"No, I do not, Captain; but I know that the thought must have once been familiar to me."
"I dare say you have read some romance," said he "or, there is no telling, you may have known some one who believed, the doctrine; you may have believed it yourself. And I doubt that mere reading would have influenced your mind to attach itself so strongly to thoughtful subjects. I find you greatly interested philosophy. I think it quite probable, sir, without flattery, that at college your professor had an apt student."
"But you do not believe the doctrine?"
"I believe in Christ and His holy apostles, sir; I believe that we live after death."
"And that I shall be I again and again?"
"Pardon me for not following you entirely. I believe that you will be you again; but my opinion is not fixed as to more than one death."
"Do you believe that when you live again you will remember your former experiences?"
"I lean to that belief, sir, yet I consider it unimportant; I might go so far as to say that it makes no difference."
"But how can I be I if I do not remember? What will connect the past me with the present me? I have a strange, elusive thought there, Captain. It sometimes seems to me that I am two,--one before, and another now,--and that really I have lived this present time, or these present times, in two bodies and with two minds."
"Allow me to ask if it is not possible that your strange thought as to your imagined doubleness is caused by your believing that memory is necessary to identity?"