are not represented. Doubtless the current, for all that, comes to us as continuous. But so it does when things go further, and when in present disease our recollection becomes partial and distorted. Nay, when in one single man there are periodic returns of two disconnected memories, the faculty still keeps its nature and proclaims its identity. And psychology explains how this is so. Memory depends on reproduction from a basis that is present—a basis that may be said to consist in self-feeling. Hence, so far as this basis remains the same through life, it may, to speak in general, recall anything once associated with it. And, as this basis changes, we can understand how its connections with past events will vary indefinitely, both in fulness and in strength. Hence, for the same reason, when self-feeling has been altered beyond a limit not in general to be defined, the base required for reproduction of our past is removed. And, as these different bases alternate, our past life will come to us differently, not as one self, but as diverse selves alternately. And of course these “reproduced” selves may, to a very considerable extent, have never existed in the past.[1]
Now I would invite the person who takes his sameness to consist in bare memory, to confront his view with these facts, and to show us how he understands them. For apparently, though he may not admit that personal identity has degrees, he at least cannot deny that in one life we are able to have more than one self. And, further, he may be compelled to embrace self-sameness with a past which exists, for him only sometimes, and for others not at all. And under these conditions it is not easy to see what becomes of the self. I will, however, go further. It is well known that after an injury followed by unconsciousness which is removed by an operation, our mental life may begin again from the
- ↑ Compare here once again the suggested selves of hypnotism.
