Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/81

Rh self which may exist simultaneously with the upper self, and in a way beneath it as above described?

There is good reason for thinking that they do, to some extent to what extent is a question more easily asked than answered. In the first place, if the two groups are to be entirely distinct, there scarcely seems to be enough mental material to go around. The primary system would be so maimed and the secondary so incomplete that one could scarcely regard either as a full-fledged personality. If certain elements are to be simultaneously held in common by both groups the case would be different, but, so far as I know, there is no good evidence for this. In the second place, the will, or sense of effort, which I believe to be the essence of the self, raises a serious difficulty. We practically know nothing of its nature. The rival theories may be regarded as falling under two heads—those that make will but a name for the control exerted by the more complex ideas over the more simple, and those that make it something absolutely unique in mental life, and in no respect analogous to the control exerted by ideas, whether complex or simple. If we adopt the first, it is hard to believe that the secondary system could attain the degree of complexity necessary to the manifestation of will without destroying the complexity of the primary; if we adopt the second, it is as hard to believe that two of these unique phenomena should appear in one body. If the secondary system manifested a will of its own, we should expect to find that the primary had lost it, and then we would not have two simultaneous selves, but merely successive modifications of the original self, as in the cases discussed in my last paper.

Turning now from the abstract to the concrete, I shall give some of the facts upon which these conceptions are based. First I shall take up the case of Prof. Pierre Janet's famous patient Lucie, and show how he tried to prove in her the existence of subconscious states, and how he apparently succeeded in organizing them into a sort of dream self which existed only in his presence, faded away when he departed, and finally vanished when Lucie recovered her health. Then I shall try to throw a little light upon the actual character of this "amorphous mind" and the relations which may exist between secondary states and the primary system.

When Lucie fell into Prof. Janet's hands, she was about nineteen years of age. She was intelligent, quick-witted, hot-tempered, and had a strong will of her own. She had wholly lost her