Wyndham Smith. S. Fowler Wright
overcome,” the stranger replied, “but not easily. The operation requires elaborate preparations, and can only be performed at long intervals, and upon not more than four individuals—that is two exchanges—at once.”
“May I ask what is the result of the operation, if every trace of surrounding matter should not be successfully separated?”
“Insanity—at the least. Insanity both to the ego transferred with adhesions which will be foreign to the brain with which new relations must be established, and to that which is introduced to a depleted environment.”
“And if it be successful? I suppose that the knowledge—the memories—”
“You suppose rightly. I see that you perceive some of the limitations of the results of this operation, and the possibilities that remain.”
“I should have thought—”
“Yes. You would have guessed correctly, so far as guessing would be likely to go; and beyond that you would have seen that only experiment could resolve the enigmas your mind would raise. But the time for guessing is past.
“If you will listen carefully, on a matter which is likely to be of the utmost interest to yourself, it is what I propose to explain.”
Wyndham did not like that expression “of the utmost interest to yourself.” He did not like the way it was said. His heart missed a beat. Was he to be the subject of one of these interesting experiments?
The thought was one from which he shrank in a most unscientific spirit. The beauties of vivisection—even its moral altitudes are matters which the vivisected may fail to see. He was glad to recall—which he had been so near to forget—that you cannot die, nor suffer hurt, in a dream. He made no answer; and the stranger, after a moment of keen though quiet scrutiny, as though reading his mind very easily, commenced the explanation he had promised to give.
“I should tell you first that it has been practicable, for a very long period, to transfer all parts of the principal organs of the body, so that the anomaly was no longer possible (for instance) by which a scientist might be frustrated in his work by a defective gall bladder or a sluggish liver, while a common lunatic would be going about with these organs robustly alive. Grafting or substitution would quickly restore the physical harmony which the quality of his work required.
“You will not suppose that such results were achieved without some unexpected difficulties, some unforeseen complications, some inevitable catastrophes. But the practice is now firmly established, and it might be difficult to find a man of more than eighty or a hundred years, one or more of whose vital organs have not been substantially or radically repaired.
“You will see that this custom had beneficent consequences in ameliorating the conditions of the poor, for no child could be born who was not potentially valuable, if not in itself, yet to prolong the existence of others; and to the meanest of mankind there was opened the high, unselfish destiny that his lungs might expand with a monarch’s breath, or his heart beat in a statesman’s breast.
“For those wretched females who were allowed to marry, before the era of the present orderly methods, there was the hope that, if they could produce offspring of more than average quality, and with the requisite regularity, their lives might be indefinitely prolonged by a grateful country; and there were some whose bodies were so successfully repaired or renewed that they lived for more than two hundred years.
“Nor must you suppose that the direct benefits of this advance in surgical science were confined to those who were eminent in the state, or required for the continuance of its population. Purchases and exchanges became frequent among all classes of the community, and no cause of litigation was more common than that arising from this description of bartering. A man complaining, for instance, that he had been led by fraudulent misrepresentation to surrender a sound stomach for a heart with a defective valve. And as you will easily see, that at least three persons, and probably more, must have been directly involved in each of these transactions, for a few men would desire to make a direct exchange of the same organ only, and none would wish to be left with two of the same kind. The equitable adjustment of these disputes might be far from simple, and the cancellation of the contract by the return to a man of his own property might be unfair to an innocent party not directly concerned in the dispute.”
“It is an idea,” Wyndham took advantage of a moment’s pause to remark, forgetting his previous fear in the interest of the subject, “of many fascinating possibilities, but I should suppose that, in such cases as the women you mentioned, whose ages must have been over two hundred, there could be so little of the originals left that the question of identity would arise. Would they not have ceased to be the persons that they first were, and become compilations of other and younger women?”
“It is a question which naturally and necessarily arose at a comparatively early time, when major operations of this kind were first recognized as being of a beneficent and practicable character. It was a line of defence in an ancient and famous trial, when a wealthy criminal distributed his vital organs so freely among his associates (even including some portions of the brain itself) that there arose a serious issue of how far the human form in the dock could be held responsible for the deeds with which it was charged, or how otherwise the criminal could be brought to justice.
“The case actually resulted in an acquittal, it being decided that the man had escaped beyond the possibility of arrest, and it was this trial which led the government of that day to set aside a large fund for the determination of the location of personality in the human body…with an ultimate consequence which has brought you here.”
The last remark was a sharp reminder to Wyndham Smith that his interest in the instruction he was receiving might not prove to be of a merely academic kind. And feeling, like the man about to be hanged, that he could bear anything but suspense, he put the question directly, “And do you mind telling me what that is?”
“It is to that that I was about to come. But, before giving you such information, I wish you to have a clear mind as to the nature and consequence of the transfer of the human ego from one body to another.
“In the first place, our experiments have demonstrated that the ego has an identity absolutely separate from the body which it inhabits, and over which it has a limited muscular control. It follows, as you may have anticipated, that when an ego is transferred, it leaves behind all the memories, all the knowledge, which were stored in the brain which it had previously governed, and acquires the knowledge and memories of the one which it commences to occupy.
“It might be supposed that the practical result would be as though there had been no transfer at all. But this is not so. The ego which enters the body of another inherits the knowledge which that brain has acquired, and the physical dexterities to which it has trained its members, but does not necessarily sympathize with the proclivities which have caused that knowledge to be accumulated, or those physical abilities to develop; it may commence at once to train its acquired brain to other uses, its body to different sports.
“Having explained this, you will understand that if (for instance) your own ego should be removed from your present body and another introduced, the fresh tenant would acquire memory of this conversation, and would therefore readily understand what had occurred on an explanation being supplied. And, in the same way, if you should be transferred to another body, you would be equally so informed if the knowledge had been previously so imparted to the brain of which you would obtain control.”
“You mean,” Wyndham replied, endeavouring to maintain an impersonal attitude towards the subject, and suppressing the cold fear of a more immediate interest, “that if (for instance) my ego were so transferred, I should lose the memories that I now have, with all the knowledge of the time from which you say that I am already so widely removed, and should be dependent upon you to inform me even of the fact of my present identity?”
“That is what the position would be, but, in place of all from which you would have parted, you would have acquired the use of the stores of another brain, and its natural abilities, which might be more—perhaps much more—than those you had left behind, and of which also—it is an equal chance—you