400 PSYCHOLOGY. 



are symptoms of agraphia disease. The left hand, if left 

 to its natural impulse, will in most people Avrite mirror- 

 script more easily than natural script. Mr. F. W. H. Myers 

 has laid stress on these analogies.* He has also called 

 attention to the usual inferior moral tone of ordinary plan- 

 chette writing. On Hughlings Jackson's principles, the 

 left hemisphere, being the more evolved organ, at ordinary 

 times inhibits the activity of the right one ; but Mr. Myers 

 suggests that during the automatic performances the usual 

 inhibition may be removed and the right hemisphere set 

 free to act all by itself. This is very likely to some extent 

 to be the case. But the crude explanation of ' two ' selves 

 by ' two ' hemispheres is of course far from Mr. Myers's 

 thought. The selves may be more than two, and the brain- 

 systems severally used for each must be conceived as inter- 

 penetrating each other in very minute ways. 



SUMMARY. 



To sum up now this long chapter. The consciousness of 

 Self involves a stream of thought, each part of which as ' I ' 

 can 1) remember those which went before, and know the 

 things they knew ; and 2) emphasize and care paramountly 

 for certain ones among them as 'me,' and appropriate to 

 these the rest. The nucleus of the ' me ' is always the bodily 

 existence felt to be present at the time. Whatever remem- 

 bered-past-feelings resemble this present feeling are deemed 

 to belong to the same me with it. Whatever other things 

 are perceived to be associated with this feeling are deemed 

 to form part of that me's experience ; and of them certain 

 ones (which fluctuate more or less) are reckoned to be 

 themselves constituents of the me in a larger sense, — such 

 are the clothes, the material possessions, the friends, the 

 honors and esteem which ihz person receives or may re- 

 ceive. This me is an empirical aggregate of things object- 

 ively known. The I which knows them cannot itself be an 



* See his highly important series of articles on Automatic Writing, etc., 

 in the Proceedings of the Soc. for Psych. Research, especially Article II 

 (May 1885). Compare also Dr. Mandsley's instructive article in Mind, 

 vol. XIV. p. 161, and Luys's essay, ' Sur le Dedoublement,' etc.. io 

 I'Encephale for 1889. 



