The Philosophy of Mystery

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.

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.

Even Priestley’s master-mind was sometimes sleeping thus, being subject (to quote his own words) “to humbling failures of recollection;” so that he lost all ideas of things and persons, and had so forgotten his own writings, that, on the perusal of a work, he sat himself to make experiments on points which he had already illustrated, but on which his mind was then a “tabula rasa.”

Above all, the superlative memory of Sir Walter lay in a deep sleep, after a severe indisposition. It is recorded by Ballantyne, that when “the Bride of Lammermoor, in its printed form, was submitted to his perusal, he did not recognize, as his own, one single incident, character, or conversation it contained; yet the original tradition was perfect in his mind. When Mrs. Arkwright, too, sung some verses of his, one evening, at Lord Francis Egerton’s, the same oblivion was o’er his mind, and he whispered to Lockhart, ‘Capital words;—whose are they? Byron’s, I suppose; but I don’t remember them.’ ”

The Countess of Laval had, in her childhood, been taught the Armorican of Lower Brittany (which is a dialect of the Welch), but had, as she believed, forgotten it. On attaining the adult period, this lady had an acute fever, and, during her delirium, she ceased to speak in her native language, and chattered fluently in the bastard Welch.

But creatures to which the gift of intellect is not granted, in which innate ideas cannot arise, still evince the faculty of memory. It is, therefore, possible that fish and insects, possessing memory, dream. Of course the doctrines of Pythagoras, and Simonides, and the story of the interpretation of the language of birds by the vizier of Sultan Mahmoud, are mere fables, and the cackling of the Roman geese was accidental; yet the bird does possess the memory of language, and the power of imparting ideas.

Nightingales’ notes (as Bechstein has beautifully recorded them) seem to me like the Mexican language, and to express variety of sentiments of adoration and love. The parrot, magpie, jackdaw, jay, starling, and bullfinch, are prattlers; and the exquisite little canary, the pupil of my friend, Mrs. H——, the pet, indeed, not only of its mistress, but of statesmen and learned physiologists, warbled its words in purest melody. From Sir William Temple we learn the faculty of the wonderful parrot of Prince Maurice, of Nassau, at the Hague, that responsed almost rationally to promiscuous questions. Granting, then, this faculty of memory, it is clear the bird may dream, and I may add one other quotation from the “Domestic Habits of Birds,” in proof of this.

“We have even observed this in a wild bird. On the night of the 6th April, 1811, about ten o’clock, a dunncock (accentor modularis) was heard in a garden to go through its usual song more than a dozen times very faintly, but distinctly enough for the species to be recognised.” The night was cold and frosty, but might it not be that the little musician was dreaming of summer and sunshine? Aristotle, indeed, proposes the question whether animals hatched from eggs ever dream. Marcgrave, in reply, expressly says, that his “parrot, Laura, often rose in the night, and prattled while half asleep.”

Among quadrupeds, it is probable that those which, by their half-reasoning instinct, approach nearest to the power of comparison, and those which, in contrast to the callous-hoofed, possess an acuteness of feeling, and therefore the nearest approximate intelligence, are the most prone to dream.

Although we know nothing of the dreams of that very learned dog, which Leibnitz assures us he saw, and which uttered an articulate language, and often enjoyed a chat with his master; yet, of the slumbering visions of the canines I have many illustrations. Vic, a fat terrier, was a somniloquist. She would bark, and laugh, and run round the room, or against tables; the surest proof of somnambulism. Indeed dogs are celebrated by many poets for their dreaming propensities. Ennius writes —

From simple, unassociated memory, too, springs the dream of the infant; pure and innocent as the thought of a cherub. For delight is the common feeling of a dreaming child; and when its lips are touched in sleep, the memory of its mother’s bosom will excite its lips and tongue to the congenial action of suction, though a fright of the previous day will change its slumbers into moments of terror, and it will murmur and cry in its dream.