Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/576

558 great advantages over the observation of spontaneous manifestations that, under it, the conditions of the observation can be indefinitely multiplied and varied, the phenomena can be regarded under a large number of phases, and it can sometimes arouse new phenomena which passive observation could never have reached. Coexistent personalities, or the simultaneous existence of two selfs, among which the still obscure and doubtful phenomena of spiritualism are included, are of two classes: first, hysteric insensibility, where a part of the body is insensible to what is going on, while the nervous centers in relation with the same region may continue to act, as in hysteria, from which it results that certain acts, sometimes simple, but often very complicated, may be accomplished unconsciously in the body of the hysteric, which acts may, further, be psychical, and exhibit an intelligence consequently distinct from that of the patient, constituting a second self; and, second, a particular attitude of the mind, concentration of attention upon a single point, by virtue of which the mind becomes distracted and as it were insensible, opening the way to automatic actions; and these actions, in their complications, like those in the other case, may take on a psychical character and constitute parasitical intelligences, living, unknown to it, by the side of the normal personality.

A third part of the essay is devoted to the discussion of the disorders in the personality provoked in experiments in what is called hypnotic suggestion, as when a person in a condition of artificially provoked somnambulism is made to execute what is suggested to him by the operator. The attempt is made to show that the suggestion usually provokes a division of consciousness and cannot be realized without it. Suggestions are divided into two groups—those directly intended to produce a new personality, and those which, while having some other purpose, can not accomplish it except by causing a division of consciousness. In this part are considered hallucinations, the measurement of time by suggestion, systematic anaesthesia, the doubling of personality, and spiritualism.

The conclusions drawn from the whole are, that the self is composite, a grouping or resultant of several elements. The unity of our normal and mature personality exists, indeed, and no one should think of doubting its reality; but there are pathological facts to prove that that unity must be sought for in the co-ordination of the elements that compose it.

volume forms Mr. Atkinson's contribution to the recent tariff discussion, the outcome of which has been so disastrous to the advocates of high protection. Though the successive chapters appeared first as articles in the daily papers, the book lacks nothing on that account, in the way of thoroughness or the logical grouping of the subjects considered. The discussion takes a wide range, covering not only the relation of a protective tariff to industry, wages, and the revenue needs of the Government, but the relation of a depreciated currency to the same as well. Mr. Atkinson opens his discussion with a consideration of taxation in terms of work, and presents very forcibly and graphically the truth, so frequently lost sight of, that a government can have only what it takes from the people. When it is realized that this demand upon the people is at present equivalent to the labor of a million men at two dollars per day, and that the total number of people engaged in gainful occupations is but twenty-three millions, the great importance of the subject of taxation becomes manifest. In discussing the cost of a protective tariff, Mr. Atkinson shows with especial clearness how extravagant this method of taxation may be. The cost to the country, so far from being measured by the amount of the tax, may be, and generally is, many times greater. This is particularly true of taxes upon raw materials, which, by raising the cost of manufactured articles, curtail our markets and subject us to an indefinite and undeterminable loss. Mr. Atkinson estimates that the cost to the country during the past year of such taxes, which have yielded only fourteen millions of revenue, has been not far from three hundred millions of dollars.

The strength of the protective system in this, as in every other country, lies in its supposed effect in raising wages. The fallacy of this has been many times demon