The Gate of Remembrance (Illustrated)

Two problems in the script have engaged the serious attention of critics. The first and simpler of the two is that which is involved in the language and literary form of the messages. This is a curious patchwork of Low Latin, Middle English of mixed periods, and Modern English of varied style and diction. It is a mosaic of multi-coloured fragments cemented together in a strangely random fashion. This anomaly is the more remarkable from the contrast it presents to the sustained and consistent burden of the script itself, which, as though in obedience to some preordained intention and settled plan, seems to proceed to the presentment, line by line, of a completed whole, with absolute patience and indifference to interruptions. Lapse of time seems of no account. After a break of several hours, the thread is resumed at the point where it had been dropped. The unfinished communications about the Loretto Chapel in 1911 are picked up and spontaneously completed five years later. Nevertheless, the queer patchwork of language is again evident.

For this fact, the following explanation is offered. It will easily be conceded that whatever the source or inspiring influence of these messages, the language in which they are conveyed is the mechanical side of the matter, the most assuredly conventional element in the process of transmission. But the obvious instruments are the brains of F.B.B. and J.A. The reasoning and reflective faculties are at the time in abeyance or are otherwise engaged,[1] their attention being entirely diverted: but the storehouse of memories and subconscious impressions latent within are being used, and quite independently used, though concurrently in point of time with the normal use of the thinking faculties on a wholly different subject.