But consider the consequences! Consider the conditions of such an event.
One's brain is designed to work within one's own skull, dealing with
sensory messages and the like. Very occasionally it acts outside,
shifting crumbs of cheese and confusing computers--and securing candy.
But even when one's will controls outside actions, it does not fuse with
the outside brain or thing. It molds or moves the recipient mind, but
there is never a sharing of memory. You have explained why.
Consider what must happen if a brain of limited power and essentially
emotional operation is linked to another and more powerful one. Assume
for a moment that my she-dog had linked her brain to yours, even
momentarily. Do you realize that she would not have gotten your
memories, much less your power to reason? She would not even have
acquired your knowledge of the meaning of words! When a bright light
shines in your eyes, you see nothing else. When thunder rolls in your
ears, you do not hear the ticking of a clock. When you suffer pain, you
do not notice a feather's tickle. If my she-dog had linked her mind to
yours, she would have experienced something which is knowledge more
firmly fixed and more continuously known than anything else in your
conscious life. This overwhelmingly strong conviction would have been so
powerful and so positive that it would be imprinted--branded--burned
into every cell of her brain. She could never get it out.
But in receiving this overwhelming experience she would not get your
memories or power to reason or even your personality. She would have
experienced only your identity. She would have received only the
conviction that she was yourself! She would have been like those poor
lunatics who believe that they are Napoleon, though they have nothing of
Napoleon in them but the conviction of identity. They do not know when
he was born or have more than the vaguest notion of what he did, but
they try to act as who he was--according to their own ideas of how
Napoleon would act in their situation. This is how my she-dog would have
behaved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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