a mansion, and, descending into a chamber, which had been indeed his own nursery, lay down, in his sooty clothes, on the quilt, and, by this happy memory, discovered his aristocratic birth. This is the incident which still enlivens the pageantry of May-day.

These reminiscences will occur sometimes in the most sudden and unexpected manner. In one of the American journals, we are told of a clergyman, who, at the termination of some depressing malady, had completely lost his memory. His mind was a blank, and he had, in fact, to begin the world of literature again. Among other of his studies was the Latin language. During his classical readings with his brother, he one day suddenly struck his head with his hand, and stated that he had a most peculiar feeling, and was convinced that he had learned all this before.

Boërhave, in his “Prelectiones Academic. Institut. Med.,” relates the case of a Spanish tragic writer, whose memory, subsequently to an acute febrile disease, was so completely impaired, that not only the literature of various languages he had studied was lost to him, but also their elements, the alphabets. When even his own poetic compositions were read to him, he denied himself to be the author. But the most interesting feature of the case is this: that, on becoming again a votary of the Muse, his recent compositions so intimately resembled his original productions in style and sentiment, that he no longer doubted that both were the offspring of his own imagination.