ess. Meantime there has been no pause in the
discourse. Not a phrase nor a word nor the shading of a thought has been
missed. The intellectual life went on in its completeness while the ray
of intelligence sent down in the finger-tip got and reported the fact as
it was. Just so the life of the ego--the true self of each of us--goes
forward on its home plane while the personality here gropes for its
harvest of experience. Some of those experiences will be painful to the
personality, and the event will seem tragic here, but it will be a
passing incident to the ego. In the illustration just used the substance
on the table may prove to be neither sand nor sugar, but tiny bits of
glass. Some of the sharp points may penetrate the finger and pain
follows. To the finger-tip consciousness it is a blinding flash of
distress that is overwhelming. But to the brain consciousness it is a
trivial incident. And thus it is with most of our painful experiences
here. They do a useful work in our evolution and they are trifling
incidents to the consciousness of the ego.

The personality finishes its work and perishes, in the sense that it is
drawn up and incorporated in the ego. Most people identify themselves so
fully with the personality that its loss seems like a tragedy to them.
But that feeling will trouble them no longer when the ego is understood
to be the real self. We might say that the relationship between the ego
and the personality is like that between man and child. Childhood will
perish but only to be merged into manhood. When we look at that
transformation from the viewpoint of the man it is quite satisfactory.
But if looked at from the viewpoint of the child it may look appalling.
If you should say to your son of three summers, "My child, the time will
come when all these beautiful toys will be broken and lost and your
little playmates will see you no more," you might cause him much
distress. It would seem to his limited child consciousness nothing less
than a tragic destruction of what makes life worth while. But when he
reaches manhood he will look back with a smile to the trivial things of
those early days. If there is something in his childhood of real,
permanent value, it will persist in manhood. All the trivial and
transient will have disappeared and he will be pleased that it is so,
for manhood is the real life of the personality as the ego is the real
self.

As the memory of childhood lives in the brain of the man,