the vast store of past experience which exists in the individual's unconscious being.

The self or personality, then, appears to be a combination of the more stable sense, conscious and unconscious, derived through "body" and of the less stable sense, conscious and unconscious, derived through "mind," a complex aggregate of all the mental processes which, at any given moment, are in action. Over the relatively unchanging foundation of the personal self flutter, like wind-driven vapors over a lake, the other, and exceedingly evanescent, constituents of consciousness, the more solid and the more ethereal parts alike sharing in the aggregate of the personality.

It is mainly from the "body" that the conscious self derives its stability or persistent sense of identity, and from the "mind," in narrower meaning, its sense of soaring freedom. As I sit in my chair to think, I am conscious of the chair through touch and pressure, I hear the tick of the mantel-clock, I am aware of the pictures on the wall, I scent the fragrance of flowers and, further, perhaps, I am conscious of my breathing and of the arterial pulsation within an aching head; and even if these sensations be so faint as to be not consciously perceptible they may yet be recorded in me and bound, however my thoughts may change and roam, to the self of which, at this time, they constitute a part. From the "mind” the self derives all the complex mass of past experience, all that we have ever known, felt, or desired, and, likewise, the intricate fabric of our thoughts, feelings, and volitions as we project them into the future even beyond the limit of our terrestrial existence. Such is the self of which we have knowledge expanding for a time, growing ever richer in content, as life advances, until the climax

has been reached, then contracting and becoming impoverished until at last reduced to "childishness and mere oblivion."

I

Walt Whitman, in one of his poems, has given a very suggestive portrayal of the development of the self, which we may here reproduce, in very abridged and even fragmentary form, and in the frank guise of prose, without entire destruction of its charm, as follows. There was a child went forth every day; and the first object he looked upon, and received with wonder, pity, love, or dread, that object he became. The early lilacs became part of this child, and grass, and white and red morning-glories, and the song of the phoebe bird, and the noisy brood of the barnyard; and the old drunkard staggering home from the tavern, and the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and all the changes of city and country, wherever he went. His own parents, he that had fathered him and she that had birthed him, they gave this child more of themselves than that; they gave him afterward every day-they became a part of him. The mother with mild words; the father, strong, manly, mean, angered, unjust, the family usages, the sense of what is real-the thought if, after all, it should prove unreal, the doubts of daytime, the doubts of nighttime-the curious whether and how, whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks? Men and women crowding fast in the streets-if they are not flashes and specks, what are they? The horizon's edge, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud; these became part of that child who went forth every day.

The self or personality in the broadest sense, as the summation of all our experiences and all our powers, is There was a child went forth.

not however the self which actually thinks and feels at any given moment; that is a very partial self, an activity limited to selected portions of the whole. Essentially,

the variation is usually in the psychic constituents of the personality, those derived from the "body" remaining but little changed; and so however rapid and diverse the psychic transformations, they are yet held down to approximately the same physical base, and the conscious identity is thus preserved.

Alterations of Personality.-When the common sensations of the body assume an unusual form and their accustomed balance is considerably disturbed, the new combination may induce a very different consciousness of personality, and the individual's sense of identity be much transformed or quite destroyed. Of such transformation in slight degree we have frequent illustration in our moods, as they vary with varying conditions of body. More striking changes occur through hysteria, insanity, and other abnormal states.

This connection between personality and bodily condition throws light upon the ascetic practices of religious devotees, and seems to have been recognized and strangely utilized by many of the inferior or socalled primitive peoples. Thus, a very widespread custom among them has been the practice of "initiation," an ordeal often long and painful imposed upon the youth at the coming of manhood. The torture then inflicted has assumed such forms as the deprival of sleep and food, severe flogging, bleeding, extraction of teeth, exposure to the bites of venomous ants, suspension by hooks which pierce the flesh, suffocation by smoke, and burning.

While with many tribes, no doubt, the main purpose

of the initiation has been a physical test of the endurance of the young men, to determine their fitness for the strain of hunting and warfare, among many others the essential purpose seems to have been the induction, through physical exhaustion, of a state of mind which should supply a fit receptivity for the tribal mysteries to be communicated by the older men; and this required receptivity has been found through a new phase of personality. Through this physical cataclysm, the victim is more or less stupefied and, upon return of clear consciousness, is readily persuaded of things before incredible.1

In the great historic instances of religious conversion, there seems to have been almost invariably as precursor of the intellectual change some sort of physical shock, as an illness or fright or some intense impression of the feelings, as through the mass influence of revivals.

Although the personality changes from moment to moment, the change is usually gradual and relatively slight, for the dominating influence resides in the long, tenacious roots which stretch back through the past to recent, intermediate, and remote experience. Pascal has said that time cures our griefs and our quarrels because we change and are no longer the same persons; but he was not entirely right, for our sorrows and the pain of our quarrels are never cured but persist as inextinguishable components of the self which, after years of oblivion, may flash into consciousness unbidden or, while entirely restricted to the realm of the unconscious, plague us strangely under some form of psychoneurotic disease.

The processes which compose the personality appear

Cf. L. Lévy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures, p. 414 seq. Paris, 1910.

to be arranged in systems, being linked together in accordance with their relations or associations. These systems take turns in their domination and, at any given moment, such control will determine the character or personality of the individual. The average result of such variation may change gradually, producing an almost imperceptible transition from one character to another and, if the transformation be sufficiently marked, the new phase may be termed an abnormal personality. More rarely, the change may be abrupt.

Such sudden alterations of personality may be induced artificially, as by hypnotic suggestion, or may appear spontaneously, as in hysteria and the various phases of psycho-neurotic disease and insanity. In the hysteric form and often in insanity, to persons knowing nothing of the change, the individual presenting such an altered personality may appear in all respects normal. These modifications of personality are due to a dissociation of the component systems which make up the potentially complete personality, the whole self, which, as such, is never in action.

The difference between the degree of dissociation which may be considered within normal limits and that which is rightly called abnormal appears to be about this: that the processes of the first kind are referred always to one and the same relatively unchanging physical and mental base, to the same self, and that they are free to establish connections with any part of the individual's life-experience, whereas those of the second or abnormal type refer themselves to some new personal base or to various such bases, and, further, connection with many other parts of the mind has been completely inhibited. It is to dissociations of this second type