198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Smith ? Am I the man who did this and that ? or is it merely a 

 dream ? " And when we go further, and totally destroy a man's 

 memories, as not infrequently happens in cases of disease or acci- 

 dent, we find that the consciousness of personal identity is also 

 gone. The man may know that he is somebody, or at least that 

 he ought to be somebody, but he can not tell who he is. If the 

 injury be greater still, even this consciousness that he ought to 

 be somebody is lost, and the patient sinks into a condition of de- 

 mentia, which we can not well understand because it is so utterly 

 unlike anything that we have experienced. 



Now, evidently, this is very like the case of the simple idea. 

 I have shown that the permanence and identity of any such idea, 

 as that of a rose, which is the standard illustration in psycholgy, 

 depends upon the organization of a permanent system of physical 

 forces of some kind, and I think we have reason to believe that 

 the man remains the same for much the same reason, although 

 the elements entering into that system are a thousandfold more 

 numerous and more complexly interlaced. 



PROFESSOR FORBES ON "HARNESSING NIAGARA." 



BY ERNEST A. LE SUEUE, So. B. 



THE past few months have seen the successful completion of 

 a gigantic work, of epoch-making extent and significance 

 the Niagara Falls electrical power transmission plant. An article 

 appeared in these pages in September, 1894, describing something 

 of the difficulties which had been met and overcome by the engi- 

 neers in charge of the water power and generator installation of 

 the Cataract Construction Company, as the corporation which 

 had the contracts for erecting the plant was named. 



Prof. George Forbes, who held the position of consulting elec- 

 trical engineer to that company, is to be heartily congratulated 

 upon the success that has crowned his efforts. It becomes per- 

 tinent at present to insist, however, that Prof. Forbes should be 

 content to limit his claims to glory to the considerable work that 

 he has undoubtedly accomplished, for, unfortunately, he appears 

 not overanxious to define that limit when discoursing to the 

 public about his achievements. 



There has been some bickering between Prof. Forbes and 

 Prof. Rowland, of Johns Hopkins, as to which of the two was the 

 originator of certain of the novel points in the Niagara Falls 

 Power Company's generators. The atmosphere is very murky in 

 consequence, but some facts would seem to have filtered through, 

 and we shall take occasion to refer to them later. What seems 



