THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 375 



2. Wlien we pass bejouci alterations of memory to ab- 

 normal alterations in the present self we have still graver 

 disturbances. These alterations are of three main types, 

 from the descriptive point of view. But certain cases unite 

 features of two or more types ; and our knowledge cf the 

 elements and causes of these changes of personality is so 

 slight that the division into types must not be regarded as 

 having any profound significance. The types are ; 



(1) Insane delusions ; 



(2) Alternating selves ; 



(3) Mediumships or possessions. 



1) In insanity we often have delusions projected into 

 "the past, which are melancholic or sanguine according to 

 the character of the disease. But the worst alterations of 

 the self come from present perversions of sensibility and 

 impulse which leaA-e the past undisturbed, but induce the 

 patient to think that the present me is an altogether new 

 personage. Something of this sort happens normally in 

 the rapid expansion of the whole character, intellectual as 

 well as volitional, which takes place after the time of 

 puberty. The pathological cases are curious enough to 

 merit longer notice. 



The basis of our personality, as M. Eibot says, is that 

 feeling of our vitality which, because it is so perpetually 

 present, remains in the background of our consciousness. 



"It is the basis because, always present, always acting, without 

 peace or rest, it knows neither sleep nor fainting, and lasts as long as 

 life itself, of which it is one form. It serves as a support to that self- 

 conscious me which memory constitutes, it is the medium of association 

 among its other parts. . . . Suppose now that it were possible at once 

 to change our body and put another into its place : skeleton, vessels, 

 viscera, muscles, skin, everything made new, except the nervous sys- 

 tem with its stored-up memory of the past. There can be no doubt 

 that in such a case the afflux of unaccustomed vital sensations would 

 produce the gravest disorders. Between the old sense of existence en- 

 graved on the nervous system, and the new one acting with all the 

 intensity of its reality and novelty, there would be irreconcilable con- 

 tradiction." * 



* Maladies de la Memoire, p. 85. The little that would be left of per- 

 sonal consciousness if all our senses stopped their work is ingenuously 

 shown iu the remark of the extraordinary ancesthetic youth whose case 



