Its Composite and Dissoluble Nature. 173 



is then much affected. We grow heedless and do work 

 badly ; the morale runs down to lower degrees ; \ve are 

 less hopeful, less ambitious, and yield more readily to 

 temptation to evil courses ; and this because the personality 

 is weakened from less perfect sentient contact of the cells. 



If the brain of the criminal classes could be inspected 

 and examined with this end in vi'ew, it would be found 

 below normal in these particulars of the formation and 

 maintenance of the personality. 



When one hemisphere of the brain is damaged, or 

 paralyzed by pressure of clots from ruptured blood vessels, 

 so that celebration is limited mainly to the other hemi- 

 sphere, we liave the phenomena of a diminished personality, 

 an intellect abated in volume and power. The axis of 

 self-consciousness appears to have shifted. Personal 

 identity continues ; yet the patient remarks that he is a 

 little strange to himself, and has the feeling that he is not 

 quite the same. To his friends it is evident that he is not 

 what he was before the seizure. 



In extreme old age, when the progressive enfeeblement 

 of the neurons has become marked, at ninety or a hundred 

 years, the personality dwindles to so feeble a flicker as 

 scarcely to enable the person to be self-recognizant, or per- 

 form the most habitual acts. It can hardly be termed 

 personalit}", since there are constantly recurrent lapses to 

 self-forgetfulness. Pari passu with the cell exhaustion, 

 personality slackens and deliquesces to the vanishing point, 



