Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/757

Rh been sent to a hospital, and anxious to find out the reason. Being a very intelligent lad, ho became interested in his own case at once, on learning a few of the facts, and ascertained by inquiry the various occurrences which have just been described. Soon after this I lost track of him, and do not know whether any similar attacks have since occurred.

It would be easy to offer other illustrations of a condition of mind very properly termed double consciousness. It is as if a single individual had two separate and distinct personalities, neither of which has anything in common with the other. All associations, all memories of one condition seem to be blotted out or suspended when the person is in the other condition. It is a remarkable fact that such a state is usually produced by a blow or a fall, and it is a well-recognized complication of railway injuries and of severe accidents that such a state of secondary consciousness may follow for several hours or days, but in the case here related nothing of this kind preceded the onset. And it must be remembered that such a state of secondary consciousness or abnormal personality may also be produced by hypnotic suggestion. Persons who are hypnotized are in a condition quite similar to that described as a state of secondary consciousness—that is, they have no recollection of what has happened before they were put in the hypnotic condition, and after they are awakened they have no recollection of what has happened in the hypnotic condition. Yet in that condition they are able to reply to questions intelligently, and if they are hypnotized a second time their memory of what has occurred on the first occasion is continuous with their memory of what occurs upon the second. Such cases have been described with much care by Paul Janet.

The same phenomena are observed in a less degree in somnambulists, for what a sleep-walker may do one night he may undo on a second night, though having absolutely no recollection of either occurrence in his waking hours.

There is no satisfactory explanation as yet found for these extraordinary alterations of consciousness and personality, and there is much opportunity for study and research in regard to these peculiar conditions. They remain among the curiosities of thinking, inexplicable yet interesting.

 has long enjoyed a complete system of local government. Among the people, three hundred thousand in number, are five hundred village councils, elected every three years, ruled by popularly elected officers, levying rates, distributing charities, appointing supervisors of education, whose duty it is to deliver popular lectures on its advantages, "and finding the solution of the problem of women's rights," says Mr. W. H. Cozens-Hardy, "in allowing women to speak in the village meetings as long as they may wish, but to vote not at all.