I 78 Traces of Unity in f/ie 



severe surgical discipline, I consider my suffering to 

 have been far greater at that time, if not in intensity, at 

 least in general distress." 



With such experience, it is no wonder that, in the 

 course of this letter, Admiral Beaufort should put the 

 question : " May we not infer that in the ' prolonged 

 instant ' in which the past was so marvellously opened 

 out there is no faint indication of the almost infinite 

 power of memory with which we are to awaken here- 

 after, and thus be enabled, or compelled, to contemplate 

 our past life ? Or, might it not almost warrant the 

 startling idea that death is only a change or modifica- 

 tion in our existence, in which there is no real pause or 

 interruption." 



In a note accompanying the copy of this letter, Sir 

 Thomas Watson writes : " Many years ago a Mr. Impey, 

 whom I met at dinner, told me that James Boswell (son 

 of Dr. Johnson's Jemmy Boswell), who was a contem- 

 porary of his at Brazenose, Oxford, and was once nearly 

 drowned, had afterwards declared to him (Impey) that 

 he then felt a drowsy, sleepy, undulating sensation, and 

 that in a very short space of time the minutest circum- 

 stances of all his former life appeared before his mind 

 in rapid succession. The present Lord Romilly, and 

 his deceased brother Edward, also knew of similar 

 cases ; the former of a gentleman rendered insensible 

 by immersion in the Lake of Geneva ; the latter of an 

 acquaintance of his, a Mr. Ashmore (?), who was near 

 being drowned in this country." 



With facts like these to deal with it is more than 

 difficult to be satisfied with any materialistic view of 

 memory. How can anything that is so far imperish- 

 able find a home in perishable brain-cells, or in any 

 other part of " the clay cottage in which man is tenant 



