A case is quoted in Combe's system of Phrenology,* in which a cultivated mind suddenly lost all vestiges of its acquirements, but afterwards regained them. During four years the patient passed several times from one state to the other-in her old state, as she called it, using her former knowledge, and in her new state only that acquired after she became thus diseased. There is a form of disease akin to this in which persons imagine others addressing them. I knew an old gentleman who was long persecuted by a most provoking phantasm of this kind, often leading to very animated and angry controversy between my friend and his foe, both sides being acted and spoken by the old gentleman with more than the versatility and vividness of a Matthews, and not without a full share of terrible comicality; for when the patient's fancied antagonist was baffled in argument, he would take to blowing a huge bassoon, to escape from the sound of which the sufferer usually drew many night-caps over his ears, covering the whole with a large tin saucepan, and so falling asleep. Now, in such cases, is the double character like that of two persons, as some teach? Is a man who dreams and forgets like two persons? All that such facts teach us with regard to personal identity is this-ideas are the production of the man, or soul, working with the brain, and therefore distinguishable from the man himself, who, in certain states of brain, can attend to them as evidently the workings of his own mind, while in other, or insane states, he seems to perceive them only as if they arose from another's mind addressing himself. This fact indicates that ideas are really always objective to the soul.

What is called double consciousness is curiously tested in the case of a person who cannot preserve attention to his body, or to things around him, in consequence of being overpowered by fatigue. He sits, we will suppose, * Page 108.

in some uneasy position, not allowing him to resign. himself to sleep, but keeping him in a state of alternation between imperfect sleeping and waking; so that he is constantly correcting the aberrations of consciousness that occur in the mind, when the will ceases to act on the senses, by the returning consciousness of his situation, when slightly roused. Here the individual recognises the double mode of his existence, and in the course of a few minutes passes several times from the one state to the other, dreaming one instant and reasoning the next. However the fact may be explained, he is conscious of transition, and loses not the sense of his identity, although the memory associated with the exercise of the senses is distinctly seen to differ from that which exists during its suspense; for, in reality, the perception of the difference between the objects of the memory in the dreaming and in the wakeful conditions, constitutes all by which the mind knows the difference between sleep and vigilance.

Aged persons are often afflicted with inability to recognise familiar objects, by confounding several remembered ideas together. When the exercise of memory is disordered by disease of the brain, it is often difficult for the patient to awake to the consciousness of realities; and he is apt, as in cases of insanity, to blend the memory of dreams with the impressions of objects on his senses; or even, while apparently gazing at a real scene, to be attending only to an imaginary or remembered one. This state was exemplified in the case of an aged gentleman, whose remarkable affection was lately the subject of public enquiry, and who, while looking out of a window on a wide prospect in England, described it to his housekeeper as a scene in Barbadoes, where he had an estate, and the different parts of that estate he pointed out very minutely. This individual suffered from disease, which often rendered him incapable of

266 CONNECTION OF MEMORY WITH DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS.

comparing ideas with present impressions, or dreaming with wakefulness, and of course rendered his memory almost as uncertain when awake as when in a dream. We all live in some degree of mental duplicity, and we may so sensualise ourselves as to become incapable of true thought, and when we would do good find only evil present with us. A kind of moral double-consciousness is often witnessed, repentance and remorse alternating with passionate indulgence, temptation with duty, so that the man appears in contrary characters, perhaps now a devotee, and now a drunkard. Such a one has

a devil not to be cast out but by prayer and fasting; he must be put upon a plan of mental discipline and physical correction to bring his body under and his soul in order, that wrong ideas may be rooted up and right ones find room to grow.

267

CHAPTER XI.

THE CONNECTION OF MEMORY WITH IMAGINATION AND WILL.

WHATEVER has once impressed the soul through the senses is capable of being reproduced, not only as an ideal or remembered thing, but also with all the vividness of objective reality. The reproductive faculty is not limited in its operation to the renewal of sense impressions only; the ideas excited into being by those impressions, with the trains of thought and emotion due to the individual character and experience of the person subjected to them, are also capable of being thus re-awakened as if again realised. We, therefore, cannot suppose such reproductions to be exclusively the result of mere nerve-action. The thinking principle itself is engaged in the operation, and in reproducing past impressions also remodels them according to the mental state at the time, whatever may be the cause of that state. A good example of this reconstruction of past impressions as modified by the existing state of mind or brain is related by Sir John F. W. Herschel, Bart., in his remarks on Sensorial Vision.* He states: 'I had been witnessing the demolition of a structure familiar to me from childhood, and with which many interesting associations were connected; a demolition not unattended with danger to the workmen employed, about whom I felt very uncomfortable. It happened to me at the approach of evening, while, however, there was

* Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects, p. 104.

yet pretty good light, to pass near the place where the day before it stood; the path I had to follow leading beside it. Great was my amazement to see it as if still standing projected against the dull sky. Being perfectly aware that it was a nervous impression, I walked on, keeping my eyes directed to it, and the perspective of the form and disposition of the parts appeared to change with the change in the point of view as they would have done if real.'

The phenomena thus related are not to be easily explained on physiological principles. Supposing association of ideas, on again visiting the site of the demolished building, to have so acted on the brain as there and then to have reproduced the exact condition of that organ which was actually experienced under former impressions, we then have the imaginative power of the soul acting on the brain to effect its condition, and not the brain acting of its own accord to excite the imaging faculty of the soul. Supposing brain-action to have produced the same images on the retina as had formerly impinged on it from the actual building, how can the apparent change of perspective on change of position be explained? Only on the principle that the soul makes its renewed visions of the past not merely according to the laws of association and memory, but also in consistency with the laws of physics. Imagination, in fact, constructs all her ghosts, not only with appropriate attributes, to move and speak in keeping with an ideal character, but clothes them too with drapery fashioned and coloured for the occasion, and at the same time calls into existence surrounding scenery to suit the imaginary drama. There is not only the revival of faded pictures but the creation of new ones, and such too as the mind had never previously beheld. This is an action of the soul referable neither to material impressions nor to voluntary agency on her own part,