sitting quietly at my table engaged in writing
this book, I can conceive the sensations that a soldier, a woman, an
artist, or an Englishman would experience in such and such a situation.
But, however fantastic the conceptions may be that we form, we do not
cease to be conscious withal of our own personal existence. Imagination
has taken flight fairly in space, but the memory of ourselves always
remains behind. Each of us knows that he is himself and not another,
that he did this yesterday, that he has just written a letter, that he
must write another such letter tomorrow, that he was out of Paris for a
week, etc. It is this memory of passed facts--a memory always present to
the mind--that constitutes the consciousness of our normal personality.

It is entirely different in the case of the two women, A---- and B----,
that M. Richet studied.

Put to sleep and subjected to certain influences, A---- and
B---- forget their identity; their age, their clothing, their
sex, their social position, their nationality, the place and
the time of their life--all this has entirely disappeared.
Only a single idea remains--a single consciousness--it is the
consciousness of the idea and of the new being that dawns upon
their imagination.

They have lost the idea of their late existence. They live,
talk, and think exactly like the type that is suggested to
them. With what tremendous intensity of life these types are
realized, only those who have been present at these experiments
can know. Description can only give a weak and imperfect idea
of it.

Instead of imagining a character simply, they realize it,
objectify it. It is not like a hallucination, of which one
witnesses the images unfolding before him, as a spectator
would. He is rather like an actor who is seized with passion,
imagines that the drama he plays is a reality, not a fiction,
and that he has been transformed, body and soul, into the
personality that he sets himself to play.

In order to have this transformation of personality work it is
sufficient to pronounce a word with some authority. I say to
A----, "You are an old woman," she considers herself changed
into an old woman, and her countenance, her bearing, her
feelings, become those of an old woman. I say to B----, "You
are a little girl," and she immediately assumes the language,