34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



All these examples lead up to one sovereign attribute which com- 

 prehends and implies both them and others equally important, namely, 

 the attribute of personality. A man can say, with a full sense of the 

 meaning of what he says, not merely " I eat, drink, and sleep," nor 

 even " I am conscious of will, purpose, and thought," but " I am : I 

 am a conscious person, not a mere machine, though the proprietor of a 

 wonderful piece of machinery. My body, my brain, my mind, are not 

 merely things which work with a living innate power, but they are 

 mine, they work for me, they do what I tell them. If they are out of 

 order, I know it, and I complain of it ; I say, for instance : ' I have 

 overtasked my brain, I must give it some rest before I can do this or 

 that ; I know what I wish to do, and feel myself competent to do it, 

 but my brain will not obey me because it is tired, just as my horse may 

 be overworked, or as my knife will not cut when it has been blunted by 

 too much use.' " So of the moral feelings. I can discuss them, I can 

 guide my conduct by means of them, I can feel ashamed of this or that 

 failure in upright or high conduct. A man knows that he is respon- 

 sible for his actions. Sometimes a murderer is convicted twenty years 

 after the offense has been committed, or he gives himself up after as 

 many years because his memory and his conscience make his life in- 

 tolerable. He has no doubt as to the fact that the person who did the 

 deed of darkness years ago is the same person as he who feels the 

 pangs of remorse to-day. Every material particle in his body may 

 have changed since then ; but there is a continuity in his spiritual 

 being out of which he can not be argued, even if any ingenious soph- 

 ist should attempt the task. No ingenuity will prevent the conscience- 

 stricken murderer from pleading guilty. 



There are, undeniably, anomalies of a very remarkable kind con- 

 nected with the sense of personality, and cases are recorded in which 

 men and women have had (as it were) a different personality at differ- 

 ent times. An instance is recorded of a young woman who habitually 

 passed from one state of existence or consciousness to another, so dis- 

 tinct that when in the second state she knew nothing of what had hap- 

 pened when she was in the first. For example, having returned upon 

 one occasion from a funeral, she fell asleep, and awoke in a few mo- 

 ments in her second state ; all remembrance of the funeral was gone, 

 and she wondered why she was in mourning. This case appears to 

 have been carefully and scientifically watched for many years, and to 

 have given undeniable evidence of what may be described as a double 

 existence or double consciousness ; so that the being in question would 

 have no true sense of personality, and certainly would not be admis- 

 sible in a witness-box as evidence of any event said to have taken 

 place.* Instances more or less of the same kind may probably be 



ful to his existence as an organized being." ("Design in Nature," "Word, Work, and 

 Will," p. 244.) 



* I take this from the " Causeries Scientifiques," 1877 (Rothschild, Paris). 



