CHAPTER II

 I have said that in my dreams I never saw a human being. Of this fact I became aware very early, and felt poignantly¹ the lack of my own kind. As a very little child, even, I had a feeling, in the midst of the horror of my dreaming, that if I could find but one man, only one human, I should be saved from my dreaming, that I should be surrounded no more by haunting terrors. This thought obsessed² me every night of my life for years—if only I could find that one human and be saved!

 

I must iterate that I had this thought in the midst of my dreaming, and I take it as an evidence of the merging³ of my two personalities⁴, as evidence of a point of contact between the two disassociated parts of me. My dream personality lived in the long ago, before ever man, as we know him, came to be; and my other and wake-a-day personality projected itself, to the extent of the knowledge of man’s existence, into the substance of my dreams.

 

Perhaps the psychologists of the book will find fault with my way of using the phrase, “disassociation of personality.” I know their use of it, yet am compelled to use it in my own way in default of a better phrase. I take shelter behind the inadequacy⁵ of the English language. And now to the explanation of my use, or misuse⁶, of the phrase.

 

It was not till I was a young man, at college, that I got any clew to the significance of my dreams, and to the cause of them. Up to that time they had been meaningless and without apparent causation. But at college I discovered evolution and psychology⁷, and learned the explanation of various strange mental states and experiences. For instance, there was the falling-through-space dream—the commonest dream experience, one practically known, by first-hand experience, to all men.

 

This, my professor told me, was a racial memory. It dated back to our remote ancestors who lived in trees. With them, being tree-dwellers, the liability of falling was an ever-present menace. Many lost their lives that way; all of them experienced terrible falls, saving themselves by clutching branches as they fell toward the ground.

 

Now a terrible fall, averted⁸ in such fashion, was productive of shock. Such shock was productive of molecular⁹ changes in the cerebral¹⁰ cells. These molecular changes were transmitted to the cerebral cells of progeny¹¹, became, in short, racial memories. Thus, when you and I, asleep or dozing¹² off to sleep, fall through space and awake to sickening consciousness just before we strike, we are merely remembering what happened to our arboreal¹³ ancestors, and which has been stamped by cerebral changes into the heredity of the race.

 

There is nothing strange in this, any more than there is anything strange in an instinct. An instinct is merely a habit that is stamped into the stuff of our heredity, that is all. It will be noted¹⁴, in passing, that in this falling dream which is so familiar to you and me and all of us, we never strike bottom. To strike bottom would be destruction. Those of our arboreal ancestors who struck bottom died forthwith. True, the shock of their fall was communicated to the cerebral cells, but they died immediately, before they could have progeny. You and I are descended¹⁵ from those that did not strike bottom; that is why you and I, in our dreams, never strike bottom.

 

And now we come to disassociation of personality. We never have this sense of falling when we are wide awake. Our wake-a-day personality has no experience of it. Then—and here the argument is irresistible—it must be another and distinct personality that falls when we are asleep, and that has had experience of such falling—that has, in short, a memory of past-day race experiences, just as our wake-a-day personality has a memory of our wake-a-day experiences.

 

It was at this stage in my reasoning that I began to see the light. And quickly the light burst upon me with dazzling brightness, illuminating¹⁶ and explaining all that had been weird¹⁷ and uncanny and unnaturally¹⁸ impossible in my dream experiences. In my sleep it was not my wake-a-day personality that took charge of me; it was another and distinct personality, possessing a new and totally different fund of experiences, and, to the point of my dreaming, possessing memories of those totally different experiences.

 

What was this personality? When had it itself lived a wake-a-day life on this planet in order to collect this fund of strange experiences? These were questions that my dreams themselves answered. He lived in the long ago, when the world was young, in that period that we call the Mid-Pleistocene. He fell from the trees but did not strike bottom. He gibbered with fear at the roaring of the lions. He was pursued by beasts of prey¹⁹, struck at by deadly snakes. He chattered²⁰ with his kind in council, and he received rough usage at the hands of the Fire People in the day that he fled before them.

 

But, I hear you objecting, why is it that these racial memories are not ours as well, seeing that we have a vague other-personality that falls through space while we sleep?

 

And I may answer with another question. Why is a two-headed calf²¹? And my own answer to this is that it is a freak. And so I answer your question. I have this other-personality and these complete racial memories because I am a freak.

 

But let me be more explicit²².

 

The commonest race memory we have is the falling-through-space dream. This other-personality is very vague. About the only memory it has is that of falling. But many of us have sharper, more distinct other-personalities. Many of us have the flying dream, the pursuing-monster dream, color dreams, suffocation²³ dreams, and the reptile²⁴ and vermin dreams. In short, while this other-personality is vestigial in all of us, in some of us it is almost obliterated²⁵, while in others of us it is more pronounced. Some of us have stronger and completer race memories than others.

 

It is all a question of varying degree of possession of the other-personality. In myself, the degree of possession is enormous. My other-personality is almost equal in power with my own personality. And in this matter I am, as I said, a freak—a freak of heredity.

 

I do believe that it is the possession of this other-personality—but not so strong a one as mine—that has in some few others given rise to belief in personal reincarnation experiences. It is very plausible²⁶ to such people, a most convincing hypothesis. When they have visions of scenes they have never seen in the flesh, memories of acts and events dating back in time, the simplest explanation is that they have lived before.

 

But they make the mistake of ignoring their own duality. They do not recognize their other-personality. They think it is their own personality, that they have only one personality; and from such a premise²⁷ they can conclude only that they have lived previous lives.

 

But they are wrong. It is not reincarnation. I have visions of myself roaming through the forests of the Younger World; and yet it is not myself that I see but one that is only remotely a part of me, as my father and my grandfather are parts of me less remote. This other-self of mine is an ancestor, a progenitor²⁸ of my progenitors²⁹ in the early line of my race, himself the progeny of a line that long before his time developed fingers and toes and climbed up into the trees.

 

I must again, at the risk of boring, repeat that I am, in this one thing, to be considered a freak. Not alone do I possess racial memory to an enormous extent, but I possess the memories of one particular and far-removed progenitor. And yet, while this is most unusual, there is nothing over-remarkable about it.

 

Follow my reasoning. An instinct is a racial memory. Very good. Then you and I and all of us receive these memories from our fathers and mothers, as they received them from their fathers and mothers. Therefore there must be a medium whereby these memories are transmitted from generation to generation. This medium is what Weismann terms the “germplasm.” It carries the memories of the whole evolution of the race. These memories are dim and confused, and many of them are lost. But some strains of germplasm carry an excessive freightage of memories—are, to be scientific, more atavistic than other strains; and such a strain is mine. I am a freak of heredity, an atavistic nightmare—call me what you will; but here I am, real and alive, eating three hearty³⁰ meals a day, and what are you going to do about it?

 

And now, before I take up my tale, I want to anticipate the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone³¹ to scoff³², and who would otherwise surely say that the coherence³³ of my dreams is due to overstudy and the subconscious³⁴ projection³⁵ of my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In the first place, I have never been a zealous³⁶ student. I graduated last of my class. I cared more for athletics³⁷, and—there is no reason I should not confess it—more for billiards³⁸.

 

Further, I had no knowledge of evolution until I was at college, whereas in my childhood and youth I had already lived in my dreams all the details of that other, long-ago life. I will say, however, that these details were mixed and incoherent until I came to know the science of evolution. Evolution was the key. It gave the explanation, gave sanity³⁹ to the pranks⁴⁰ of this atavistic brain of mine that, modern and normal, harked back to a past so remote as to be contemporaneous with the raw beginnings of mankind.

 

For in this past I know of, man, as we to-day know him, did not exist. It was in the period of his becoming that I must have lived and had my being.

1 poignantly   

参考例句：

• His story is told poignantly in the film, A Beautiful Mind, now showing here. 以他的故事拍成的电影《美丽境界》，正在本地上映。

2 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

3 merging   

合并（分类）

参考例句：

• Many companies continued to grow by merging with or buying competing firms. 许多公司通过合并或收买竞争对手的公司而不断扩大。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• To sequence by repeated splitting and merging. 用反复分开和合并的方法进行的排序。

4 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

5 inadequacy   

n.无法胜任，信心不足

参考例句：

• the inadequacy of our resources 我们的资源的贫乏
• The failure is due to the inadequacy of preparations. 这次失败是由于准备不足造成的。

6 misuse   

n.误用，滥用；vt.误用，滥用

参考例句：

• It disturbs me profoundly that you so misuse your talents.你如此滥用自己的才能，使我深感不安。
• He was sacked for computer misuse.他因滥用计算机而被解雇了。

7 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

8 averted   

防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移

参考例句：

• A disaster was narrowly averted. 及时防止了一场灾难。
• Thanks to her skilful handling of the affair, the problem was averted. 多亏她对事情处理得巧妙，才避免了麻烦。

9 molecular   

adj.分子的；克分子的

参考例句：

• The research will provide direct insight into molecular mechanisms.这项研究将使人能够直接地了解分子的机理。
• For the pressure to become zero, molecular bombardment must cease.当压强趋近于零时，分子的碰撞就停止了。

10 cerebral   

adj.脑的，大脑的；有智力的，理智型的

参考例句：

• Your left cerebral hemisphere controls the right-hand side of your body.你的左半脑控制身体的右半身。
• He is a precise,methodical,cerebral man who carefully chooses his words.他是一个一丝不苟、有条理和理智的人，措辞谨慎。

11 progeny   

n.后代，子孙；结果

参考例句：

• His numerous progeny are scattered all over the country.他为数众多的后代散布在全国各地。
• He was surrounded by his numerous progeny.众多的子孙簇拥着他。

12 dozing   

v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡

参考例句：

• The economy shows no signs of faltering. 经济没有衰退的迹象。
• He never falters in his determination. 他的决心从不动摇。

13 arboreal   

adj.树栖的；树的

参考例句：

• Man was evolved from an ancestor that was probably arboreal.人大概是从住在树上的祖先进化而来的。
• Koala is an arboreal Australian marsupial.考拉是一种澳大利亚树栖有袋动物。

14 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

15 descended   

a.为...后裔的，出身于...的

参考例句：

• A mood of melancholy descended on us. 一种悲伤的情绪袭上我们的心头。
• The path descended the hill in a series of zigzags. 小路呈连续的之字形顺着山坡蜿蜒而下。

16 illuminating   

a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的

参考例句：

• We didn't find the examples he used particularly illuminating. 我们觉得他采用的那些例证启发性不是特别大。
• I found his talk most illuminating. 我觉得他的话很有启发性。

17 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

18 unnaturally   

adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地

参考例句：

• Her voice sounded unnaturally loud. 她的嗓音很响亮，但是有点反常。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Her eyes were unnaturally bright. 她的眼睛亮得不自然。 来自《简明英汉词典》

19 prey   

n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨

参考例句：

• Stronger animals prey on weaker ones.弱肉强食。
• The lion was hunting for its prey.狮子在寻找猎物。

20 chattered   

（人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤

参考例句：

• They chattered away happily for a while. 他们高兴地闲扯了一会儿。
• We chattered like two teenagers. 我们聊着天，像两个十多岁的孩子。

21 calf   

n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮

参考例句：

• The cow slinked its calf.那头母牛早产了一头小牛犊。
• The calf blared for its mother.牛犊哞哞地高声叫喊找妈妈。

22 explicit   

adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的

参考例句：

• She was quite explicit about why she left.她对自己离去的原因直言不讳。
• He avoids the explicit answer to us.他避免给我们明确的回答。

23 suffocation   

n.窒息

参考例句：

• The greatest dangers of pyroclastic avalanches are probably heat and suffocation. 火成碎屑崩落的最大危害可能是炽热和窒息作用。 来自辞典例句
• The room was hot to suffocation. 房间热得闷人。 来自辞典例句

24 reptile   

n.爬行动物；两栖动物

参考例句：

• The frog is not a true reptile.青蛙并非真正的爬行动物。
• So you should not be surprised to see someone keep a reptile as a pet.所以，你不必惊奇有人养了一只爬行动物作为宠物。

25 obliterated   

v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭

参考例句：

• The building was completely obliterated by the bomb. 炸弹把那座建筑物彻底摧毁了。
• He began to drink, drank himself to intoxication, till he slept obliterated. 他一直喝，喝到他快要迷糊地睡着了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

26 plausible   

adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的

参考例句：

• His story sounded plausible.他说的那番话似乎是真实的。
• Her story sounded perfectly plausible.她的说辞听起来言之有理。

27 premise   

n.前提；v.提论，预述

参考例句：

• Let me premise my argument with a bit of history.让我引述一些史实作为我立论的前提。
• We can deduce a conclusion from the premise.我们可以从这个前提推出结论。

28 progenitor   

n.祖先，先驱

参考例句：

• He was also a progenitor of seven presidents of Nicaragua.他也是尼加拉瓜7任总统的祖先。
• Schoenberg was a progenitor of modern music.勋伯格是一位现代音乐的先驱。

29 progenitors   

n.祖先( progenitor的名词复数 )；先驱；前辈；原本

参考例句：

• The researchers also showed that the progenitors mature into neurons in Petri dishes. 研究人员还表示，在佩特里培养皿中的脑细胞前体可以发育成神经元。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 大脑与疾病
• Though I am poor and wretched now, my progenitors were famously wealthy. 别看我现在穷困潦倒，我家上世可是有名的富翁。 来自互联网

30 hearty   

adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的

参考例句：

• After work they made a hearty meal in the worker's canteen.工作完了，他们在工人食堂饱餐了一顿。
• We accorded him a hearty welcome.我们给他热忱的欢迎。

31 prone   

adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的

参考例句：

• Some people are prone to jump to hasty conclusions.有些人往往作出轻率的结论。
• He is prone to lose his temper when people disagree with him.人家一不同意他的意见,他就发脾气。

32 scoff   

n.嘲笑，笑柄，愚弄；v.嘲笑，嘲弄，愚弄，狼吞虎咽

参考例句：

• You are not supposed to scoff at religion.你不该嘲弄宗教。
• He was the scoff of the town.他成为全城的笑柄。

33 coherence   

n.紧凑；连贯；一致性

参考例句：

• There was no coherence between the first and the second half of the film.这部电影的前半部和后半部没有连贯性。
• Environmental education is intended to give these topics more coherence.环境教育的目的是使这些课题更加息息相关。

34 subconscious   

n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的)

参考例句：

• Nail biting is often a subconscious reaction to tension.咬指甲通常是紧张时的下意识反映。
• My answer seemed to come from the subconscious.我的回答似乎出自下意识。

35 projection   

n.发射，计划，突出部分

参考例句：

• Projection takes place with a minimum of awareness or conscious control.投射在最少的知觉或意识控制下发生。
• The projection of increases in number of house-holds is correct.对户数增加的推算是正确的。

36 zealous   

adj.狂热的，热心的

参考例句：

• She made zealous efforts to clean up the classroom.她非常热心地努力清扫教室。
• She is a zealous supporter of our cause.她是我们事业的热心支持者。

37 athletics   

n.运动，体育，田径运动

参考例句：

• When I was at school I was always hopeless at athletics.我上学的时候体育十分糟糕。
• Our team tied with theirs in athletics.在田径比赛中，我们队与他们队旗鼓相当。

38 billiards   

n.台球

参考例句：

• John used to divert himself with billiards.约翰过去总打台球自娱。
• Billiards isn't popular in here.这里不流行台球。

39 sanity   

n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确

参考例句：

• I doubt the sanity of such a plan.我怀疑这个计划是否明智。
• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。

40 pranks   

n.玩笑，恶作剧( prank的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Frank's errancy consisted mostly of pranks. 法兰克错在老喜欢恶作剧。 来自辞典例句
• He always leads in pranks and capers. 他老是带头胡闹和开玩笑。 来自辞典例句