Boswell, James (1740-1795)

The Hypochondriack, No. 7

April, 1778

"How then can we represent, by a sensible image, the mind as a theatre to its own actings? Let us conceive a spacious saloon, in which our thoughts and passions exert themselves, and let its walls be encrusted with mirrour, for the purpose of reflection, in the same manner that rooms in voluptuous oriental countries are said to be finished for the purposes of increasing sensual delight."

The construction of the human mind is a mystery which there seems to be no probability will ever be known in this state of human existence. Of its operations we have many registers, as we have many meteorological journals. But of itself we know no more than of the original substance of the planets. He, "who spake as never man spake," saith of one well-known quality in the natural world, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof; but cannot tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth." The sound of the mind we hear; but what it is we cannot tell. The music which it utters, its melody, its harmony, its discord, its variety of notes, have been written by Shakespeare with a wonderful degree of perfection, so as to be themselves to every cultivated reader. We have even gamuts and treatises of the grounds of its music--witness a Locke and other metaphysicians. But the instrument is as much concealed from our intelligence, as the spheres of which the delightful music has been fancied by romantic imaginations. Models enough of this unknown instrument have been framed, as portraits have been drawn of personages whom the painters never saw; but such models being "fabrics of a vision," have faded away, and been succeeded by others as vain as images in the clouds, painted with light, melt into air, and are succeeded by other forms as fleeting. How then can we represent, by a sensible image, the mind as a theatre to its own actings? Let us conceive a spacious saloon, in which our thoughts and passions exert themselves, and let its walls be encrusted with mirrour, for the purpose of reflection, in the same manner that rooms in voluptuous oriental countries are said to be finished for the purposes of increasing sensual delight.
(I, pp. 151-3 in SUP edition)

Architecture::Theater Architecture::Saloon Optics::Mirror

Reading

The Hypochondriack, No. 7 (April, 1778). From The London Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer.

See also James Boswell, The Hypochondriack, ed. Margery Bailey, 2 vols. (Stanford UP, 1928)

07/09/2013