HAVE you thought deeply concerning the
Persistence of Personal Identity?
We took it up the other evening -- our
little group, you know -- in quite a thorough way --
devoted an entire evening to it.
You see, there's a theory that after Evolution has
evolved just as far as it possibly can, everything
will go to smash, but then Evolution will start all
over again. And everything that has happened be-
fore will happen again.
Only the question is whether the people to whom
it is happening again will know whether they
are the same people to whom it has happened
before.
That's where the question of Persistence of
Personal Identity comes in. FRIGHTFULLY
fascinating, isn't it?
For my part I'd just as soon not be reincarnated
as to be reincarnated and not know anything about
it, wouldn't you?
Of course, one's Subliminal Consciousness might
know about it, and give one intimations.
I've had intimations like that myself -- really!
I'm dreadfully psychic, you know.
Sometimes I quite startle people with my psychic
power.
Fothergil Finch was here the other evening --
you know fothergil Finch, the poet, don't you? --
and I astounded him utterly by reading his inmost
thoughts.
He had just finished reading one of his poems --
a vers libre poem, you know; all about Strength and
Virility, and that sort of thing. Fothergil is just
simply fascinated by Strength and Virility, though
you never would think it to look at him -- he is so --
so -- well, if you get what I mean you'd think to
look at him that he'd be writing about violets instead
of cave men.
"Fothy," I said, when he had finished reading
the poem, "I know what you are thinking -- what
you are feeling!"
"What?" he said.
"You're thinking," I said, 'how WONDERFUL a
thing is the Cosmic Urge!"
Thoughts come to me just like that -- leap to me --
right out of nowhere, so to speak.
Fothy was staggered; he actually turned pale;
for a minute or two he could scarcely speak. There
had been scarcely a WORD about Cosmic Urge in
the poem, you know; he'd hardly mentioned it.
"It is wonderful," he said, when we got over the
shock; "wonderful to be understood!" And you
know, really -- poor dear! -- so many people don't
understand Fothy at all. Nor what he writes,
either.
But the strangest thing was -- I wish I could make
you understand how positively EERIE it makes me
feel -- that just the instant before he said, "It is
wonderful to be understood!" I knew he was going
to say it. I got that psychically, too!
"Fothy," I said, "It is absolutely WEIRD -- I
eavesdropped on your brain the second time!"
"Wonderful!" he said, "but the still more
wonderful thing would be -- -- "
And before he could finish the sentence it happened
the THIRD time! I interrupted and finished it
for him.
"The still more wonderful thing would be," I said,
"if it were NOT so."
"Heavens!" he cried, "this is getting positively ghostly."
And you know, it almost was. Not that I'm superstitious
at all, you know, in the vulgar way. But in the dim
room -- I always have just candlelight in
the drawing-room -- it fits in with my more reflective
moods, somehow -- I believe one must suit one's
environment to one's mood, don't you? -- in the dim
room, all those thoughts flying back and forty between
my brain and his gave me a positively creepy
feeling. And Fothy was so shaken I had to give
him a drink of Papa's Scotch before he went out
into the night.