Rough Ways Made Smooth: A series of familiar essays on scientific subjectsProctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Rough Ways Made Smooth: A series of familiar essays on scientific subjects
Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
range of the subjects' perception. It has been stated that subjects
in this condition have been able to describe occurrences not known to
any person, which yet have been subsequently verified. Although some
narratives of the kind have come from persons not likely to relate
what they _knew_ to be untrue, the possibility of error outweighs the
probability that such narratives can really be true. There is a form
of unconscious cerebration by which untruthful narratives come to be
concocted in the mind. For instance, Dr. Carpenter heard a scrupulously
conscientious lady asseverate that a table 'rapped' when nobody was
within a yard of it; but the story was disproved by the lady herself,
who found from her note-book, recording what really took place, that
the hands of six persons rested on the table when it rapped. And apart
from the unconscious fiction-producing power of the mind, there is
always the possibility, nay, often the extreme probability, that the
facts of a case may be misunderstood. Persons may be supposed to know
nothing about an event who have been conscious of its every detail;
nay, a person may himself be unconscious of his having known, and in
fact of his really knowing, of a particular event. Dual consciousness
in this particular sense is a quite common experience, as, for
instance, when a story is told us which we receive at first as new,
until gradually the recollection dawns upon us and becomes momentarily
clearer and clearer, not only that we have heard it before, but of the
circumstances under which we heard it, and even of details which the
narrator from whom a few moments before we receive it as a new story
has omitted to mention.[22]
The most important of all the questions depending on dual consciousness
is one into which I could not properly enter at any length in these
pages--the question, namely, of the relation between the condition of
the brain and responsibility, whether such responsibility be considered
with reference to human laws or to a higher and all-knowing tribunal.
But there are some points not wanting in interest which may be here
more properly considered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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