Another curious point to be noticed is this. Supposing one subject to alternations of consciousness were told that in his abnormal condition he suffered intense pain or mental anguish in consequence of particular actions during his normal state, how far would he be influenced to refrain from such actions by the fear of causing pain or sorrow to his 'double,' a being of whose pains and sorrows, nay, of whose very existence, he was unconscious? In ordinary life a man refrains from particular actions which have been followed by unpleasant consequences, reasoning, in some cases, 'I will not do so-and-so, because I suffered on such and such occasions when I did so' (we set religious considerations entirely on one side by assuming that the particular actions are not contrary to any moral law), in others, 'I will not do so-and-so because my so doing on former occasions has caused trouble to my friend A or B:' but it is strange to imagine any one reasoning, 'I will not do so-and-so because my so doing on former occasions has caused my second self to experience pain and anguish, of which I myself have not the slightest recollection.' A man may care for his own well-being, or be unwilling to bring trouble on his friends, but who is that second self that his troubles should excite the sympathy of his fellow-consciousness? The considerations here touched on are not so entirely beyond ordinary experience as might be supposed. It may happen to any man to have occasion to enter into an apparently unconscious condition during which in reality severe pains may be suffered by another self, though on his return to his ordinary condition no recollection of those pains may remain, and though to all appearance he has been all the time in a state of absolute stupor; and it may be a reasonable question, not perhaps whether he or his double shall suffer such pains, but whether the body which both inhabit will suffer while he is unconscious, or while that other consciousness comes into existence. That this is no imaginary supposition is shown by several cases in Abercrombie's treatise on the 'Intellectual Powers.' Take, for instance, the following narrative:—'A boy,' he tells us, 'at the age of four suffered fracture of the skull, for which he underwent the operation of the trepan. He was at the time in a state of perfect stupor, and after his recovery retained no recollection either of the accident or of the operation. At the age of fifteen, however, during the delirium of fever, he gave his mother an account of the operation, and the persons who were present at it, with a correct description of their dress, and other minute particulars. He had never been observed to allude to it before; and no means were known by which he could have acquired the circumstances which he mentioned.' Suppose one day a person in the delirium of fever or under some other exciting cause should describe the tortures experienced during some operation, when, under the influence of anæsthetics, he had appeared to all around to be totally unconscious, dwelling in a special manner perhaps on the horror of pains accompanied by utter powerlessness to shriek or groan, or even to move; how far would the possibilities suggested by such a narrative influence one who had a painful operation to undergo, knowing as he would quite certainly, that whatever pains his alter ego might have to suffer, not the slightest recollection of them would remain in his ordinary condition?
There is indeed almost as strange a mystery in unconsciousness as there is in the phenomena of dual consciousness. The man who has passed for a time into unconsciousness through a blow, or fall, or fit, cannot help asking himself like Bernard Langdon in that weird tale, Elsie Venner, 'Where was the mind, the soul, the thinking principle all that time?' It is irresistibly borne in upon him that he has been dead for a time. As Holmes reasons, 'a man is stunned by a blow and becomes unconscious, another gets a harder blow and it kills him. Does he become unconscious too? If so, when, and how does he come to his consciousness? The man who has had a slight and moderate blow comes to himself when the immediate shock passes off and the organs begin to work again, or when a bit of the skull is "pried" up, if that happens to be broken. Suppose the blow is hard enough to spoil the brain and stop the play of the organs, what happens then?' So far as physical science is concerned, there is no answer to this question; but physical science does not as yet comprehend all the knowable, and the knowable comprehends not all that has been, is, and will be. What we know and can know is nothing, the unknown and the unknowable are alike infinite.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Should any doubt whether these conditions of dual existence are a reality (a doubt, however, which the next case dealt with in the text should remove), we would remind them that a similar difficulty unmistakably existed in the case of Eng and Chang, the Siamese twins. It would have been almost impossible to inflict any punishment on one by which the other would not have suffered, and capital punishment inflicted on one would have involved the death of the other.
[22] An instance of the sort turns up in Pope's correspondence with Addison, and serves to explain a discrepancy between Tickell's edition of the Spectator and the original. In No. 253, Addison had remarked that none of the critics had taken notice of a peculiarity in the description of Sisyphus lifting his stone up the hill, which is no sooner carried to the top of it but it immediately tumbles to the bottom. 'This double motion,' says Addison, 'is admirably described in the numbers of those verses. In the four first it is heaved up by several spondees intermixed with proper breathing places, and at last trundles down in a continual line of dactyls.' On this Pope remarks: 'I happened to find the same in Dionysius of Halicarnassus's Treatise, who treats very largely upon these verses. I know you will think fit to soften your expression, when you see the passage, which you must needs have read, though it be since slipt out of your memory.' These words, by the way, were the last (except 'I am, with the utmost esteem, &c.') ever addressed by Pope to Addison. It was in this letter that Pope with sly malice asked Addison to look over the first two books of his (Pope's) translation of Homer.
Although we certainly have no reason to complain of the infrequency of attempts in newspapers, &c., as well as in scientific journals, to explain the principles on which electric lighting depends, it does not seem that very clear ideas are entertained on this subject by unscientific persons. Nor is this, perhaps, to be wondered at, when we observe that in nearly all the explanations which have appeared, technical expressions are quite freely used, while those matters about which the general reader especially desires information are passed over as points with which every one is familiar. Now, without going quite so far as to say that there is no exaggeration in the picture presented some time back in Punch, of one who asked whether the electric fluid was 'anything like beer, for instance,' I may confidently assert that the very vaguest notions are entertained by nine-tenths of those who hear about the electric light, respecting the nature of electricity. Of course, I am not here referring to the doubts and difficulties of electricians on this subject. It is well known that Faraday, after a life of research into electrical phenomena, said that when he had studied electricity for a few years he thought he understood much, but when he had nearly finished his observational work he found he knew nothing. In the sense in which Faraday spoke, the most advanced students of science must admit that they know nothing about electricity. But the greater number of those who read about the electric light are not familiar even with electrical phenomena, as distinguished from the interpretation of such phenomena. I am satisfied that there is no exaggeration in a passage which appeared recently in the 'Table Talk' of the Gentleman's Magazine, describing an account of the electric light as obtained from some new kind of gas, carried in pipes from central reservoirs, and chiefly differing from common gas in this, that the heat resulting from its consumption melted ordinary burners, so that only burners of carbon or platinum could be safely employed.
I do not propose here to discuss, or even to describe (in the proper sense of the word) the various methods of electric lighting which have been either used or suggested. What I wish to do is to give a simple explanation of the general principles on which illumination by electricity depends, and to consider the advantages which this method of illumination appears to promise or possess.