Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death

by F. W. H. Myers

Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis origo

Seminibus, quantum non noxia corpora tardant

Terrenique hebetant artus moribundaque membra.

—Virgil.

IN my second chapter I made no formal attempt to define that human personality which is to form the main subject of this book. I was content to take the conception roughly for granted, and to enter at once on the study of the lapses of personality into abnormal conditions,—short of the lowest depths of idiocy or madness. From that survey it appeared that these degenerations could be traced to some defect in that central control which ought to clasp and integrate into steady manhood the hierarchies of living cells which compose the human organism. This insight into the Self's decay was the needed prerequisite to our present task—that of apprehending its true normality, and thereafter of analysing certain obscurer faculties which indicate the line of its evolution during and after the life of earth.

Strength and concentration of the inward unifying control—that must be the true normality which we seek; and in seeking it we must remember how much of psychical operation goes on below the conscious threshold, imperfectly obedient to any supraliminal appeal. What advance can we make in inward mastery? how far extend our grasp over the whole range of faculty with which we are obscurely endowed?

"Human perfectibility" has been the theme of many enthusiasts; and many utopian schemes of society have been and still are suggested, which postulate in the men and women of the future an increase in moral and physical health and vigour. And it is plain that in a broad and general way natural selection, sexual selection, and the advance of science are working together towards improvements of these kinds. But it is plain also that these onward tendencies, at least in comparison with our desires and ideals, are slow and uncertain; and it is possible to argue that the apparent advance in our race is due merely to the improvement which science has affected in its material environment, and not to any real development, during the historical period, in the character or faculties of man himself. Nay, since we have no means of knowing to what extent any genus has an inward potentiality of improvement, it is possible for the pessimist to argue that the genus homo has reached its fore-ordained evolutionary limit; so that it cannot be pushed further in any direction without risk of nervous instability, sterility, and ultimate extinction. Some dim apprehension of this kind lends plausibility to many popular diatribes. Dr. Max Nordau's works afford a well-known example of this line of protest against the present age as an age of overwork and of nervous exhaustion. And narrowing the vague discussion to a somewhat more definite test, Professor Lombroso and other anthropologists have discussed the characteristics of the "man of genius"; with the result of showing (as they believe) that this apparently highest product of the race is in reality not a culminant but an aberrant manifestation; and that men of genius must be classed with criminals and lunatics, as persons in whom a want of balance or completeness of organisation has led on to an over-development of one side of the nature;—helpful or injurious to other men as accident may decide.

On this point I shall join issue; and I shall suggest, on the other hand, that Genius—if that vaguely used word is to receive anything like a psychological definition—should rather be regarded as a power of utilising a wider range than other men can utilise of faculties in some degree innate in all;—a power of appropriating the results of subliminal mentation to subserve the supraliminal stream of thought;—so that an "inspiration of Genius" will be in truth a subliminal uprush, an emergence into the current of ideas which the man is consciously manipulating of other ideas which he has not consciously originated, but which have shaped themselves beyond his will, in profounder regions of his being. I shall urge that there is here no real departure from normality; no abnormality, at least in the sense of degeneration; but rather a fulfilment of the true norm of man, with suggestions, it may be, of something supernormal;—of something which transcends existing normality as an advanced stage of evolutionary progress transcends an earlier stage.

But before proceeding further I wish to guard against a possible misapprehension. I shall be obliged in this chapter to dwell on valuable aid rendered by subliminal mentation; but I do not mean to imply that such mentation is ipso facto superior to supraliminal, or even that it covers a large proportion of practically useful human achievement. When I say "The differentia of genius lies in an increased control over subliminal mentation," I express, I think, a well-evidenced thesis, and I suggest an important inference,—namely, that the man of genius is for us the best type of the normal man, in so far as he effects a successful co-operation of an unusually large number of elements of his personality—reaching a stage of integration slightly in advance of our own. Thus much I wish to say: but my thesis is not to be pushed further:—as though I claimed that all our best thought was subliminal, or that all that was subliminal was potentially "inspiration."

It is true, however, that the range of our subliminal mentation is more extended than the range of our supraliminal. At one end of the scale we find dreams,—a normal subliminal product, but of less practical value than any form of sane supraliminal thought. At the other end of the scale we find that the rarest, most precious knowledge comes to us from outside the ordinary field,—through the eminently subliminal processes of telepathy, telæsthesia, ecstasy. And between these two extremes lie many subliminal products, varying in value according to the dignity and trustworthiness of the subliminal mentation concerned.

This last phrase—inevitably obscure—may be illustrated by reference to that hierarchical arrangement of supraliminal action and perception which Dr. Hughlings Jackson has so used as to clear up much previous confusion of thought. Following him, we now speak of highest-level nerve-centres, governing our highest, most complex thought and will; of middle-level centres, governing movements of voluntary muscles, and the like; and of lowest-level centres (which from my point of view are purely subliminal), governing those automatic processes, as respiration and circulation, which are independent of conscious rule, but necessary to the maintenance of life. We can roughly judge from the nature of any observed action whether the highest-level centres are directing it, or whether they are for the time inhibited, so that middle-level centres operate uncontrolled.

Thus ordinary speech and writing are ruled by highest-level centres. But when an epileptic discharge of nervous energy has exhausted the highest-level centres, we see the middle-level centres operating unchecked, and producing the convulsive movements of arms and legs in the "fit." As these centres in their turn become exhausted, the patient is left to the guidance of lowest-level centres alone;—that is to say, he becomes comatose, though he continues to breathe as regularly as usual.

Now this series of phenomena,—descending in coherence and coordination from an active consensus of the whole organism to a mere automatic maintenance of its most stably organised processes,—may be pretty closely paralleled by the series of subliminal phenomena also.