[TO THE Enrroa OF THE "SPECTATOR.,
Sin,—I have read with interest the letter in your issue of May 10th on "Personality," in which the writer narrated the experience of two persons who had become conscious for the first time of possessing a definite personality. The following quotation from Carlyle's essay on "Jean Paul Friedrich Richter," contributed to the Foreign Review in 1830, maybe of interest as bearing on the points suggested in the letter:— " Never shall I forget the unusual occurrence, till now narrated to no mortal, when I witnessed the birth of self- consciousness, of which I can still give the place and tithe. One forenoon, I was standing, a very young child, in the outer door, and looking leftward and at the stack of firewood, when all at once, the internal vision,—I am a Me (ich bin sin ich) came like a flash from heaven before me, and in gleaming light ever afterward continued. Then had my Me, for the first time, seen itself and for ever." The above experience of Jean Paul has a striking similarity to the cases mentioned in the Spectator.—I am, Sir, 8w.,
St. George's Rectory, Stamford. J. F. CAMM, LL.D.
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