of course, made concerning the pastor’s habits; and the solution of the
phenomenon was soon obtained. For it appeared, that it had been the old
man’s custom, for years, to walk up and down a passage of his house into
which the kitchen door opened, and to read to himself with a loud voice,
out of his favourite books. A considerable number of these were still in
the niece’s possession. She added, that he was a very learned man and
a great Hebraist. Among the books were found a collection of Rabbinical
writings, together with several of the Greek and Latin Fathers; and the
physician succeeded in identifying so many passages with those taken
down at the young woman’s bedside, that no doubt could remain in any
rational mind concerning the true origin of the impressions made on her
nervous system.
This authenticated case furnishes both proof and instance, that reliques
of sensation may exist for an indefinite time in a latent state, in
the very same order in which they were originally impressed; and as we
cannot rationally suppose the feverish state of the brain to act in any
other way than as a stimulus, this fact (and it would not be difficult
to adduce several of the same kind) contributes to make it even
probable, that all thoughts are in themselves imperishable; and, that if
the intelligent faculty should be rendered more comprehensive, it
would require only a different and apportioned organization,--the body
celestial instead of the body terrestrial,--to bring before every human
soul the collective experience of its whole past existence. And this,
this, perchance, is the dread book of judgment, in the mysterious
hieroglyphics of which every idle word is recorded! Yea, in the very
nature of a living spirit, it may be more possible that heaven and earth
should pass away, than that a single act, a single thought, should be
loosened or lost from that living chain of causes, with all the links of
which, conscious or unconscious, the free-will, our only absolute Self,
is coextensive and co-present. But not now dare I longer discourse of
this, waiting for a loftier mood, and a nobler subject, warned from
within and from without, that it is profanation to speak of these
“mysteries tois maede phantasteisin, os kalon to taes dikaiosynaes kai
sophrosynaes prosopon, kai oute hesperos oute eoos outo kala. To gar
horon pros to horomenon syngenes kai homoion poiaesamenon dei epiballein
tae thea, ou gar an popote eiden ophthalmos haelion, haelioeidaes mae
gegenaemenos oude to kalon an idae psychae, mae kagae genomenae--to
those to whose imagination it has never been presented, how beautiful is
the countenance of justice and wisdom; and that neither the morning nor
the evening star are so fair. For in order to direct the view aright,
it behoves that the beholder should have made himself congenerous and
similar to the object beheld. Never could the eye have beheld the sun,
had not its own essence been soliform,” (i.e. pre-configured to light
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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