metaphysicians, and not worth considering. They speak as if there were a sort of secret submerged soul coiled up inside us like a chicken in an egg. An oracle in a well! There is no such thing. We are all of a piece!"
"But how about somnambulists who diagnose their own complaints and predict the course of their illness? How about the known cases of multiple personality,—Felida X and Miss Beauchamp in Boston? Their alternate selves were distinct and separate."
"You should read The Journal of Abnormal Psychology," said Astro. "Those selves are fortuitous combinations of the normal self's properties; they are, strictly, part-selves. The subjects are simply not 'all there'."
"And those post-hypnotic time experiments, too?" she persisted. "I have read of their suggesting that a subject should, just fifteen hundred and forty-seven minutes afterward, look at his watch and write down the time. He did it, in every such case."
"And you think he has a subliminal self, a sort of psychic alarm clock, that telephones to his waking personality? Nonsense! They managed to tap the mechanical part of his memory, that's all. It's like looking up a book in a library. There are no co-conscious personalities. What happens in 'automatic writing'? A person holds a pencil in his hand, and it seems to write of itself. Spirits? Rubbish! A subliminal self? Poppycock! The hand transcribes merely records of thoughts or memories that have been forgotten or were unnoticed, that's all. We don't think of half we see and hear; we pass myriads of faces in the street, for instance; but everything is recorded, as on a pho-
