DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 285 



The most important of all the questions depending on 

 dual consciousness is one into which I could not properly 

 enter at any length in these pages^ the question, namely, of 

 the relation between the condition of the brain and respon- 

 sibility, whether such responsibility be considered with 

 reference to human laws or to a higher and all-knowing 

 tribunal. But there are some points not wanting in interest 

 which may be here more properly considered. 



In the first place it is to be noticed that a person who 

 has passed into a state of abnormal consciousness, or who is 

 in the habit of doing so, can have no knowledge of the fact 

 in his normal condition except from the information of 

 others. The boy at Norwood might be told of what he had 

 said and done while in his less usual condition, but so far as 

 any experience of his own was concerned, he might during 

 all that time have been in a profound sleep. Similarly of 

 all the other cases. So that we have here the singular cir- 

 cumstance to consider, that a person may have to depend 

 on the information of others respecting his own behaviour 

 not during sleep or mental aberration or ordinary absence 

 of mind but (in some cases at least) while in possession 

 of all his faculties and unquestionably responsible for his 

 actions. Not only might a person find himself thus held 

 responsible for actions of which he had no knowledge, and 

 perhaps undeservedly blamed or condemned, but he might 

 find himself regarded as untruthful because of his perfectly 



This double motion,' says Addison, ' is admirably described in the 

 numbers of those verses. In the four first it is heaved up by several 

 spondees intermixed with proper breathing places, and at last trundles 

 down in a continual line of dactyls. ' On this Pope remarks : ' I 

 happened to find the same in Dionysius of Halicarnassus's Treatise, who 

 treats very largely upon these verses. I know you will think fit to 

 soften your expression, when you see the passage, which you must 

 needs have read, though it be since slipt out of your memory.' These 

 words, by the way, were the last (except 'I am, with the utmost esteem, 

 &c.' ) ever addressed by Pope to Addison. It was in this letter that 

 Pope with sly malice asked Addison to look over the first two books of 

 his (Pope's) translation of Homer. 



