Real Ghost Stories | Page 7

time and sense are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
It is extraordinary how close is the analogy when we come to work it
out. The impressions stored up by the Conscious Personality and
entrusted to the care of the Unconscious are often, much to our disgust,
not forthcoming when wanted. It is as if we had given a memorandum
to our wife and we could not discover where she had put it. But night
comes; our Conscious Self sleeps, our Unconscious Housewife wakes,
and turning over her stores produces the missing impression; and when
our other self wakes it finds the mislaid memorandum, so to speak,
ready to its hand. Sometimes, as in the case of somnambulism, the
Sub-conscious Personality stealthily endeavours to use the body and
limbs, from all direct control over which it is shut out as absolutely as
the inmate of a Hindu zenana is forbidden to mount the charger of her
warrior spouse. But it is only when the Conscious Personality is thrown
into a state of hypnotic trance that the Unconscious Personality is
emancipated from the marital despotism of her partner. Then for the
first time she is allowed to help herself to the faculties and senses
usually monopolised by the Conscious Self. But like the timid and
submissive inmate of the zenana suddenly delivered from the thraldom
of her life-long partner, she immediately falls under the control of
another. The Conscious Personality of another person exercises over
her the same supreme authority that her own Conscious Personality did
formerly.
There is nothing of sex in the ordinary material sense about the two
personalities. But their union is so close as to suggest that the intrusion
of the hypnotist is equivalent to an intrigue with a married woman. The
Sub-conscious Personality is no longer faithful exclusively to its
natural partner; it is under the control of the Conscious Personality of
another; and in the latter case the dictator seems to be irresistibly
over-riding for a time all the efforts of the Conscious Personality to
recover its authority in its own domain.
What proof, it will be asked impatiently, is there for the splitting of our
personality? The question is a just one, and I proceed to answer it.

There are often to be found in the records of lunatic asylums strange
instances of a dual personality, in which there appear to be two minds
in one body, as there are sometimes two yolks in one egg.
In the Revue des Deux Mondes, M. Jules Janet records the following
experiment which, although simplicity itself, gives us a very vivid
glimpse of a most appalling complex problem:--
"An hysterical subject with an insensitive limb is put to sleep, and is
told, 'After you wake you will raise your finger when you mean Yes,
and you will put it down when you mean No, in answer to the questions
which I shall ask you.' The subject is then wakened, and M. Janet
pricks the insensitive limb in several places. He asks, 'Do you feel
anything?' The conscious-awakened person replies with the lips, 'No,'
but at the same time, in accordance with the signal that has been agreed
upon during the state of hypnotisation, the finger is raised to signify
'Yes.' It has been found that the finger will even indicate exactly the
number of times that the apparently insensitive limb has been
wounded."
The Double-Souled Irishman.
Dr. Robinson, of Lewisham, who has bestowed much attention on this
subject, sends me the following delightful story about an Irishman who
seems to have incarnated the Irish nationality in his own unhappy
person:--
"An old colleague of mine at the Darlington Hospital told me that he
once had an Irish lunatic under his care who imagined that his body
was the dwelling-place of two individuals, one of whom was a Catholic,
with Nationalist--not to say Fenian--proclivities, and the other was a
Protestant and an Orangeman. The host of these incompatibles said he
made it a fixed rule that the Protestant should occupy the right side of
his body and the Catholic the left, 'so that he would not be annoyed wid
them quarrelling in his inside.' The sympathies of the host were with
the green and against the orange, and he tried to weaken the latter by
starving him, and for months would only chew his food on the left side
of his mouth. The lunatic was not very troublesome, as a rule, but the

attendants generally had to straight-waistcoat him on certain critical
days--such as St. Patrick's Day and the anniversary of the battle of the
Boyne; because the Orange fist would punch the Fenian head
unmercifully, and occasionally he and the Fenian leagued together
against the Orangeman and banged him against the wall. This lunatic,
when