It is barely fifty years since the problem of supreme interest to mankind—the problem of the nature, possibilities, and destiny of man—began to be studied in a really scientific way; yet in that half century more progress has been made toward its solution than in all the previous thousands of years that have elapsed since man first asked himself: What am I? What are my capabilities? Shall I be, after I have ceased to exist here on earth?

Armed with instruments of the most delicate precision, devising novel methods for exploring the body and the mind in their mutual ramifications, modern investigators have thrown a flood of new and largely unexpected light on the great questions at issue, and have opened vistas of hope and aspiration and actual achievement undreamed of by the vanished peoples of bygone times.

At first sight, to be sure, much of their effort appears to be irreparably, even wantonly, destructive, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the blows they have dealt at the traditional conception of the central fact in man’s psychical make-up—that intangible entity variously known as the ego, the self, the personality, animated and governed by an indwelling, unifying principle, the soul. Every man instinctively believes that there is only one of him. He feels that, no matter how his thoughts, his sensations, his emotions may change in the course of time, he himself will remain essentially and permanently the same. Putting this belief into metaphysical language, he declares, with the excellent Thomas Reid:

“The conviction which every man has of his identity ... needs no aid of philosophy to strengthen it; and no philosophy can weaken it without first producing some degree of insanity.... The identity of a person is a perfect identity; wherever it is real it admits of no degrees; and it is impossible that a person should be in part the same and in part different, because a person is a monad, and is not divisible into parts.”[45]

But the modern explorer of the nature of man, replies:

“You are wrong, my friend. Your self is very far from being the simple, stable unity that you imagine it to be. In reality it is most complex and most unstable, easily breaking up, and sometimes breaking up so completely that it may even be replaced by an entirely new self. You do not believe this? I can prove it to you from the facts not only of scientific experiment, but also of everyday observation.”

Naturally, in support of this statement, stress would be laid on instances resembling the strange case of BCA, just narrated. And although cases at all similar to the BCA affair are extremely uncommon there are a number on record evidencing in other ways so-called “total dissociation of personality.” For example:

A prosperous Philadelphia plumber, a man of exemplary habits and seemingly in good health, left his home one day to take a short walk. From that moment he disappeared as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed him. There was no reason why he should abscond or commit suicide, and the general belief was that he had met with foul play. Rewards were offered, and detectives employed, but no trace of him could be found. His wife, giving him up for dead, sold his business and removed with their children to Chicago.

Nearly two years later, the workmen in a tin-shop in a Southern city were startled one morning by the conduct of one of their number, who, dropping his tools and pressing his hand to his head in a bewildered way, sprang to his feet, and cried:

“My God! Where am I? How did I get here? This isn’t my shop!”

The foreman, thinking he was drunk, or had gone insane, ran forward to pacify him.

“Steady, Smith, steady!” he exclaimed. “You’ll be all right in a minute.”

The other only stared at him wildly.

“Why do you call me Smith?” he demanded. “That isn’t my name.”

“That’s the name you’ve gone by since you came among us six months ago.”

“Six months ago! You’re crazy, man. It isn’t half an hour since I left my wife and little ones to get a breath of fresh air before dinner.”

“Look here,” said the foreman, pressing him gently into a seat, “where do you suppose you are, anyway?”

“Why, in Philadelphia, of course.”

It was indeed the Philadelphia plumber, whose missing self had returned to him as suddenly and as mysteriously as it had vanished. A few days more and he was happily reunited with the family that had so long believed him to be among the dead.[46]

Where, it may well be asked, was this man’s original self during these two years? What had become of his normal ego, the ego of which alone he had formerly been aware? Yet at no time throughout the period when he lacked knowledge of his identity, and was without memory for his earlier life and social relationships, did he display the slightest sign of mental aberration. He was as sane and real to himself and to those with whom he came into contact, and was as able to take care of himself and earn a sufficient living, as he had ever been in the years before he experienced the remarkable psychical upheaval that had substituted an alien, a “secondary” self in the place of the self he had always been and known.

A blow, an illness, a fright, the stress of a prolonged emotion—any one of several causes may bring about this weird condition, of which I could give illustrative cases to a number that would fill many pages of this book.[47] Sometimes, though fortunately seldom, there may be—as in the case of BCA—a double or even a multiple dissociation, resulting in the development of two, three, four, or more secondary selves, which alternate with one another in a way productive of the most intense mental agony to the helpless victim.

But, after all, it is not necessary to insist on such extreme instances in order to demonstrate the essential instability and divisibility of that which we commonly have in mind when we speak of the “self.” Dissociation of personality is in evidence every day in the pathetic symptomatology of the various insanities, and in the chronic, if often masked and unrecognized, memory lapses universal among sufferers from the manifold affections of hysteria, such as we dealt with in the chapter on “Dissociation and Disease.” It is in evidence in the victims of alcoholic and drug excesses, who, in a very literal sense, may become “another person,” and say and do things quite alien from their usual self, and concerning which their usual self afterward has no knowledge.

Even normal sleep, albeit a wise provision for the rest and strengthening of the organism, involves dissociation. Still more strikingly is dissociation evident in the phenomena of the state of artificial sleep induced by hypnotism.

It would carry us too far from the point now under consideration to enter here into any discussion of the nature and mechanism of hypnotism, that still widely misunderstood but marvelous agency, not simply for therapeutic purposes but for the study and exploration of man’s inmost being. The thing of immediate importance is the fact that under the influence of hypnotism a person invariably develops a self more or less different from his ordinary waking, conscious self.

Hypnotized, he is to all outward seeming oblivious to everything transpiring around him. But let the hypnotist speak to him, question him, and he instantly responds with answers so intelligent as to indicate that, in some respects, at all events, he is more alert and keen than when wide awake. Curiously enough, however, commands and suggestions given to him are, within certain limitations, accepted and acted upon, no matter how disagreeable or absurd they may be.

Later, when awakened, he is in precisely the same position as are victims of spontaneous dissociation—such as the Philadelphia plumber, and Doctor Prince’s puzzling neurasthene, BCA. That is to say, he is unable to give any account of what he has said and done during hypnosis. Thus the effect of hypnotism is to produce a psychical cleavage so profound as to involve the action, within a single organism, of two separate selves.

This has been demonstrated by a long line of scientific investigators, including physicians and psychologists of international reputation. Moreover, these investigators have shown that, even after a person has been brought out of the hypnotic state, the self evoked by hypnotism may in some inscrutable way continue operant without his suspecting for a moment its existence and influence.

Impressive proof of this is found in the execution of what are known as post-hypnotic commands. A hypnotized person is told that, after being de-hypnotized, he is to perform a certain act on receiving a certain signal, or at the expiration of a certain time. As usual, when restored to his conscious, waking state, he remembers nothing of the command imposed on him; but when the signal is given, or the appointed time arrives, he feels an irresistible, and to him inexplicable, impulse to carry out the suggested idea.

Thus, in one series of fifty-five experiments made by the foremost English authority on hypnotism, Doctor J. Milne Bramwell, the subject, a young woman of nineteen, was ordered to perform a specified act at the end of a varying number of minutes, ranging from three hundred to more than twenty thousand. Not once, on being de-hypnotized, did she remember what she had been told to do, although offered a liberal reward if she could recall the commands given her.

Nevertheless, only two of the fifty-five experiments were complete failures, while in forty-five she executed the commands at exactly the moment designated, and in the remainder was at no time more than five minutes out of the way. As to the complete failures, Doctor Bramwell ascertained that in one instance she had mistaken the suggestion given, and in the other the circumstances were such that the command might have been executed without his being aware of it.[48]

Equally astonishing results are reported by the brilliant group of Frenchmen who, uniting under the direction of Doctor A.A. LiÉbeault, were the first to make an organized investigation of the cause and effects, the possibilities and limitations, of hypnotism. One of these French investigators, Doctor Hippolyte Bernheim, once hypnotized an old soldier, and asked him:

“On what day in the first week of October will you be at liberty?”

“On the Wednesday.”

“Well,” said Doctor Bernheim, “on that day you will pay a visit to Doctor LiÉbeault; you will find in his office the president of the republic, who will present you with a medal and a pension.”

The soldier was then awakened and questioned as to what had been said to him, but could remember nothing. However, on Wednesday, October 3, Doctor LiÉbeault wrote to Doctor Bernheim:

“Your soldier has just called at my house. He walked to my bookcase, and made a respectful salute; then I heard him utter the words: ‘Your excellency!’ Soon he held out his right hand, and said: ‘Thanks, your excellency.’ I asked him to whom he was speaking. ‘Why, to the president of the republic.’ He turned again to the bookcase and saluted, then went away. The witnesses to the scene naturally asked me what that madman was doing. I answered that he was not mad, but as reasonable as they or I, only another person was acting in him.”[49]

Compare with this an amusing little story told by Doctor Prince.

“Wishing to test the compelling influence of post-hypnotic commands,” he says,[50] “I suggested to one of my subjects, Mrs. R., after she was hypnotized, that on the following day, when she went down to dinner, she would put on her bonnet, and keep it on during the whole of dinner time. The next day I received a letter from her in which she said:

“‘I think I am getting insane. At dinner time I would wear my hat during the meal.’

“On further inquiry, I obtained the following story, which I give substantially in the original language:

“‘As I was going in to dinner, my girl asked me what I was going out for. “I am not,” says I. “I am going to eat my dinner.” “Then what have you got your hat on for?” says she. I put my hand to my head, and there was my bonnet. “Lord, Mamie!” says I, “am I going crazy?” “No, mother,” she says, “you often do foolish things.” I began to get frightened, but took off my bonnet and went into the next room to dinner.’

“Then the younger child similarly asked her where she was going, and called attention to her having her bonnet on. A second time she raised her hand to her head, and to her surprise found that her bonnet was really there. She again took it off, and later, when her husband entered, the same thing was repeated; but when she found her bonnet on her head for the third time, she made excuse of the stormy words that ensued to declare she would ‘keep it on now till she was through.’ After dinner, being alarmed, she consulted a neighbor about it.”

But the longest time on record for the carrying out of a post-hypnotic suggestion was made by a subject of Doctor LiÉgeois, another of the early French investigators. Doctor LiÉgeois hypnotized a young man, and said to him:

“A year from to-day this is what you are going to do, and what you are going to see: You will call at Doctor LiÉbeault’s office in the morning, and tell him that you have come to thank him and Doctor LiÉgeois for all they have done to improve your health. While you are talking to him, you will see enter the room a dog with a monkey riding on its back. They will perform a thousand tricks that will amuse you very much.

“Then you will see a man come in, leading a great American grizzly bear, which will also perform tricks. It will be a tame bear, so that you will not be at all frightened. The man will be delighted at recovering his trained dog and monkey, which he thought he had lost. Before he leaves you will borrow a few cents from Doctor LiÉbeault to give to him.”

Doctor LiÉgeois, after repeating these complicated and absurd directions, awoke the young man, and by cautious questioning ascertained that his memory was a perfect blank for all that had been said to him while he was hypnotized. Great care was taken not to recall to his mind at any time the command given to him, and which his hypnotic self was expected to remember and perform on the appointed day.

Exactly a year later, at nine in the morning, Doctor LiÉgeois went to Doctor LiÉbeault’s office, where he waited half an hour, and then returned home, thinking that the experiment had failed. But at ten minutes to ten the young man arrived. There was nothing about his appearance to indicate that he was in any abnormal condition.

He greeted Doctor LiÉbeault, explained that he had come to thank him for his kindness to him, and inquired for Doctor LiÉgeois, whom he said he had expected to find there. A few minutes afterward, Doctor LiÉgeois having meanwhile been hastily summoned, the young man cried out that a monkey had just come in, riding on the back of a dog. He watched the antics of these imaginary animals with great interest, laughing heartily, and describing the tricks he fancied he saw them performing. After this, he announced the arrival of a man who was evidently the owner of the monkey and the dog, and he begged Doctor LiÉbeault to lend him a little money to reward the man for the amusement his animals had given him. But he saw no bear.

A moment later he was conversing with the two physicians, in evident ignorance of all that he had just been saying and doing. He angrily denied that there had been any animals in the room. When asked why he himself was there, he could give no definite reply. Doctor LiÉgeois immediately put him into the hypnotic state, and demanded:

“Do you know why you came here this morning?”

“Of course I do.”

“Why was it?”

“Because you told me to.”

“When?”

“A year ago.”

“But you did not come at nine o’clock?”

“You did not tell me to come at nine o’clock. You said to come at exactly a year from the time you were talking to me. It was ten minutes to ten when you gave me your command.”

“And why did you not see the bear?”

“Because you said nothing about a bear when you repeated your orders. You spoke only once of a bear. Everything else you spoke of twice. I thought you had changed your mind about the bear.”[51]

Obviously, the hypnotic self, distinct and different though it is from the primary, waking self, can reason, can analyze, can draw conclusions as readily as the conscious self, and is, to put it otherwise, as truly a self as the conscious self.

Facts like these, as was said, have caused numerous investigators to question the validity of the hitherto prevailing view of human personality. The self, they affirm, is no single, continuous, permanent entity. On the contrary, it is merely a loosely coÖrdinated aggregation of mental states, forever shifting and changing, so that the self of to-morrow may be vastly different from the self of to-day. To quote Professor Ribot, the famous scientist, and one of the most distinguished exponents of this new view of the self:

“The unity of the ego is not the unity of a single entity diffusing itself among multiple phenomena; it is the coÖrdination of a certain number of states perpetually renascent, and having for their sole, common basis the vague feeling of the body. This unity does not diffuse itself downward, but is aggregated by ascent from below; it is not an initial, but a terminal point.”

And Ribot adds emphatically:

“It is the organism, with the brain, its supreme representative, which constitutes the real personality; comprising in itself the remains of all that we have been and the possibilities of all that we shall be. The whole individual character is there inscribed, with its active and passive aptitudes, its sympathies and antipathies, its genius, its talent or its stupidity, its virtues and its vices, its torpor or its activity.”[52]

Or, as the eminent psychologist, Alfred Binet, declares:

“We have long been accustomed by habits of speech, fictions of law, and also by the results of introspection, to consider each person as constituting an indivisible unity. Actual researches utterly modify this current notion. It seems to be well proven nowadays that if the unity of the ego be real, a quite different definition should be applied to it. It is not a single entity; for, if it were, one could not understand how in certain circumstances some patients, by exaggerating a phenomenon which obviously belongs to normal life, can unfold several different personalities. A thing that can be divided must consist of several parts. Should a personality be able to become double or triple, this would be proof that it is compound, a grouping of, and a resultant from, several elements.”[53]

But the brain, which Ribot identifies with the personality, is a mere organ of the body, perishing with the body. Does it follow that the self perishes with bodily death? Is it really without an abiding, indwelling principle superior to, and independent of, the physical organism—in short, a soul—that would enable it to survive the final catastrophe of earthly existence? Is man soulless? Does death end personality?

Aye, those who hold with Ribot would reply. To speak of a soul is, in their view of the case, sheer mysticism, since “the ego in us is nothing more than the functional result of the arrangement for the time being of the molecules or ions of our brain matter.”

That is why, at the beginning of this chapter, I stated that, of all the labors of the modern investigators of the nature of man, none would seem to be so irreparably destructive as the blows they have dealt at the traditional conception of human personality.

Yet, when we probe a little deeper, it will be found that the damage is not so irreparable as would at first appear; nay, it will even be found that by their searching inquiries, the advocates of the brain-stuff theory have unwittingly provided stronger reasons than were at any previous time available for insisting both on the actuality of the soul and the fundamental unity and continuity of the ego.

Undeniably, it is necessary to modify the old conception in some important respects. After the discoveries that have been made as to the disintegrating effects of natural and artificially induced sleep, of disease, of sudden frights, of profound emotional shocks, of alcohol and drugs, etc., it is idle to pretend that unity and continuity are distinctive characteristics of the ordinary self of waking life. So far as that self is concerned, its instability and divisibility are now plainly evident.

What, however, if it can be shown that, equally with the secondary selves that may and so often do replace it, the primary self is only part of a larger self—a self which persists unchanged beneath all the mutations of spontaneous and experimental occurrence? In that case it will at once become clear that the situation has again changed completely, and that we are back to the traditional, the intuitive, the “common-sense” conception of personality, with the single difference that the term “self” means something broader and nobler than when we limit it to the now demonstrated unstable, and ever-changeable self of ordinary consciousness.

And it is precisely to such a view of the self that the discoveries of the modern investigators, when closely scrutinized, irresistibly impel us. If, I repeat, they have shown that what we usually look upon as the self is liable to sudden extinction, they have likewise brought to light abundant evidence to prove that there is none the less an abiding self, a self not dominated by but dominating the organism, and unaffected by any vicissitudes that may befall the organism.

To be sure, it must be said that, as yet, comparatively few of those to whom we owe this evidence are prepared to admit that such is the ultimate outcome of their efforts. All the same, the evidence is there, not simply justifying, but rendering logically necessary, the hypothesis of a continuous, unitary ego, inclusive of, and superior to, all changing selves of outward manifestation, and possessing powers thus far little utilized; but, under certain conditions, utilizable for our material, intellectual, and moral betterment.

I have, in fact, in the previous chapters presented much of the evidence supporting this view.[54] All the phenomena of subconscious mental action—as variously exhibited in telepathy, crystal vision, automatic writing and speaking, the cure of disease by wholly mental means—point unmistakably, I am persuaded, to the existence of a superior self to which the ordinary self of everyday life stands in much the same relation as does the secondary self of a hysterical patient to the ordinary, normal self of a healthy person.

Not all the faculties of the larger self—for instance, the faculty involved in telepathic action—seem to be adapted for ready employment here on earth. Which would argue, of course, for a future state in which, freed from all hampering limitations of the body, such faculties will have full manifestation.

But most assuredly, as the findings of the psychopathologists indicate plainly, some among these hidden powers are amply available for use here and now, and may be so employed as to enable the self of ordinary consciousness to become less liable to disintegration, to ward off and conquer disease, to develop mental attainments of a high order, to solve life’s varying problems with a sureness and success sadly lacking to most of us at present.

[1] In a prefatory note to the book, “An Adventure,” in which these ladies detail their experience, their publishers, Messrs. Macmillan and Company, of London, guarantee “that the authors have put down what happened to them as faithfully and accurately as was in their power.” Their good faith is also vouched for by a reviewer in The Spectator.