who have seen him lying quietly asleep, describes where he has been, and
what he has done, his rude language fails to state the difference
between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did.
From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot
truly represent this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly
represent it to himself. Hence, in the absence of an alternative
interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells his
adventures, is that his other self has been away, and came back when he
awoke. And this belief, which we find among various existing savage
tribes, we equally find in the traditions of the early civilized races.
5. The conception of another self capable of going away and returning,
receives what to the savage must seem conclusive verifications from the
abnormal suspensions of consciousness, and derangements of
consciousness, that occasionally occur in members of his tribe. One who
has fainted, and cannot be immediately brought back to himself (note the
significance of our own phrases "returning to himself," etc.) as a
sleeper can, shows him a state in which the other self has been away for
a time beyond recall. Still more is this prolonged absence of the other
self shown him in cases of apoplexy, catalepsy, and other forms of
suspended animation. Here for hours the other self persists in remaining
away, and on returning refuses to say where he has been. Further
verification is afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body,
during the absence of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how
else does it happen that the other self, on returning, denies all
knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this supposition that the
body has been "possessed" by some other being, is confirmed by the
phenomena of somnambulism and insanity. 6. What, then, is the
interpretation inevitably put upon death? The other self has habitually
returned after sleep, which simulates death. It has returned, too, after
fainting, which simulates death much more. It has even returned after
the rigid state of catalepsy, which simulates death very greatly. Will
it not return also after this still more prolonged quiescence and
rigidity? Clearly it is quite possible--quite probable even. The dead
man's other self is gone away for a long time, but it still exists
somewhere, far or near, and may at any moment come back to do all he
said he would do. Hence the variou