It cannot be doubted that, on the one hand, it is possible to produce in an insensible limb a great variety of subconscious actions, and all sorts of reactions; and when they are recorded by the graphic method, it is perceived that with the fingers of his insensible hand, the subject has made movements the form of which varies according to the receiving apparatus (the dynamograph, drum, pencil, etc.). These movements thus exhibit the truly psychological marks of adaptation, and seem to reveal the existence of an intelligence which is other than that of the ego of the subject, and which acts without his assistance and even unknown to him. On the other hand, numerous experiences of very different kinds show that the subject whose anæsthetic arm, for example, is pricked, can have an idea of the stimulation, although he does not perceive it. He does not feel the prickings, but the excitation calls forth the idea of their number: he counts them as a normal individual would do; “only, in hysterical individuals, the first part of the process occurs in one consciousness, and the second in another.”[17] It can hardly be denied that these different consciousnesses are distinct; since experience proves that each can have its own perceptions, its own memory, and even a moral character. However, their relative value with respect to each other matters little. We are compelled to consider, with M. Ribot, the ego as a “coördination” of states of consciousness, admitting of infinitely variable groupings. According to the old conception of the ego, the personality, with respect to secondary consciousnesses, was compared to a coachman who had ceased to have control over his horses. This comparison is now insufficient, since it may happen that the coachman falls asleep on the box, and that one of the horses then governs the set, regulating, more or less perfectly, the pace of the others by its own gait. Spiritualists, however, will never consent to put the ego in the place of the coachman. “A stone detached from the complex structure of the personality,” M. Binet now tells us, “can become the starting point of a new structure, which rises rapidly by the side of the old. Whereupon a disaggregation of the psychological elements is produced.” This comparison is certainly more precise and more in accordance with facts. Moreover, there remains to be explained how the mental compound which constitutes the ego has been constructed from its elements. M. Binet shows, _à propos_ of this question, that the association of ideas is powerless to explain the genesis of personality; associations alone, as proved by the experiences of suggestion, are not sufficient to restore forgotten memories. Neither is memory the sole factor in personality; since, in certain conditions a person may, while preserving the consciousness and the memory of certain of his mental states, nevertheless repudiate these mental states and consider them as foreign to himself.