We cannot make the same statement concerning B2 and B4, who present themselves as foreign influences.

B3 received the name of Sally, and is a problem. She plays no part, she seems a distinct entity come into the body to amuse herself at her victim's expense, a parasite who wishes to enjoy life and substitute herself for Miss Beauchamp, while profiting by the latter's terrestrial relations.

She differs from the other personalities in that the doctor, while treating his subject by hypnotism, can, at pleasure, bring Miss Beauchamp to the state of B3 or B4, but he can neither call upon nor expel Sally, who resists his suggestions. Indeed, it is often she herself who makes the suggestions: in her struggle against the doctor, she suggests to Miss Beauchamp to understand quite the opposite of whatever he may be saying to her.

Thus the life of Miss Beauchamp alternates between three different conditions, which render her existence all the more difficult, as the doctor who hypnotizes her seems not to have acquainted her connections with these changes. We can understand the forlorn existence of one who, knowing nothing of her periods of absence, awakens in an unknown place, talking with people whom she does not know, or at least perceiving that she is not in touch with the questions under discussion, and who keeps apart, wondering always if she is not going mad.

But Sally is a veritable little demon: unknown to Miss Beauchamp, and possessing all her organs, she writes letters, and makes appointments. We may imagine the astonishment of poor Bl who finds these inexplicable letters and believes herself possessed of the devil! One thing alone moves Sally, the fear of losing this body which she abuses. The thought that the death of Miss Beauchamp would deprive her of her pleasures, makes her slightly more reasonable. Therefore she made a compact with the doctor, who had been unable to command her.

Naturally, a professor of pathology of the nervous system would put forth the thesis that there is no distinction to be made among these several personalities, all of which he considers as divisions of the ego. However, I should like to present some objections in behalf of the unity and indivisibility of the human being, which theory it seems is rather lightly handled, when similar cases are treated.

The different aspects of the ego do not necessarily pertain to division. Mons. de Roches has distinctly shown in his studies upon the regression of memory, that the same subject, carried back by hypnotism through previously lived years, is seen under varying aspects and with different characteristics. Here, however, there is neither change nor dissociation of personality: there is return to a former state, differing greatly from the present state, by reason of his changed life and progress of his education. Here is nothing to lead one to infer a division of the ego.

B4, one of the personalities who appeared, is, according to Dr. Prince, a person of this kind, seized with an amnesia that veils from her for the time being an entire period of her life. The subject takes up her life when she was eighteen years old, and is unaware of all that Miss Beauchamp has accomplished and learned since then. Therefore there is no change in the ego. There are the same will, emotion and sensibility that live and move in a group of images and recollections common to both personalities up to the eighteenth year, but which differ from the moment when B4 manifests a lapse of memory.

That is why I feel I should be reserved in this war of words which discourses so freely upon the dissociation of the ego.

Until now we have called this central seat of conscious life which manifests itself as an indivisible entity, the ego.

If It is used in another sense, it is necessary to warn the reader. Arms and legs have nothing in common with the ego, and I confess that I do not understand this hypothesis of dissociation.

When one speaks of a division of the ego, it appears to me senseless: the subconscious ego itself seems to be nonsense: subconsciousness, simply, suffices for me. The subconsciousness which acts unknown to a conscious subject is not himself, since by himself, I mean his conscious part. In short, I have need of a comprehensible hypothesis, and I cannot allow discussion of an ego that is outside of myself. My subconsciousness is the under-being, beyond my consciousness.

To express an hypothesis upon dissociation, there must be clarity of image. If the ego should be considered as a part of the material being, dissociation would be none other than a traumatic nervous affection, causing local paralysis. If it belongs to the psychic center which is self-cognizant, it is indivisible. In the first case, there can only be a mutilation of the being, and the parts are less than the whole: in the second, there can be but alternations of the personality.

In the case of Miss Beauchamp, certain persons speak ingenuously of the coexistence of several egos forming the different personalities. This recalls the mystery of the Trinity, according to which there are three Gods in One Person, each co-equal.

Let us admit that the course of life is an aggregate of ideas and memories that form strata, as a tree whose years are counted by the rings, but this aggregate is distinct from the ego. It is only in conceiving the subject as in touch with several of these concentric strata, that I can create for myself an objective representation of what a change of personality might be.

Thus we may imagine the life of Miss B. as concentric circles representing the years she has lived and we shall see that B4 is only the subject herself, presenting a lapse of several years.

As for the artificial states, obtained through hypnotism, we should not, I believe, consider them as personalities. The problem, as concerning Miss B., is truly more complex and offers so strange an assemblage, that we may well imagine that a foreign manifestation has been introduced among the other phenomena. B3, called Sally, is not explicable by a redoubling of the ego, a formula which presents nothing tangible to the imagination. In order to express a concrete thought it was necessary to imagine groups of states of consciousness, which would have created a second ego unknown to the first. But these dissociated states cannot create a being ex nihilo, without the affinity of the conscious ego.

By dissociation, we understand a group of isolated images: the noise of the street that strikes our ear without attracting our attention, a detail mechanically observed, while the mind is busy elsewhere - these are images which may survive in our subconsciousness in the state of dissociation. Yet these images must rise to the higher consciousness, else they are as though dead: such a group of memories cannot animate itself to the point of creating a new, even though an artificial, personality. Is Sally factitious? All the personalities of Miss B. may be alternating states of a single ego, all save Sally. To call her the alter ego of Miss B., as does Dr. Prince, is to lay the problem but not to solve it. Sally affirms her independence by her acts and Miss B., when in a state of hypnotic lucidity, declares: "We are all the same person, except Sally."

Dr. Prince refuses to admit Sally, but she has diabolical tricks and ruses. Herself rebellious to suggestion, it is she who imposes her will upon Miss Beauchamp, by means of hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestions. She follows her whims, writing letters which she posts, smoking cigarettes to annoy her medium, whose reserve and scruples she detests. Finally she wastes her money, destroys her bank notes, and treats Miss Beauchamp as a stupid victim.

When Miss B. is in her normal state, Sally is always there, as an exterior witness who later will be in touch with all her acts. In the same way Sally is aware of whatever the other personalities do. The others, on the contrary, are nonexistent and incapable of knowing what Miss B. has done in her normal state. By means of her knowledge, Sally endeavors sometimes to conceal her coming and tries to play the part of Miss B.: but as she has not the same education the doctor unveils her ruse by causing her to speak French. Sally, who does not know French, seeing herself caught, bursts into laughter and exhibits her true colors, greatly pleased with the joke.

Sally can even recount dreams, which fact proves that she exists or coexists, at the time of the medium's conscious activity. Another peculiarity which distinguishes her from the other personalities is that physiologically she adopts herself with difficulty to the organs. Having much trouble to speak, she stammered terribly in the beginning: once she demanded the use of her eyes and opened the lids with her hands. She declares that this body is entirely foreign to her, as a garment, and that within it she feels no illness, neither fatigue, hunger nor thirst.

The following is an example of the incarnations of Sally. On Christmas Eve Miss B. was at Church, seated on the right side of the nave. The choir was singing the processional. Suddenly she found herself on the left side and the choir still singing the processional. Twenty-four hours had passed for her like twenty-four seconds: Sally had confiscated her and brought her back the next day to the spot where she had been seized. Sally had profited by the invitations sent to Miss B., taken to herself all the Christmas pleasures, and had enjoyed herself greatly.

There are other and even better illustrations. Once, when Miss B. was in the throes of the most violent delirium, Sally intervened, absolutely in her right mind, consented to be her nurse, and came at intervals to swallow the food or medicine, which the patient, in her delirium could not take.

The lucid mind appearing at the same time as the delirious state, is one of the facts which prove the presence of two distinct entities. It is impossible to conceive of the ego thus severed in half.

The conception that we have of an ego will not permit us to imagine the simultaneousness of these two contrary states in a single unity. To declare that Miss B. and Sally act under the influence of a single ego is to say there are two egos of the same person, which is accepting words whose meaning is inconceivable.

It was easy to speculate concerning the arbitrary divisions of personality, but it is not so easy to give them an appearance of reality: Sally is too large a part to have been detached from the principal consciousness of Miss B. without the latter having been diminished: the disintegration of Miss B.'s personality into so many small parts is purely arbitrary. Sally does not find her place in this scheme. No ego is found to which she is akin, and the mystery has not been elucidated. It is true we cannot say that she is a spiritual entity of the nature of those who give proofs; but there is here a mysterious entity which might have been studied with profit. Here we have the manifestation of a foreign activity, whose secret lies in the unknown. All this proves, at least, the existence of a new world, which has not as yet been sufficiently explored.