Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/44

34 All these examples lead up to one sovereign attribute which comprehends and implies both them and others equally important, namely, the attribute of personality. A man can say, with a full sense of the meaning of what he says, not merely "I eat, drink, and sleep," nor even "I am conscious of will, purpose, and thought," but "I am: I am a conscious person, not a mere machine, though the proprietor of a wonderful piece of machinery. My body, my brain, my mind, are not merely things which work with a living innate power, but they are mine, they work for me, they do what I tell them. If they are out of order, I know it, and I complain of it; I say, for instance: 'I have overtasked my brain, I must give it some rest before I can do this or that; I know what I wish to do, and feel myself competent to do it, but my brain will not obey me because it is tired, just as my horse may be overworked, or as my knife will not cut when it has been blunted by too much use.'" So of the moral feelings. I can discuss them, I can guide my conduct by means of them, I can feel ashamed of this or that failure in upright or high conduct. A man knows that he is responsible for his actions. Sometimes a murderer is convicted twenty years after the offense has been committed, or he gives himself up after as many years because his memory and his conscience make his life intolerable. He has no doubt as to the fact that the person who did the deed of darkness years ago is the same person as he who feels the pangs of remorse to-day. Every material particle in his body may have changed since then; but there is a continuity in his spiritual being out of which he can not be argued, even if any ingenious sophist should attempt the task. No ingenuity will prevent the conscience stricken murderer from pleading guilty.

There are, undeniably, anomalies of a very remarkable kind connected with the sense of personality, and cases are recorded in which men and women have had (as it were) a different personality at different times. An instance is recorded of a young woman who habitually passed from one state of existence or consciousness to another, so distinct that when in the second state she knew nothing of what had happened when she was in the first. For example, having returned upon one occasion from a funeral, she fell asleep, and awoke in a few moments in her second state; all remembrance of the funeral was gone, and she wondered why she was in mourning. This case appears to have been carefully and scientifically watched for many years, and to have given undeniable evidence of what may be described as a double existence or double consciousness; so that the being in question would have no true sense of personality, and certainly would not be admissible in a witness-box as evidence of any event said to have taken place. Instances more or less of the same kind may probably be