238 FORMULAS OF THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 



ciple, and act on their own account : the physical 

 processes of our organism are always largely in- 

 dependent of our will. 



But the clearest proof of the imperfect combina- 

 tion of the elements of our personality is to be found 

 in the curious phenomena of "multiplex" conscious- 

 ness or personality. These represent what we are 

 ordinarily wont to call our self, i.e., our normal con- 

 sciousness, as but one out of many psychical pro- 

 cesses which go on within our organism. The nor- 

 mal consciousness is the primary self, but there are 

 indefinite possibilities of secondary selves, which may 

 coexist with it, alternate with it, and even supplant 

 it. So it has been well said that the normal self is 

 that which has a good working majority for carrying 

 on the affairs of life, and that when the majority 

 becomes disorganized, there ensues chaos in the 

 soul, i.e., insanity. 



But perhaps we need hardly go so far afield for 

 examples of this imperfect psychic synthesis, for we 

 nightly experience in our dreams powers which our 

 waking self does not possess. It is not merely that 

 we may remember in dreams what we had forgotten 

 in waking life, but that the dream-self possesses the 

 power of clothing its ideas with all the vividness 

 and wealth of sensuous perception ; its fancy is 

 creative of its objects, and while the dream lasts 

 they are real. And yet when we awake, we cannot 

 give sensuous shape to our thoughts, and no amount 

 of thinking of a cat will enable us to see one. Or 

 again, who has not experienced the delicious cer- 

 tainty of the intuitive knowledge we possess in 

 dreams, and the ease of absolute conviction with 

 which we attain to the knowledge we require ? 



§ 19. These and similar facts which we shall 



