as learned to live as a matter of course with his ever-present
ghost, does he discover that others have had like familiars themselves.

Sometimes this dawn of consciousness is preceded by a long twilight of
soul-awakening; but sometimes, upon more sensitive and subtler natures,
the light breaks with all the suddenness of a sunrise at the equator,
revealing to the mind's eye an unsuspected world of self within. But in
whatever way we may awake to it, the sense of personality, when first
realized, appears already, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, full grown
in the brain. From the moment when we first remember ourselves we seem
to be as old as we ever seem to others afterwards to become. We grow,
indeed, in knowledge, in wisdom, in experience, as our years increase,
but deep down in our heart of hearts we are still essentially the same.
To be sure, people pay us more deference than they did, which suggests
a doubt at times whether we may not have changed; small boys of a
succeeding generation treat us with a respect that causes us inwardly to
smile, as we think how little we differ from them, if they but knew it.
For at bottom we are not conscious of change from that morning, long
ago, when first we realized ourselves. We feel just as young now as we
felt old then. We are but amused at the world's discrimination where we
can detect no difference.

Every human being has been thus "twice born": once as matter, once as
mind. Nor is this second birth the birthright only of mankind. All the
higher animals probably, possibly even the lower too, have experienced
some such realization of individual identity. However that may be,
certainly to all races of men has come this revelation; only the degree
in which they have felt its force has differed immensely. It is one
thing to the apathetic, fatalistic Turk, and quite another matter to an
energetic, nervous American. Facts, fancies, faiths, all show how wide
is the variance in feelings. With them no introspective [greek]cnzhi
seauton overexcites the consciousness of self. But with us; as with
those of old possessed of devils, it comes to startle and stays to
distress. Too apt is it to prove an ever-present, undesirable double.
Too often does it play the part of uninvited spectre at the feast,
whose presence no one save its unfortunate victim suspects. The haunting
horror of his own identity is to natures far less eccentric than Kenelm
Chillingly's only too common a curse. To this