Part 20 (2/2)

Obviously, the hypnotic self, distinct and different though it is from the primary, waking self, can reason, can a.n.a.lyze, 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 ent.i.ty. On the contrary, it is merely a loosely coordinated aggregation of mental states, forever s.h.i.+fting 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 ent.i.ty diffusing itself among multiple phenomena; it is the coordination 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 const.i.tutes 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 pa.s.sive apt.i.tudes, its sympathies and antipathies, its genius, its talent or its stupidity, its virtues and its vices, its torpor or its activity.”[52]

[52] Ribot's ”Les Maladies de la Personalite.” Quoted from F. W. H. Myers's translation in his ”Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death,” vol. i, p. 10.

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 const.i.tuting 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 ent.i.ty; for, if it were, one could not understand how in certain circ.u.mstances 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]

[53] ”Les Alterations de la Personnalite,” p. 316.

But the brain, which Ribot identifies with the personality, is a mere organ of the body, peris.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.bler 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.

[54] See also my book, ”The Riddle of Personality,”

especially pp. 69-70, 159-162.

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 a.s.suredly, 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.

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