150 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
states. What is essential, therefore, to belief in continuous personal 
identity as a mental state, is that consecutive continuity of vital 
processes which is necessary to reminiscence, and not a continuous 
consciousness, as is the doctrine of reflective philosophy. Memory 
in this sense may, and does extend in fact beyond the con¬ 
sciousness, so that changes may and do take place in the conscious¬ 
ness which are due to preceding records made without consciousness, 
but which not being for that reason recognised as belonging to 
past mental life, are believed to be intuitive. Memory in the in¬ 
dividual from this point of view, and considered as a vital process, 
has its exact counterpart in what may be termed memory of the 
species of both plants and animals, in virtue of which consecutive 
continuity of vital process through the seed or germ is maintained, 
and ancestral qualities reproduced in offspring. 
Such being the philosophy of belief, considered as the result of 
brain-work, it is not difficult to understand why the philosophy of 
morals, in so far as it is founded on identity of belief simply, or 
orthodoxy, and not upon knowledge, is chaotic ; nor how it is that 
all the efforts made to secure identity of mere belief, independently 
of knowledge of the order of nature, whether by education or 
otherwise, must fail. 
I shall now illustrate these views by morbid or insane beliefs. 
The reflective philosophy, as is well-known, discards all inquiry into 
aberrant mental states ; with much the same propriety, however, as 
an astronomer would discard the observation of planetary observa¬ 
tion : in the inductive method these are of the greatest value as 
experiments of nature. By examining every kind of result of the 
molecular change as manifested by others, and comparing these 
with our own, we are enabled in truth to study them as directly 
manifested to our own consciousness. Hence all facta, all writing, 
all art, and all conduct, however normal or abnormal, are the appro¬ 
priate facts for inductive inquiry. To illustrate the method in this 
direction, and at the same time to show the true relations of belief, 
I place before the Society the portrait of a house-carpenter painted 
by himself, with a descriptive legend describing himself as three 
persons, viz.—1. Gfeorge Elliot, his true personality. 2. “ G-eorge 
the Fifth, son of George the Fourth;” and, 3. “ The Emperor of 
the world—the true and lawful God.” The reflective philosopher 
