Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/120

120 Paris, records the instance of a young man who one morning heard himself addressed by name, and yet he could not see his interlocutor. He replied, however, and a conversation followed, in the course of which his ghostly visitant informed him that his name was M. Gabbage.

After this occurrence he frequently heard M. Gabbage speaking to him. Unfortunately, M. Gabbage was always recommending him to perform very outrageous acts, such as to give an overdose of chlorodyne to a friend's child, and to jump out of a second-floor window. This led to the patient being kept under observation, and it was found that he was suffering from a one-sided hallucination. Similar cases have been recorded in which disease of one sensory perceptive area has produced unilateral hallucination.

I can not see that these cases in any way support the notion of the duality of the mind. On the contrary, they go to show that while as a rule the sensory perceptive areas are simultaneously engaged upon one object, it is still possible for one only to be stimulated, and for the mind to conclude that the information it receives in this unusual way must be supernatural, and at any rate proceeding from one side of the body.

To conclude, I have endeavored to show that as a rule both cerebral hemispheres are engaged at once in the receiving and considering one idea; that under no circumstances can two ideas either be considered or acted upon attentively at the same moment; that therefore the brain is a single instrument.

It now appears to me that one is justified in suggesting that our idea of our being single individuals is due entirely to this single action of the brain,

Laycock showed that the Ego was the sum of our experience, and every writer since confirms him. But our experience means (1) our perception of ideas transmitted and elaborated by the sensory paths of the brain; and (2) our consciousness of the acts we perform. If, now, these things are always single, the idea of the Ego surely must also be single.—Nature.



HIBET! how little does the name of that unexplored and jealously exclusive country convey to the average European! To the scientific it is known as the most extensive and highest table-land in the world, the water-parting from whence the majority of the largest and longest rivers in the world derive their sources. It is also