24 DAVID ANDERSON-BERRY, M.D., LL.D., ETC., ON 



evening would sit beside the fire on opposite sides of the hearth. 

 One of us would take whatever coppers happened to be in his 

 pocket, and choosing one would concentrate his mind on the date 

 stamped thereon. The other would give that date correctly. 



It was a modest little experiment, but I relate it because there 

 can be no doubt as to the bona fides which have been questioned 

 in the case of more striking ones. Mind spoke to Mind. 



Experiment V (and last). — Please concentrate your minds on 

 yourselves. 



Look back to the dawn of consciousness. Many things have 

 happened to you since then, many strange experiences perhaps, 

 but they are like beads strung on one cord, they all happened to 

 and were felt by you. Personal Identity is that cord. Now here is 

 the more difficult part, and I am ready to admit that we may not 

 agree. Look forward to the moment of your de23arture from this 

 world. I have often in this manner stood there, and I have never 

 felt that at that moment I might cease to exist as the I or Ego. I 

 have tried but in vain to conceive of this mysterious self within 

 that feels, wills, knows, sinking into nothingness. It has survived 

 so many shocks that the longer I live the more I become assured 

 that oblivion, and that for ever, is not its goal. As I say, you 

 may not agree with me, but there it is ; one at least feels it. 



I wish to turn your attention in this experiment to the beginning 

 of your existence. A minute cell or ovum ; a still more minute 

 (so minute that three million would not fill a cubic millimetre) 

 sperm-cell : these two unite and the germ cell begins to spht 

 up into two, then four, and so on, until is built up that organism 

 I know as myself. What is evolved must first be involved. 

 From that conjunction comes not only a man, any man, but the 

 man with physical and mental characteristics and traits that 

 mark him out distinctly as the son of his parents, and the product 

 of a long line of ancestors. Thus Professor Huxley, after describ- 

 ing the development of a living creature from an egg, adds these 

 remarkable words : " After watching the process hour by hour, 

 one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some 

 more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic would show the 

 hidden artist with his plan before him." To illustrate this power 

 let me recall to your mind the Habsburg chin which, handed 

 down, marked at last the most ill-fated of the Bourbons. 



I would close now in the words of others : — 



" There is in man a littleness which dwarfs and cramps all that 

 is strong and noble in him ; but there is also a grandeur hard to 



