"What are we doing while we are endeavouring to recollect an idea which we have forgotten? What faculty is then exerted? How is it exerted? Nothing can be more wildly mysterious. A learned and ingenious physician gave me a very pretty similitude as a slight explanation of it. Said he 'You are like one who has forgotten nature, and tries all the sounds of a flute till his ear acknowledges its old acquaintance.'"
— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Author
Work Title
Date
April, 1783
Metaphor
"What are we doing while we are endeavouring to recollect an idea which we have forgotten? What faculty is then exerted? How is it exerted? Nothing can be more wildly mysterious. A learned and ingenious physician gave me a very pretty similitude as a slight explanation of it. Said he 'You are like one who has forgotten nature, and tries all the sounds of a flute till his ear acknowledges its old acquaintance.'"
Metaphor in Context
What are we doing while we are endeavouring to recollect an idea which we have forgotten? What faculty is then exerted? How is it exerted? Nothing can be more wildly mysterious. A learned and ingenious physician gave me a very pretty similitude as a slight explanation of it. Said he "You are like one who has forgotten nature, and tries all the sounds of a flute till his ear acknowledges its old acquaintance."
And what shall we say to the preservation of tunes in the memory. How do they exist? It is clear there is no sound, and neither is there any sense: what is if then that does exist? the idea of a sound! Strange vapour of contemplation! Yet we are all fully conscious of it. There needs no ghost to tell us it. To quote an authority for it would be ridiculous. But one is always glad to hear Virgil in illustration. One of his shepherds expressly soys, "Numeros memini si verba tenerem--I recollect the time if I had the words."
(p. 159)
And what shall we say to the preservation of tunes in the memory. How do they exist? It is clear there is no sound, and neither is there any sense: what is if then that does exist? the idea of a sound! Strange vapour of contemplation! Yet we are all fully conscious of it. There needs no ghost to tell us it. To quote an authority for it would be ridiculous. But one is always glad to hear Virgil in illustration. One of his shepherds expressly soys, "Numeros memini si verba tenerem--I recollect the time if I had the words."
(p. 159)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
The Hypochondriack, No. 67 (April, 1783). See also The London Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer
<Link to Google Books>
See also James Boswell, The Hypochondriack, ed. Margery Bailey, 2 vols. (Stanford UP, 1928).
See also James Boswell, The Hypochondriack, ed. Margery Bailey, 2 vols. (Stanford UP, 1928).
Date of Entry
07/09/2013
