Happiness, which ever flits on before us. The real centre of being, the
self, the ego, the person, the individuality, evades us at every turn.
Each of us has the feeling, under all ordinary and normal circumstances,
that, as James expressed it, "I am the same self that I was yesterday."
And one would be most astonished, I fancy, were he to wake up one fine
morning and find himself some one else! Like the Arab in the tale, he
would be bewildered indeed!

From the solitary desert
Up to Bagdad, came a simple
Arab; there amid the rout
Grew bewildered of the countless
People, hither, thither, running,
Coming, going, meeting, parting,
Clamour, clatter, and confusion,
All around him and about.

Travel-wearied, hubbub-dizzy,
Would the simple Arab fain
Get to sleep,--"But then on waking,
How," quoth he, "amid so many
Waking, know myself again?"

So, to make the matter certain,
Strung a gourd about his ankle,
And, into a corner creeping,
Bagdad and himself and people
Soon were blotted from his brain.

But one that heard him and divined
His purpose, slyly crept behind;
From the sleeper's ankle clipping,
Round his own the pumpkin tied,
And laid him down to sleep beside.

By and by the Arab waking
Looks directly for his signal--
Sees it on another's ankle--
Cries aloud, "Oh, good-for-nothing
Rascal to perplex me so,
That by you I am bewildered,
Whether I be I or no!
If _I_--the pumpkin why on you!
If _You_--then where am I, and who?"

One can quite appreciate the tangled state of our Arab's mind on
awakening under such peculiar circumstances, and, from the point of view
of common sense and common experience, such an awakening would be an
utter impossibility--fit only for fairy tales and the traditions of
savage tribes. Yet, in our own day, here in civilized New York and
London, similar cases have been recorded and studied by experts! Under
peculiar circumstances, patients have gone to sleep one person and
awakened another; and they have remained another, not only during the
first temporary moments of bewilderment, but sometimes for days, weeks,
and months at a time; and in some cases even whole years have elapsed
before the first "self" returned to tenant the body, to look out of the
eyes it had looked out of years before; to take up the self-conscious
life it had lain