132 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



C2»«S. N<>59.,rKB.14. '67. 



THE SENSE OF PBE-EXISTENCE. 



(2°<» S. ii. 517.; iii. 50.) 



The papers of F. and the Kev. W. L. Nichols 

 possess a deep Interest for me, as I was once my- 

 self the subject of a remarkable day dream, which 

 you will perhaps permit me to relate. About 

 four years ago, I suffered severely from derange- 

 ment of stomach ; and upon one occasion, after 

 passing a restless and disturbed night, I came 

 down to breakfast in the morning, experiencing 

 a sense of general discomfort and uneasiness. I 

 was seated at the breakfast-table with some mem- 

 bers of my family, when suddenly the room and 

 objects around me vanished away, and I found 

 myself, without surprise, in the street of a foreign 

 city. Never having been abroad, I imagined it 

 to have been a foreign city from the peculiar 

 character of the architecture. The street was 

 very wide, and on either side of the roadway 

 there was a foot pavement elevated above the 

 street to a considerable height. The houses had 

 pointed gables and casemented windows over- 

 hanging the street. The roadway presented a 

 gentle acclivity ; and at the end of the street 

 there was a road crossing it at right angles, backed 

 by a green slope, which rose to the eminence of a 

 hill, and was crowned by more houses, over which 

 soared a lofty tower, either of a church or some 

 other ecclesiastical building. As I gazed on the 

 scene before me I was impressed with an over- 

 whelming conviction that I had looked upon it 

 before, and that its features were perfectly fami- 

 liar to me ; I even seemed almost to remember 

 the name of the place, and whilst I was making 

 an effort to do so a crowd of people appeared to 

 be advancing in an orderly manner up the street. 

 As it came nearer it resolved itself into a quaint 

 procession of persons in what we should call fancy 

 dresses, or perhaps more like one of the guild 

 festivals which we read of as being held in some 

 of the old continental cities. As the procession 

 came abreast of the spot where I was standing 

 I mounted on the pavement to let it go by, and 

 as it filed past me, with its banners and gay para- 

 phernalia flashing in the sunlight, the irresistible 

 conviction again came over me that I had seen 

 this same procession before, and in the very 

 street through which it was now passing. Again 

 I almost recollected the name of the concourse 

 and its occasion ; but whilst endeavouring to stimu- 

 late my memory to perform its function, the effort 

 dispelled the vision, and I found myself, as before, 

 seated at my breakfast- table, cup in hand. My 

 exclamation of astonishment attracted the notice 

 of one of the members of my family, who inquired 

 " what I had been staring at ? " Upon my re- 

 lating what I have imperfectly described, some 

 surprise was manifested, as the vision, wliich ap- 

 peared to mc to embrace a period of considerable 



duration, must have been almost instantaneous. 

 The city, with its landscape, is indelibly fixed in 

 my memory, but the sense of previous familiarity 

 with it has never again been renewed. The "spirit 

 of man within him " is indeed a mystery ; and 

 those who have witnessed the progress of a case of 

 catalepsy cannot but have been impressed with the 

 conviction, that there are dormant faculties be« 

 longing to the human mind, which, like the rudi- 

 mentary wings said to be contained within the 

 skin of the caterpillar, are only to be developed 

 in a higher sphere of being. 



John Pavin Phillips. 

 Haverfordwest. 



It was long before I could find persons who had 

 experienced what I have so often done in this way. 

 It has many times happened to me, not like the 

 feeling of pre-existence noticed by Lytton and 

 Scott, but as if I had myself gone through precisely 

 the same train of thought before, or as having 

 spoken the same things, and had others join in the 

 conversation and say the same, as had happened 

 at some indistinct period before. I have found a 

 few, but very few persons who testified that they 

 had experienced the same curious sensation. It 

 never occurred to me as in any way implying or 

 connected with pre-existence, but it is sufficiently 

 strange and unaccountable to have a strong vivid 

 recollection come upon us that we have thought 

 and spoken, and that others have spoken with us, 

 precisely in the same order and connexion as at 

 the time present. This feeling I have had very 

 frequently, but of course it has been oftenest with 

 reference to trains of thought alone. I may add 

 that not unfrequently it has happened to me in a 

 dream, to feel that I had dreamed exactly the 

 same before. T. C. H. 



This subject, started by me, and more fully 

 and ably investigated by the Rev. W. L. Nichols, 

 seems still to require farther consideration. 



In the first place, I wish that a more appropriate 

 terra were found to designate the feeling in ques- 

 tion. I would call it "mysterious memory," rather 

 than " the sense of pre-existence." Many have 

 experienced it, who are unwilling and unable to 

 conceive that the present is merely the repetition 

 of the past. " Nature never repeats herself" is, I 

 believe, an axiom in natural philosophy. " The 

 sense of prescience " would, perhaps, be nearer 

 the truth. Some of the cases, as that of Hone, 

 mentioned by Me. Nichols, are scarcely to be 

 explained otherwise than as cases of fore-know- 

 ledge. 



That, under certain conditions, the human 

 mind is capable of foreseeing the future, more or 

 less distinctly, is hardly to be questioned. May 

 we not suppose that in dreams or waking reveries 

 we sometimes anticipate what will beful us, and 



