DUAL CONSClOtrSfiESS. 287 



suffer such pains, but whether the body which both inhabit 

 will suffer while he is unconscious, or while that other con- 

 sciousness comes into existence. That this is no imaginary 

 supposition is shown by several cases in Abercrombie's 

 treatise on the ' Intellectual Powers.' Take, for instance, 

 the following narrative : ' A boy,' he tells us, 'at the age 

 of four suffered fracture of the skull, for which he underwent 

 the operation of the trepan He was at the time in a state 

 of perfect stupor, and after his recovery retained no recol- 

 lection either of the accident or of the operation. At the 

 age of fifteen, however, during the delirium of fever, he gave 

 his mother an account of the operation, and the persons 

 who were present at it, with a correct description of their 

 dress, and other minute particulars. He had never been 

 observed to allude to it before ; and no means were 

 known by which he could have acquired the circumstances 

 which he mentioned.' Suppose one day a person in 

 the delirium of fever or under some other exciting cause 

 should describe the tortures experienced during some 

 operation, when, under the influence of anaesthetics, he had 

 appeared to all around to be totally unconscious, dwelling 

 in a special manner perhaps on the horror of pains accom- 

 panied by utter powerlessness to shriek or groan, or even to 

 move ; how far would the possibilities suggested by such a 

 narrative influence one who had a painful operation to 

 undergo, knowing as he would quite certainly, that whatever 

 pains his alter ego might have to suffer, not the slightest 

 recollection of them would remain in his ordinary condition? 

 There is indeed almost as strange a mystery in un- 

 consciousness as there is in the phenomena of dual con- 

 sciousness. The man who has passed for a time into 

 unconsciousness through a blow, or fall, or fit, cannot help 

 asking himself like Bernard Langdon in that weird tale, 

 Elsie Venner. ' Where was the mind, the soul, the thinking 

 principle all that time ? ' It is irresistibly borne in upon 

 him that he has been dead for a time. As Holmes reasons, 

 ' a man is stunned by a blow and becomes unconscious, 



