OUR SUBORDINATE PERSONALITIES. 119 



or more distinct centres of sensation and will are 

 present in such a case, would really be the same as say- 

 ing that we have the power of constituting two or more 

 distinct egos in one body, which is manifestly absurd." 

 One sees the absurdity of maintaining that we can 

 make one frog into two frogs by cutting a frog into 

 two pieces, but there is no absurdity in believing that 

 the two pieces have minor centres of sensation and 

 intelligence within themselves, which, when the animal 

 is entire, act in such concert with the brain, and with 

 each other, that it is not easy to detect their originally 

 autonomous character, but which, when deprived of 

 their power of acting in concert, are thrown back upon 

 earlier habit, now too long forgotten to be capable of 

 permanent resumption. 



Illustrations are apt to mislead, nevertheless they 

 may perhaps be sometimes tolerated. Suppose, for 

 example, that London to the extent, say, of a circle 

 with a six-mile radius from Charing Cross, were 

 utterly annihilated in the space of five minutes during 

 the Session of Parliament. Suppose, also, that two 

 entirely impassable barriers, say of five miles in 

 width, half a mile high, and red hot, were thrown 

 across England ; one from Gloucester to Harwich, and 

 another from Liverpool to Hull, and at the same time 

 the sea were to become a mass of molten lava, so that 

 no water communication should be possible ; the poli- 

 tical, mercantile, social, and intellectual life of the 

 country would be convulsed in a manner which it is 

 hardly possible to realise. Hundreds of thousands 

 would die through the dislocation of existing arrange- 



