also knows />; in them, what knows a is expressly posited
as not knowing h\ etc. In short, the two separate idcab



200 PSTCHOLOOT,

can never by any logic be made to figure as one idea. If
one idea (of a -\-h, for example) come as a matter of fact
after tlie two separate ideas (of a and of h), then we must
hold it to be as direct a product of the later conditions as
the two separate ideas were of the earlier conditions.

The sim])lest thing, therefore, if we are to assume the eX"
istence of a stream of consciousness at all, would be to sup^
pose that things that are Jcno^vn together are Tcnown in
single pulses of that stream. The things may be many,
and may occasion many currents in the brain. But the
psychic phenomenon correlative to these many currents is
one integral ' state/ transitive or substantive (see p. 161), to
which the many things appear.

The Soul as a Combining Medium. — The spiritualists in
philosophy have been prompt to see that things which are
known together are known by one something, but that some-
thing, they say, is no mere passing thought, but a simple
and permanent spiritual being on which many ideas com-
bine their effects. It makes no difference in this connec-
tion whether this being be called Soul, Ego, or Spirit, in
either case its chief function is that of a combining
medium. This is a different vehicle of knowledge from
that in which we just said that the mystery of knowing
things together might be most simply lodged. Which is
the real knower, this permanent being, or our passing
state ? If we had other grounds, not yet considered, for
admitting the Soul into our psychology, then getting
there on those grounds, she might turn out to be the
knower too. But if there be no other grounds for admit-
ting the Soul, we had better cling to our passing '' states '
as the exclusive agents of knowledge; for we have to as-
sume their existence anyhow in psychology, and the know-
ing of many things together is just as well accounted for
when we call it one of their functions as when we call it a
reaction of the Soul. Explained it is not by either con-
ception, and has to figure in psychology as a datum that is
ultimate.



THE 8ELV. 201

But there are other alleged gi'ounds for admitting the
Soul into jisyehoiogy, and the chief of them is

The Sense of Personal Identity. — In the hist chapter it
was stated (see p. 154) that the thoughts which we actually
know to exist do not fly about loose, but seem each to
belong to some one thinker and not to another. Each
thought, out of a multitude of other thoughts of which
it may tliink, is able to distinguish those Avhich belong to
it from those which do not. The former have a warmth
and intimacy about them of which the latter are com-
pletely devoid, and the result is a ^le of yesterday, judged
to be in some peculiarly subtle sense the same with the
1 who now make the judgment. As a mere subjective
phenomenon the judgment presents no special mystery.
It belongs to the great class of judgments of sameness;
and there is nothing more remarkable in making a judg-
ment of sameness in the first person than in the second or
the third. The intellectual operations seem essentially
alike, whether I say ' I am the same as I Avas,' or Avhether
I say ' the pen is the same as it was, yesterday.' It is as
easy to think this as to think the opposite and say 'neither
of us is the same.' The only question which we have to
consider is whether it be a right judgment. Is the sa^ne-
ness j^rcdicafcd rcciUi/ tltorc?

Sameness in the Self as Known. — If in the sentence "I
am the same tbat I was yesterday," we take tlie ' I ' broadly,
it is evident that in many ways I am not the same. As a
concrete Me, I am somewhat dilTerent from what I was:
then hungry, now full; then walking, now at rest; then
poorer, now richer; then younger, now older; etc. And
yet in other ways I am the same, and we may call theso
the essential ways. My name" and i)rofessi<)n and rela-
tions to the world are identical, my face, niy faculties and
store of memories, are practically indistinguishable, now and
then. Moreover the Me of now and the Me of then are con-
iinuous : the alterations were gradual and never afTected the
whole of me at once. So far, then, my personal identity is



202 PSTCEOLOOt.

just like the sameness predicated of any other aggregate
thing. It is a conclusion grounded either on the resem-
blance in essential respects, or on the continuity of the
phenomena compared. And it must not be taken to mean
more than these grounds warrant, or treated as a sort of
metaphysical or absolute Unity in which all differences are
overwhelmed. The past and present selves compared are'
the same Just so far as they a?-e the same, and no farther.
They are the same in kind. But this generic sameness
coexists with generic differences just as real; and if from
the one point of view I am one self, from another I am
quite as truly many. Similarly of the attribute of con-
tinuity: it gives to the self the unity of mere connected-
ness, or unbrokenness, a perfectly definite phenomenal
thing — but it gives not a jot or tittle more.

Sameness in the Self as Knower. — But all this is said
only of the Me, or Self as known. In the judgment I
am the same,' etc., the ' I ' was taken broadly as the con-
crete person. Suppose, however, that we take it narrowly,
as the Thinker, as ' thai to which ' all the concrete deter-
minations of the Me belong and are known: does there not
then appear an absolute identity at different times ? That
something which at every moment goes out and knowingly
appropriates the Afe of the past, and discards the non-me
as foreign, is it not a permanent abiding principle of spir-
itual activity identical with itself wherever found ?

That it is such a principle is the reigning doctrine both
of philosophy and common-sense, and yet reflection finds
it difficult to justify the idea. Jf thei'e were no passimj
states of CO use ion, sne-ss, then indeed we might suppose an
abiding principle, absolutely one with itself, to be the
ceaseless thinker in each one of us. But if the states of
consciousness be accorded as realities, no such * substantial '
identity in the thinker need be supposed. Yesterday's and
to-day's states of consciousnesses have no suhstantial
identity, for when one is here the other is irrevocably dead
and gone. But they have ^ functional identity, for both



THE SELF. 203

know tlie same objects, and so far tis the by-goue me i? one
of those objects, they react iqion it in an identical way>
greeting it and calling it //lii'c, and opposing it to all the
utliL'r things they know. This functional identity seems
n-ally the only sort of identity in the thinker wliich tlie
facts require us to sui)pose. Successive thinkers, numeri-
cally distinct, but all aware of the same past in the same
way, form an adequate vehicle for all the experience of
personal unity and sameness which we actually have. And
just such a train of successive thinkers is the stream of
mental states (each with its complex object cognized and
emotional and selective reaction thereupon) which psycholo-
gy treated as a natural science has to assume (see p. 2).

The logical conclusion seems then to be that flie states
of con.'<ri(tus)H'ss are all that psyclwlogy needs to do her
work with. Mctaphi/sics or tlicohxjy may prove tlie Soul to
exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substan-
tial principle of unity is superfluous.

How the I appropriates the Me. — But why should each
successive mental state appropriate the same past Me ? I
spoke a while ago of my own past experiences appearing to
me with a 'warmth and intinuicy ' which the experiences
thought of by me as having occurred to other people lack.
I'his leads us to the answer sought. My present Me is felt
with warmth and intimacy. Tiie heavy warm mass of my
body is there, and the nucleus of the 'spiritual me,' the sense
of intimate activity (p. 1.S4), is there. We cannot realize our
present self wit)iout simultaneously feeling one or other of
these two things. Any other object of thought whieh
brings these two things with it into consciousness will be
thought with a warmth and an intimacy like those wiiich
cling to the present me.

Any distant oljject which fullils this ctjiidilinn will he
thought with such warmth and intimacy. Wul which dis-
tant objects do fullil the conditic^n, when represented ?

Obviously tliose, and only tliose, which fuHilled it when
they were alive. Them we shall atill represent with the



204 PSYGEOLOGT.

animal warmtli upon them; to tliem may possibly still cling
the flavor of the inner activity taken in the act. And by a
natural consequence, we shall assimilate them to each other
and to the warm and intimate self we now feel within us
as we think, and separate them as a collection from what-
ever objects have not this mark, much as out of a herd
of cattle let loose for the winter on some wide Western
prairie the owner picks out and sorts together, when the
round-up comes in the spring, all the beasts on which he
finds his own particular brand. Well, just such objects are
the past experiences which I now call mine. Other men's
experiences, no matter how much I may know about them,
never bear this vivid, this peculiar brand. This is why Peter,
awakening in the same bed with Paul, and recalling what
both had in mind before they went to sleep, reidentifiee
and appropriates the 'warm' ideas a? his, and is never
tempted to confuse them with those cold and pale-appear-
ing ones which he ascribes to Paul. As well might he
confound Paul's body, which he only sees, with his own
body, which he sees but also feels. Each of us when he
awakens says. Here's the same old Me again, just as he
says, Here's the same old bed, t^'-.e same old room, the same
old world.

And similarly in our waking hours, though each pulse of
consciousness dies away and is replaced by another, yet that
other, among the things it knows, knows its OAvn prede-
cessor, and finding it 'warm,' in the way we have de-
scribed, greets it, saying: "Thou art mine, and part of the
same self with me." Each later thought, knowing and
including thus the thoughts that Avent before, is the final
receptacle — and appropriating tliem is the final owner — of
all that they contain and own. As Kant says, it is as if
elastic balls were to have not only motion but knowledge
of it, and a first ball were to transmit both its motion and
its consciousness to a second, which took both up into lis
consciousness and passed them to a third, until the last
ball held all that the other balls had held, and realized it



THE SELF. 205

as its own. It is this trick whicli the nasceut thouglit
has of immediately taking up the expiring thought and
'adopting' it, which leads to the appropriation of most of
the remoter constituents of the self. \N'ho owns the last
self owns the self before the last, for what possesses the pos-
sessor possesses the possessed. It is impossible to discover
any verifiable features in personal identity which this
sketch docs not contain, impossible to imagine how any
transcendent principle of Unity (were such a principle
there) could shape nuitters to any other result, or bo
known by any other fruit, than just this production of a
stream of consciousness each successive part of which
should know, and knowing, hug to itself and adopt, all
those that went before, — thus standing as the represcnta-
iivc of an entire past stream with which it is in no wise
to be identified.

Mutations aud Multiplications of the Self. — The Me, like
every other aggregate, changes as it grows. The passing
states of consciousness, which should jtreserve in their suc-
cession an identical knowledge of its j)ast, wander from
their duty, letting large portions drop from out of their
ken, and representing other portions wrong. The identity
which we recognize as we survey the long procession can
only be the relative identity of a slow shifting in which
there is always some common ingredient retained. Tiie
commonest element of all, the most uniform, is tiie posses-
sion of some common memories. However dilTerent the
man may be from the youth, liotli Icok l)a('k on the same
( liildhood and call it their own.

Tlins the identity found by the / in its Me is only a
loosely construed thing ; :i identity * on the wliole,' just
like that which any er.tside oljserver might find in Iho
same assem'olage of facts. We often say of a nun: ' he is so
changed one would not know him'; aiid so does a man,
less often, speak of himself. 'J'hcse changes in the Me,
recogniz(»d liy the I, or by outsid(! observers, may bo grave
or blight. They deserve some uotico here.



206 PSYCHOLOOT

The mutations of the Self may be divided into two main
classes :

a. Alterations of memory; and

b. Alterations in the present bodily and spiritual selves.
a. Of the alterations of memory little need be said —

they are so familiar. Losses of memory are a normal inci-
dent in life, especially in advancing years, and the person's
me, as * realized/ shrinks j)'^^^'^ passu with the facts that
disappear. The memory of dreams and of experiences in
the hypnotic trance rarely survives.

False memories, also, are by no means rare occurrences,
and whenever they occur they distort our consciousness of
our Me. Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain
matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them,
may have said them, done them, or they may only have
dreamed or imagined they did so. The content of a dream
will oftentimes insert itself into the stream of real life in a
most perplexing way. The most frequent source of false
memory is the accounts we give to others of our experi-
ences. Such accounts we almost always make both more
simple and more interesting than the truth. We quote
what we should have said or done, rather than what we
really said or did; and in the first telling we may be fully
aware of the distinction. But ere long the fiction expels
the reality from memory and reigns in its stead alone.
This is one great source of the fallibility of testimony
meant to be quite honest. Especially where the marvellous
is concerned, the story takes a tilt that way, and the mem-
ory follows the story.

h. When we pass beyond alterations of memory to ab-
normal alterations in the present self we have graver dis-
turbances. These alterations are of three main types, but
our knowledge of the elements and causes of these changes
of personality is so slight that the division into types must
not be regarded as having any profound significance. The
types are :



THE SELF. 207

a. Insane delusions;

fi. Alternating selves;

)'. MediuDiships or possessions.

a. In insanity we often have delusions projected into
the past, which are melancholic or sanguine according to
the character of tlie disease. But the worst alterations of
the self come from present perversions of sensibility and
impulse which leave the past undisturbed, but induce the
patient to think that the present Me is an altogether new
personage. Something of this sort happens normally in
the rapid expansion of the whole character, intellectual
as well as volitional, which takes place after the time of
puberty. The pathological cases are curious enough to
merit longer notice.

The basis of our personality, as M. Ribot says, is that
feeling of our vitality wliich, because it is so perpetually
present, remains in the background of our consciousness.

" It is the basis because, always present, always acting,
without peace or rest, it knows neither sleep nor fainting,
and lasts as long as life itself, of which it is one form. It
gerves as a support to that self-conscious me wliich memory
constitutes, it is the medium of association among its other
parts, . . . Suppose now that it were possible at once to
change our body and put another into its place: skeleton,
vessels, viscera, muscles, skin, everything made new, except
tlie nervous system with its stored-u]) memory of the past.
There can be no doubt that in such a case the aflUix of
unaccustomed vital sensations would produce the gravest
disorders. Between the old sense of existence engraved on
the nervous system, and the new one acting with all the
intensity of its reality and novelty, there would be irrecoTi-
cihdde contradiction."

What the particular perversions of the bodily scnsil)ility
Tnav bf which give rise to these contradii-tions is, for the
moat part, imposaible fur u Bound-miuded person to con-



208 P8TCE0L0OT.

ceive. One patient has another self that repeats all his
thoughts for him. Others, amongst whom are some of the
first characters in liistory, have internal da3mons who speak
with them and are replied to. Another feels that someone
' makes ' his thoughts for him. Another has two bodies,
lying in different beds. Some patients feel as if they had
lost parts of their bodies, teeth, brain, stomach, etc. In
some it is made of wood, glass, butter, etc. In some it
does not exist any longer, or is dead, or is a foreign object
quite separate from the speaker's self. Occasionally, parts
of the body lose their connection for consciousness with
the rest, and are treated as belonging to another person
and moved by a hostile will. Thus the right hand may
fight with the left as with an enemy. Or the cries of the
patient himself are assigned to another person with whom
the patient expresses sympathy. The literature of insan-
ity is filled with narratives of such illusions as these. M.
Taine quotes from a patient of Dr. Krishaber an account
of sufferings, from which it will be seen how completely
aloof from what is normal a man's experience may sud-
denly become:

" After the first or second day it was for some weeks
impossible to observe or analyze myself. The suffering —
angina pectoris — was too overwhelming. It was not till
the first days of January that I could give an account to
myself of what I experienced. . . . Here is the first thing
of which I retain a clear remembrance. I was alone, and
already a prey to permanent visual trouble, when I was
suddenly seized with a visual trouble infinitely more pro-
nounced. Objects grew small and receded to infinite dis-
tances — men and things together. I was myself immeas-
urably far away. I looked about me with terror and
astonishment ; the world was escapi?ig from me. ... I
remarked at the same time that my voice was extremely
far away from me, that it sounded no longer as if mine. I
struck the ground with my foot, and perceived its resist-
ance ; but this resistance seemed illusory— not that the



TEE SELF. 209

soil wjis soft, but that the weight of my body was reduced
to almost uotliing. ... I had the feeling of being witliout
weight. . . ." lu addition to being so distant, " objects
apj)eared to me fat. When I spoke with anyone, I saw
him like an image cut out of paper with no relief. . . .
This sensation lasted intermittently for two years. . . ,
Constantly it seemed as if my legs did not belong to me.
It was almost as bad with my arm?. As for my head, it
seemed no longer to exist. ... I appeared to myself to
act automatically, by an impulsion foreign to myself. . . .
There was inside of me a new being, and another part of
myself, the old being, which took no interest in the new-
comer. I distinctly remember saying to myself that the
sufferings of this new being were to me indifferent. I was
never really dupe of these illusions, but my mind grew
often tired of incessantly correcting the new impressions,
and I let myself go and live the unhappy life of this new
entity. I had an ardent desire to see my old world again,
to get back to my old self. This desire kept me from
killing myself. ... I was another, and I hated, I despised
this other; he was perfectly odious to me; it was certainly
another who had taken my form and assumed my func-
tions." *

In cases like this, it is as certain that the J is unaltered
as that the ^fc is changed. That is to say, the present
Thought of the patient is cognitive of both the old Me and
the new, so long as its memory holds good. Only, within
that objective sphere which formerly lent itself so 8im})ly
to the judgment of recognition and of egoistic aj)propria-
tion, strange perplexities have arisen. The present and
the paht, both seen therein, will not unite. A\'here is my
old Me? "What is this new one? Are they the same?
Or liave I two ? Sueli questions, answered by whatever
theory the patient is able to conjure up as plausible, form
the beginning of his insane life.



• De rintelligence. Sin*- e<lition (1878). vol. ii. p. 461, rmU.



210 P8YCH0L0OT.

/?. The phenomenon of alteriiating personality in its
simplest phases seems based on lapses of memory. Any
man becomes, as we say, inconsistent with himself if he
forgets his engagements, pledges, knowledges, and habits;
and it is merely a question of degree at what point we shall
say that his personality is changed. But in the pathological
cases known as those of double or alternate personality the
loss of memory is abrupt, and is usually preceded by a
period of unconsciousness or syncope lasting a variable
length of time. In the hypnotic trance we can easily pro-
duce an alteration of the personality, either by telling the
subject to forget all that has happened to hira since such
or such a date, in which case he becomes (it may be) a
child again, or by telling him he is another altogether
imaginary personage, in which case all facts about himself
seem for the time being to lapse from out his mind, and
he throws himself into the new character with a vivacity
proportionate to the amount of histrionic imagination
which he possesses. But in the pathological cases the
transformation is spontaneous. The most famous case,
perhaps, on record is that of Felida X., reported by Dr.
Azam of Bordeaux. At the age of fourteen this woman
began to pass into a * secondary' state characterized by a
''hange in her general disposition and character, as if cer-
tain 'inhibitions,* previously existing, were suddenly re-
moved. During the secondary state she remembered the
first state, but on emerging from it into the first state she
remembered nothing of the second. At the age of forty-
four the duration of the secondary state (which was on the
whole superior in quality to the original state) had gained
upon the latter so much as to occupy most of her time.
During it she remembers the events belonging to the
original state, but her complete oblivion of the secondary
state when the original state recurs is often very distressing
to her, as, for example, when the transition takes place in
a carriage on her way to a funeral, and she has no jdef-
wbich one of her friends may be dead. She actually be-



THE SELF. iill

came preo^iiint during one of her early secondary states,
and during her tirst state had no knowledge of how it had
come to pass. Her distress at these blanks of memory is
Bonietimes intense and once drove her to attempt suicide.

M. Pierre Janet describes a still more remarkable case
as follows: " Leonie B., whose life sounds more like an Im-
probable romance than a genuine history, has had attacks
of natural somnambulism since the age of three years.
8he has been hypnotized constantly by all sorts of persons
from the age of sixteen upwards, and she is now forty-
five. AVhilst her normal life developed in one way in
the midst of her poor country surroundings, her second
life was passed in drawing-rooms and doctors' offices, and
naturally took an entirely difTereiit direction. To-day,
when in her normal state, this poor peasant woman is a
serious and ratlier sad person, calm and slow, very mild
with every one, and extremely timid : to look at her one
would never suspect the personage which slie contains.
But hardly is she put to sleep hypnotically when a meta-
morphosis occurs. Her face is no lon'^er the same. She
keeps her eyes closed, it is true, but the acuteness of her
other senses supplies their place. She is gay, noisy, rest-
less, sometimes insupportably so. She remains good-
natured, but has acquired a singular tendency to irony and
sharp jesting. Nothing is more curious than to hear her
after a sitting when she has received a visit from stra".ger8
who wished to see her asleep. She gives a word-portrait
of them, apes their numners, claims to know their little
ridiculous aspects and passions, and for each invents a
romance. To this character must be added the possession
of an enormous number of recollections, whose existence