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 nobler 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.