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SCIENCE. 



LVol. VII., No. 169 



mal and better disciplined character which uses 

 most easily the left hemisphere of the brain is a 

 stranger ; so that, in a sense very different from 

 that of the original saying, the left hand does not 

 indeed know what the right hand doeth. If there 

 be any truth in this theory, it must certainly be 

 extended. In the case of 'Louis V.,' there ap- 

 pear to be no less than six different conditions 

 of consciousness, in each one of which there must 

 be some different proportion between the activity 

 of the right and left brain. It is not merely a 

 case of right brain v. left, but of various propor- 

 tions of activity, — say, all right and no left, 

 three-quarters right and one- quarter left, half 

 right and half left, one-quarter right and three- 

 quarters left, no right and all left, and lastly, per- 

 haps, the equal co-operation of right and left. To 

 each of these conditions a different personality 

 would correspond ; so that 'Louis V.,' instead of 

 being two different persons in turns, is, perhaps, 

 six different persons in turns, according to the 

 variety of the mixture. 



Of course, if this were an adequate explanation 

 of the case, the application of a bar of steel to 

 one arm, or of soft iron to the right thigh, 

 would change one person into another person ; or, 

 in other words, personality would express nothing 

 more than certain temporary phenomena, which, 

 by the use of either physical or moral agencies, 

 you could transform at will, if not into their op- 

 posites, at least into qualities as different as arro- 

 gance from modesty, or irritability from patience. 

 We say ' by either physical or moral agencies,' be- 

 cause, as we have already said, it did not neces- 

 sarily take any magnetic influence to produce the 

 change : the change was also effected by simply 

 assuring the young man that he was once more 

 what he had once been, even though he had then 

 absolutely forgotten this antecedent condition of 

 his own consciousness ; and with the belief, the 

 physical state of the body as regarded paralysis or 

 activity, itself changed ; that is, as amongst his 

 various selves, you could determine for him which 

 of them he should be. 



But what does all this prove ? It proves not in 

 any sense multiple identity, but what we have 

 all of us always known, — that a man may easily 

 lose the conscious clew which connects one phase 

 of his lite with another phase. We all lose, and 

 lose for the most part completely, the clew con- 

 necting infancy with childhood. The very aged 

 often lose, and sometimes completely lose, the 

 clew connecting manhood and age. Even in the 

 fulness of our strength, illness often wipes out of 

 our memory a certain limited term of weeks or 

 months. But then, it will be said, a man seldom 

 or never loses the connecting-link of character. 



A selfish and irritable man is selfish and irritable 

 throughout all his phases ; a self -forgetful and 

 patient man is self -forgetful and patient through- 

 out all his phases ; whereas, in this case of ' Louis 

 V. ,' we have a man transformed, in the twinkling of 

 an eye, from an arrogant and ignorant boaster, 

 into a quiet and docile learner. Does not that 

 imply more than a change of memory or mental 

 scenery ? Does it not imply a change in the at- 

 titude of the will? Is it conceivable that a will 

 trained to defer to the lessons of higher minds in 

 one state, should lose all the training it had ac- 

 quired, even though it had lost the memory of all 

 who had given that training ? If humility and 

 arrogance are qualities only superficially distinct, 

 and really severed from each other only by the 

 memory or oblivion of a year or two of personal 

 training, they are not moral qualities at all. Un- 

 less through every change of circumstances the 

 thread of personality is continuous, personality is 

 an illusion ; and if it is continuous, then nothing 

 can charm away a quality of the will, once 

 genuinely acquired, unless it be the voluntary 

 treachery and default of the will itself. If the 

 left brain is a ' new creature,' but the right brain 

 is unregenerate, then the two brains are not brains 

 of the same person, and one of those persons is 

 not responsible for the other person. 



But the truth is, that nothing of this kind is 

 even rendered plausible as an hypothesis by the 

 cases of alternating consciousness of which mor- 

 bid pathology treats. We might almost as seri- 

 ously treat the healthy man as responsible for his 

 delirious ravings in fever, as treat one of these 

 hysteric patients as responsible for what he thinks 

 and does under hysterical conditions. Grant, if 

 there be evidence for it, that the abnormal ac- 

 tivity of the right hemisphere of the brain im- 

 plies the activity of the lower nature. If that 

 activity be caused by disease alone, the patient is 

 not responsible ; but we all know that the activity 

 of the lower nature may be caused, not by disease 

 alone, but by either the application of a stimulus 

 wdiich we know we could withhold, or the neglect 

 of a self-restraint which we know we could ex- 

 ercise. The attempt to draw inferences as to our 

 normal and healthy state from the consideration 

 of abnormal and unhealthy states, is a radically 

 misleading one. All double or multiple identities 

 are signs of disease. And, of all mistakes in 

 psychology, perhaps the worst is that which takes 

 its standard of health from the study of disease, 

 instead of taking the cue for the healing of 

 disease from the study of health. One essential 

 note of mental health is a strong personal identity. 

 A certain sign of disease is that hysterical multi- 

 plicity of states which presents its most typical 



