I was a
being incomprehensible to myself. Either I had a second self, who
transacted business in my likeness, or else my body was at times
possessed by a spirit over which it had no control, and of whose
actions my own soul was wholly unconscious. This was an
anomaly not to be accounted for by any philosophy of mine, and I
was many times, in contemplating it, excited to terrors and mental
torments hardly describable. To be in a state of consciousness and
unconsciousness, at the same time, in the same body and same
spirit, was impossible. I was under the greatest anxiety, dreading
some change would take place momently in my nature; for of
dates I could make nothing: one-half, or two-thirds of my time,
seemed to me totally lost. I often, about this time, prayed with
great fervour, and lamented my hopeless condition, especially in
being liable to the commission of crimes which I was not sensible
of and could not eschew. And I confess, notwithstanding the
promises on which I had been taught to rely, I began to have
secret terrors that the great enemy of man's salvation was
exercising powers over me that might eventually lead to my ruin.
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