not following you entirely. I believe that you will be
you again; but my opinion is not fixed as to more than one death."

"Do you believe that when you live again you will remember your former
experiences?"

"I lean to that belief, sir, yet I consider it unimportant; I might go
so far as to say that it makes no difference."

"But how can I be I if I do not remember? What will connect the past me
with the present me? I have a strange, elusive thought there, Captain.
It sometimes seems to me that I am two,--one before, and another
now,--and that really I have lived this present time, or these present
times, in two bodies and with two minds."

"Allow me to ask if it is not possible that your strange thought as to
your imagined doubleness is caused by your believing that memory is
necessary to identity?"

"And that is error?" I asked.

"You say truly, sir; it is error. Your own experience disproves it. If
memory is necessary, you have lost your personality; but you have a
personality,--permit me to say a strong one,--and whose have you taken?"

"I do remember some things," said I.

"Then do you not agree with me that your very memory is proof that you
are not double? But, if you please, take the case of any one. Every one
has been an infant, yet he cannot remember what happened when he was in
swaddling clothes, though he is the same person now that he was then,
which proves that although a person loses his memory, he does not on
that account, sir, lose his identity."

"Then what is the test of identity, Captain?"

"It needs none, sir; consciousness of self is involuntary."

"I have consciousness of self; yet I do not know who I am, except that I
am I."

"Every man might say the same words, sir," said he, smiling.

"And I am distinct? independent?"

"Jones, my dear fellow, there are many intelligent people in the world
who, I dare say, would think us demented if they should know that we are
seriously considering such a question."

This did not seem very much of an answer to my mind, which in some
inscrutable way seemed to be at this moment groping among fragments of
thoughts that had come unbidden from the forgotten past. I felt helpless
in the presence of the Captain; I could not presume to press his
good-nature. Perhaps he saw my thought, for he added: "A man is
distinct from other men, but not from himself. He constantly changes,
and constantly remains the same."

"That is hard to understand, Captain